"I think this will prove to be a very useful text for undergraduate students. Alex Law has produced a comprehensive list of key classical social theory concepts and provides an accessible account of the meaning of central terms, their place in the work of the classical analysts considered and the contemporary significance of their ideas. In addition he has offered useful additional reading guidance from which students will derive considerable benefit."
- Barry Smart, University of Portsmouth
This book's individual entries introduce, explain and contextualise the key topics within classical social theory. Definitions, summaries and key words are developed throughout with careful cross-referencing allowing students to move effortlessly between core ideas and themes.
Each entry provides:

• clear definitions


• lucid accounts of key issues


• up-to-date suggestions for further reading


• informative cross-referencing.
  

Relevant, focused and accessible this book will provide students across the social sciences with an indispensible guide to the central concepts of classical social theory.

Alex Law is Professor of Sociology at Abertay University, Dundee. 

Introduction: Classical Social Theory
Alienation
Anomie
Base and Superstructure
Bureaucracy
Capital
Civil Society
Class
Class, Status and Party
Collective Effervescence
Collective Representations
Commodity Fetishism
Conscience Collective
Division of Labour (Smith and Ferguson)
Division of Labour (Marx)
Division of Labour in Society (Durkheim)
Fashion
Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft
Historical Materialism
Ideal-Types
Ideology
Legitimate Domination
Mechanical and Organic Solidarity
Metropolis
Mode of Production
Modernity
Money
Normal and Pathological
Positivism
Primitive Accumulation
Protestant Ethic and the ¿Spirit of Capitalism¿
Rationality and Rationalization
Sacred and Profane
Social Action
Social Facts
Social Forms and Sociation
Social Morphology
Social Space
Suicide
Totemism
Value Freedom
Verstehen