This volume challenges prevailing understanding of the two great founders of sociological thought. In a detailed and systematic way the author demonstrates how Marx and Durkheim gradually developed the fundamental frameworks for sociological materialism and idealism. While most recent interpreters of Marx have placed alienation and subjectivity at the centre of his work, Professor Alexander suggests that it was the later Marx's very emphasis on alienation that allowed him to avoid conceptualizing subjectivity altogether. In Durkheim's case, by contrast, the author argues that such...