The Making of Social Theory

In The Making of Social Theory: Order, Reason, and Desire, second edition, author Anthony Thomson follows the development of Western ideas about society and social life from the medieval period through to the rise of modern sociology in the early twentieth century. Far from simply explicating theory, however, Thomson situates each idea in the context of time and space, examining the social circumstances in which it arose and the characteristics of the people who advocated it. In this way, The Making of Social Theory is a cross-disciplinary cultural chronicle of the ideas that underpin the discipline of sociology.

The second edition of The Making of Social Theory retains its unique coverage of pre-Enlightenment ideas and presents this material in a compact, manageable introduction to the text. New material includes a chapter examining the fate of Marxism in the early decades of the twentieth century and a chapter dedicated to tracing the evolution of social democracy through Pareto and Mannheim. Throughout Thomson strives to create links between the classical and contemporary worlds, allowing students to see how classical theory has helped to shape the ideas of today.