Durkheim's Ghosts is a fascinating presentation of the tradition of social theory influenced by Emile Durkheim's thinking on the social foundations of knowledge. From Saussure and Levi-Strauss to Foucault, Bourdieu and Derrida, today's criticisms of modern politics and culture owe an important, if unacknowledged, debt to Durkheim. These engaging and innovative essays by leading sociologist Charles Lemert bring together his writings on the contributions of French social theory past and present. Rather than merely interpret the theories, Lemert uses them to explore the futures of sociology, social theory, and culture studies. Durkheim's Ghosts offers the reader original insights into Durkheim's legacy and the wider French traditions for the cultural and social sciences. Of special note is the book's new and exciting theory of culture and semiotics. Provocative, scholarly, imaginative and ambitious this book will be invaluable to anyone interested in social theory, culture, and intellectual history of modern times.

Social Functions of Synagogue Song: A Durkheimian Approach by Jonathan L. Friedmann paints a detailed picture of the important role sacred music plays in Jewish religious communities. This study explores one possible way to approach the subject of music’s intimate connection with public worship: applying sociologist Émile Durkeim’s understanding of ceremonial ritual to synagogue music. Durkheim observed that religious ceremonies serve disciplinary, cohesive, revitalizing, and euphoric functions within religious communities. Drawing upon musical examples from different composers, regions, periods, rites, and services, Friedmann demonstrates how Jewish sacred music performs these functions.

In the second edition of this study of religion and kinship in East Timor, David Hicks argues that reproductive rituals and ideas regarding fertility and gender direct the notion that for the Tetum-speaking people of Caraubalo suku, in the district of Viqueque, life and death derive from the same source. This source is the world of the ancestral ghosts (the mate bein). The soul of a person (the klamar mate) who has died becomes transformed by ritual action into an agency for life-affirming fertility, that is, an ancestral ghost, and it is from the ancestors that fertility, which sustains life down the generations, originates. Incorporated into this complex of ideas regarding life, fertility, gender, and death, are two recreational institutions, cockfighting and kick-fighting, which Dr. Hicks argues are ritualized manifestations of fertility and infertility respectively, as well as gendered aspects of the sacred (lulik) and secular (sau) worlds. In addition to contributing to the comparative study of ritual and indigenous notions of reproduction, the second edition of Tetum Ghosts and Kin: Fertility and Gender in East Timor, provides an ethnographic portrait of village life among a people whose traditions were about to be abruptly devastated by war and conquest. In a summary retrospect he outlines the events that overtook the East Timorese between the time of his first period of fieldwork and East Timors becoming a nation on May 20, 2002, and concludes with a brief description of the present condition of Caraubalo.

This book expands the sociological canon by introducing non-Western and female voices, and subjects the existing canon itself to critique. Including chapters on both the ‘founding fathers’ of sociology and neglected thinkers it highlights the biases of Eurocentrism and androcentrism, while also offering much-needed correctives to them. The authors challenge a dominant account of the development of sociological theory which would have us believe that it was only Western European and later North American white males in the nineteenth and early twentieth century who thought in a creative and systematic manner about the origins and nature of the emerging modernity of their time. This integrated and contextualised account seeks to restructure the ways in which we theorise the emergence of the classical sociological canon. This book’s global scope fills a significant lacuna and provides a unique teaching resource to students of classical sociological theory.

The Structural Lie tackles one of social science's most mysterious problems. How is it possible to derive statements about the grand structures of social life from their effects in the small movements of everyday life? Prominent sociologist Charles Lemert shows how Marx and Freud provide some answers to this question. Marx derived from the commodity his picture of the capitalist system, Freud diagnosed the character of psyches from the details of dreams, slips and jokes. This wonderfully readable and engaging book lays the foundation for a new social science in an age where a microchip can convey a world of information.

The fifth edition of this bestselling reader builds a strong foundation in both classical and contemporary theory, with a sharpened focus on gender and anthropology, and the anthropology of new media and technology. Short introductions and key terms accompany every reading, and light annotations have been added to aid students in reading original articles. Used on its own or together with A History of Anthropological Theory, Fifth Edition, this anthology offers a flexible and unrivalled introduction to anthropological theory that reflects not only the history but also the changing nature of the discipline today.

The fifth edition of this bestselling reader builds a strong foundation in both classical and contemporary theory, with a sharpened focus on gender and anthropology, and the anthropology of new media and technology. Short introductions and key terms accompany every reading, and light annotations have been added to aid students in reading original articles. Used on its own or together with A History of Anthropological Theory, Fifth Edition, this anthology offers a flexible and unrivalled introduction to anthropological theory that reflects not only the history but also the changing nature of the discipline today.