Forgotten Founders and Other Neglected Social Theorists

Reviews / Votes

Editors Christopher T. Conner, Nicholas M. Baxter, and David R. Dickens have done us a great service by publishing this volume on important theorists that, as its title suggests, have been largely left unread and underappreciated. I hope the book is picked up by advanced undergraduates planning for graduate school, current graduate students focusing on social theory, and faculty looking to add to or modify existing theory courses. Instructors can assign the full text or add value to their courses by selecting some chapters while recommending the rest. Perhaps teachers looking to move beyond Marx, Weber, Durkheim, and Du Bois in classical theory will focus on the first part, while those teaching contemporary theory will pick up the latter. Each audience will find much to appreciate here, as the book whets the appetite for more from these founders and more recent theorists. * Teaching Sociology * This volume helps resurrect theorists that did not make the grade in the recorded history of the discipline. . . . Sociologists today will find something new and interesting in the ideas of these unacknowledged theorists. They are still teaching us today. The fact that their ideas are applicable to modern day issues, as reflected in this text, shows their continued relevance. . . It is a very valuable contribution to sociological theory. * Symbolic Interaction * Readers of this book are in for a treat. The authors, distinguished scholars themselves, open windows into the work of figures whose scholarship, overlooked or long neglected, offers surprisingly fresh insight into society today as well as in the past. Some of the scholars profiled here were once famous (Luther Bernard, Pitirim Sorokin, Marianne Weber). Others, like Annie Marion Maclean and Radhakamal Mukerjee, were no less accomplished. All deserve our attention today. Pressures to specialize, and the tides of fashion, can inhibit the wide reading and historical memory modeled by this book. A few hours in the company of the authors presented here will be a welcome reminder of the benefits of such an effort. -- David N. Smith, University of Kansas