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Articles written to date in Sociological Research Online as part of the rapid response to the events of 11 September and their aftermath have considered how sociology understands the contemporary world, as Larry Ray (2001) suggested. These articles have suggested that sociology can helpfully consider a number of issues that are emerging as a consequence of these events and that there is an urgency for sociologists to address these questions in the present context. This paper adds to the current debate by considering some implications of September 11th and its aftermath for the teaching of sociology. It does so by first exploring the current marketising context in which we teach and our students learn. It then considers my response to these events as a lecturer teaching Contemporary Social Theory and Globalisation in autumn 2001 and suggests that lecturers need to demonstrate to students now more than ever the usefulness of sociology to developing a fuller understanding of the contemporary world.

"Race, Ethnicity and Social Theory provides a critical analysis of the main areas of scholarly research and debate about racial and ethnic relations over the past few decades. The book covers substantive areas of scholarly debate in this fast-changing field, including race and social relations, identities and the construction of the racial other, feminism and race, the relationship between race and nationalism, antisemitism, the evolution of new forms of racism, race and political representation and, more generally, the changing debates about race and ethnicity in our global environment. The book argues that there is a need for more dialogue across national and conceptual boundaries about how to develop the theoretical tools needed to understand both the historical roots of contemporary forms of racialised social and political relations and the contemporary forms through which race is made and re-made. A key argument that runs through the book is that the need to develop conceptual frameworks that can help us to make sense of the changing forms of racial and ethnic relations in contemporary societies. This means developing more dialogue across national research cultures as well as empirical research that seeks to engage with the key issues raised by contemporary theoretical debates. The book will be of interest to both students wanting to develop a deeper understanding of this area of scholarship and to researchers of race, ethnicity and migration working in various national and disciplinary environments"--

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Introduction: Why Theorize and Can You Learn to Do It? -- Part 1: How to Theorize -- Chapter 1. Starting Anew -- Chapter 2. Social Observation -- Chapter 3. Naming, Concept, and Typology -- Chapter 4. Analogy, Metaphor, and Pattern -- Chapter 5. Coming Up with an Explanation -- Part 2: Preparing for Theorizing -- Chapter 6. Heuristics -- Chapter 7. Practical Exercises -- Chapter 8. The Role of Theory -- Chapter 9. Imagination and Art -- Chapter 10. Summary and More -- Appendix: How to Theorize according to Charles S. Peirce -- Acknowledgments -- Notes -- References -- Index

This article argues that anthropology may represent untapped perspectives of relevance to social theory. The article starts by critically reviewing how anthropology has come to serve as the 'Other' in various branches of social theory, from Marx and Durkheim to Parsons to Habermas, engaged in a hopeless project of positing 'primitive' or 'traditional' society as the opposite of modernity. In contemporary debates, it is becoming increasingly recognized that social theory needs history, back to the axial age and beyond. The possible role of anthropology in theorizing modernity receives far less attention. That role should go much beyond representing a view from 'below' or a politically correct appreciation of cultural diversity. It involves attention to key theoretical concepts and insights developed by maverick anthropologists like Arnold van Gennep, Marcel Mauss, Victor Turner and Gregory Bateson, concepts that uniquely facilitate an understanding of some of the underlying dynamics of modernity.

1. Introduction -- Essential Versus External Social Being -- Part I: Subjectivity -- 2. Who Controls Your Thoughts? Epictetus and Émile Durkheim on Mental Structure -- 3. When Are You Present? Chrysippus and Henri Bergson on Continuous Time -- 4. Why Do You Care About Yourself? The Early Stoics and Herbert Spencer on Self-Preservation -- Part II: Knowledges and Epistemologies -- 5. Do Preconceptions Determine New Knowledge? Epictetus and Max Weber on Truth -- 6. Do People Know Why They Travel? Seneca and Anthony Giddens on Ignorance -- Part III: Physical Conditions -- 7. Is Climate Change Natural? Marcus Aurelius and Barbara Adam on Death -- 8. What Causes Your Behaviors? Zeno and Pierre Bourdieu on the Body -- Part IV: Collective Ethics -- 9. How Do We Regulate Our Affection for Others? Hierocles and Claude Lévi-Strauss on Kinship Circles -- 10. Can Education Be Egalitarian? Musonius Rufus and Julia Kristeva on Gendered Labor -- 11. Is It Natural to Be Social? Marcus Aurelius and George Herbert Mead on Socialization -- Part V: Emotions -- 12. Is Reason External to Passion? Posidonius, Ann Game, and Andrew Metcalfe on Self-Division -- 13. Who Benefits from the Management of Feelings? Epictetus and Arlie Hochschild on Emotional Labor -- 14. How Individual Is Happiness? Chrysippus and Harriet Martineau on the Universal End.

This study reassesses the concept of the Anthropocene as a new geological age as it is influencing contemporary debates in social theory. As a unit of geological time whose changes are allegedly caused, directly and indirectly, by human beings, this scientific concept challenges the existing constructions of theoretical binaries, such as nature/culture, environment/society, objectivity/subjectivity or happenstance/design, in social theory. The analysis suggests many understandings of the Anthropocene in social theory are politicized over-interpretations of natural events, and these moves appear to be developing moral rhetorics of, and operational plans for, managing the Anthropocene to create specific outcomes for those who are the managers as well as the managed. The fact that human beings do not, in fact, have this measure of technical control is ignored by advocates of Anthropocenarian politics to advance their policy agendas.

In the nineteenth century, there was substantial and sophisticated interest in neuroscience on the part of social theorists, including Comte and Spencer, and later Simon Patten and Charles Ellwood. This body of thinking faced a dead end: it could do little more than identify highly general mechanisms, and could not provide accounts of such questions as `why was there no proletarian revolution?' Psychologically dubious explanations, relying on neo-Kantian views of the mind, replaced them. With the rise of neuroscience, however, some of the problems of concern to earlier thinkers, such as imitation, have revived because of the discovery of neuronal mechanisms, or through fMRI studies. The article reviews the history and discusses the implications of current work for the reconsideration of traditional social theory concepts. It is suggested that certain kinds of bridging work with neuroscience would enable us to answer many questions in social theory that empirical sociology has failed to answer.

A discussion of Saguiv A. Hadari's critique of rational choice models (see abstract in this section). Hadari uses a multilevel approach that covers the debate from the broad area of philosophy of social science to the level of specific rational choice models. Here, the levels of Hadari's critique are traced, starting with the philosophy of social science, moving to the concept of rationality assumption, & finally examining the research application of the assumption. In Rational Choice In Social Theory, Saguiv A. Hadari (Wake Forest U, Winston-Salem, NC) agrees with Grafstein's comments on the usefulness of rational choice models, but challenges Grafstein's assumption of a disjunction between positive theory & hermeneutics & reconsiders the limits to the application of rational choice models, using an example from analytical Marxist theory. 18 References. Modified HA