'One may state Dilthey's significance in most general fashion by characterizing his work as the first thorough-going and sophisticated confrontation of history with positivism and natural science. Dilthey's sweep was universal: he strove to reduce to order the multifarious realms of knowledge, the conflicting traditions of cultural study, that he had embraced. Thus Dilthey laid out a program that no mortal - and certainly no one whose mind had been formed in the third quarter of the nineteenth century - could hope to bring to completion. Yet despite its inconclusiveness, Dilthey's work...

Karl Mannheim (1893-1947) occupies a prominent position among the leading social scientists of the twentieth century; his ideas and his books are relevant for many issues engaging the concern of sociologists today. Mannheim's life spanned three cultural traditions - Hungarian, German and British - and in this authoritative study Professor Remmling covers all these phases in his life and work.

Mannheim began as an idealistic philosopher, but soon began to make important contributions to the developing area of sociology of knowledge. After his emigration to England in 1933, Mannheim...

Based on a comparative study of the theories of such sociologists as Ward, Sumner, Keller, Giddings, Ross, Small and Cooley, this is a systematic and rigorous analysis of the main features of earlier sociological theory in the USA. The author identifies and characterizes the basic assumptions of early American sociological thought in terms of an abstract analytical scheme. He shows that early theory focused on social ontological interests, the pervasive ontological stance being evolutionary naturalism, within which the problems of social origins and social change tended to be paramount. He...

The six essays in this volume are designed to introduce the general reader to some of the main issues in the fields of education, industry, politics, family changes and the like, which concern British sociologists. While each of the essays is independently conceived, their joint aim is to show how sociologists can use empirical methods to throw fresh light on current social problems and also to convey the distinctive approach, the distinctive view of the world towards which sociologists are striving.

Symbolic interactionsim is of major importance in contemporary sociology. In this study, three authorities in the field collaborate to define symbolic interactionism and to describe, and present criticism of, the interactionist perspective. The contributions of G.H. Mead, J. Dewey, C.H. Cooley, W.I. Thomas and other theorists to the interactionist viewpoint on human behaviour and social life are examined. There is a systematic discussion of the diverse schools of thought within the field, including H.G. Blumer's Chicago School, M.H. Kuhn's Iowa School, E. Goffman's dramaturgical approach...

In this important volume of specially commissioned essays, nine leading sociologists present their answers to the question, 'What use are the sociological classics today?' They report on the latest scholarship, on neglected features of the various masters, on promising applications and unrecognised implications.

The sociology of knowledge is an area of social scientific investigation with major emphasis on the relations between social life and intellectual activity. It is now an area central to most graduate and undergraduate courses in sociology. The present collection of readings explains the origins, systematic development, present state and possible future direction of the discipline. The major statements in the field were developed early in the twentieth century by Durkheim, Scheler and Mannheim, but the sociology of knowledge continues to engage the theoretical and empirical interests of...

Professor Duverger at last provides the student with an overall view of the methodology of the social sciences. He briefly traces the origin of the notion of a social science, showing how it emerged from social philosophy. Its essential elements and pre-conditions are described; the splintering of social science into specialist disciplines is explained, and the need for a general sociology confirmed.

The techniques of observation used by social scientists are dealt with in some detail and the unity of the social sciences is illustrated by examples of the universal...

Meanings and Situations is an account of the interactionist position. It is a committed account in the sense that it sees the central concerns of social psychology and sociology as being located in an interpretative and humanistic framework. At the same time, it argues for a bio-social image of man which does not do violence to the way in which men in interaction continuously construct and renegotiate meaning . This is in contrast to some of the highly fashionable exchange and game models of interaction which dominate the thinking of proponents of respectable behavioural...