SOC 101: Introduction to Sociology

To look outside the discipline of sociology is to find little credibility given to the field as a science. Bernard Phillips argues that we are learning to see more clearly the contradiction between scientific standards and what sociology has achieved. Instead of knowledge based on the full range of our findings, we have separate pieces of knowledge located within the diverse areas of the discipline and fads and fashions in the ideas and terms we use with relatively little cumulative development. This has led many to question whether any scientific method can be applied to human behavior. If the arguments and alternative interpretations in this book on the problematic nature of sociology's use of the scientific method prove credible and fruitful, then the implications are profound.

The Countries, Peoples & Cultures series is complete with specific information on over 200 countries and self-governing territories and separate appendices profiling 21 types of governments currently in power and 10 major world religions. Useful for students, educators, academic researchers, and other professionals in their fields, this encyclopedia is a must-have for community, educational, and specialized libraries nationwide.

In Covid-19 and the Transformation of American Society, the first book-length consideration of the Covid-19 pandemic's implications noted by sociologist Jose Martinez lays bare the immense social changes we should expect from the novel coronavirus, which has upended American life since March 2020. A vital theme of his critique is how inequality already entrenched in American society may worsen due to large-scale economic disruption that resonates strongly in the socioeconomic circumstances of minorities and people with low incomes. On the other hand, the community may also experience constructive social changes resulting from a widespread reconsideration of consumerism driven by frank reassessments of our wants and needs. This book addresses how the coronavirus has contributed to long-lasting reconsiderations of social relationships, from dating to leisure to education, in negative and positive ways and how national and cultural politics will never be the same. Martinez opens a new field in foretelling an unanticipated future for American society and the world. It concludes by considering possible solutions to address social changes we are unlikely to avoid.

Drawing on current scholarship, Education and Society takes students on a journey through education's many roles in contemporary societies. Addressing student's own experience of teaching before expanding to more extensive sociological conversations, Education and Society help readers understand and engage with such topics as peer groups, gender and identity, social class, the racialization of achievement, the treatment of immigrant children, special education, school choice, accountability, discipline, global perspectives, and schooling as a social institution. The book prompts students to evaluate how schools organize our society and how society organizes our schools. Moving from students to teaching to social forces, Education and Society provides a lively and engaging introduction to theory and research. It will serve as a cornerstone for courses such as Sociology of education, foundations of Education, critical issues in Education, and School and society.

Facebook claims that it is building a "global community." Whether this sounds utopian, dystopian, or simply self-promotional, there is no denying that social-media platforms have altered social interaction, political life, and outlooks on the world, even for people who do not regularly use them. In this book, Roberto Simanowski takes Facebook as a starting point to investigate our social-media society—and its insidious consequences for our concept of the self. Simanowski contends that while they are often denounced as outlets for narcissism and self-branding, social networks and the practices they cultivate remake the self in their image. Sharing is outsourcing one's experiences, encouraging unreflective self-narration rather than conscious self-determination. Instead of experiencing the present, we are ceaselessly documenting and archiving it. We let our lives become episodic autobiographies whose real author is the algorithm lurking behind the interface. As we accumulate more material for the platform to arrange for us, our sense of self diminishes, and Facebook shapes a subject who no longer minds. Social media companies' relentless pursuit of personal data for advertising presents users with increasingly targeted, customized information, attenuating cultural memory and fracturing collective identity. Offering a creative, philosophically informed perspective that speaks candidly to a shared reality, Facebook Society asks us to come to terms with the networked world for our own sake and for all those with whom we share it.

This book explores the achievements of British feminist sociology in theory, methods, and empirical research. It outlines the barriers to the development of feminism and explores contemporary challenges. It provides an unrivaled guide to the origins of feminism in the discipline of sociology, analyses the uneasy relationships between feminists and the founding fathers, and elucidates the opportunities and challenges presented by post-modernism. The book was written to try to be even-handed in discussing the various schools of feminism. It draws on different empirical areas, from science to stratification and health and illness to the professions, to illustrate the depth and vitality of feminist perspectives.

Not your typical sociology primer, this straightforward yet challenging text begins with a discussion of foundational theories, central concepts, and areas of study. Drawing on anthropology, archaeology, and history to illustrate key points, the book thoroughly examines the field, covering such often neglected topics as the mass production of deviance (Stalin's lethal purges, for example) and the sociology of war. This multifaceted approach provides a broad overview of the discipline through a clear-eyed investigation of human society at its best and worst.

Building theories of organizations is challenging: ideas are partial, and folk categories are fuzzy. The commonly used tools--first-order logic and its foundational set theory--are ill-suited for handling these complications. Here, three leading authorities rethink organization theory. Logics of Organization Theory sets forth and applies a new language for theory building based on nonmonotonic logic and fuzzy set theory. In doing so, it marks a significant advance in organizational theory and draws lessons for theory building elsewhere in the social sciences. Organizational research analyzes organizations in categories like banks, hospitals, or universities. These categories have been treated as crisp analytical constructs designed by researchers. But sociologists increasingly view categories as constructed by audiences. This book builds on cognitive psychology and anthropology to develop an audience-based theory of organizational categories. It applies this framework and the new language of theory creation to organizational ecology. It reconstructs and integrates four central theory fragments and, in so doing, reveals unexpected connections and new insights.

Postcolonial theory has enjoyed vast influence in the humanities, but its implications remain elusive for social science, particularly sociology. This exceptional volume brings together leading sociologists to explore the concept of postcolonial sociology with brand new postcolonial readings of canonical thinkers like Karl Marx, Max Weber, Emile Durkheim, and Robert Park. Chapters consider whether or not postcolonial theory is compatible with sociology, explore the relationship between knowledge and colonial power, and offer critical perspectives on the sociology of race and the implications of postcolonial theory for global sociology. They also unravel the complex entanglements of sociology, area studies, and postcolonial studies; give creative deployments of postcolonial concepts such as hybridity; and critical excavations of sociological thought in India and Mexico. In so doing, this volume is among the first to craft new sociologies informed by postcolonial criticism.

The Holocaust is the most researched and written about genocide in history. Known facts should be beyond dispute. Yet Holocaust memory is often formed and dictated by governments and others with an agenda to fulfill or deniers seeking to rewrite the past due to vested interests and avowed prejudices. Legislation can be used to prosecute hate crimes and genocide denial. Still, it has also been created to protect the reputation of nation-states and the inhabitants of countries previously occupied and oppressed by the regime of Nazi Germany. The crimes of the Holocaust are, of course, rightly seen mainly as the work of the Nazi regime. Still, there is a reality that some citizens of subjugated lands participated in, conspired, and collaborated with those crimes and, on occasion, committed crimes and atrocities against Jews independently of the Nazis. Others facilitated and enabled the Nazis by allowing industries to work with the Germans; some showed hostility, indifference, and reluctance to assist Jewish refugees, or, due to antipathy, apathy, greed, self-interest, or out-and-out anti-Semitism, they allowed or even encouraged barbaric and cruel crimes to take place. Survivors of the Holocaust often express a primary desire that past lessons must be learned to reduce the risk of similar crimes reoccurring. Yet anti-Semitism is still a toxin in the modern world, and racism and hostility to other communities – including those who suffer in or have fled war and oppression – can sometimes appear normalized and socially acceptable. This book seeks to explore aspects of the Holocaust as it is remembered and reflect ultimately on parallels with the world we live in today.

Georg Simmel's highly original take on the newly revived sociology field made it far more sophisticated than it had been beforehand. He took insights from dialectical thought and Kantian epistemology to develop a sociology method that remains implicit in the field a century later. Forms include such patterns of interaction as inequality, secrecy, membership in multiple groups, organization size, and coalition formation. While today's texts and professional societies are organized around contents rather than forms, a fresh reading of Simmel's chapters on conditions suggests original avenues of inquiry into each of the contents--family, business, religion, politics, labor relations, and leisure.

The Sociology Reference Guide series is designed to provide a solid foundation for researching various sociological topics.

For too long, scientists have focused on the dark side of our biological heritage: our capacity for aggression, cruelty, prejudice, and self-interest. But natural selection has given us beneficial social features, including our ability for love, friendship, cooperation, and learning. Beneath all our inventions- our tools, farms, machines, cities, and nations- we carry innate biases to make a good society. In Blueprint, Nicholas A. Christakis introduces the compelling idea that our genes affect not only our bodies and behaviors but also how we make societies, ones that are surprisingly similar worldwide. With many vivid examples--including diverse historical and contemporary cultures, communities formed in the wake of shipwrecks, commune dwellers seeking utopia, online groups thrown together by design or involving artificially intelligent bots, and even the tender and complex social arrangements of elephants and dolphins that so resemble our own--Christakis shows that, despite a human history replete with violence, we cannot escape our social Blueprint for goodness. In a world of increasing political and economic polarization, it's tempting to ignore the positive role of our evolutionary past. Drawing on advances in social science, evolutionary biology, genetics, neuroscience, and network science, Blueprint shows how and why evolution has placed us on a humane path--and how our common humanity unites us.

Profiles alphabetically arranged countries, providing an overview of the cultures that shape each one. Topics covered include history, ethnic relations, urbanism, food and economy, social stratification, politics, gender roles and statuses, marriage, kinship, etiquette, religion, health care, secular celebrations, arts and humanities, and science.

A consistent best-seller, the wide-ranging and authoritative Dictionary of Sociology was first published in 1994 and contains more than 2,500 entries on the terminology, methods, concepts, and thinkers in the field, as well as from the related fields of psychology, economics, anthropology, philosophy, and political science. For this fourth edition, Professor John Scott has thoroughly reviewed all entries to ensure that they are concise, focused, and up to date. Revisions reflect intellectual debates and social conditions, particularly global and multicultural issues. New entries cover relevant contemporary concepts, such as climate change, social media, terrorism, and intersectionality, as well as key living sociologists. This Dictionary is an invaluable introduction to sociology for beginners and an essential reference source for more advanced students and teachers.

It comprises 370 original articles written by leading experts, including Richard Dawkins, Stephen Jay Gould, and Jane Goodall. American Libraries selected it as one of the Outstanding Reference Sources of 2003. A similar book, the Cambridge Encyclopedia of Evolution, is edited by Steve Jones.

The new encyclopedia presents essays by scholars about many topics within the broad field of sociology. It continues to be useful both for scholars and professionals investigating new areas of study and for students needing introductory overviews. The first edition contains 370 essays in four volumes, but the second has expanded to five books with 60 new pieces. New articles include "Censorship and the Regulation of Expression," "Futures Studies as Human and Social Activity," and "Internet." The latest edition also revises and updates many of the original essays. For instance, "Feminist Theory" now discusses the 1990s and its secondary bibliography includes texts published in 1995 and 1999. The second edition also reflects changes in our society and academics by incorporating some topics into different essays or changing the titles of specific articles. As with the first edition, the arrangement is alphabetical by case. The signed papers provide a thorough and detailed overview of the subject.

The classic Handbook of Social Psychology has been the standard professional reference for social psychology for the past 50 years. Now available in a new edition, this internationally acclaimed resource maintains the high standards of previous editions by recruiting leading experts from all areas of social psychology to bring readers up to date on new scientific methods and analytic techniques and to take stock of research advances in their respective specialties. In addition to a new and diverse group of authors, this edition is filled with new topics, such as emotions, self, automaticity, stigma, memory, and evolution.

A watershed book that masterfully integrates insights from evolutionary biology, genetics, psychology, economics, and more to explore the development and workings of human societies. "There is no good reason why human societies should not be described and explained with the same precision and success as the rest of nature." Thus argues evolutionary psychologist Pascal Boyer in this uniquely innovative book. Integrating recent insights from evolutionary biology, genetics, psychology, economics, and other fields, he offers precise models of why humans engage in social behaviors such as forming families, tribes, and nations or creating gender roles. In fascinating, thought-provoking passages, he explores questions such as, Why is there a conflict between groups? Why do people believe low-value information like rumors? Why are there religions? What is social justice? What explains morality? Boyer provides a new picture of cultural transmission that draws on the pragmatics of human communication, the constructive nature of memory in human brains, and human motivation for group formation and cooperation.

This is a comprehensive, scholarly, and up-to-date survey of the field of social psychology for the new millennium. Basic and applied research is integrated, and the traditional emphasis on interpersonal processes is balanced with intergroup relations.

Emphasizing an interdisciplinary and international coverage of the functions and effects of science and technology in society and culture, Science, Technology, and Society/B contains over 130 A to Z signed articles written by prominent scholars and experts from academic and scientific institutions and institutes worldwide. A selected bibliography accompanies each piece. Other features include extensive cross-referencing throughout, a directory of contributors, and a comprehensive topical index.