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RR 2012/217 The Wiley-Blackwell Companion to Sociology (new edition) Edited by George Ritzer Wiley-Blackwell MaLden, MA, and Oxford 2012 xvii + 661 pp. ISBN 978 1 4443 3039 7; ISBN 978 1 4443 4735 5 (e-PDF) £110/$199.95
Wiley-Blackwell Companions to Sociology
Available in a variety of electronic formats in addition to e-PDF
Keyword Sociology
Review DOI 10.1108/09504121211240567
For some reason we seem not to have reviewed Judith Blau's Blackwell Companion to Sociology in Reference Reviews at the time of its first appearance (Blau, 2001). I certainly remember looking through it at the time and remarking on its slightly idiosyncratic content. Since then, of course, Blackwell have been absorbed by the mighty Wiley, the original Blackwell Companions to Sociology have expanded into a considerable library of social science reference texts, and, of course, the social world has changed, bringing in different approaches to sociology. George Ritzer edited the first two books in that series - The Blackwell Companion to Major Classical Social Theorists and The Blackwell Companion to Major Contemporary Social Theorists - and compressed them into the first of the series to appear since the merger of Blackwell with Wiley as The Wiley-Blackwell Companion to Major Social Theorists last year (Ritzer and Stepnisky, 2011). (I am not quite sure how you define "classical" in social science terms, other than "old", or how you can tell whether a contemporary is major or minor until his work has had time to have an impact, but all three are handy books on social philosophy, well worth looking at.) Ritzer therefore seems a suitable person to produce a new book to act as the core text for the series.
This really is a new book, not just a new edition. Only five of the contributors to Blau are among the 45 contributors...