Varieties of Modern Social Theory [antikvár]

INTRODUCTION This anthology seeks to focus attention upon the stresses and crises which beset modem man in a mass society. In this effort many others have preceded me; their work, however, offers either a general survey of the crucial issues facing man in contemporary society^ or treats more fully one or another specific aspect of these crises.^ This volume, however, hopes to present a number of the special stresses found in our society and show how they are analyzed by students of the social disciplines in America. The problems which such issues create are not the concern only of the research scholar, for they also interest both the average educated man and those who are his teachers. Increasingly, and especially at the undergraduate level, American universities have been offering integrated social science courses. Greater attention, therefore, has turned to the material available for these courses and to the teaching methods which their instructors should use. The American college student, accustomed as he is to 1 An excellent source book is Identity and Anxiety: Survival of the Person in Mass Society, edited by Maurice Stein, Arthur J. Vidich, and David Manning White, Glencoe, Illinois, The Free Press, 1960. 2 Erich Fromm, Escape from Freedom and The Sane Society, David Riesman, The Lonely Crowd and Individualism Reconsidered; Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition and Between Past and Future; Helen Merrill Lynd, On Shame and The Search for Identity; Erik H. Erikson, Childhood and Society and Young Man Luther; WiUiam H. Whyte Jr., The Organization Man; Norman O. Brown, Life Against Death; Allen Wheelis, The Quest for Identity; Herbert Marcuse, Eros and Civilization; Erich Kahler, The Tower and the Abyss; Bruno Bettelheim, The Informed Heart; Karen Homey, The Neurotic Personality in our Time; C. Wright Mills, The Power Elite and The White Collar; Maurice Stein, The Eclipse of Community; Margaret Mary Wood, Paths of Loneliness; Paul Tillich, The Courage To Be; Reinhold Niebuhr, Moral Man and Immoral Society; Eric Larrabee, The Self-Conscious Society; Paul Goodman, Growing Up Absurd; Rollo May, Mans Search for Himself. ix A.UJ m