Thinking the unthinkable : the riddles of classical social theories / Charles Lemert.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Lemert, Charles C., 1937-

Series:

Great Barrington books

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Sociology.

Sociology--History.

History.

Physical Description:

xi, 195 pages ; 24 cm.

Place of Publication:

Boulder : Paradigm Publishers, [2007]

Summary:

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.

Contents:

What is social theory? total destruction, bead lust, and other unreasonable social things

The impossible reasons of modern civilizations

Social theory and modernity's unthinkable

Social violence as the bead lust of the unthinkable

Five ways to skin a cat: modernity's five riddles

Unthinkable social things : five solutions to the riddle of the defiant darkness, 1848-1914

Light and dark

Revolutionary reasons: Karl Marx and the melting pot of solid modernity

Rationality's double-bind: Max Weber and modernity's threat to the human spirit

The reasonable hope of a social bond: Émile Durkheim and modern man's trouble with conflict

Riddles and realities

Perverse reasons: Sigmund Freud and the discontents of conscious life

Unreasonable differences: Charlotte Perkins Gilman and the logic of the feminist standpoint

The exiled others think the unthinkable: the classic solutions encounter differences and possibilities

Unthinkable variations on the classic riddles: W.E.B. Du Bois, Anna Julia Cooper, Georg Simmel, and Ferdinand de Saussure

Beyond the double-bind: W.E.B. du Bois and the gift of second-sight

A revolutionary social bond: Anna Julia Cooper and the colored woman's office

The strange social benefits of conflict: Georg Simmel and modern wandering

The social structure of meanings: Ferdinand de Saussure and the arbitrary sign

Violence, war, and the short twentieth century, 1914-1991

The unfolding of social theory in the unraveling of the twentieth century into the twenty-first

Bibliographic essay and other acknowledgments

Index

About the author.

Notes:

"Great Barrington books"--P. [ii].

Includes bibliographical references (pages 179-186) and index.

ISBN:

9781594511851

1594511853

9781594511868

1594511861

OCLC:

79256813