Abstract
Students in undergraduate sociological theory courses often have a difficult time understanding how theory fits into the discipline and how it applies to the larger social world around them. Intimidated by dense prose and big ideas, it may seem to students that theory is an impenetrable mess. For instructors, the challenge is to make theory comprehensible within its own context and relate theory to the contemporary world. One tool that has aided me in this task is the second edition of the outstanding reader Classical and Contemporary Sociological Theory by Scott Appelrouth and Laura Desfor Edles. The authors have now come out with a third edition of the text, which I am eager to use in my undergraduate theory class this fall. This new edition reorganizes the way it presents feminist and gender theorists and theoretical syntheses; offers new, more up-to-date examples in the editors’ introductions to the readings; and expands its history of modernity in the introductory chapter.
A key feature of the book is that it is a hybrid of a reader and a textbook on theory. The book is organized in two ways. Classical theory is organized around individual theorists including the big three (Marx, Durkheim, and Weber) as well as other key contributors including Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Georg Simmel, W. E. B. Dubois, and George Herbert Mead. Each of these seven theorists receives their own chapter, with brief biographies, an introduction to the major themes in the theorist’s work, one to five readings by each theorist, as well as brief introductions to each selected reading. Contemporary theory is organized by theoretical tradition, including the big three of structural functionalism, critical theory, and symbolic interactionism and dramaturgy, as well as exchange and rational choice theories, phenomenology, poststructuralism, postmodernism, and theories of the global society. Each of these eight theoretical schools receives its own chapter, featuring two to four theorists. Again, there is a brief biography and an introduction to the major themes in the theorist’s work for each theorist, one or two readings by each theorist, as well as brief introductions to each selected reading.
The authors structure the book on two pedagogical principles—that there is value in having students read the original works (at least in translation) and that students should be able to make connections between theory and the world around them. The introductory materials and discussion questions that accompany the readings make these connections explicit for students. The numerous visual aids—photographs, diagrams, and charts—also appeal to a wide variety of learning styles. For instance, photographs on page 92 compare and contrast Durkheim’s concepts of mechanical and organic solidarity by showing farmers working a harvest in a traditional society and doctors working in a modern operating room, respectively. These images, with their accompanying captions, help reemphasize the concepts in a visual manner.
I would recommend the book for undergraduate students in an upper-level sociological theory course. It is particularly suited for a single course or two-course sequence that serves as a survey of sociological theory, covering both classical and contemporary sociological theory. I would be less likely to recommend the book for graduate-level theory courses because as the book is a survey of sociological theory, it favors breadth over depth, and most graduate instructors would likely be looking for both.
The introductory material for each reading balances two different tasks. First, it contextualizes the theoretical writings in their time and place and the intellectual conversations in which they take part. For instance, in discussing Karl Marx, the authors discuss the influence of Adam Smith and Georg Hegel. They also examine the contemporary influence of Friedrich Engels and Karl Marx on theorists such as Thorstein Veblen and Antonio Gramsci. At the same time, the introductory material makes connections between the theories and the world outside of the theories themselves—whether in the personal life of the student or the larger social world. In discussing Marx, for instance, Appelrouth and Edles help students think about alienation in their own personal lives when they open the chapter by asking, “Have you ever worked at a job that left you feeling empty inside?” (p. 24). The same chapter also makes connections to the contemporary world as the authors point out that while the nineteenth-century factories that inspired Marx’s writings may no longer exist, there remain concerns over human rights and environmental violations at factories in modern China.
The major strength of the book is its breadth in covering sociological theorists. For anyone trying to cover both classical and contemporary theory in their curriculum, this book will cover most of the theorists and those readings that one would hope that it would cover, from classics like Marx’s Capital, Durkheim’s Suicide, and Weber’s The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism to contemporary masterpieces like Merton’s “Social Structure and Anomie,” Collins’s Black Feminist Thought, and Goffman’s The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. In my one semester course, despite the fact that we cannot hope to cover all of the readings in the book, students still find that we use the book enough (and use enough of the book) that it remains a good value at its price point. That said, because someone else has put together the list of theorists and readings, no matter how thoughtfully, there will inevitably be omissions that in the individual instructor’s opinion should be included. For instance, I find that despite the authors’ good description of ethnomethodology in the chapter on phenomenology, I am disappointed that there is not a reading covering the topic. Instead, I assign the class the author’s introduction to ethnomethodology in the textbook and supplement it with West and Zimmerman’s (1987) “Doing Gender.” Instructors should make sure that the authors’ list of theorists and readings is appropriate for the course that they are interested in teaching, although most should find it more than adequate.
There are three major changes to the new edition. The first change is that the chapter on gender from the second edition is removed from the third edition and its theorists are split among the chapters that connect these theorists with larger theoretical traditions. For instance, Patricia Hill Collins is now placed in the critical theory chapter and Dorothy Smith in the phenomenology chapter, although in both incidences, the editors acknowledge that both theorists drew from both traditions to varying degrees. By removing these theorists (as well as Judith Butler) from a chapter on gender, it makes it easier to see theoretical work on gender and feminist theory not as a small subset of theory but as a part of a larger theoretical legacy. (A similar move is made with the chapter on theoretical syntheses.) Second, the updated photos and examples help make the book more relevant to students. For instance, in their coverage of W. E. B. DuBois’s The Souls of Black Folk, they talk about the meaning of the Obama presidency in the context of financial inequality and mass incarceration. Finally, the expanded discussion of the historical origins of sociology and sociological theory in the first chapter is especially helpful in understanding what was so unique about the intellectual program undertaken by the classical sociologists.
The authors also offer an accompanying website (https://study.sagepub.com/node/32931/instructor-access?destination=node/32932) with resources for instructors, newly updated, that can serve as a valuable jumping off point in putting together various class materials. It offers a test bank, discussion questions, and suggested writing assignments, which could all be used in creating assessments. It also offers PowerPoint slides that could be used to create lectures. Finally, there are pdfs of tables and figures from the book that allow the instructor to use these images in class discussions. For instance, an instructor could easily use the book’s images of social networks in an in-class discussion of James S. Coleman’s theory of social capital.
Overall, I highly recommend this book for the sociological theory classroom. The expertly curated readings give students the intellectual challenge of dealing with these theorists in their own words. At the same time, the insightful and highly readable accompanying material helps students make connections to the larger world outside of the theory classroom. Instructors would ideally pair the book with activities that force students to apply theoretical concepts to the wider world to reinforce the idea that theory is more than just esoteric or outdated writings. For instance, Kordsmeier and Macdonald’s (2015) paper assignment that requires undergraduate theory students to apply the concepts that they are learning in class to current events or Pelton’s (2013) paper assignment that has students apply theory to the analysis of popular movies would build on the idea presented by Appelrouth and Edles that theory is a vital and valuable tool for understanding the world around us. Appelrouth and Edles help bring theory to life, and adopting the book can help the undergraduate theory professor meet that particular challenge in their classroom.