This is a book with an immodest ambition. It attempts to set forth the core of what we know about how to explain the social world. It is theoretical knowledge, not description; it does not tell how many people at various times and places have acted and thought in particular ways and what social structures they have formed; it does tell us why these kinds of things in general happen as they do. The theories may not all be correct, and none is as strongly validated by empirical evidence as one might wish. But sociologists have been at the business of theory and research for more than a century now, and we have learned some significant things over that time. The book is, thus, an attempt to assess the state of our sociological knowledge: in addition to presenting theoretical models, to judge how likely these theories are to be true, where their weaknesses lie, and in what directions they need to be developed.
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