Key Contemporary Social Theorists is a comprehensive introduction to some of the most significant figures in social, cultural, political and philosophical thought of the twentieth century. This collection of newly commissioned entries offers students and scholars an authoritative guide on current contributions to contemporary social theory and social science. Preceding the entries is a well-organized chart of the main trends of development in social theory. The result is an invaluable reference work for all those concerned with central issues in contemporary social theory.

Anthony Elliott is Professor of Social and Political Theory at the University of the West of England, where he is Director of the Centre for Critical Theory. He is the author of Subject to Ourselves (Polity, 1996), Social Theory and Psychoanalysis in Transition (Second Edition, 1999), Concepts of the Self (2001), and editor of The Blackwell Reader in Contemporary Social Theory (Blackwell, 1999).

Larry Ray is Professor of Sociology at the University of Kent. He is the author of Rethinking Critical Theory (1993), Social Theory and the Crisis of State Socialism (1996), Theorizing Classical Sociology (1999), and the co-editor of Organizing Modernity (1994).