Contemporary Social Theory

Contents
Preface and acknowledgements
xiii
1
The Textures of Society
1
What is society?
3
Society and social theory
6
Social theory as practical life: Charles Lemert
9
Key themes in contemporary social theory
11
Further questions
15
Further reading
16
Internet links
16
2
The Frankfurt School
17
Adorno and Horkheimer: 
Dialectic of Enlightenment
20
Freudian revolution: the uses of psychoanalysis
22
Fromm: fear of freedom
24
Adorno: the authoritarian personality, anti-Semitism and the 
psychodynamics of modernity
30
Written in the stars: Adorno on astrology
34
Marcuse: Eros, or one-dimensional futures?
36
Freud’s cultural message: sufferings, submissions and 
discontents
38
Utopia and social transformation: Marcuse on libidinal rationality
42
Appraisal of Marcuse
45
Summary points
49
Further questions
50
Further reading
51
Internet links
52
c o n t e n t s
ix

---

3
Structuralism
53
Saussure and structural linguistics
55
Critical comments on Saussure
60
The Raw and The Cooked 
: Lévi-Strauss and structural 
anthropology
63
Roland Barthes: structuralist semiology and popular culture
65
Foucault: knowledge, social order and power
70
Society and disciplined bodies
74
The limits of structuralism: Foucault’s 
History of Sexuality 
76
Governmentality
81
Criticisms of Foucault
83
Summary points
87
Further questions
88
Further reading
88
Internet links
89