New Rules for Sociolog Methd

by Anthony Giddens

Book Overview

This is a new and revised edition of a book which has established itself as a basic text in social theory. The first section of the work provides a concise critical analysis of some leading schools of... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0465050832
• ISBN13: 9780465050833
• Release Date: December 1976
• Publisher: Basic Books
• Length: 192 Pages
• Weight: 0.80 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Major review and critique of microsociological approaches

Giddens is not particularly well-known for being an *original* thinker. Instead, his great strength, as many note, is his unparalleled ability to summarize and contextualize the work of other sociologists and social thinkers. The "New Rules" is a great review of the major mid-late twentieth century approaches to microsociology: phenomenology, ethnomethodology, and Wittgensteinian approaches. What these three approaches have in common is a concern with meaning, agency, and interpretation; taken together they represent a major challenge to the previously dominant structural-functionalist and deterministic approaches to sociology. For those in the know, this is one of Giddens' first attempts at fleshing out his "structuration" theory, attempting to strike a balance between the structural and interpretative approaches. Read this book instead for a quick (and not overly difficult) review of the dominant interpretative theories in twentieth century sociology.