A highly readable and innovative work—one that deserves a wide audience. By articulating eight major metaphors in social theory, Rigney opens vistas for interpreting present-day social and cultural reality.
Gideon Sjoberg, University of Texas Social science and social life both depend on imagination. Rigney's The Metaphorical Society offers tools for understanding the world and an engagement in the critical ... Read moretask of seeing what each tool obscures and what it reveals.
Craig Calhoun, University Professor of Social Sciences, Arizona State University A nicely compact book that covers nearly every kind of social theorizing imaginable—not just sociology, but the array of academic disciplines, plus politics, poetry, business and industry, religious and military reasoning, common sense, and on and on: They are all there, side by side, though sociology is predominantly featured. The prose is wonderful, smooth, conversational, lucid, and flowing. Citations are detailed and the bibliography thorough.
Contemporary Sociology
This book will prove useful not only to the beginner who is trying to develop a sense of what is involved in the practice of theorizing, but also to sociologists and theorists who want to develop an understanding of how they use language, and language uses them.
BSA Network
Exceptionally well written and learned. . . . Should find a significant readership in undergraduate and graduate courses.
Ben Agger Show Less