Introduction

Abstract

It is widely acknowledged that sociology — in both its liberal and Marxist guises — was the outcome of efforts to understand the dramatic changes which began to take place in western societies during the late eighteenth century. The ‘theory of industrial society’ and Marxism’s theory of capitalist society both claim to explain the major contours of development associated with the ‘great transformation’ from either traditional/agrarian to modern/industrial societies, or from feudalism to capitalism. The debate involving the proponents of these two avowedly opposed traditions has been keenly contested and the subject of numerous reappraisals over the past twenty years or so.