During the 1970s and 1980s, much of George Ritzer's work focused on topics of interest to professional sociologists, but not to the public at large. His work on sociology as a multiple paradigm science, his engagement with what were then lively debates about the micro-macro linkage, and his development of the idea of metatheory are among the topics reviewed. Moreover, his ambitions for the future of sociological theory are compared with the contemporaneous work of Jeffrey C. Alexander and Anthony Giddens.
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