A rich, highly textured, historically sweeping, and strikingly inclusive collection. -Jeffrey Alexander, Yale University Powerful and provocative...Social Theory is an essential guide through the complex contours of multicultural ideology and theory from the nineteenth century to the present. -Manning Marable, Pulitzer Prize winner for Malcom X The breadth, scope, and variety of this reader is truly unique. For nearly twenty years, I've kept up-to-date on contemporary social theory by using Lemert as a guide to complete articles and books worth reading. -Jerry Daday, Western Kentucky University Social Theory provides a distinctive opportunity to read primary source material across a wide range of theoretical, political, and historical contexts, yet is expansive enough to offer flexibility in how I teach from one semester to the next. -Anthony Hatch, Georgia State University This book is nothing short of a spiritual experience. The writings are wonderfully diverse, and Dr. Lemert's essays are a vital and powerful supplement to the words of these transformative thinkers. -Ben McKeown, sociology student Praise for Prior Editions: Lemert has given ample space to those who are at the margins of or fall completely outside of what most consider social theory...and [who] contribute to a diverse, broad, multilevel, and, in places, deep treatment of social theory and its evolution. ...Late modern and postmodern theorists are well represented, and the focuses on race, gender, and globalization make this text useful for courses far beyond the standard undergraduate one in sociological theory. This book would also be well suited to more focused courses on modernity and postmodernity or even in a cultural studies curriculum. ...Excellent. -Stephen Lippmann, Teaching Sociology Lemert provides an illuminating introduction to the collection and introductions to each section that provide an overview of the socio-historical context and delineation of key thinkers and texts in each period. Combining important classical and contemporary material, Lemert's collection enables the student and reader to trace out the origins of the modern world to our present global and conflicted condition. -Douglas Kellner, University of California, Los Angeles This collections presents a provocative wide-angle view of the history of social theory, including very recent work which interestingly engages with a future only dimly coming into focus. Well-chosen selections from the new social movements as well as the classics and recent mainstream make this a fine introduction for courses in the social sciences. The collection also offers students and scholars in other fields a valuable overview of the ideas and assumptions that have shaped thought in the humanities, jurisprudence, and public policy more generally. -Sandra Harding, UCLA, Co-Editor of Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society Lemert gives shape to a sociological imagination for the twenty-first century. This is necessary reading for us all. -Patricia Clough, Queens College and CUNY Graduate Center With an equally sure grasp of the classics of the past and the probable classics of the future, Charles Lemert has assembled a remarkable array of stimulating readings in social theory. The result is a well-stocked tool kit for the canon wars of the twenty-first century. -Martin Jay, University of California at Berkeley Social Theory is an essential guide through the complex contours of multicultural ideology and theory from the nineteenth century to the present. Lemert brings together a surprising range of multicultural voices and perspectives into a powerful and provocative introductory text. Social Theory clearly illustrates how critical ideas have the power to transform societies. -Manning Marable, Columbia University A rich, highly textured, historically sweeping, and strikingly inclusive collection that aims to reconstruct, perhaps for the first time, the actual dialogue of contemporary social thought. -Jeffrey Alexander, Yale University Charles Lemert captures the surfacing of multiple theoretical voices in the postmodern era. No theory course should be without Social Theory. -Steve Seidman, State University of New York at Albany
