How social science explains order, conflict, and change — in short, finishable pieces.
Social theory is the body of argument that explains how societies hold together and why they change. This collection works through the whole arc of that argument: the emergence of the discipline, the classical founders, the twentieth-century schools, and the contemporary debates about modernity, race, colonialism, and globalisation. We have compressed the standard course into short, self-contained articles — each one states a problem, works through the reasoning, and stops. Read it in order to build the whole picture, or jump straight to the theorist or debate you need. By the end you will be able to reconstruct, compare, and challenge the explanations that social scientists actually use.
Coming soon
From scattered commentary on society to a discipline with methods, journals, and arguments of its own.
From scattered commentary on society to a discipline with methods, journals, and arguments of its own.
Capital and alienation set against social facts and solidarity — two incompatible blueprints for a science of society.
Capital and alienation set against social facts and solidarity — two incompatible blueprints for a science of society.
Interpretation as a method, then the formal analysis of interaction, money, and modern culture.
Interpretation as a method, then the formal analysis of interaction, money, and modern culture.
Functionalism, systems, conflict, and the several Marxisms that survived the crossing to America.
Functionalism, systems, conflict, and the several Marxisms that survived the crossing to America.
Symbolic interactionism and ethnomethodology: how ordinary conduct produces a recognisable social order.
Symbolic interactionism and ethnomethodology: how ordinary conduct produces a recognisable social order.
Rational and network accounts of interaction, feminist theory, and the attempt to join action to structure.
Rational and network accounts of interaction, feminist theory, and the attempt to join action to structure.
Late-modern diagnoses of risk and liquidity, then structuralism and the postmodern critique of knowledge.
Late-modern diagnoses of risk and liquidity, then structuralism and the postmodern critique of knowledge.
Colonial and racial theory, rival explanations of global integration, and theory for a changed planet.
Colonial and racial theory, rival explanations of global integration, and theory for a changed planet.
“A rigorous, unusually readable map of social theory from Marx to the Anthropocene.”
This collection keeps the argument and drops the scaffolding, which is exactly what self-directed learners need. Each article is short enough to finish in one sitting yet carries the full claim and its counterargument. The classical material is handled without reverence, and the contemporary chapters are genuinely current.
Nano College takes the standard university textbook for a course and turns it into short, self-contained pieces you can actually finish. We keep the ground the textbook covers and the rigour it insists on; what we leave out is the padding that only exists to fill a semester.