Over the past quarter century, social theory has moved in diverse and
often seemingly incompatible directions, exaggerating differences of
approach that existed even in earlier periods. In a strikingly original
book, Barry Barnes uses this intellectual diversity not only to identify
but also to unify the central ways of looking at the field. Barnes
frames his task by addressing the most important problem confronting all
students of society today: the apparent conflict between cultural and
functional methods of describing the social order, on one hand, and
choice-theoretic accounts, on the other. But rather than reviewing in
detail the origins and development of these contending views of reality,
Barnes conducts a dialogue between the two perspectives, thereby
revealing their respective strengths and shortcomings. In the process,
he develops a case for a theoretical "third way," an interactionist
understanding of the workings of the social order and the emergence of
behavioral norms.
Barnes successfully applies interactionist analysis, formerly used
mostly for micro-social settings, to macro-phenomena like the formation
of status groups, the origin of social movements, the politics of class
formation, and the dynamics of bureaucratic action. He shows how these
phenomena are inexplicable in terms of exclusively cultural- functional
or choice-theoretic methods: they can be understood only by showing how
norms emerge through interaction. Barnes has constructed a coherent and
learned vision of the fundamentals of social theory that will excite not
only sociologists but all social scientists and their students.
Originally published in 1995.
The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand
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