Readings that show how modern social scientists conceive and apply the concepts, methods and theories of the three great founders of sociology

This volume contains an all-new collection of penetrating works by modern social scientists on Karl Marx, Émile Durkheim, and Max Weber — the “holy trinity” of sociology and other social sciences. ¬Although their paradigm-changing treatises were first published between the mid-19th and early 20th centuries, they contain ideas and methods that still largely define what social scientists think about, and how they analyze societal phenomena, in the disciplines of sociology, economi¬cs, political science, education, geography, anthropology, and social psychology.

Click here for TABLE OF CONTENTS

From the Book:

This volume is the second in our ongoing project to anthologize the works of modern social scientists who apply and analyze the theories, concepts, and research methods of Karl Marx (1818-1883), Émile Durkheim (1859-1917), and Max Weber (1864-1920). Few thinkers in the history of the world have influenced future generations of social scientists — as well as political leaders, organizational policy makers, and citizens around the globe — more than the “holy trinity” of the social sciences, Marx, Durkheim, and Weber.

Collectively, the intricate societal problems they defined and deeply explored during the 19th and early 20th centuries — involving social solidarity, individual freedom, bureaucracy, inequality, economic rationality, anomie, and class conflict, among many others — still dominate the thinking of scholars in all social science disciplines, including sociology, economics, anthropology, political science, education, social work, geography, and social psychology.

In short, the legacy of Marx, Durkheim, and Weber continues to live on, into the 21st century, compelling contemporary social scientists not only to learn the great masters’s seminal theories, concepts and research methods, but also to test, expand, challenge and even to deconstruct them.

Just as major societal changes during the 19th century deeply affected the thinking of Marx, Durkheim, and Weber, so too have major changes in our times affected the way scholars perceive, evaluate, and use the works of the three great classical sociological masters. At the time of this writing, for example, the Internet is a global force that is affecting every social institution and tens of millions of individuals, including social scientists, in America and other countries. Its impact is forcing social scientists to rethink and adapt classical conceptions of community, authority, economic transactions, and empowerment, among a multitude of others. In similar fashion, modern social scientists have lived through and been affected by revolutionary cultural and social events such as the “Sixties,” the end of the Cold War, the demise of the Soviet Union, and the rise of feminism. How have these and related changes affected the way social investigators apply and analyze Marx, Durkheim and Weber?

Answers to these and related questions are found in this anthology, The Living Legacy of Marx, Durkheim & Weber, Volume 2, which brings together another rich collection of articles that show how some of the world’s leading scholars research and dissect concepts such as class, anomie, bureaucracy, suicide, community, rationality, conflict, justice, religious ritual, identity, and meaning, which are at the heart of the writings of Marx, Durkheim, and Weber.

As you will see from reading these articles, although each author focuses on a unique problem and approach, collectively the authors share an important implied consensus: that the works of Marx, Durkheim, and Weber remain vital for understanding, explaining, and attempting to predict behavior in human societies. The classical works continue to provide modern social scientists with inspiration that stimulates their imaginations, curiosity, critical intelligence, and quest for the truth, and provides them with the belief that a better society is possible through the application of reason and systematic study of human behavior.

As a result of reading these articles, it is my hope that you will not only grow from learning the content of the works, but that — in the spirit of Marx, Durkheim, and Weber — you will experience the unfolding of your sociological imagination that enables you to envision human societies in new ways and propose fresh solutions to both traditional and novel problems that threaten our well-being. Such creative thought is especially important now, at the beginning of the New Millennium, when the rapid rise of microprocessor-based technologies and the destruction of traditional communities are creating an unprecedented degree of anomie and new forms of inequality and intergroup hostilities. At the same time, the historic forces of bureaucratization, urbanization, and industrialization — analyzed in depth by Marx, Durkheim and Weber — continue to transform societies around the globe, as they interact with novel technological, environmental, and demographic trends and conditions.

In this new, global environment, the role of the social scientist is more important than ever — to define this “strange new land” into which millions of individuals and families are moving all around the globe, and to help leaders in government, communities, and business create policies and programs that will contribute to the building of a safe, sane social order for generations to come.

If modern social scientists can adapt classical sociological theory to help define solutions to the novel problems that will increasingly alter the lives of the majority of people on Earth, then their contribution will ensure that the legacy of Marx, Durkheim and Weber continues to live, well into the New Millennium.

“From the Introduction”