Four Sociological Traditions

Revised and Expanded Edition of Three Sociological Traditions

Randall Collins

The updated version of Collins's critically-acclaimed Three Sociological Traditions, this text presents a concise intellectual history of sociology organized around the development of four classic schools of thought: the conflict tradition of Marx and Weber, the ritual solidarity of Durkheim, the microinteractionist tradition of Mead, Blumer, and Garfinkel, and--new to this edition--the utilitarian/rational choice tradition. Collins, one of the liveliest and most exciting writers in sociology today, traces the intellectual highlights of these four main schools from classical theories to current developments, introducing the roots of sociology and indicating the areas where progress has been made in our understanding, the areas where controversy still exists, and the direction in which sociology is headed.

Four Sociological Traditions

Revised and Expanded Edition of Three Sociological Traditions

Randall Collins

Description

The updated version of Collins's critically-acclaimed Three Sociological Traditions, this text presents a concise intellectual history of sociology organized around the development of four classic schools of thought: the conflict tradition of Marx and Weber, the ritual solidarity of Durkheim, the microinteractionist tradition of Mead, Blumer, and Garfinkel, and--new to this edition--the utilitarian/rational choice tradition. Collins, one of the liveliest and most exciting writers in sociology today, traces the intellectual highlights of these four main schools from classical theories to current developments, introducing the roots of sociology and indicating the areas where progress has been made in our understanding, the areas where controversy still exists, and the direction in which sociology is headed.

Previous publication dates

March 1985

Four Sociological Traditions

Revised and Expanded Edition of Three Sociological Traditions

Randall Collins

Prologue: The Rise of the Social Sciences
Social Thought in the Agrarian Empires
Medieval Universities Create the Modern Intellectual
Economics: the First Social Science
The Rise of Public Schools and the University Revolution
The Development of the Disciplines
1. The Conflict Tradition
The Pivotal Position of Karl Marx
Friedrich Engels, the Sociologist in the Shadows
Max Weber and the Multidimensional Theory of Stratification
The Twentieth Century Intermingles Marxian and Weberian Ideas
APPENDIX: Simmel, Coser, and Functionalist Conflict Theory
2. The Rational/Utilitarian Tradition
The Original Rise and Fall of Utilitarian Philosophy
Bringing the Individual Back In
Sociology Discovers Sexual and Marriage Markets
Three Applications of Sociological Markets: Educational Inflation, Split Labor Markets, Illegal Goods
The Paradoxes and Limits of Rationality
Proposed Rational Solutions for Creating Social Solidarity Economics Invades Sociology, and Vice Versa
The Rational Theory of the State
The New Utilitarian Policy Science
3. The Durkheimian Tradition
Sociology as the Science of Social Order
Two Wings: The Macro Tradition
The Second Wing: The Lineage of Social Anthropology
Ritual Exchange Networks: The Micro/Macro Linkage
The Future of the Durkheimian Tradition
4. The Microinteractionist Tradition
A Native American Sociology
The Pragmatism of Charles Sanders Peirce
Society Is in The Mind: Cooley
George Herbert Mead's Sociology of Thinking
Blumer Creates Symbolic Interactionism
The Sociology of Consciousness: Husserl, Schutz, and Garfinkel
Erving Goffman's Counterattack
A Summing Up
Notes
Epilogue
Bibliography
Index