Modern social thought is largely the intellectual product of a number of -great minds.- Revisiting the central theories of Marx, Durkheim, Weber, Simmel, Mead, Parsons, Goffman, Garfinkel, and Luhmann, this text introduces readers to a select group of thinkers who have made significant, distinctive, and controversial contributions to the development of modern social theory. Offering a careful selection of primary sources that encourage direct engagement with the writings, Poggi and Sciortino emphasize the theoretical insights and problems that remain valuable to discussions of social theory...

The management of contemporary public affairs involves many different centres of social power, engaged in complex and mutable relations, ranging from willing cooperation, to competition, to out-and-out conflict. This book emphasises the role played in these relations by political institutions in particular. Generally, these claim a special competence to authorise and regulate the activities of other institutions, but their claim is often contested by other power centres, serving different and sometimes contrasting interests. To explore those processes, the author, after identifying the nature...

The state is the most massive and significant modern expression of the broader phenomenon of political power. This book offers a fresh, accessible and original interpretation of the modern state, concentrating particularly on the emergence and nature of democracy. Poggi presents an extensive conceptual portrait of the state, distinguishing its early characteristics from those that have developed subsequently and are apparent in contemporary states. He reviews the "historical career" of the state, from the dissolution of feudal forms of rule to the advent of modern, liberal-democratic systems....