On Sociology Second Edition Volume Two: Illustration and Retrospect

by John H. Goldthorpe

Overview

see copy for volume one.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780804750004
Publisher:	Stanford University Press
Publication date:	01/23/2007
Series:	Studies in Social Inequality
Edition description:	2
Pages:	360
Product dimensions:	6.12(w) x 9.25(h) x (d)

About the Author

John H. Goldthorpe is an Emeritus Fellow of Nuffield College, Oxford University. He is a Fellow of the British Academy, a member of the Academia Europaea, and a foreign member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.

Table of Contents

Introduction to Volume II     1
Part I
Class Analysis and the Reorientation of Class Theory: The Case of Persisting Differentials in Educational Attainment     21
Explaining Educational Differentials: Towards a Formal Rational Action Theory (with Richard Breen)     45
The Theory Evaluated: Commentaries and Research     73
Social Class and the Differentiation of Employment Contracts     101
Class Analysis: New Versions and Their Problems     125
Outline of a Theory of Social Mobility     154
Part II
Sociology and the Probabilistic Revolution, 1830-1930: Explaining an Absent Synthesis     189
Statistics and the Theory of Social Action: Failures in the Integration of American Sociology, 1900-1960     228
Notes     259
Bibliography     301
Index     335

Editorial Reviews

"Goldthorpe, one of Great Britain's most eminent sociologists, finds sociology in a troubling state of disarray. Research and theory proceed in ignorance of each other, and the mantra of "pluralism" undermines the prospect of consensus on the discipline's fundamental purpose and approach. In this expanded, two-volume edition of his manifesto, he proposes a solution to this lamentable state of affairs: make a particular style of research the chief paradigm... The book is useful, erudite, and occasionally provocative."—Contemporary Sociology

"When the most distinguished empirical social researcher in Britain takes on the problem of the relation between theory and research, places the issues in their larger historical setting (based on wide and accurate reading in the historical literature), and also states the issue in current technical terms, and does so with both panache and bite, we get a book that is well worth reading."—American Journal of Sociology

"Goldthorpe's project has all the scope and reach of the post-war functionalist program of Parsons and Merton, but it is likely to be more successful precisely because it allows a substantial role for empirical scholarship and can contain and encompass the ongoing quantitative revolution. . . . The publication of On Sociology will come to be seen as a turning-point in the history of the discipline."—European Sociological Review

"John Goldthorpe has given us a fine book. . . . I cannot think of a better introduction for any aspiring sociologist to the delicate art of synthesizing theory and empirics. . . . Each of Goldthorpe's chapters hammers home the virtues of finding an intellectual rapprochement between statistical modelling, based on large data-sets, structures of social action and interaction, and theory."—British Journal of Sociology

From the Publisher

"John Goldthorpe has given us a fine book. . . . I cannot think of a better introduction for any aspiring sociologist to the delicate art of synthesizing theory and empirics. . . . Each of Goldthorpe's chapters hammers home the virtues of finding an intellectual rapprochement between statistical modelling, based on large data-sets, structures of social action and interaction, and theory."

British Journal of Sociology

"Goldthorpe, one of Great Britain's most eminent sociologists, finds sociology in a troubling state of disarray. Research and theory proceed in ignorance of each other, and the mantra of "pluralism" undermines the prospect of consensus on the discipline's fundamental purpose and approach. In this expanded, two-volume edition of his manifesto, he proposes a solution to this lamentable state of affairs: make a particular style of research the chief paradigm... The book is useful, erudite, and occasionally provocative."

Contemporary Sociology

"When the most distinguished empirical social researcher in Britain takes on the problem of the relation between theory and research, places the issues in their larger historical setting (based on wide and accurate reading in the historical literature), and also states the issue in current technical terms, and does so with both panache and bite, we get a book that is well worth reading."

American Journal of Sociology

"Goldthorpe's project has all the scope and reach of the post-war functionalist program of Parsons and Merton, but it is likely to be more successful precisely because it allows a substantial role for empirical scholarship and can contain and encompass the ongoing quantitative revolution. . . . The publication of On Sociology will come to be seen as a turning-point in the history of the discipline."

European Sociological Review