Giddens Anthony. Politics, Sociology, and Social Theory: Encounters with Classical and Contemporary Social Thought

Stanford University Press, 1995. 304 pages.Politics, Sociology, And Social Theory: Encounters With Classical And Contemporary Social Theory consists of a series of critical engagements with major figures in classical and present-day social and political thought. It offers not only a challenging critique of major traditions of social and political analysis but also unique insights into the ideas that Anthony Giddens has developed over the past twenty years. Giddens has attempted to strike a balance between classical and contemporary theorists including politics and sociology in the thought of Max Weber, analysis of Emile Durkheim's political sociology, Comte and the origins of positivism, and essays on Parsons (the concept of "power"), Marcuse (One-Dimensional Man), Garfinkel (ethnomethodology and hermeneutics), Habermas (labor and interaction), and Foucault (the new French conservatism), and a backward glance at Fredrick Nietzsche and Karl Marx. Politics, Sociology And Social Theory serves as a comprehensive introduction to some of the main debates in the social and political sciences today. - Midwest Book Review