New Rules of Sociological Method: A Positive Critique of Interpretative Sociologies

This is a new and revised edition of a book which has already established itself as a basic text in social theory.

The first section of the work provides a concise critical analysis of some leading schools of thought in social philosophy, giving particular attention to phenomenology, ethnomethodology and Wittgensteinian thought. Giddens concentrates primarily upon the implications of these various perspectives for an account of human action and its intelligibility. An 'action approach' on ...