The Theory Of Social Structure

Over the last three decades, social theory has become an increasingly important subdiscipline within sociology. Social theory has attempted to elucidate the philosophical basis of sociology by defining the nature of social reality. According to social theory, society consists of objective institutions, structure, on the one hand, and individuals, agency on the other, it promotes human social relations, insisting that in every instance social reality consists of these relations.

1. Theories of Capital: The Historical Foundation. 3. 2. Social Capital: Capital Captured through Social Relations. 19. 3. Resources, Hierarchy, Networks, and Homophily: The Structural Foundation. 29. 4. Resources, Motivations, and Interactions: The Action Foundation. 41. 5. The Theory and Theoretical Propositions. 55. 6. Social Capital and Status Attainment: A Research Tradition. 78. 7. Inequality in Social Capital: A Research Agenda. 99. 8. Social Capital and the Emergence of Social Structure: A Theory of Rational Choice. 127. 9. Reputation and Social Capital: The Rational Basis for Social Exchange. 143. 10. Social Capital in Hierarchical Structures. 165. 11. Institutions, Networks, and Capital Building: Societal Transformations. 184. 12. Cybernetworks and the Global Village: The Rise of Social Capital. 210. 13. The Future of the Theory. 243. . References. 251. . Index. 267.

Unique study re-evaluating the role of emotions in social interaction.

A watershed event in the field of sociology, this text introduced “a major breakthrough in the sociology of knowledge and sociological theory generally” (George Simpson, American Sociological Review). In this seminal book, Peter L. Berger and Thomas Luckmann examine how knowledge forms and how it is preserved and altered within a society. Unlike earlier theorists and philosophers, Berger and Luckmann go beyond intellectual history and focus on commonsense, everyday knowledge—the proverbs, morals, values, and beliefs shared among ordinary people. When first published in 1966, this systematic, theoretical treatise introduced the term social construction,effectively creating a new thought and transforming Western philosophy.

This new printing is not a newly revised edition, only an enlarged one. The revised edition of 1957 remains intact except that its short introduction has been greatly expanded to appear here as Chapters I and II. The only other changes are technical and minor ones: the correction of typographical errors and amended indexes of subjects and names.

This pioneering Handbook offers a state-of-the-art exploration of the social structure of accumulation theory, a leading theory of stages of capitalism, expertly summarising its development to date. It breaks new ground in several areas, including econometric evidence for the theory and developing institutional analyses of technology and the environment.