One of the great intellectual battles of modern times is between evolution and religion. Until now, they have been considered completely irreconcilable theories of origin and existence. David Sloan Wilson's Darwin's Cathedral takes the radical step of joining the two, in the process proposing an evolutionary theory of religion that shakes both evolutionary biology and social theory at their foundations. The key, argues Wilson, is to think of society...

Theory for the Working Sociologist makes social theory easy to understand by revealing sociology's hidden playbook. Fabio Rojas argues that sociologists use four different theoretical "moves" when they try to explain the social world: how groups defend their status, how people strategically pursue their goals, how values and institutions support each other, and how people create their social reality. Rojas uses famous sociological studies to illustrate...

The Study of Sociology, originally published in 1873, was Herbert Spencer's groundbreaking overview of the nascent science of social systems. His basic assertion was that societies were not the creations of a few 'great men,' as Nietzsche asserted, but that they resulted from the interplay of different institutions (such as government, religion, academia, media, economic models, and so forth). Taking a cue from biology, and the emerging theory of...

Colorfully written by two popular and respected sociologists, this volume shows how sociology has evolved, how it became divided from Christian faith, and how Christian sociologists can make sense of this branch of social science.

"I have always maintained that sociology is a science of liberation and not of restraint."Lester F. Ward, often regarded as one of the founding figures of American sociology and a true polymath, presents a comprehensive framework in this seminal work. This book aims to establish sociology as a rigorous scientific discipline. Ward's approach to sociology is both theoretical and empirical, emphasizing the importance of understanding the fundamental...

French Sociology offers a uniquely comprehensive view of the oldest and still one of the most vibrant national traditions in sociology. Johan Heilbron covers the development of sociology in France from its beginnings in the early nineteenth century through the discipline's expansion in the late twentieth century, tracing the careers of figures from Auguste Comte to Pierre Bourdieu. Presenting fresh interpretations of how renowned thinkers such Émile...

How do we use our mental images of the present to reconstruct our past? Maurice Halbwachs (1877-1945) addressed this question for the first time in his work on collective memory, which established him as a major figure in the history of sociology. This volume, the first comprehensive English-language translation of Halbwach's writings on the social construction of memory, fills a major gap in the literature on the sociology of knowledge.

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During the 1920s a new generation of American sociologists tried to make their discipline more objective by adopting the methodology of the natural sciences. Robert Bannister provides the first comprehensive account of the emergence of this "objectivism" within the matrix of the evolutionism of Lester Ward and other founders of American sociology.Objectivism meant confining inquiry to the observable externals of social behavior and quantifying the...

"Abbreviations and citations": pages 452-463.

The Protestant ethic - a moral code stressing hard work, rigorous self-discipline, and the organization of one's life in the service of God - was made famous by sociologist and political economist Max Weber. In this brilliant study (his best-known and most controversial), he opposes the Marxist concept of dialectical materialism and its view that change takes place through "the struggle of opposites." Instead, he relates the rise of a capitalist economy...