This innovative textbook presents an up-to-date synthesis of the central debates in contemporary social thought. It offers a different framework for the study of social theory. By focusing on the core concepts and issues - rather than on schools of thought or individual theorists - Malcolm Waters relates past and present theory to the key concerns of sociology today.

Modern Sociological Theory gives a lucid overview of: the core concepts that sociological theory must address and attempt to reconcile - agency, rationality, structure and system; and the main phenomena that sociological theory sets to explain - culture, power, gender, differentiation and stratification.

It explains the major contributio