Taken from a series of short topic books designed to cover the requirements of A level sociology syllabuses, this book provides an introduction to the range of approaches and ideas which comprise sociological theory. Drawing on both historical and contemporary material, it examines the ways in which theoretical positions help us to understand the social world and produce sociological knowledge. It examines critically the perspectives approach, and concludes with a discussion of the challenge to sociology from feminism. Each book in the series is written by a specialist in the area and contains a selection of reading and documentary extracts, including statistical and quantitative data, where relevent, as well as textual analysis.