Charles Lemert
Biographic Data
| ID | 115365 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Charles Lemert |
| GIVEN NAMES | Charles |
| FAMILY NAME | Lemert |
| SIGNATURE | LEMERT C |
| AFFILIATIONS | Wesleyan University |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 103 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 281 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 102 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1974 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 9 |
Baudrillard (1929-2007) & Mao: A History of Normal Violence
Margaret Fuller: Feminist Theory Years Ahead of Its Time
Betty Friedan and Simone de Beauvoir
Niebuhr's America
What Is to Be Done
The Marxist Sociology section of the American Sociological Association held a symposium in November, 2025 to honor award winners. This is Charles Lemert's contribution, he was the recipient of the 2025 Lifetime Achievement Award
Why Mills and Not Gouldner
Looking back, one cannot help but be struck by the similarities between C. Wright Mills and
And the Crisis of the American Interior
The Modern-World System: Europe or Asia? Fernand Braudel & André Gunder Frank
Author Biography Charles Lemert, Wesleyan University Charles Lemert is an Emeritus Professor of Sociology at Wesleyan University and will soon publish: Americans Thinking America; The Bottom Turtle: Silence and Society; and. with Immanuel Wallerstein: Living Progressively in a Transitional Time
The Senator and the Philosopher: What Liberalism Might Have Been
Lies and Life: The Other Italians
C. Wright Mills: A New Left for a New Day
Thomas Paine, during a crucial moment in the American war against its colonizers, said famously: “These are times that try men’s souls.” Many think, I among them, that these too are times that try men’s souls. At such a time, one must look back for clues as to what to think and do. One from not that long ago who lends us wisdom of a sort is C. Wright Mills, who in the 1950s, tried to make sense of America’s changing culture. However, a bad heart …
Henry David Thoreau: The Beginnings of Fast Capitalism
Author Biography Charles Lemert, Wesley University Emeritus Professor of Sociology at Wesleyan University
Frantz Fanon / Immanuel Wallerstein: Marxism, Capitalism, and the Now Uncertain World
Margaret Fuller: Feminist Theory Years Ahead of Its Time
From the 1830s to the 1860s and the end of the American Civil War, Concord, Massachusetts was the nation's intellectual center.At the heart of its international fame were Ralph Waldo Emerson and
The textures of society
Introduction to Contemporary Social Theory
In this comprehensive and clear introduction to contemporary social theory, Anthony Elliott and Charles Lemert explore the major theoretical traditions from the Frankfurt School to the digital revolution and beyond. Fully revised and updated, this second edition has been expanded to consider the most recent developments in social theory, including a new chapter on the digital revolution and the increasingly significant impact of technological dev…
Capitalism and its Uncertain Future
For decades, Charles Lemert has been the leading voice in social theory. In Capitalism and its Uncertain Future he teams up with one of the most creative emerging social theorists, Kristin Plys, to examine how social theory imagines capitalism. This engaging and innovative book provides new perspectives on well known theorists from Adam Smith, and Frantz Fanon, to Gilles Deleuze, while also introducing readers to lesser known theorists such as Lu…
Henry David Thoreau: The Beginnings of Fast Capitalism
of them, I lived alone in the woods, a mile from any neighbor, in a house which I built myself, on the shore of Walden Pond, in Concord, Massachusetts, and earned my living by the labor of my hands only
Social Theory: The Multicultural, Global, and Classic Readings
Introduction—Social Theory
The Souls of W. E. B. Du Bois
This work marks the recent passing of the 100th Anniversary of Du Bois' classic of African American literature. More than fifty events and celebrations were held in cities and universities around the country. It poignantly explores the relationship of Du Bois, the man, to his writings. It is written by expert team of authors including the prominent Manning Marable. The Souls of W. E. B. Du Bois explores the relationship of W. E. B. Du Bois' semin…
Souls of W. E. B. du Bois
G ouldner, A lvin W . (1920–1980)
Alvin W. Gouldner (1920–1980) was a contradiction in the sense that his literary career began in 1954 with two traditional sociological studies of industrial bureaucracy and ended with a series of books on revolutionary intellectuals, Marxist social theories, and the new culture of techno‐media. The Coming Crisis of Western Sociology (1970) was a challenge to academic sociology to become, in effect, more partisan. By 1980 he had proven himself no…
Social Theory: The Multicultural, Global, and Classic Readings
This book provides an illuminating introduction to a collection of readings on social theory and provides an overview of the socio-historical context and delineation of key thinkers and texts. It includes a new section exploring social theory at the limits of the social
Postmodernism is Not What You Think
'Charles Lemert is one of the most thoughtful and interesting of sociology's postmodernists. He recurrently finds new angles of vision and is especially helpful for overcoming the pernicious opposition of 'micro' and 'macro' perspectives.' -Craig Calhoun, New York University (on the first edition) Highly readable, the second edition of Postmodernism Is Not What You Think responds to the widespread claim that postmodernism is over. It explains the…
Social Theory: The Multicultural And Classic Readings
Social Theory: Its Uses and Pleasures * Modernity's Classical Age, 1848-1919 Estranged Labour Camera Obscura (Karl Marx) Class Struggle (K. Marx and Friedrich Engels) The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte On Imperialism in India The Values of Commodities The Fetishism of Commodities Labour-Power and Capital (K. Marx) The Patriarchal Family (F. Engels) Anomie and the Modern Division of Labor Sociology and Social Facts Suicide and Modernity (E…
Sociology After the Crisis
The crisis-riddled world needs a renewed sociology perhaps even more than it requires economic or political advice. Charles Lemert sees sociology as first and foremost a special type of practical, moral wisdom. Sociology is the way in which individuals try to understand the inner secrets of social life against the embracing structures of the modern world. All professional sociologists build, or ought to build, from this fundamental attempt to tak…
Sociology after the Crisis
A Classic from the Other Side of the Veil: Du Bois's Souls of Black Folk
Why has W.E.B. Du Bois not mattered more in sociology? In addition to being on the short list of the 20th century's most influential public intellectuals, Du Bois made substantial, if under recognized, intellectual contributions as a sociologist and social theorist. Among his nearly 2000 published writings, The Philadelphia Negro and Souls of Black Folk have all the qualities of classic works. Yet, neither has been officially canonized by sociolo…
Social Things: An Introduction to the Sociological Life
Preface to the Fifth Edition Introduction The Sociological Life Chapter 1: Imagining Social Things, Competently Chapter 2: Personal Courage and Practical Sociologies Chapter 3: Practicing the Discipline of Social Things Sociology Chapter 4: Sociology and Lost Worlds of A New World Order: 1848 - 1920 Chapter 5: Sociology Becomes a Science of Structures: 1920 - 1960 Chapter 6: Sociology Reaches Out Into the World: 1968 - 2000s Social Things Chapter…
The Voice of Anna Julia Cooper: Including a Voice from the South and Other Important Essays, Papers, and Letters
The Race of Time: Du Bois and Reconstruction
Research Article| August 01 2000 The Race of Time: Du Bois and Reconstruction Charles Lemert Charles Lemert Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google boundary 2 (2000) 27 (3): 215–248. https://doi.org/10.1215/01903659-27-3-215 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Permissions Search Site Citation Charles Lemert; The Race of Time: Du Bois and Reconstruction. boundary 2 1 August 2000; 27 (3): 215–248. doi:…
French Sociology: Rupture and Renewal Since 1968
Language, Structure, and Measurement: Structuralist Semiotics and Sociology
Recent literature documenting the necessary relationship among the concept of social structures, the practice of measurement, and the nature of sociological language is reviewed. Structuralist semiotics (with special reference to Saussure) is used a resource for examining the deficiencies of both formalist and interpretativist positions on these relationship. Structural explanation is described as an alternative. Umberto Eco's idea of a semantic …
Subjectivity's Limit: The Unsolved Riddle of the Standpoint
Several years ago the American Sociological Association's newsletter Footnotes carried an opinion piece which argued, in effect, that feminist sociology was a fraud and an annoyance. The idea of this little piece was that gender is already an important variable; therefore, a feminist sociology is unnecessary. Positive method could generate the truth of women's social reality. More recently, however, it has been rumored that a once major departmen…
The End of Ideology, Really
Sociology and the Twilight of Man: Homocentrism and Discourse in Sociological Theory
A critique of modern sociological theory, this brilliant new work rather than announcing the twilight of man accepts the event both as an intellectual conclusion and an empirical fact, and proceeds systematically to examine the alternatives beyond the Weber-Durkheim-Parsons episteme.Addressing himself to the issues of pluralism in sociological theory, Lemert rigorously examines representative writings of important theorists in America and Europe,…
Sociology after the Crisis
Sociological Theory and the Relativistic Paradigm
Sociological theory is compared to the relativist paradigm which is found in a variety of contemporary intellectual movements: microphysics, drama, theology, art, music and psychology. The principal elements in the relativist paradigm are: (1) complementarity; (2) indeterminacy: (3) relativity. In contrast to this thought pattern, the apparent pluralism represented in the strict, hermeneutical, and critical schools of sociological theory is shown…
French Sociology: After the Patrons, What
Sociology and the Twilight of Man: Homocentrism and Discourse in Sociological Theory
The Clothes Have No Emperor: Bourdieu on American Imperialism
The Clothes Have No Emperor' (a title borrowed from Paul Slansky's hilarious critique of the Reagan years in the USA) means to say that Bourdieu's criticism of American imperialism is an understandable slip of his brilliant visual sociology. He writes to those of a disposition to agree completely because they know the facts all the better. Bourdieu may well be the only person alive today who has so perfectly combined theoretical, empirical and po…
The Might Have Been and Could be of Religion in Social Theory
Religion may well be the most inscrutable surd of social theory, which began late in the 19th century dismissing the subject. Not even the renewal of interest in religion in the 1960s did much to make religion a respectable topic in social theory. It is possible that social theory's troubles are, in part, due to its refusal to think about religion. Close examination of social theories of Greek religion suggest, for principal example, that religio…
Social Theory at the Early End of a Short Century
Il est peut-etre temps d'aller au-dela du debat postmoderniste, ne serait-ce que parce que les defis qu'il pose ne peuvent etre resolus en ses termes. L'A. propose de retourner aux buts premiers de la theorie sociale, d'ecrire une histoire du present. Il ne s'agit pas de retourner aux origines, mais de montrer combien il a pu etre difficile meme au meilleur des modernistes d'apprehender la realite divisee et multiple de la modernite. Ainsi desanc…
Science, Religion and Secularization
The persistence of religion among scientists is the background question from which is derived a number of theoretical questions previously explored only tentatively in the sociology of religion and less by the sociology of science. The examination, organized around the differences in style and subject of these two sociological specialties, argues that the social study of science could benefit from and supplement theoretical concepts recently deve…
Poetry and Public Life
The public life is one entered more by the patience of the poetic ear than by the sharpness of the pen or the truth of the facts
The habits of intellectuals: Response to Ringer
Future of the sixties generation and social theory
Michel Foucault: Social Theory as Transgression
Social Structure and the Absent Center: An Alternative to New Sociologies of Religion
The new sociology of religion (Bellah, Berger, Luckmann, Fenn, among others) has made little progress because of its failure to consider the metatheoretical aspect of its various sociological proposals. There are, metatheoretically, two classic problems: the tension between the personal and the social structural dimensions of social action and the problem of meaning . The new sociologists of religion share an ambivalence with respect to social st…
Cultural Multiplexity and Religious Polytheism
Les recherches récentes en sociologie de la religion n'ont pas accordé une attention suffisante à l'impact des conditions socio-culturelles sur l'idéation religieuse. Le problème est re pris par l'Auteur et analysé du point de vue de la sociologie de la religion comprise comme forme particulière de la socio logie de la connaissance. Pour l'Auteur, la place centrale du monothéisme dans l'idéation religieuse traditionnelle occidentale doit être mis…
Sociological Theory and the Relativistic Paradigm
Sociological theory is compared to the relativist paradigm which is found in a variety of contemporary intellectual movements: microphysics, drama, theology, art, music and psychology. The principal elements in the relativist paradigm are: (1) complementarity; (2) indeterminacy: (3) relativity. In contrast to this thought pattern, the apparent pluralism represented in the strict, hermeneutical, and critical schools of sociological theory is shown…
Social Structure and the Absent Center: An Alternative to New Sociologies of Religion
The new sociology of religion (Bellah, Berger, Luckmann, Fenn, among others) has made little progress because of its failure to consider the metatheoretical aspect of its various sociological proposals. There are, metatheoretically, two classic problems: the tension between the personal and the social structural dimensions of social action and the problem of meaning . The new sociologists of religion share an ambivalence with respect to social st…
Defining Non-Church Religion
A Sociology of Belief
Against the World for the World
Journal Article Against the World for the World edited by Peter L. Berger and Richard John Neuhaus. New York: The Seabury Press, 1976, ix + 164 pp. $3.95 Get access Charles Lemert Charles Lemert Southern Illinois University at Carbondale Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Sociology of Religion, Volume 38, Issue 3, Fall 1977, Pages 266–268, https://doi.org/10.2307/3709807 Published: 01 October 1977
Theorizing, Policy Making, and the Critique of Europeanism
Sociology and the Twilight of Man: Homocentrism and Discourse in Sociological Theory
A critique of modern sociological theory, this brilliant new work rather than announcing the twilight of man accepts the event both as an intellectual conclusion and an empirical fact, and proceeds systematically to examine the alternatives beyond the Weber-Durkheim-Parsons episteme.Addressing himself to the issues of pluralism in sociological theory, Lemert rigorously examines representative writings of important theorists in America and Europe,…
Science, Religion and Secularization
The persistence of religion among scientists is the background question from which is derived a number of theoretical questions previously explored only tentatively in the sociology of religion and less by the sociology of science. The examination, organized around the differences in style and subject of these two sociological specialties, argues that the social study of science could benefit from and supplement theoretical concepts recently deve…
Language, Structure, and Measurement: Structuralist Semiotics and Sociology
Recent literature documenting the necessary relationship among the concept of social structures, the practice of measurement, and the nature of sociological language is reviewed. Structuralist semiotics (with special reference to Saussure) is used a resource for examining the deficiencies of both formalist and interpretativist positions on these relationship. Structural explanation is described as an alternative. Umberto Eco's idea of a semantic …
Sociology and the Twilight of Man: Homocentrism and Discourse in Sociological Theory
French Sociology: Rupture and Renewal Since 1968
Literary politics and the Champ of French sociology
Alvin Ward Gouldner: 1920?1980
Michel Foucault. Social Theory and Transgression
Looks at the works of Michel Foucault, who was a professor of the history of systems of thought at the College de France, who wrote on topics such as literature, philosophy, history, sociology, politics, medicine and semiotics.
Beyond Structuralisms
Gouldner's theoretical method and reflexive sociology
French Sociology Rupture and Renewal Since 1968
Michel Foucault: Social Theory and Transgression
The Way of the Masks
Michel Foucault: Social Theory as Transgression
French Sociology: After the Patrons, What
Future of the sixties generation and social theory
Jean Baudrillard: Selected Writings
Behaviorism, Structure, and Theoretical Method: Response to Turner
Sociology (75 works) · Philosophy (49 works) · Epistemology (43 works) · Contemporary Sociological Theory and Practice (28 works) · Social science (27 works) · Political science (26 works) · Law (22 works) · Philosophy (21 works) · Psychology (21 works) · Politics (20 works)