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Moral relativism attracts and repels. What is defensible in it and what is to be rejected? Do we as human beings have no shared standards by which we can understand one another? Can we abstain from judging one another's practices? Do we truly have divergent views about what constitutes good and evil, virtue and vice, harm and welfare, dignity and humiliation, or is there some underlying commonality that trumps it all?

These questions turn up everywhere, from Montaigne's essay on cannibals, to the UN Declaration of Human Rights, to the debate over female genital mutilation. They...

What is power? Is it, as Betrand Russell suggested, -the production of intended effects-, or is it the capacity to produce them? And which effects count? Or is Max Weber's definition of power as -the probability that an actor in a social relationship will be in a position to carry out his own will despite resistance- more accurate. What are the outcomes of power and who holds it? These are some of the fundamental questions answered in this colection of classic views of power.

Steven Luke's lucid and accessible introduction on the nature of power leads to pieces by Bertrand...

Are there absolute truths that can be gradually approached over time through rational processes? Or are all modes and systems of thought equally valid if viewed from within their own internally consistent frames of reference? Are there universal forms of reasoning and understanding that enable us to distinguish between rational beliefs and those that are demonstrably false, or is everything relative?

These central questions are addressed and debated by the distinguished contributors to this lively book. Some of them -- Hollis, Lukes, Robin Horton, and Ernest Gellner -- discuss new...

When it was originally published, The Division of Labor in Society was an entirely original work on the nature of labor and production as they were being shaped by the industrial revolution. Emile Durkheim's seminal work studies the nature of social solidarity and explores the...

Founders, classics, and canons have been vitally important in helping to frame sociology's identity. Within the academy today, a number of positions-feminist, postmodernist, postcolonial-question the status of "tradition."

In Founders, Classics, Canons, Peter Baehr defends the continuing importance of sociology's classics and traditions in a university education. Baehr offers arguments against interpreting, defending, and attacking sociology's great texts and authors in terms of founders and canons. He demonstrates why, in logical and historical terms, discourses and...

The Rules of Sociological Method represents Emile Durkheim's manifesto for sociology. He argues forcefully for the objective, scientific, and methodological underpinnings of sociology as a discipline and establishes guiding principles for future research.

The substantial new...