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Contemporary of social thought

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If anyone has had or is taking Contemporary of Social Thought, please help me to understand it! My professor's test are two essays and true and false questions.

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This sounds like a huge project. Primarily because
<br>1) I'm not sure what the curriculum is exactly about
<br>2) And if I am right to guess that it deals with theories beyond Marx, Weber and Durkheim, these theories would be so vast in varieties and intense in profundity.
<br>
<br>It would be very difficult to give you good advice about this.
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<br>What I can say here is to list out some general issues in contemporary theories.
<br>1)Structure-agency debate
<br>2) Holism-Individualism debate
<br>3) Action-Communication debate
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<br>1) The structure-agency debate is basically the question of Freedom. Does social structure determine our every aspects of life (thoughts, behaviors, etc..) or are we agents who can determine what society will be?
<br>There are many contemporary theories who have tried to deal with this by postulating what they call meso-theories. People like Giddens and Bourdieu are the representatives of two groups of people. Giddens tends more towards agency and Bourdieu towards structure. Meso theories are basically theories which try to land themselves right smack in the middle of the two extremes; but they never really succeed anyway. Social order, is itself a paradox. It contrains us yet it allows us to act more freely as well. Other contemporaries who deal with these issues ...

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