S. N. Eisenstadt is well known for his wide-ranging investigations of modernization, social stratification, revolution, comparative civilization, and political development. This collection of twelve major theoretical essays spans more than forty years of research, to explore systematically the bases of human action and society. Framed by a new introduction and an extensive epilogue, which are themselves important statements about processes of institutional formations and cultural creativity, the essays trace the major developments of contemporary sociological theory and analysis. Examining themes of trust and solidarity among immigrants, youth groups, and generations, and in friendships, kinships, and patron-client relationships, Eisenstadt explores larger questions of social structure and agency, conflict and change, and the reconstitution of the social order. He looks also at political and religious systems, paying particular attention to great historical empires and the major civilizations. United by what they reveal about three major dimensions of social life—power, trust, and meaning—these essays offer a vision of culture as both a preserving and a transforming aspect of social life, thus providing a new perspective on the relations between culture and social structure.

When Stanford M. Lyman authored The Seven Deadly Sins: Society and Evil in 1978 it was hailed by Alasdair MacIntyre as "a book of absorbing interest and importance...[that] places us all in his debt." By Nelson Hart as "a masterful and thought-provoking book...[that] is the only scholarly treatment of sin that is so well-informed by the best of ancient through modern perspectives." By James A. Aho as a work whose "abstract hardly does justice to the scholarly and detailed analysis of sin." And by Harry Cohen as a "book...[that] stands as a beautiful illustration of what holistic, idiosyncratic, interdisciplinary, and creative thinking and writing can bring to bear on the age-old problem of society and evil." The American Sociological Association's section on the Sociology of the Emotions selected this book as one of the works that laid the foundations for the study of pride, lust, envy, and anger—basic sentiments embedded in the social process. For this revised and expanded edition Lyman has written a new chapter, "Sentiments, Sin, and Social Conflict: Toward a Sociology of the Emotions." The new edition will be a valuable work for courses in social psychology, ethics, deviance, and the sociology of morals and of religion.

For too long the study of law and society in the modern Middle East has been left to specialists in narrow subcategories of law or the social sciences. Property, Social Structure, and Law in the Modern Middle East lays the groundwork for a new field of scholarship in which analysis of the social dimensions of law and the legal dimensions of social structure are integrated. It offers the stimulus of a variety of new models of scholarship by a distinguished international group of contributors whose work shares a common focus on regimes of property in the societies of the modern Middle East. The case studies examine the regulations of many kinds of property in relation to the social structures of selected Middle Eastern communities form the eighteenth century to the present. Most of the societies studied are subjected to pressures for rapid modernization and adjustment to major economic transformations. The book features comparisons of property rights and relations under regimes of Islamic and customary law as well as modern statutory law. Highlighted are new patterns of intervention by modern Middle Eastern states to alter traditional regimes of property and to transform the accompanying social structures. Their implications for development are also considered. The book's notes and bibliographies constitute a valuable resource for anyone interested in further research.

Originally published in 1984, this work is organised in three parts. Each part consists of several related chapters. Each chapter explores the assumptions and implications of a closely related group of concepts in depth. Part 1 explores what a structure is. It considers such notions as content, context, constraint, unity, integrity, and the hierarchical and nucleate forms of organization. Part 2 critically explores the dynamic (energic) conceptualization of psychological and social phenomena. Thus, this part considers such notions as energy, entropy, activity, confirmation, discrepancy, and resistance, as they apply to and affect the stability, activity, and changes observed in psychological and social structures. The relationship among the biological (metabolic), psychological, and social levels of analysis are explored from a rather simplified thermodynamic point of view. In Part 3 brings all these earlier considerations to bear upon the processes by which these structures grow and develop. It explores the concept of development itself, and such related issues as the levels-by-stages model of development, the distinction between intrastructural and intergenerational development, the orthogenic principles, the process of primordial differentiation and integration, development as a dialectical process, and the relationship between growth and development. The Epilogue indicates briefly some of the implications of the present thesis for future empirical and theoretical investigations.

“This book has been more helpful to the students—both the better ones and the lesser ones—than any other book I have ever used in any of my classes in my more than a quarter century of university teaching.” —RICHARD L. KIRKWOOD, University of Wisconsin–Eau Claire This Norton Critical Edition includes: • The medieval masterpiece’s most popular tales, including—new to the Third Edition—The Man of Law’s Prologue and Tale and The Second Nun’s Prologue and Tale. • Extensive marginal glosses, explanatory footnotes, a preface, and a guide to Chaucer’s language by V. A. Kolve and Glending Olson. • Sources and analogues arranged by tale. • Twelve critical essays, seven of them new to the Third Edition. • A Chronology, a Short Glossary, and a Selected Bibliography. About the Series Read by more than 12 million students over fifty-five years, Norton Critical Editions set the standard for apparatus that is right for undergraduate readers. The three-part format—annotated text, contexts, and criticism—helps students to better understand, analyze, and appreciate the literature, while opening a wide range of teaching possibilities for instructors. Whether in print or in digital format, Norton Critical Editions provide all the resources students need.

Social and Political Philosophy was first published in 1982. Minnesota Archive Editions uses digital technology to make long-unavailable books once again accessible, and are published unaltered from the original University of Minnesota Press editions.