Summary
Contents
Subject index
George Ritzer is one of the leading social and cultural commentators of the present day. In this essential new book he considers some of the main tendencies in contemporary social theory. Included here are Ritzer's latest reflections on the uses and misuses of metatheory. According to Ritzer, sociology is a multiparadigm science. The differences and intensities of rivalries between paradigms are often very confusing for students and even for professional sociologists. This book seeks to find a way out of the confusion by sketching out the lineaments of a new integrated sociological paradigm and demonstrates how this paradigm can be applied. It shows the various ways in which Ritzer has developed rationalization theory to shed light on professional integration, the shape of consumer culture, hyperrationality and the state of sociology today.
Sociology: A Multiple Paradigm Science
Sociology: A Multiple Paradigm Science
A variety of tools have proven attractive to metatheorists interested in gaining a deeper understanding of theory (Mu) and more generally to metasociologists seeking to better understand the nature of sociology as a whole. While the architectonic employed in Chapter 2 is a somewhat unusual tool, the paradigm concept has been widely employed and is extremely useful; that concept provides the basis for the analysis undertaken in this chapter. While the focus here is on American sociology as a whole, special attention is devoted to attaining a more specific comprehension of American sociological theory.
The period of concern here is primarily the 1960s, although the multi-paradigmatic status of sociology certainly predated that decade and did not disappear ...
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