Critical Bibliography
Here’s an incomplete bibliography of books that have been useful or important to me, and to which I’ll be adding on occasion. I intend to add some annotations noting what was valuable to me about these books. My favorites are marked in red. Some texts appear more than once because they belong in multiple categories. If you have any suggestions, corrections, questions, or comments, please feel free to comment below (although I’ll probably only add books I’ve already read).
Louis Althusser
Louis Althusser, For Marx. London: Verso, 2006.
Louis Althusser, Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays. New York: Monthly Review Press, 2001.
Louis Althusser, On Ideology. London: Verso, 2008.
Louis Althusser and Etienne Balibar, Reading Capital. London: Verso, 2009.
Pierre Bourdieu
Pierre Bourdieu, Acts of Resistance: Against the Tyranny of the Market.
Pierre Bourdieu, The Field of Cultural Production.
Pierre Bourdieu, Language and Symbolic Power. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999.
Pierre Bourdieu, The Logic of Practice. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Pierre Bourdieu, Outline of a Theory of Practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977.
Pierre Bourdieu, Practical Reason: On the Theory of Action. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
David Swartz, Culture and Power: The Sociology of Pierre Bourdieu. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Jacques Derrida
Jacques Derrida, Limited Inc. Northwestern University Press.
Jacques Derrida, Margins of Philosophy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Jacques Derrida, Of Grammatology. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976.
Jacques Derrida, Writing and Difference. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Rudolphe Gasche, The Tain of the Mirror. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Michel Foucault
Michel Foucault, The Archaeology of Knowledge.
Michel Foucault, The Birth of Biopolitics: Lectures at the College de France, 1978-79. New York: Palgrave, 2008.
Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. New York: Vintage.
Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality: Volume 1. New York: Vintage.
Michel Foucault, Politics, Philosophy, Culture: Interviews and Other Writings, 1977-1984. London: Routledge, 1990.
Michel Foucault, Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings, 1972-1977. New York: Pantheon.
Michel Foucault, Power (The Essential Works of Foucault, 1954-1984, Volume 3). New York: New Press 2001.
Michel Foucault, Security, Territory, Population: Lectures at the College de France, 1977-78. New York: Picador, 2009.
Michel Foucault, “Society Must Be Defended”: Lectures at the College de France, 1975-76. New York: Picador, 2003.
Ian Hacking, Historical Ontology. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Antonio Gramsci
Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks. London: International Publishers.
Peter Ives, Language and Hegemony in Gramsci. Pluto Press.
Chantal Mouffe (ed.), Gramsci and Marxist Theory. London: Routledge, 1979.
Karl Marx
Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The Marx-Engels Reader, Second Edition. Ed. by Robert C. Tucker. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1978.
Karl Marx, Capital: Volume 1. Trans. by Ben Fowkes. New York: Penguin, 1992.
Friedrich Nietzsche
Gilles Deleuze, Nietzsche and Philosophy. New York: Columbia University Press.
Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil.
Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science.
Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals.
Ideology
Jean-Francois Bayart, The Illusion of Cultural Identity. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Terry Eagleton, Ideology: An Introduction. London: Verso, 1991.
Michael Freeden, Ideology: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003.
Fredric Jameson, The Political Unconscious. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
Bruce Lincoln, Discourse and the Construction of Society: Comparative Studies of Myth, Ritual, and Classification. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989.
Elizabeth Kammarck Minnich, Transforming Knowledge. Temple University Press.
John B. Thompson, Ideology and Modern Culture. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1990.
John B. Thompson. Studies in the Theory of Ideology. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1985.
Critical Social Theory or Theories of Religion
Peter Berger, The Sacred Canopy: Elements of a Sociological Theory of Religion. New York: Anchor, 1967.
Peter Berger and Thomas Luckman, The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge. New York: Anchor, 1967.
Chiara Bottici, A Philosophy of Political Myth. Cambridge University Press, 2007.
Wendy Brown, Politics Out of History. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Wendy Brown, Regulating Aversion: Tolerance in the Age of Identity and Empire. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Wendy Brown, States of Injury. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Anthony P. Cohen, The Symbolic Construction of Community. London: Routledge.
Emile Durkheim, Elementary Forms of Religious Life.
Emile Durkheim, Rules of Sociological Method.
Torben Bech Dyrberg, The Circular Structure of Power: Politics, Identity, Community. London: Verso, 1997.
Anthony Giddens, The Constitution of Society: Outline of the Theory of Structuration. Berkely: University of California Press.
Max Gluckman, Politics, Law, and Ritual in Tribal Society.
Erving Goffman, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. New York: Anchor, 1959.
Nancy Hirschmann, The Subject of Liberty: Towared a Feminist Theory of Freedom.
David I. Kertzer, Ritual, Politics, and Power. Yale University Press.
Bruce Lincoln, Authority: Construction and Corrosion. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995.
Bruce Lincoln, Discourse and the Construction of Society: Comparative Studies of Myth, Ritual, and Classification. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989.
Tim Murphy, Representing Religion. London: Equinox Publishing, 2007.
Nikolas Rose, Inventing Ourselves: Psychology, Power, and Personhood. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Nikolas Rose and Peter Miller, Governing the Present.
Marshall Sahlins, Culture and Practical Reason. Chicago: Chicago University Press.
James C. Scott, Domination and the Arts of Resistance.
James C. Scott, Weapons of the Weak.
Raymond Williams, Marxism and Literature.
Iris Marion Young, Justice and the Politics of Difference. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Language and Social Construction
Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann, The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge. New York: Anchor, 1967.
Lee Braver, A Thing of This World. Northwestern University Press, 2007.
John Dewey, The Quest for Certainty.
Mary Douglas, How Institutions Think. Syracuse University Press, 1986.
Ian Hacking, Historical Ontology. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Ian Hacking, The Social Construction of What? Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999.
Sally Haslanger (any of her essays)
Martin Heidegger, Being and Time.
Nancy Hirschmann, The Subject of Liberty: Towared a Feminist Theory of Freedom.
George Lakoff, Whose Freedom? The Battle of America’s Most Important Idea. New York: Farrar, Strauss, and Giroux, 2006.
George Lakoff, Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things: What Categories Reveal about the Mind. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990.
Elizabeth Kammarck Minnich, Transforming Knowledge. Temple University Press.
Rodney Needham, Symbolic Classification.
Hilary Putnam, The Collapse of the Fact/Value Dichotomy and Other Essays. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press 2004.
Hilary Putnam, Ethics Without Ontology. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2005.
Edward Schiappa, Defining Reality: Definitions and the Politics of Meaning. Carbondale, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2003.
John R. Searle, The Construction of Social Reality. New York: Free Press.
Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, Third Edition. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1958.
Gender
Judith Butler, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. London: Routledge, 1990.
Anne Fausto-Sterling, Sexing the Body: Gender Politics and the Construction of Sexuality.
Judith Lorber, Paradoxes of Gender. Yale University Press.
Serena Nanda, Gender Diversity: Crosscultural Variations
Critical Studies
Jeremy Carrette and Richard King, Selling Spirituality.
Michael O. Emerson and Christian Smith, Divided by Faith: Evangelical Religion and the Problem of Race in America. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Julie Ingersoll, Evangelical Christian Women: War Stories in the Gender Battles. New York: New York University Press, 2003.
Bruce Lincoln, Death, War, and Sacrifice.
Bruce Lincoln, Emerging from the Chrysalis.
Bruce Lincoln, Religion, Empire, and Torture: The Case of Achaemenian Persia, with a Postscript on Abu Ghraib. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007.
Saba Mahmood, Politics of Piety: The Islamic Revival and the Feminist Subject. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Uday Singh Mehta, Liberalism and Empire: A Study in Nineteenth-Century British Liberal Thought. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Dawne Moon, God, Sex, and Politics. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
John Powers, History as Propaganda: Tibetan Exiles versus the People’s Republic of China. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Beth Roy, Some Trouble With Cows: Making Sense of Social Conflict. Berkely: University of California Press.
Winnifred Fallers Sullivan, The Impossibility of Religious Freedom. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005.
Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism.
Capitalism
Charles Fishman, The Wal-Mart Effect: How the World’s Most Poweful Company Really Works—And How It’s Transforming the American Economy. New York: Penguin.
David Harvey, A Brief History of Liberalism. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
David Harvey, The Limits to Capital, Second Edition. London, Verso.
David Harvey, The New Imperialism. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Naomi Klein, The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism.
Robert B. Reich, Supercapitalism: The Transformation of Business, Economy, and Everyday Life. New York: Vintage.
Ellen Ruppel Shell, Cheap: The High Cost of Discount Culture.
What would you regard as the best overall textbook on contemporary sociological theory? I have been using Ritzer but I am searching for something that is better as a textbook, like Ashley and Orenstein for Classical Theory.
I don’t teach any straight sociology courses (although sociological concerns/questions/theories are running through all my courses), so I’ve never used a sociology textbook; sorry, I’m not the best person to ask!
I considered posting off-topic in some other comments but I figured it would be well-placed here.
I think of religious studies as an interdisciplinary effort to understand religiosity, broadly construed. Are you trained in a discipline that is not religious studies per se? I get the impression — from this bibliography as well as many of your topical blog posts, at least — that you’re a philosopher who is well informed in sociology and other necessary tools for a religious studies professor. Is this accurate, or is something else the case?
My Ph.D. is in fact from a department of religion or religious studies. However, it is a program that would typically be understood as “theory heavy.” For the most part, my coursework was as likely to cover Levinas as Judaism, as likely to cover Weber’s Protestant Ethic as Protestantism. Thus my “Hinduism” comprehensive exam was really about Hindu nationalism and Indian politics from British colonialism forward—which required me to read more about post-colonialism than about Hinduism.
Why do you ask? Are you challenging my religion bona fides?! ;)
Hardly! I was merely curious because I know that sometimes philosophers in the “Continental” tradition are relegated to other departments — English, religious studies, and so on — by unsympathetic “analytic” philosophy departments. I was wondering if this was the case with you, as you seem inclined to cite philosophers often enough, or if I’m just ignorant of religious studies generally.
My philosophy bibliography is similar to that of my peers in religion at my alma mater, but not representative of the field of religious studies as a whole, for sure. Except maybe Foucault—EVERYBODY reads Foucault.