Contemporary social theory is a treasure-house but also a minefield. One has to tread warily to find the gems. Anthony Elliott has done just that in selecting some of the most important and influential writings of the past 20 to 30 years. Here are all the familiar names but also some less familiar ones raising different but no less relevant questions. This reader will be invaluable to senior undergraduates and graduates seeking the path-breaking contributions in contemporary social theory. Krishan Kumar, University of Virginia
Acknowledgements.
Introduction: Anthony Elliott.
Part I: The Theory of the Subject:.
1. The Obsolescence of the Freudian Concept of Man: Herbert Marcuse. 2. Language and Speech: Roland Barthes.
3. The Mirror Stage as Formative of the Function of the I in Psychoanalytic Experience: Jacques Lacan.
4. Revolution in Poetic Language: Julia Kristeva.
5. The Individual and Representation: Cornelius Castoriadis.
Part II: Social Structure and Institutional Analysis:.
6. The Means of Correct Training: Michel Foucault.
7. Structures, Habitus, Practices: Pierre Bourdieu.
8. Elements of the Theory of Structuration: Anthony Giddens.
9. Society Turns Back upon Itself: Alain Touraine.
10. The Concept of Society: Niklas Luhmann.
11. Individualization and Precarious Freedoms: Perspectives and Controversies of a Subject-Centered Sociology: Ulrich Beck and Elisabeth Beck-Gernsheim.
Part III: Contemporary Critical Theory:.
12. The Uncoupling of System and Lifeworld: Jurgen Habermas.
13. Patterns of Intersubjective Recognition: Love, Rights, and Solidarity: Axel Honneth.
14. Truth, Semblance, Reconciliation: Adorno's Aesthetic Redemption of Modernity: Albrecht Wellmer.
Part IV: Race, Multiculturalism, Difference: .
15. DissemiNation: Homi K. Bhabha.
16. Freud and the Epistemology of Race: Sander L. Gilman.
17. Masters, Mistresses, Slaves, and the Antinomies of Modernity: Paul Gilroy.
18. Subaltern Studies: Deconstructing Historiography: Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak.
Part V: Feminism, Gender, and Sexual Difference: .
19. The Reproduction of Mothering: Nancy Chodorow.
20. This Sex which Is Not One: Luce Irigaray.
21. Gender Trouble: Judith Butler.
22. Living with Uncertainty: Jeffrey Weeks.
23. Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective: Donna J. Haraway.
Part VI: The Modernity/Postmodernity Debate:.
24. Postmodernism: David Harvey.
25. The Postmodern Condition: Jean-Francois Lyotard.
26. Simulations: Jean Baudrillard.
27. Postmodernism, or The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism: Frederic Jameson.
28. Feminism and the Question of Postmodernism: Seyla Benhabib.
29. Postmodernity, or Living with Ambivalence: Zygmunt Bauman.
Index.