A Good Book, In Theory

 
A Good Book, In Theory
A Guide to Theoretical Thinking

by Alan Sears

University of Toronto Press

2005
 

 

A Good Book, In Theory is another book that I borrowed from a friend and took waaay too long to read before returning it.

 
Sears is writing for undergraduate sociological theory students, hoping to convince them that social theory can be interesting and relevant. I'm not sure his writing is as engaging as he wants it to be, and I think it might be a bit dense for undergrads, but it is an introduction to several aspects of social thought.

 
Sears wants a running theme of his book to be the debate between theories of order, which generally have a negative view of human nature and assume that power and hierarchy are good for preventing anarchy, and theories of conflict, which have a more positive view of human nature and assume that hierarchy benefits the powerful at the expense of the subordinated - but it's not really a running thread, just something he brings up a few times.

 
Sears introduces the two perspectives, then, uses the two perspectives to talk about formal education, then talks about a few applications of the social construction of reality, and ends by talking about theory-making.

One critique I have of Sears is that I think he creates 'themes' for his chapters by grouping not-necessarily related topics that share a word or phrase in everyday English. So for example, he ends his first chapter on the social construction of reality by talking about debates around globalization that are framed in terms of who has a more 'realistic' view of the world.

 
I feel like one of the hardest challenges of teaching any theory is getting students to understand that within the theory, some words are used in very specific ways, and shouldn't be read as having the full range of meanings and connotations they carry in everyday speech. Like how being able to 'rationalize' a decision psychologically is not the same thing as making a formally 'rational choice.' So Sears committing similar linguistic slippage in his text seems not ideal to me.

 
I would never assign A Good Book, In Theory, but I wouldn't have regretted reading it back when I was a student. My undergrad criminology theory class actually was organized around order versus conflict, and in sociology, I've always found social construction to be one of the most important ideas.