Sociological Theory: Symbolic Interactionism, Phenomenology and Ethnomethodolgy

This book - never before published - is eminent sociologist Harold Garfinkel's earliest attempt, while at Harvard in 1948, to bridge the growing gap in U.S. sociology. This gap was generated by a Parsonsian paradigm that emphasized a scientific approach to sociological description, one that increasingly distanced itself from social phenomena in the influential ways studied by phenomenologists. It was Garfinkel's idea that phenomenological description, rendered in more empirical and interactive terms, might remedy shortcomings in the reigning Parsonsian view. Garfinkel soon gave up the attempt to repair scientific description and his focus became increasingly empirical until, in 1954, he famously coined the term 'Ethnomethodology'. However, in this early manuscript can be seen more clearly than in some of his later work the struggle with a conceptual and positivist rendering of social relations that ultimately informed Garfinkel's position. Here we find the sources of his turn toward ethnomethodology, which would influence subsequent generations of sociologists. This book is essential reading for all social theory scholars and graduate students and for a wider range of social scientists in anthropology, ethnomethodology, and other fields.

Since the 1967 publication of Studies in Ethnomethodology, Harold Garfinkel has indelibly influenced the social sciences and humanities worldwide. This new book, the long-awaited sequel to Studies, comprises Garfinkel's work over three decades to further elaborate the study of ethnomethodology. "Working out Durkheim's Aphorism," the title used for this new book, emphasizes Garfinkel's insistence that his position focuses on fundamental sociological issues-and that interpretations of his position as indifferent to sociology have been misunderstandings. Durkheim's aphorism states that the concreteness of social facts is sociology's most fundamental phenomenon. Garfinkel argues that sociologists have, for a century or more, ignored this aphorism and treated social facts as theoretical, or conceptual, constructions. Garfinkel in this new book shows how and why sociology must restore Durkheim's aphorism, through an insistence on the concreteness of social facts that are produced by complex social practices enacted by participants in the social order. Garfinkel's new book, like Studies, will likely stand as another landmark in sociological theory, yet it is clearer and more concrete in revealing human social practices.

This book presents the remarkable correspondence between Alfred Schutz and Aron Gurwitsch, emigre philosophers influenced by Edmund Husserl, who fled Europe on the eve of World War II and ultimately became seminal figures in the establishment of phenomenology in the United States. Their deep and lasting friendship grew out of their mutual concern with the question of the connections between science and the life-world. Interwoven with philosophical exchange is the two scholars' encounter with the unfamiliar problems of American academic life--what Gurwitsch called the "passology" of exile. Apart from its brilliant and moving portrait of two distinguished men, the correspondence holds rich significance for current issues in philosophy and the social sciences.

Harrison C. White is one of American sociology's preeminent thinkers, yet until now his endeavour to develop a general theoretical perspective on the basis of social network analysis has remained largely unexamined. This book opens out for the first time White's contribution to those interested generally in his social network approach, but daunted by the complexity and mathematical modelling often employed in his published work. Special attention is paid to White's model of production markets, as an application of his general sociology. The book draws on interview material with White himself, as well as with several of his past students.

In this completely revised edition of one of the foundational texts of network sociology, Harrison White refines and enlarges his groundbreaking theory of how social structure and culture emerge from the chaos and uncertainty of social life. Incorporating new contributions from a group of young sociologists and many fascinating and novel case studies, Identity and Control is the only major book of social theory that links social structure with the lived experience of individuals, providing a rich perspective on the kinds of social formations that develop in the process. Going beyond traditional sociological dichotomies such as agency/structure, individual/society, or micro/macro, Identity and Control presents a toolbox of concepts that will be useful to a wide range of social scientists, as well as those working in public policy, management, or associational life and, beyond, to any reader who is interested in understanding the dynamics of social life.