Charles Lemert, Social Theory: The Multicultural and Classical Readings

Journal of Sociology and Social Welfare, Sept, 2005

Charles Lemert, Social Theory: The Multicultural and Classical Readings. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2004. $35.00 papercover.

Social work and social policy are now well-established academic subjects. In addition to applying sophisticated research methodologies, both are making far more use of theory than ever before. However, in the early days, the founders of social work and social policy were suspicious of theory. Many embraced the positivist view that social welfare institutions could best be analyzed through observation and scientific verification. Pragmatism reinforced this perspective and theoretical speculation was generally disdained. Although social work and social policy scholarship was historically characterized by an anti-theoretical stance, the situation is very different today and a wide range of theoretical perspectives now inform social work and social policy research. Psychological and sociological theories are now widely used, and there is far more familiarity with political economy and major normative social science perspectives.

It is in this context that Charles Lemert's book should be regarded as a major resource for social work and social policy students and scholars. Focusing primarily on social theories, the book presents an extremely comprehensive collection of excerpts from the writings of leading contributors to social theory since the mid-19th century. The material is organized chronologically into six parts. Part one is concerned with the classical social theorists including Marx, Durkheim and Weber but interestingly Lemert also includes an except from the writings of Jane Addams who is seldom regarded as a theoretician. Part II, which spans the first half of the 20th century, contains excerpts from the writings of Keynes, Mead, Merton, Du Bois and Gramsci as well as political and literary figures such as Virginia Woolf, Gandhi and Mao. The next two parts of the book focus on the writings of late 20th-century scholars such as Parsons, Goffman, Habermas and Galbraith but here again, except from the writings of political and literary figures are included. Part five deals largely with the work of postmodernist and multicultural writers of the 1980s and 1990s and, reflecting the title of the book, multicultural and postmodernist excerpts dominate the final section which is concerned with the social theories of the new century. Appropriately, a significant proportion of these excerpts address issues of globalization.

As suggested earlier, Lemert's collection should be viewed as a source book rather than a basic text. Its major strengths is its comprehensiveness and the way the editor presents short but representative selections that will appeal to students. Many students, and indeed many educators, do not have the time or inclination to plow through heavy theoretical tomes and many rely on secondary sources when seeking to understand theoretical writing. Lemert's collection makes original writings accessible and manageable. This is a valuable book which should be extensively used in social work and social policy classes.