Franco Ferrarotti is widely regarded as the founder of postwar Italian sociology. Along with such figures as Leo Strauss, Edward Shils, David Riesman, Robert Merton, and Ralf Dahrendorf, he established the terms and texts of contemporary sociology after the Second World War.Social Theory for Old and New Modernities is a collection of Ferrarottis essays that brings his work back into the forefront of sociology. His writings, on theory and ethnographic research, on immigration and multiculturalism, on religion and secularization, speak directly to todays social and political dilemmas and crises and offer sociologists a critical and enlivened vision of their discipline.Maria Maciotis Introduction locates Franco Ferrarottis work within his remarkable life, that of a politician, intellectual, and social scientist living amidst the social and political changes of the last half of the twentieth century, anticipating the changes and challenges of the twenty-first.E. Doyle McCarthy is the editor of this collection.