Charles Lemert

Wesleyan University

If by social equality is meant: a relatively equal distribution of goods, material and immaterial, in a society; then the ends of social equality must be rethought. Since the world revolution of 1968 and its consummation in the collapse of the post World War II geopolitical, Cold War accords in 1989-1991, all prior liberal theories of the modern na...

Drawing on classical sociology texts, Charles Lemert explores the necessity of a sociological examination of what he calls the Society of the Dead and how its memories impact social life.

Marx’s Eleventh Thesis has long been code for the social theorist’s duty ultimately to do more than think to world. Global realities early in the twenty-first century have rendered the Eleventh Thesis feeble if not futile. There is no singular ”world“ (not a trivial fact). Social thought must encounter a series of Unthinkables that Marx himself und...

Expected to become a classic in the field and the classroom standard for teachers and their students, this book offers the most comprehensive, engaging selection of classic and contemporary readings on globalization currently available. Here, for the first time in print, is the full historical story of globalization – drawn from original sources,...

Structuralisms in the Social, Cultural, and Human SciencesPoststructuralisms and Other Critiques of StructuralismBourdieu's Habitus and Giddens's Structuration TheoryConclusion Bibliography

Whilst undoubtedly one of the most controversial but also most established issues in research and debate within the contemporary social and human sciences, as well as in cultural studies, work on 'identity' has undergone dramatic changes in recent years. The aim of this book is to provide a detailed analysis of those changes, by confronting the imp...

This text covers Bauman’s contribution to sociology and social theory. This ideal teaching text analyzes Bauman's shift from a sociology of postmodernity to liquid modernity, and provides a critical assessment of the contemporary Bauman, appraising his novel theory of liquid modernity in terms of its implications for self-identity, interpersonal re...

Multiculturalism is, among other things, an attitude toward values - hence, an ethic of a kind. The question it poses, however, is what kind of ethics are possible when it is assumed that the one world culture that stood behind classical social ethics no longer pertains. The issue binds most strictly when it is further assumed that social ethics en...

Kenneth Allan and Jonathan Turner's article, “A Formalization of Postmodern Theory,” is a wonderful example of intellectual courage and honesty. They seek to subject selected theories associated with postmodernism to the rule of formal theory construction. Their article is a rare instance of scientific regard for ideas too often dismissed by those...

`The Clothes Have No Emperor' (a title borrowed from Paul Slansky's hilarious critique of the Reagan years in the USA) means to say that Bourdieu's criticism of American imperialism is an understandable slip of his brilliant visual sociology. He writes to those of a disposition to agree completely because they know the facts all the better. Bourdie...

boundary 2 27.3 (2000) 215-248 Dedicated with love to my firstborn, Matthew (1970–2000), who chose to leave the time of this life in the midst of my mediations on the time of race. Presentism is the fault of holding persons native to an earlier time accountable to the standards of a present time. Those blamed in the first place are usually dead, or...

Religion may well be the most inscrutable surd of social theory, which began late in the 19th century dismissing the subject. Not even the renewal of interest in religion in the 1960s did much to make religion a respectable topic in social theory. It is possible that social theory’s troubles are, in part, due to its refusal to think about religion....

Most of the sciences of social behavior arose initially out of social ethics. The question asked is whether social ethics can revive itself as a central occupation of social thought. Such a revival faces the challenge of rethinking the normative foundations of late modern, global conditions which themselves are seen as inhospitable to the classic t...

Preface. Disturbance. 1. Beasts, Frogs, Freaks and Other Postmodern Things. 2. Postmodernism Is Not What You Think. 3. An Impossible Glossary. Beginnings. 4. The Political Reality of the Linguistic Turn. 5. Letters From Brazil: Structuralism's Zero Signifier. 6. The Uses of French Structuralisms in Sociology. Prospects. 7. Identities After the Impe...

Why has W.E.B. Du Bois not mattered more in sociology? In addition to being on the short list of the 20th century's most influential public intellectuals, Du Bois made substantial, if under recognized, intellectual contributions as a sociologist and social theorist. Among his nearly 2000 published writings, The Philadelphia Negro and Souls of Black...

A classic text is not always canonized. Canonical texts are frequently anything but classics. Durkheim's Division of Labor in Societyis an instance of the former; his Rules of Sociological Methodof the latter. Both books are based on errors of fact and method. Division of Laborwas so intentionally the classical theory of modern divided societies th...

To them, I would say: Look again. This is a friend trying above all else to revitalize, perhaps to save, our enterprise. True, he uses a stern, sometimes alien, vocabulary. But he just may be right about us. Moreover, it could be worse-both the language and the attack. Seidman's criticisms are nothing compared to the active disregard by theorists i...

PART ONE: SOCIAL THEORY AND POLITICAL INTELLECTUALS Making History and Making Theory - Dick Flacks Notes on How Intellectuals Seek Relevance Three Waves of New Class Theories and a Postcript - Ivan Szelenyi and Bill Martin Learning from Feminism - Roslyn Wallach Bologh Social Theory and Intellectual Vitality PART TWO: WORLD POLITICS AND INTELLECTUA...

There is a further, more substantial proof that Gouldner, somewhere in the deep metaphorically of his thought, recognized the digression of his sociolinguistic phase. It turns out that the Culture of Critical Discourse did reappear one more time after its repression in The Two Marxisms. In the book on Marxism and intellectuals, left unpublished at...

Certainly it cannot be claimed that French sociology has definitive answers to the problems besetting sociologies everywhere. What can be claimed is that among those sociologies outside the strict and direct domination of American sociology, France's is one of the most interesting. Having avoided the Scylla of mimicking American empiricism and the...

The new sociology of religion (Bellah, Berger, Luckmann, Fenn, among others) has made little progress because of its failure to consider the metatheoretical aspect of its various sociological proposals. There are, metatheoretically, two classic problems: the tension between the personal and the social structural dimensions of social action and the...

Within the sociology of religion, the recent interest in non-church religion, also known as civil religion and invisible religion, requires an intentional definitional strategy. The minimal requirements of a definition are that: (1) it correspond positively to standard definitions in the field; and (2) it be sufficiently flexible as to apply to eme...

The Blackwell Companion to Social Theory, Second Edition, builds on the success of the highly regarded first edition by adding four completely new chapters on the foundations of social theory, anthropology, phenomenology, and sociology of the body. Retained material from the first edition has been revised, extended, and updated, and coverage of fem...