Should cultural meaning be understood in terms of psychological motivations and intentions, or in terms of collective codes and belief systems? Max Weber saw the task of the interpretive sociologist as that of reconstructing the objective and subjective rationality of ideal typical actors. Neo-Kantians, phenomenologists, critical interpretivists, pragmatists, symbolic interactionists, ethnomethodologists, cultural anthropologists and others have struggled for over a century over what such an approach entails. The development of an interpretive or verstehen approach to understanding social life draws itself in distinction from approaches that seek causal explanation in terms of variables external to the beliefs of social actors, but this collection attempts to disrupt the comfortable polarities between macro and micro, structure and agency, explanation and description that dog sociology and through which the term interpretive has been quarantined.

Table of Contents:
VOLUME 1 SECTION ONE: THE CLASSICAL STATEMENTS AND AUTHORS The Rise of Hermeneutics - Wilhelm Dilthey and Frederic Jameson Translator′s Introduction to Max Weber′s Essay on Some Categories of Interpretive Sociology - Edith Graber Some Categories of Interpretive Sociology - Max Weber "Anticritical Last Word on The Spirit of Capitalism," by Max Weber - Wallace Davis "Capitalism" in Recent German Literature: Sombart and Weber - Talcott Parsons "Capitalism" in Recent German Literature: Sombart and Weber (concluded) - Talcott Parsons The Role of Ideas in Social Action - Talcott Parsons The Problem of Sociology - Georg Simmel The Sociology of Sociability - Georg Simmel and Everett C. Hughes The Verstehen Thesis and the Foundations of Max Weber′s Methodology, History and Theory - Guy Oakes Rickert′s Value Theory and the Foundations of Max Weber′s Methodology - Guy Oakes SECTION TWO: THE INTERPRETERS AND CHALLENGERS OF THE CLASSIC INTERPRETIVIST IDEA OF VERSTEHEN The Operation Called Vershehen - Theodore Abel On the Method of Verstehen as the Sole Method of Philosophy - Ernest Nagel Empirical Science and Max Weber′s Verstehende Soziologie - Peter Munch Max Weber′s" Verstehen" - William T. Tucker Verstehen I and Verstehen II, Theory and Decision - Theodore Abel "Sense" and "Intention" in Max Weber′s Theory of Social Action - Peter Munch Weber on Action - Stephen P. Turner Max Weber′s ′Interpretive Sociology′: A comparison of conception and practice - Mary Fulbrook Value-Relevance, Scientific Laws, and Ideal Types: The sociological methodology of Max Weber - John Rex Max Weber on Causal Analysis, Interpretation, and Comparison - Fritz Ringer Max Weber′s Interpretive Sociology, the Understanding of Actions and Motives, and a Weberian View of Man - Thomas Burger Max Weber, Interpretive Sociology, and the Sense of Historical Science: A Positivistic Conception of Verstehen - Thomas Burder Causality or Interaction? Simmel, Weber and Interpretive Sociology - K Lichtblau Weber′s Interpretive Sociology and Rational Choice Approach - Zenonas Norkus Weber′s Verstehen and the History of Qualitative Research: The missing link - Jennifer Platt Weber and Interpretive Sociology in America - Peter Kivisto and William H. Swatos Jr VOLUME 2 SECTION THREE: THE PHENOMENOLOGICAL CRITICS The Stranger: An Essay in Social Psychology - Alfred Schutz Common-sense and Scientific Interpretation of Human Action - Alfred Schutz Schutz Choosing Among Projects of Action - Alfred Schutz Concept and Theory Formation in the Social Sciences - Alfred Schutz On Phenomenological Sociology - James L. Heap and Phillip A. Roth Can There Be a Phenomenological Sociology? - Edo Pivcevic Alfred Schutz and the Austrian School of Economics - Christopher Prendergast The Rationality of Everyday Behaviour: A rational choice reconstruction of the theory of action by Alfred Schutz - Hartmut Esser Rationality, Optimality and Choice: Esser′s reconstruction of Alfred Schutz′s theory of action - Christopher Prendergast Spontaneous Social Order: Econmics and Sch tzian sociology - Nicolai Juul Foss Alfred Schutz on a Theory of Motivation - Andrew J. Weigert From Weber to Parsons and Schutz: The eclipse of history in modern social theory - David Zaret Existential Phenomenology and the Sociological Tradition - Edward Tiryakian Jiri Kolaja and Peter Berger Respond to Edward Tiryakian and he Responds Back - Jiri Kolaja and Peter Berger SECTION FOUR: THE CRITICAL PHENOMENOLOGISTS The Relation between Psychology and Sociology in the Work of Wilhelm Dilthey - Max Horkheimer Existentialism: Remarks on Jean-Paul Sartre′s L′Etre et le Neant - Herbert Marcuse Towards a Reconstruction of Historical Materialism - Jurgen Habermas Some Distinctions in Universal Pragmatics - Jurgen Habermas The A Priori of Communication and the Foundation of the Humanities - Karlo Otto Apel Dilthey′s Distinction Between "Explanation" and "Understanding" and the Possibility of Its "Mediation" - Karl Otto Apel The Hermeneutic Dimension of Social Science and its Normative Foundation - Karl Otto Apel New Developments in Phenomenology in France: The phenomenology of language - Paul Ricoeur Towards Actionist Sociology, Social Science Information - Alain Touraine The Voice and the Eye: On the relationship between actors and analysts - Alain Touraine Rationality in the Slum: An essay on interpretive sociology - Alejandro Portes Meeting or Mis-Meeting? The Dialogical Challenge to Verstehen - Rob Shields VOLUME 3 SECTION FIVE: SYMBOLIC INTERACTIONISM The Mechanism of Social Consciousness - George Herbert Mead The Social Self - George Herbert Mead Social Consciousness - Charles Horton Cooley The Roots of Social Knowledge - Charles Horton Cooley Science without Concepts - Herbert Blumer Attitudes and the Social Act - Herbert Blumer Sociological Analysis and the "Variable" - Herbert Blumer Sociological Implications of the Thought of George Herbert Mead - Herbert Blumer Becoming a Marihuana User - Howard Becker Whose Side Are We On - Howard Becker Symbols of Class Status - Erving Goffman The Moral Career of the Mental Patient, Psychiatry: Journal for the Study of Interpersonal Processes - Erving Goffman Major Trends in Symbolic Interaction Theory in the Last Twenty Five Years - Manfred Kuhn SECTION SIX: ETHNOMETHODOLOGY Conditions of Successful Degradation Ceremonies - Harold Garfinkel Studies of the Routine Grounds of Everyday Activities - Harold Garfinkel Evidence for Locally Produced, Naturally Accountable Phenomena of Order, Logic, Reason, Meaning, Method, etc - Harold Garfinkel Ethnomethodology′s Program - Harold Garfinkel A Note on the Uses of Official Statistics - Aaron Cicourel and John Kitsuse The Role of Cognitive-Linguistic Concepts in Understanding Everyday Social Interactions - Aaron Cicourel Text and Discourse - Aaron Cicourel The Interpenetration of Communicative Contexts: Examples from medical encounters - Aaron Cicourel John Rawls on Two Concepts of Rules - Aaron Cicourel Symbolic Interactionism and Ethnomethodology: A proposed synthesis - Norman Denzin Verstehen, Language and Warrants - James L. Heap Writing as Social Action, Theory into Practice - James L. Heap Practical Reason in Depression: a Practice - James L. Heap VOLUME 4 SECTION SEVEN: CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGISTS "From the Native′s Point of View": On the nature of anthropological understanding - Clifford Geertz Deep Play: Notes on the Balinese cockfight - Clifford Geertz Common Sense as a Cultural System - Clifford Geertz The Way We Think Now: Toward an ethnography of modern thought - Clifford Geertz Understanding a Primitive Society - Peter Winch Social Science - Peter Winch Rhetoric and the Ethnographic Genre in Anthropological Research - George Marcus Ethnographies as Texts - George Marcus and Dick Cushman On Ethnographic Authority - James Clifford Cultural Systems, and History: From Synchrony to Transformation - William H. Sewell SECTION EIGHT: CONTEMPORARY INTERPRETATIONS, EXTENSIONS, FUSIONS AND APPLICATIONS On Interpreting and Interpretation - N. Denzin Sociological Knowledge: Winch, Marxism, and Verstehen Revisited - Kai Nielsen Interpretivism and Generalisation - Malcolm Williams