Philippine E-Journals

The Polity Reader in Social Theory. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1994. 402pp.

Alfredo C. Robles Jr.

 

Abstract:

THE FIELD OF SOCIAL THEORY is very wide, as the editors point out in the Introduction, since it simultaneously addresses methodology, the substantive analysis of modernity, and critique, with a view to transforming social reality (p. 1). In the last two or three decades, the emergence of new social phenomena

(e.g., the rise of feminism and environmental movements) has posed daunting theoretical challenges to social scientists. To make matters more confusing (and thus more interesting), theoretical reflection on these as well as the classical objects of social theory has drawn on other disciplines, notably literary theory, with which many social scientists are unfamiliar.