This book introduces the novice reader to modern social theory through the creative exploration of eight major metaphors that have shaped Western understandings

Both classical and contemporary social theorists have created a range of frameworks to formulate and develop concepts of social structure. Focusing on the work

not lie in the conceptual distinctions but in the perceived functions of metaphors and whether in the concrete case they are judged positive or negative. The on

In this book, Victor Turner is concerned with various kinds of social actions and how they relate to, and come to acquire meaning through, metaphors and paradig

"In this penetrating analysis of the social attitudes toward various major illnesses - chiefly tuberculosis, the scourge of the 19th century, and cancer, the te