Charles C. Lemert

This first truly multicultural anthology collects important, readable texts representative of the full range of social theory from the nineteenth century to the present. Now that social theory is practiced in many disciplines, it is necessary to reflect on the variety of theories being read today and the earlier sources that are customarily neglected. If today we read Donna Haraway, Henry Louis Gates, and Michel Foucault, we should also read and understand Charlotte Perkins Gilman and W.E.B. Du Bois, alongside Max Weber, Georg Simmel, William James, and others from the end of the nineteenth century. This book, therefore, sets a wider gauge for the understanding of the history of social thought than could have been possible before. It brings together theories in unexpected and exciting ways: those of Talcott Parsons and Dorothy Smith, Robert K. Merton and Jacques Lacan, Immanuel Wallerstein and Frantz Fanon, James Coleman and Molefi Asante. Extensive introductory essays by the editor situate the readings in their historical place and time, identifying the currents of social change that shaped fundamental questions of modern and postmodern life. This fourth edition has been thoroughly revised and updated to include cutting-edge documents on teletechnologies, masculinities, rhizomes, bare life, and more.

The Multicultural and Classic Readings

Social Theory

'Charles Lemert is one of the most thoughtful and interesting of sociology's postmodernists. He recurrently finds new angles of vision and is especially helpful for overcoming the pernicious opposition of 'micro' and 'macro' perspectives.' -Craig Calhoun, New York University (on the first edition) Highly readable, the second edition of Postmodernism Is Not What You Think responds to the widespread claim that postmodernism is over. It explains the historical connections between the postmodern and globalization. Those who wish to kill the term postmodernism still must face the facts that the former nationalistic world-system has collapsed and is slowly being replaced by a more global set of structures. The book is completely revised and updated with an entirely new section on globalization. The media and popular culture, identity politics, the science wars, politics and cultural studies, structuralism and poststructuralism, and the new sociologies are also put in perspective as signs of the new social formations dawning at the end of the modern age. Lemert shows that the postmodern is less a theory than a condition of social life brought about by the trouble modernity has gotten itself into.

Postmodernism is Not What You Think

Garth Gillan

Studie over het werk van de Franse socioloog en historicus Michel Foucault (1926-1984).

Social Theory and Transgression

Michel Foucault

Scott Myers-Lipton

The voices of famous and lesser known figures in America's quest to reduce poverty are collected for the first time in this comprehensive historical anthology. The book traces the most important ideas and contributions of citizens, activists, labour leaders, scholars, politicians, and governmental agencies to ensure American citizens the basics of food, housing, employment, education, and health care. The book follows the idea of poverty reduction from Thomas Paine's agrarian justice to Josiah Quincy's proposal for the construction of poorhouses; from the Freedmen's Bureau to Sitting Bull's demand for money and supplies; from Coxey's army of the unemployed to Jane Addams's Hull House; from the Civil Works Administration to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s call for an Economic Bill of Rights; and from William Julius Wilson's universal programme of reform to George W. Bush's armies of compassion.

America's Struggle to Build a Just Society

Social Solutions to Poverty

Anthony Elliott

This fascinating and easy to read book offers new insights into the interplay between increasing globalization and the rise of the new individualism. It will be of interest to everyone concerned with the future of the public spheres, progressive

The Emotional Costs of Globalization

The New Individualism

Once again, Lemert has revised and updated Social Things, a best seller that is admired by teachers, students, and even their parents for its riveting brilliance. In this edition, he challenges readers to appreciate the surprising story of how globalization requires even the most reluctant to engage with its strange effects. In a new and original chapter, “Global Things Queer the Social”, Lemert unblushingly explains that globalization became a dominant force in everyday life at the very time when ordinary life was threatened by extraordinary human crises of poverty and disease. The new world order is queer in more ways than one. It forces us to rethink social taboos, including those on talk about sex and sexualities. As in its earlier editions, Social Things excites, disturbs, and instructs readers who wonder what “globalization” means to them and how their sociological competence can contend with the way it emboldens people to look at the world honestly.

An Introduction to the Sociological Life

Social Things

Globalization offers a unique compilation of the major statements - drawn from a variety of historical periods, political contexts, intellectual perspectives and academic disciplines - on the globalization debate. Anthony Elliott and Charles Lemert expertly guide the reader through the complex terrain of globalization - its engaging histories, transnational economies, multiple cultures and cosmopolitan politics. There is no other book that manages to wrap together the historical and contemporary, the academic and public, debates as...

A Reader

Globalization

In the eloquent style for which he has become famous, Charles Lemert writes of social theory as no one else. Thinking the Unthinkable is offered as text for instruction, yet it defies the prevailing assumption that social theory is a method for clarifying the facts of social life. Lemert shows how social theory began late in the 19th century as a struggle to come to terms with the failure of modern reason to solve the social problems created by the capitalist world-system. Since then, social theory has developed through twists and turns to think and rethink this Unthinkable. Hence the surprising innovations of recent years-postmodern, queer, postcolonial, third-wave feminist, risk theories, among others arising in the wake of globalization. Once again, Lemert has made the difficult clear in a book that students and other readers will treasure and keep.

The Riddles of Classical Social Theories

Thinking the Unthinkable

A critique of modern sociological theory, this brilliant new work rather than announcing the twilight of man accepts the event both as an intellectual conclu­sion and an empirical fact, and proceeds systematically to examine the alterna­tives beyond the Weber-Durkheim-Par­sons episteme. Addressing himself to the issues of pluralism in sociological theory, Lemert rigorously examines representative writings of important theorists in America and Europe, including the writings of Homans (Lexical Explana­tion), Blalock (Theory Construction­ism), Parsons (Analytic Realism), Blumer (Symbolic Interactionism), Schutz, Berger, Luckmann (Phenomen­ology), Cicourel (Ethnomethology), and Habermas (Critical Theory). Lemert challenges the celebrated pluralism hy­pothesis in his argument that recent sociological theory is not so pluralistic after all and has not made particular use of available styles of thinking. Sociology and the Twilight of Man is an important contribution to the modern sociological enterprise for several rea­sons. First, it raises basic questions about the progress made beyond earlier theoretical writings. Second, it ques­tions the explanatory force of current theories. Third, it questions whether contemporary theory can continue to develop in a meaningful way without a profound reexamination of its assump­tions and premises. And fourth, it dem­onstrates the value of discursive analysis to theoretical studies. Lemert's critique could lead to fundamental revisions of sociologists' perception of their disci­pline.

Homocentrism and Discourse in Sociological Theory

Sociology and the Twilight of Man

Immanuel Maurice Wallerstein

Carlos Antonio Aguirre Rojas

Uncertain Worlds is the definitive presentation of the evolution of world-systems analysis from the point of view of its founder, Immanuel Wallerstein. Few theorists have offered a more systematic theory of what has become known as 'globalisation' than Wallerstein. The book includes a one-of-kind interview with Wallerstein by Carlos Rojas, a conversation between Wallerstein and Lemert about the history of the field as it has come down to the present time, a long essay by Lemert on the uncertainties of the modern world-system, as well as a preface by Rojas and a concluding essay by Wallerstein. No other book lends such biographical, historical, and personal nuance to the biography of world-systems analysis and, thus, to the history of our times. The will be a key reference book for students of global politics, economics and international relations.

World-systems Analysis in Changing Times

Uncertain Worlds

Immanuel Wallerstein

Carlos Aguirre Rojas

"Globalization: An Introduction to the End of the Known World" surveys the history of globalization from the earliest of ancient texts through contemporary debates and the prospects for anticipating the new worlds to come. At the end of the twentieth century, debates over the nature of globalization were unable to agree on a simple resolution, except to say that globalization is economic, political, and cultural all at once. Cultural globalization affects everyone with a smartphone, on which global youth from Los Angeles to Jakarta listen to Jay-Z and Beyonce. States are torn in several directions at once by unsettling economic, political, and cultural forces. Lemert concludes with a serious outline of the possible ways of imagining what the still-unknown global world will become next ways including optimism, caution, and skepticism."

An Introduction to the End of the Known World

Prof Charles Lemert

Lemert argues that race is the central feature of modern culture; that this was true for the twentieth century and will be true for the twenty-first. His book reflects the urgent social issues of race relations, multiculturalism, and social justice.

Race and the Eclipse of Society

Dark Thoughts

Widely assigned and taught in senior capstone and social theory courses, Sociology After the Crisis offers the first systematic theory of social differences built on the sociological traditions by embracing to Durkheim, Weber and other familiar figures. The first edition was acclaimed for its nuanced and original rereading of Durkheim in relation to the theoretical reasons he and his contemporaries neglected race and gender. This new edition features two chapters of new material written in the summer of 2003, as the new social structures of the 21st century became increasingly clear. The new Chapter Ten draws upon 9-11, the "new world order" of two Bush presidencies, and globalization to show how individuals' lives and sociologies must be thought about in new ways. These events also highlight how American society and sociology have responded and sometimes failed in the struggle over the crisis of modernism. Reviews for the First Edition: "[This] expansive reimagining of the historical roots of sociological imagination - especially as it embraces voices and visions long lost to our most important national debates - is balm to the fractured soul of American society. Lemert's elegant and passionate volume will aid immeasurably in our nation's search for sane solutions to the crises of purpose and perspective he so skillfully explores." Michael Eric Dyson, author of Making Malcolm and Between God and Gangsta' Rap "Elegantly crafted." Steven Seidman, State University of New York at Albany

Sociology After the Crisis

Manning Marable

Alford A. Young

Elizabeth Higginbotham

Jerry Gafio Watts

The Souls of W. E. B. Du Bois explores the relationship of W. E. B. Du Bois's seminal book, The Souls of Black Folk, to other works in his scholarly portfolio and to his larger project concerning race, racial identity, and the social objectives of scholarly engagement.The new, original chapters in this book, written by leading Du Bois scholars, offer a critical reading of Souls and its relevance a century later in today's world. The chapters show how Souls extends, refines, or introduces ideas developed in Du Bois's The Philadelphia Negro and Black Reconstruction, and how Souls relates to Du Bois's early considerations of social activism on the behalf of African Americans and to his thinking about the situation of African American women. The book demonstrates how significant Souls is for Du Bois's overarching objectives concerning racial theorizing, the social conditions affecting race, and the possibilities for social justice.

Charles C. Lemert

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