Anthony Elliott & Bryan S Turner 
Profiles in Contemporary Social Theory 

This comprehensive book provides an indispensable introduction to the most significant figures in contemporary social theory. Grounded strongly in the European tradition, the profiles include Michel Foucault, J[um]urgen Habermas, Roland Barthes, Jean Baudrillard, Pierre Bourdieu, Zygmunt Bauman, Martin Heidegger, Fredric Jameson, Richard Rorty, Nancy Chodorow, Anthony Giddens, Stuart Hall, Luce Irigaray and Donna Haraway. In guiding students through the key figures in an accessible and authoritative fashion, the book provides detailed accounts of the development of the work of major social theorists and charts the relationship between different traditions of social, cultural and political thought.

Profiles in Contemporary Social Theory will become a major reference work in the field of social theory because it offers in-depth commentaries that comprehensively examine the contents, contexts and critical evaluation of key theorists of the day.

Table of Content

Editors′ Introduction – Anthony Elliott and Bryan S Turner

Martin Heidegger – Richard Polt

Georges Bataille – Michael Richardson

Maurice Merleau-Ponty – Nick Crossley

Herbert Marcuse – Douglas Kellner

Theodor Adorno – Andrew Bowie

Walter Benjamin – Graeme Gilloch

J[um]urgen Habermas – Patrick Baert

Erving Goffman – Ann Branaman

Peter Berger – Bryan S Turner

Michel Foucault – Stephen Katz

Jean-Fran[ce]cois Lyotard – Victor J Seidler

Jacques Lacan – Anthony Elliott

Jacques Derrida – Christina Howells

Roland Barthes – Chris Rojek

Julia Kristeva – Kelly Oliver

Luce Irigaray – Caroline Bainbridge

Jean Baudrillard – Mike Gane

Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guatarri – Paul Patton

Paul Virilio – John Armitage

Henri Lefebvre – Rob Shields

Paul Ricoeur – Kathleen Blamey

Niklas Luhmann – Jakob Arnoldi

Charles Taylor – Marcos Ancelovici and Francis Dupuis-Deri

Richard Rorty – Bryan S Turner

Nancy Chodorow – Geoffrey Gershenson and Michelle Williams

Anthony Giddens – Anthony Elliott

Ulrich Beck – Nick Stevenson

Pierre Bourdieu – Bridget Fowler

Zygmunt Bauman – Barry Smart

Donna J Haraway – Patricia Ticineto Clough and Joseph Schneider

Fredric Jameson – Sean Homer

Stuart Hall – Chris Rojek

Juliet Mitchell – Sarah Wright

Edward Said – Bryan S Turner

About the author

Bryan S. Turner is Professor of Sociology in the Asian Research Institute (ARI) at the National University of Singapore. Previously he was Professor of Sociology in the Faculty of Social and Political Sciences at the University of Cambridge from 1998-2005. His research interests include globalization and religion, concentrating on such issues as religious conflict and the modern state, religious authority and electronic information, religious, consumerism and youth cultures, human rights and religion, the human body, medical change, and religious cosmologies. He is Joint Chief Editor of the journal Citizenship Studies and serves on the editorial boards of several prestigious journals.