USA Africa Dialogue Series - Choice Review of Sociological Theory Handbook

CHOICE

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January 2017 Vol. 54 No. 5

Springer SBM B.V.

The following review will appear in the January 2017 issue of CHOICE. The review is for your internal use only until our publication date of 01 January 2017

Sociology

54-2527

HM401

MARC

Handbook of contemporary sociological theory, ed. by Seth Abrutyn. Springer, 2016. 578p bibl index afp ISBN 9783319322483, $299.00; ISBN 9783319322506 ebook, $229.00.

Abrutyn editorializes in his handbook as if there is only one "theory" in sociology, a discipline characterized by a multiplicity of paradigms. The search for a singular grand "theory" reflects the contributors' ideological preference for order, integration, and functionalism. Abrutyn justifies this selective approach with the excuse that there are pressures of time, "slavish adherence principle," and the mushrooming of concepts, making it impossible to fit in every perspective, especially marginalized perspectives, even when two courses of "theory" are offered to students: classical and contemporary. The editor's unfamiliarity with Africana perspectives is evident in his multiple misspelling of the name of Du Bois as "DuBois" in the introduction, without citing his works. Before Du Bois was eventually included in the bibliography by Jason Turowetz, Matthew Hollander, and Douglas Maynard, they marginally footnoted him in their chapter (19), but copiously quoted Rawls to assert, unchallenged, that whites see "African Americans as rude or ignorant" (p.406). Postcolonial, feminist, and postmodernist theories are also mostly excluded. Sociologists who feel dissatisfied on reading this Eurocentric handbook may be compensated with Zandria Robinson's chapter (23), "Intersectionality," on race-class-gender.

--B. Agozino, Virginia Tech

Summing Up: Recommended. Graduate students/faculty.