ABSTRACT
This volume challenges prevailing understanding of the two great founders of sociological thought. In a detailed and systematic way the author demonstrates how Marx and Durkheim gradually developed the fundamental frameworks for sociological materialism and idealism. While most recent interpreters of Marx have placed alienation and subjectivity at the centre of his work, Professor Alexander suggests that it was the later Marx’s very emphasis on alienation that allowed him to avoid conceptualizing subjectivity altogether. In Durkheim’s case, by contrast, the author argues that such objectivist theorizing informed the early work alone, and he demonstrates that in his later writings Durkheim elaborated an idealist theory that used religious life as an analytical model for studying the institutions of secular society.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
chapter |7 pages
Prolegomena. General Theoretical Argument as Interpretation
part |152 pages
Collective Order and the Ambiguity about Action
chapter |34 pages
Marx's First Phase (2)
chapter |44 pages
Durkheim's First Phase (1)
chapter |42 pages
Durkheim's First Phase (2)
part |136 pages
Two Different Paths to Collective Order
chapter |38 pages
Durkheim's Later Writings (2)
part |74 pages
One-Dimensional Theory and Its Discontents