The Structural Lie: Small Clues to Global Things

by Charles Lemert

In his newest book prominent sociologist Charles Lemert takes on one of social science 's most mysterious problems. How is it possible to derive general statements about the largely invisible and overwhelming grand structures of social life that we can never see clearly beyond their effects in the small movements of individual lives? Marx and Freud were the modern inventors of a solution that is given too little attention: Where Marx derived from the tiniest commodity, his large picture of the whole of the evils of the capitalist system, so too Freud diagnosed the character of psyches and cultures from the slight inferences of details of dreams, slips, and even jokes. Charles Lemert offers in this wonderfully readable and limitlessly challenging book approaches for a new social science required for global realities in which a Bluetooth can convey a world of information.

242 pages, Hardcover

First published April 1, 2011

About the author

Charles Lemert (born 1937) is an American born social theorist and sociologist. Charles Lemert is University Professor and John C Andrus Professor of Social Theory Emeritus at Wesleyan University and Senior Fellow of the Center for Comparative Research at Yale University. He is the author and editor of many books.