Along with other key thinkers of the later 20th century such as Foucault and Habermas, these four sociologists, from different geographical and theoretical bases, transformed the shape of British sociology and its relation to social theory. K E Y WO R D S Bauman / Beck / Bourdieu / canon / Giddens[We should ask] …if the will to know is not surreptitiously motivated …by a special kind of the will to power, which is displayed in the fact of attempting to adopt towards rivals, reduced to the status of objects, a point of view which they are unable or unwilling to adopt towards themselves. (Bourdieu, 1988(Bourdieu, [1984: xiii-xiv) 1In his classic Sociology of Philosophies, Randall Collins (1998: xix and Appendix 1) identifies a generational period of around 33-35 years as the crucial accounting unit in the history of thought.The century, the period of 100 years, is an arbitrary unit … It would be theoretically more illuminating to describe intellectual history in terms of active generations, about 3 per hundred years. A 33-year period is the approximate length of an individual's creative work. By the end of that time, a cohort of thinkers will be virtually replaced by a new adult generation. Generational periods constitute a more or less minimal unit for structural change in an intellectual attention space. (1998: xix) 2The last 35 years or so in British sociology (by which I mean sociology written and taught in the UK) have been marked, I think, by two processes of 'canonization'. 3 The first is that of the holy trinity of Marx, Weber and Durkheim

This series aims to create a forum for debate between different theoretical and philosophical traditions in the social sciences. As well as covering broad schools of thought, the series will also concentrate upon the work of particular thinkers whose ideas have had a major impact on social science (these books appear under the sub-series title of 'Theoretical Traditions in the Social Sciences'). The series is not limited to abstract theoretical discussion -it will also include more substantive works on contemporary capitalism, the state, politics and other subject areas.

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