Contemporary social and sociological theory visualizing social worlds

Includes bibliographical references and index.

In the beginning there was modernity -- Defining moments in twentieth-century theory : Talcott Parsons and the Frankfurt School -- Symbolic interaction : Herbert Blumer (1900-1987) -- Organizing ordinary life : Harold Garfinkel (1917- ) -- Performing the self : Erving Goffman (1922-1982) -- Social exchanges : George Homans, Peter Blau, and Randall Collins -- Structures of racial and gender inequality : William Julius Wilson and Janet Saltzman Chafetz -- Structuring class : Pierre Bourdieu (1960-2002) -- Global capitalism : Immanuel Wallerstein (1930- ) -- The network society : Manuel Castells (1942- ) -- Modernity and reason : Jürgen Habermas (1929- ) -- Runaway modernity : Anthony Giddens (1938- ) -- Defining the possible and impossible : Michel Foucault (1926-1984) -- The end of everything : Jean Baudrillard (1929-2007) -- Racial wounds and the niggerization of America : Cornel West (1953- ) -- Text, power, and women : Dorothy E. Smith (1926- ) -- Embodying sex : Judith Butler (1956- ).