Sociological Amnesia: Cross-currents in Disciplinary History (Classical and Contemporary Social Theory)

Mark Twain said that a classic is something that everybody wants to have read but nobody actually wants to read. Sociological Amnesia shows that many of the forgotten sociological classics are books one would certainly want to read eagerly. Recovering a diverse array of compelling authors from posterity's shadows, this book opens up vibrant new vistas for future sociological thinking. - David Inglis, University of Exeter, UK

This book is a treasure trove of lost jewels. An international team of contributors present a range of social theorists - men and women from three continents - whose work has been forgotten or neglected but retains its power and relevance. The book deserves a place on every sociologist's bookshelf. -John Scott, University of Copenhagen, Denmark and University of Exeter, UK

In the history of sociology we know more about the top 1% than the rest. The authors of this collection argue for upgrading at least twelve sociologists by offering explanations and complaints for their unjustified neglect. Readers of Law's and Lybeck's Sociological Amnesia are provided with insightful, detailed and combative pleas and detached analysis of interesting cases. - Christian Fleck, University of Graz, Austria, author of A Transatlantic History of the Social Sciences

The editors, Professor Alex Law, of Abertay University, and Eric Royal Lybeck, University of Exeter, bring together various authors to write chapters on a dozen significant thinkers we now rarely read. In tackling the current obscurity, at least within sociology, of Raymond Aron, Robert Bellah, Erich Fromm, Viola Klein, Gabriel Tarde, Alasdair MacIntyre and others, the book offers some thoughts on why eminent writers fall out of fashion - whether this is caused by some inherent property of their work or is largely by chance. The book points out the cost of ignoring historical figures... - BSA Network Magazine

C'est un ouvrage tres interessant pour les historiens de la sociologie qui souhaitent (re)decouvrir de nou-velles figures intellectuelles, pour ceux qui cherchent de nou-veaux terrains d'enquete ainsi que pour les epistemologues de notre discipline. - Bulletin d'histoire de la sociologie

Law and Lybeck's excellent study of the sociological amnesia that leaves once prominent and influential thinkers on the sidelines of our disciplinary memory addresses precisely these larger issues while offering us a number of first-rate case studies of sociologists and intellectuals we can usefully reconsider. - Canadian Journal of Sociology