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In the tradition of C. Wright Mills and Irving Goffman, this monograph brings current research and insight to a social science research area famed for its fissiparous polemical battles. Sperber surveys the field from Durkheim to the present and discusses both the origins of the Radical and neo-Marxist perspective as well as the mainstream, functionalist school of research. The work's unique theoretical contribution lies in several areas. Sperber proposes that some of the diseases of modern civilization (Spanish flu epidemic of 1918, cancer, systemic lupus, heart disease, and chronic depression among others) can be effectively explained, diagnosed and treated only when a systematic sociological perspective is brought to bear on them. Sperber also argues forcefully for a progressive, critical view of the field in language that is clear, forceful and persuasive.