Craig Calhoun, et Al., Classical Sociological Theory

In a critical, comparative study of the sociological literature, this book explores the term “time,” and the various interconnections between time and a broad cluster of topics that create a conceptual labyrinth. Various understandings of time manifest themselves in the context of many individual social problems—there is no single vision in sociology of how to grasp time and address within social theory.

This concise text, covers both classical and contemporary social thought. It traces the major schools of thought over the past 150 years as they appear and reappear in different chapters and looks at important new voices in social theory. The treatment of individual theories and theorists is balanced with the development of key themes and ideas about social life.

Martindale employs a defensible set of criteria for classifying theories, tracing their intellectual social roots to map sociological theory.

In 1952 at Princeton University, Harold Garfinkel developed a sociological theory of information. Other prominent theories then being worked out at Princeton, including game theory, neglected the social elements of information, modeling a rational individual whose success depends on completeness of both reason and information.