ABSTRACT
This chapter reviews such leading currents of sociological theory and analysis as ethnomethodology, revived symbolic interactionism, social phenomenology, behaviouralism, Goffman's 'dramaturgical' sociology, Levi-Straussian or Chomskyite structuralism to satisfy her or himself of the current default. The critique of functionalist sociological theory is, in addition to or in conjunction with the study of the masters of classical sociology, a pedagogic necessity: the demolition of functionalism is almost an initiation rite of passage into sociological adulthood or at least adolescence. The 'succession crisis' to functionalism continues with a variety of post-functionalist schools, movements and cult figures competing for a share or even the monopoly of the sociological imagination. The most striking feature of the current situation in sociological theory from the present perspective is the conspicuous absence of temporal concerns or historical consciousness or at least the lack of any obvious 'quantum leap' in the level of diachronic theorisation compared with classical synchronic or achronic functionalism.
