These volumes bring together major critical responses to, and engagement with, the work of Manuel Castells. Arguably the leading analyst of the current age, Castells' magnum opus, The Information Age, has been compared to the work of Karl Marx and Max Weber. His concept of the network society' has influenced much recent social science and his ideas have been adopted in political and policy circles.

The volumes provide an unparalleled guide to the work of Castells. They demonstrate the roots of his thinking in Marxism and the shifts in his perspective. The selection if...

Theodor W.Adorno was one of the towering intellectuals of the twentieth century. His contributions cover such a myriad of fields, including the sociology of culture, social theory, the philosophy of music, ethics, art and aesthetics, film, ideology, the critique of modernity and musical composition, that it is difficult to assimilate the sheer range and profundity of his achievement. His celebrated friendship with Walter Benjamin has produced some of the most moving and insightful correspondence on the origins and objects of the Frankfurt School of Critical Theory.

This...

Roland Barthes (1915-80) was one of the leading post-structuralist authors of his day as well as making many important contributions to semiotics. These three volumes provide a complete overview of his achievement. They provide an unparalleled critical assessment of his work in semiotics, structuralism and post-structuralism. The development and contradictions in Barthes' thought are addressed and elucidated. His role in 'the cultural turn' is pinpointed. What emerges most powerfully, is a picture of a culturally engaged critic of contemporary life, who was prepared to make radical...

Edward Said was arguably the most important recent scholar examining society, politics and culture. A Palestinian-American, his life has been shaped by the cross-currents of race, globalization and nationalist violence. This exhaustive and unparalleled collection draws together the essential writings on Said's thought.

This is the first systematic assessment of the work of J um] rgen Habermas - the key theorist of the later Frankfurt School, whose writing has had a major impact on social theory and sociology. These four volumes comprise the key secondary literature on Habermas. Edited by David Rasmussen and James Swindal, leading commentators on Habermas's work, this will be the standard reference work on one of the canonical theorists of the 20th century.

VOLUME ONE The Foundations of Habermas's Project

VOLUME TWO Law and Politics

VOLUME THREE:...

Norbert Elias (1897-1990) is now widely regarded as one of the greatest sociologists of the 20th century. The challenge and profundity of his work are still being assimilated. Some have suggested that in time, he will be regarded as the Copernicus or Darwin of sociology, the man who set the subject on its scientific course.

These four volumes provide a comprehensive and penetrating survey of Elias's life and work. They pinpoint the main fields of research which Elias and his followers have explored: the civilizing process; state-formation; knowledge, religion and science;...

Born in 1917, Harold Garfinkel is one of a handful of sociologists to have founded a major sociological research programme, and he is perhaps the only one to have done so in the 20th century. Unlike many major theorists, whose individual contributions have become part of the sociological canon, Garfinkel's contribution is identified with a distinctive empirical approach that continues to be taken up in sociology and a number of other social science fields. He coined the term ethnomethodology - to describe a unique orientation to the production of social order. This term became established to...