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Synopsis From its first edition in 1979, Perspectives in Sociology has provided generations of undergraduates with a clear, reassuring introduction to the complications of sociological theory. This fifth edition has been thoroughly revised, one chapter completely rewritten and two new chapters added. While retaining its emphasis and wealth of information about the founding figures of sociology, since they inform most subsequent work in sociological theory, it also includes much new material on contemporary social theory with particular reference to its attempts to tackle current problems and issues in the areas of gender, sexuality and ethnicity in the postcolonial context. It retains an examination of the challenge to sociology posed by the rise of  oststructuralism with its questioning of the whole Enlightenment Project. It continues to retain information on thinkers of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries whose relevance to modern social thought is only now being recognised, e.g. Nietzsche, Saussure, and Freud, and to draw connections between poststructuralism thinkers like Foucault and Derrida and the founding fathers. New Features include: A thoroughly revised text including particular attention to the linking and cross-referencing of chapters. A new chapter reviewing the rise of British sociology, with particular reference to the political context and the changing role of 'class' in sociological thinking.  A new chapter describing the attempts of sociological theorists to explain current concerns, problems and issues in the areas of gender, (homo) sexuality and ethnicity in the context of the postcolonial world, and to show the similarities in these approaches. A completely rewritten chapters on the 'synthesisers'--Bourdieu, Habermas and Giddens--and their attempts to generate a consensus from the apparently conflicting theories of their predecessors: Marx, Weber and Durkheim.