The sociology of social change has always been the product of times of flux, and the unmatched dynamism of our period is already reflected in the revitalization of theories of change. Piotr Sztompka's aim in this volume is to take stock of and to reappraise the whole legacy of sociological thinking about change, from the classical to the contemporary, providing the intellectual tools necessary for a critical and rational grasp of our own turbulent times. Intended primarily as an advanced textbook for upper-division and graduate students, as well as researchers, this book covers the four grand visions of social and historical change which have dominated the field since the 19th century: the evolutionary, the cyclical, the dialectical, and the post-developmentalist. In so doing, it provides indispensable analytic discussions of the concepts focal to contemporary debates such as social process , development , progress , social time , historical tradition , modernity , post-modernity , and globalization .

Piotr Sztompka is a Full Professor of Sociology at the Jagiellonian University in Krakow, Poland, and a regular Visiting Professor at the University of California, Los Angeles. He has also taught as Visiting Professor at Columbia University, the University of Michigan, Johns Hopkins University and the University of Rome, La Sapienza. He has published many books, including: System and Function (1974), Sociological Dilemmas (1979), Rethinking Progress with J. Alexander (1990) and Society in Action (1991).