Key Sociologists
About the Book Series
Now reissued, this classic series provides students with concise and readable introductions to the work, life and influence of the great sociological thinkers. These pocket-sized introductions are be ideal for both undergraduates and pre-university students alike, as well as for anyone with an interest in the thinkers who have shaped our time.
Pierre Bourdieu
3rd Edition
By Richard Jenkins
January 24, 2025
This short critical introduction to Pierre Bourdieu’s thought has been comprehensively brought up to date for the third edition. Where Bourdieu’s own writings are often complex, even ambiguous, Richard Jenkins is direct, concise and to the point. Emphasising Bourdieu’s contributions to sociological...
Georges Bataille: The Sacred and Society
1st Edition
By William Pawlett
December 12, 2019
In this comprehensive and engaging study Georges Bataille’s central ideas – the sacred, community and eroticism – are explored in detail. Bataille’s project to understand social bonds and energies at their most fundamental level and to re-energise society by challenging individualism is ...
Max Weber
2nd Edition
By Frank Parkin
May 31, 2013
This study of Weber's sociology, written by an eminent authority, is a clear and illuminating discussion of the most important elements of Weber's thinking. The book concentrates on four main elements of Weber's work: his approach to sociological method, ethical neutrality and historical ...
Bruno Latour: Hybrid Thoughts in a Hybrid World
1st Edition
By Anders Blok, Torben Elgaard Jensen
September 10, 2012
French sociologist and philosopher, Bruno Latour, is one of the most significant and creative thinkers of the last decades. Bruno Latour: Hybrid Thoughts in a Hybrid World is the first comprehensive and accessible English-language introduction to this multi-faceted work. The book focuses on core ...
Niklas Luhmann
1st Edition
By Christian Borch
May 02, 2011
Niklas Luhmann offers an accessible introduction to one of the most important sociologists of our time. It presents the key concepts within Luhmann’s multifaceted theory of modern society, and compares them with the work of other key social theorists such as Jürgen Habermas, Michel Foucault, and ...
Jean Baudrillard: Against Banality
1st Edition
By William Pawlett
October 06, 2010
This uniquely engaging introduction to Jean Baudrillard’s controversial writings covers his entire career focusing on Baudrillard’s central, but little understood, notion of symbolic exchange. Through the clarification of this key term a very different Baudrillard emerges: not the nihilistic ...
Erving Goffman
1st Edition
By Greg Smith
October 31, 2006
Decades after his death, the figure of Erving Goffman (1922–82) continues to fascinate. Perhaps the best-known sociologist of the second half of the twentieth century, Goffman was an unquestionably significant thinker whose reputation extended well beyond his parent discipline. A host of concepts ...
Auguste Comte
1st Edition
By Mike Gane
August 17, 2006
Auguste Comte is widely acknowledged as the founder of the science of sociology and the 'Religion of Humanity'. In this fascinating study, the first major reassessment of Comte’s sociology for many years, Mike Gane draws on recent scholarship and presents a new reading of this remarkable figure. ...
Zygmunt Bauman
1st Edition
By Tony Blackshaw
September 29, 2005
This timely book provides the definitive concise introduction to the phenomenon of Zygmunt Bauman. After introducing the man, his major influences and his special way of 'thinking sociologically', author Blackshaw traces the development of Bauman's project by identifying and explaining the major ...
Pierre Bourdieu
2nd Edition
By Richard Jenkins
March 21, 2003
This short critical introduction to Pierre Bourdieu's thought is a model of clarity and insight. Where Bourdieu's own writings are often complex, even ambiguous, Richard Jenkins is direct, concise and to the point. He emphasizes Bourdieu's contributions to theory and methodology while also dealing ...
The Frankfurt School and its Critics
2nd Edition
By The late Tom Bottomore
March 21, 2003
The Institute of Social Research, from which the Frankfurt School developed, was founded in the early years of the Weimar Republic. It survived the Nazi era in exile, to become an important centre of social theory in the postwar era. Early members of the school, such as Adorno, Horkheimer and ...
Marx and Marxism
2nd Edition
By Peter Worsley
February 05, 2003
Karl Marx probably had more influence on the political course of the last century than any other social thinker. There are many different kinds of Marxism, and the Twentieth Century saw two huge Marxist states in total opposition to one another. In the West, Marxism has never presented a ...