John Goldthorpe: Consensus And Controversy (Hardcover)

This volume forms part of a series of publications on leading contemporary sociologists. The work of each scholar chosen, in this case John Goldthorpe, is internationally recognized, is still relevant to the core of the discipline in the 1990s, is extensive and thematic in coverage and is, at one and the same time, consensus-generating and controversial. The book is divided into three parts - the first provides a general introduction to Goldthorpe's work, the second contains nine sets of paired contributions and one "free-standing" chapter covering the main themes of Goldthorpe's writings, and the third consists of Goldthorpe responds to his critics. Goldthorpe concludes with a Popperian committment to the idea of "Consensus and Controversy", seeing them as the two modes of communicative action which lie at the very heart of the scientific method. The volume concludes with biographical details about the contributors, an outline intellectual biography of John Goldthorpe and a consolidated bibliography.