New Rules of Sociological Method: Second Edition

By Anthony Giddens

Book Overview

This is a new and revised edition of a book which has established itself as a basic text in social theory. The first section of the work provides a concise critical analysis of some leading schools of thought in social philosophy, giving particular attention to phenomenology, ethnomethodology, and Wittgensteinian thought. Giddens concentrates primarily upon the implications of these various perspectives for an account of human action and its intelligibility. An 'action approach' on its own, however, will not do; in human social life, action and structure presuppose one another. The author therefore moves on to provide a series of concepts relevant to understanding the production and reproduction of society. The book concludes with a succinct statement of some 'new rules of sociological method.'

Representing the first, and most trenchant, exposition of the principles of structuration theory, this edition also contains a substantial new Introduction in which Giddens replies to some of the more persistent criticisms made of the original version and also addresses some important issues originally discussed only in a cursory way.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0804722269
• ISBN13: 9780804722261
• Release Date: October 1993
• Publisher: Stanford University Press
• Length: 196 Pages
• Weight: 0.11 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 6.0" x 9.2"

Customer Reviews

Major review and critique of microsociological approaches

Giddens is not particularly well-known for being an *original* thinker. Instead, his great strength, as many note, is his unparalleled ability to summarize and contextualize the work of other sociologists and social thinkers. The "New Rules" is a great review of the major mid-late twentieth century approaches to microsociology: phenomenology, ethnomethodology, and Wittgensteinian approaches. What these three approaches have in common is a concern with meaning, agency, and interpretation; taken together they represent a major challenge to the previously dominant structural-functionalist and deterministic approaches to sociology. For those in the know, this is one of Giddens' first attempts at fleshing out his "structuration" theory, attempting to strike a balance between the structural and interpretative approaches. Read this book instead for a quick (and not overly difficult) review of the dominant interpretative theories in twentieth century sociology.