What is theory? -- The classical attempt at synthesis: Talcott Parsons -- Parsons on the road to normativist functionalism -- Parsons and the elaboration of normativist functionalism -- Neo-utilitarianism -- Interpretive approaches (1): symbolic interactionism -- Interpretive approaches (2): ethnomethodology -- Conflict sociology and conflict theory -- Habermas and critical theory -- Habermas' 'theory of communicative action' -- Niklas Luhmann's radicalization of functionalism -- Anthony Giddens' theory of structuration and the new British sociology of power -- The renewal of Parsonianism and modernization theory -- Structuralism and poststructuralism -- Between structuralism and theory of practice: the cultural sociology of Pierre Bourdieu -- French anti-structuralists (Cornelius Castoriadis, Alain Touraine and Paul Ricoeur) -- Feminist social theories -- A crisis of modernity? New diagnoses (Ulrich Beck, Zygmunt Bauman, Robert Bellah, and the debate between liberals and communitarians) -- Neopragmatism -- How things stand.
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