Table of Contents

Introduction; 1. What is theory?; 2. The classical attempt at synthesis: Talcott Parsons; 3. Parsons on the road to normativist functionalism; 4. Parsons and the elaboration of normativist functionalism; 5. Neo-utilitarianism; 6. Interpretive approaches (1): symbolic interactionism; 7. Interpretive approaches (2): ethnomethodology; 8. Conflict sociology and conflict theory; 9. Habermas and critical theory; 10. Habermas' 'theory of communicative action'; 11. Niklas Luhmann's radicalization of functionalism; 12. Anthony Giddens' theory of structuration and the new British sociology of power; 13. The renewal of Parsonianism and modernization theory; 14. Structuralism and poststructuralism; 15. Between structuralism and theory of practice: the cultural sociology of Pierre Bourdieu; 16. French anti-structuralists (Cornelius Castoriadis, Alain Touraine and Paul Ricoeur); 17. Feminist social theories; 18. A crisis of modernity? New diagnoses (Ulrich Beck, Zygmunt Bauman, Robert Bellah, and the debate between liberals and communitarians); 19. Neopragmatism; 20. How things stand; Bibliography.