SOCI 1101: Sociology

Heads up Sociology by DK Why does racism exist? Is Big Brother watching us? Why are women paid less than men? Investigate society's hidden truths, from gender and identity politics to consumer culture with this insightful guide. Sociology is the study of how societies are organized and what helps them function or go wrong. Heads Up Sociology explores a range of curious social phenomena, including poverty and class status, white-collar crime, religious beliefs, and internet anxieties. The book helps readers see themselves and their communities in the context of a larger, globalized world. Fascinating biographies offer insight into the lives and work of key researchers such as Karl Marx, Judith Butler, and Howard Becker, while well-illustrated case studies and real-life scenarios bring their ideas to life. Stunning infographics further explain the ebb and flow of power in society. Heads Up Sociology is the ultimate tool to help you get to grips with sociology in time for exams and is an essential read for anyone keen to ask the big questions about the world we live in today.

Evil by Julia Shaw What is it about evil that we find so compelling? From our obsession with serial killers to violence in pop culture, we seem inescapably drawn to the stories of monstrous acts and the aberrant people who commit them. But evil, Dr. Julia Shaw argues, is all relative, rooted in our unique cultures. What one may consider normal, like sex before marriage, eating meat, or being a banker, others find abhorrent. And if evil is only in the eye of the beholder, can it be said to exist at all? In Evil, Shaw uses case studies from academia, examples from and popular culture, and anecdotes from everyday life to break down complex information and concepts like the neuroscience of evil, the psychology of bloodlust, and workplace misbehavior. This is a wide-ranging exploration into a fascinating, darkly compelling subject.

Selfie by Will Storr We live in the age of the individual. Every day, we're bombarded with depictions of the beautiful, successful, slim, socially conscious, and extroverted individual that our culture has decided is the perfect self, and we berate ourselves when we don't measure up. This model of the perfect self and the impossibly high standards it sets can be extremely dangerous. People are suffering under the torture of this impossible fantasy, and unprecedented social pressure is leading to increases in depression and suicide. Journalist and novelist Will Storr began to wonder about this perfect self that torments so many of us: Where does this ideal come from? Why is it so powerful? Is there any way to break its spell? To answer these questions, Storr takes the reader on a journey from the shores of Ancient Greece, through the Christian Middle Ages, to the self-esteem evangelists of 1980s California, the rise of narcissism and the "selfie" generation, and right up to the era of hyper-individualism in which we live now. Selfie tells the epic tale of the person we all know so intimately--because it's us.

Chicago Sociology by Jean-Michel Chapoulie; Caroline Wazer (Translator); William Kornblum (Foreword by) Known for its pioneering studies of urban life, immigration, and criminality using the "city as laboratory," the so-called Chicago school of sociology has been a dominant presence in American social science since it emerged around the University of Chicago in the early decades of the twentieth century. Canonical figures such as Robert Park, Everett Hughes, Howard S. Becker, and Erving Goffman established foundational principles of how to conduct social research. This groundbreaking book on the development and influence of the Chicago tradition, first published in 2001, became an immediate classic in France, where Chicago sociology has exerted significant appeal. Drawing on deep archival research and interviews with members of the tradition, Jean-Michel Chapoulie interrogates evidence with a historian's eye and recognizes the profound effects that culture, society, and the economy have on individuals and institutions. His study is a fine-grained and panoramic portrait of the complex and interlocking factors that gave rise to the research interests and methodologies that characterized the Chicago tradition in the 1920s and that contributed to rises and falls in its predominance in American sociology over the following decades. Now revised and available for the first time in English, Chicago Sociology provides a unique perspective on the history of social science in the twentieth century. A foreword by William Kornblum places Chapoulie's work in context and addresses recent critical challenges to the Chicago school and its origins.

Conversations about Anthropology & Sociology by Howard Burton This compendium includes the following 5 complete books featuring Mark Maslin, Ian Stewart, Frans de Waal, Joseph Curtin and Fred Gitelman providing fully accessible insights into cutting-edge academic research while revealing the inspirations and personal journeys behind the research. The books are explicitly designed to provide a unique window into frontline research and scholarship that wouldn't otherwise be experienced through standard lectures and textbooks. A detailed preface highlights the connections between the different books and all five books are broken into chapters with a detailed introduction and questions for discussion at the end of each chapter: I. The Science of Siren Songs: Stradivari Unveiled - A conversation with master violinmaker, acoustician and MacArthur Fellow Joseph Curtin. This conversation explores Curtin's long quest to characterize the sound of a Stradivari violin and the rigorous series of double-blind tests he and his colleagues developed to probe whether or not professional musicians can really tell the difference between a Stradivari and a modern violin. II. In the Cards - A conversation with Fred Gitelman, world-champion bridge player and co-founder of Bridge Base Online. This conversation provides behind-the-scenes insights into the world of professional bridge, the psychological stress of top-flight competition, how the human mind can compute amazing feats of memory, bridge in schools, coaching Bill Gates and Warren Buffett and more. III. Embracing the Anthropocene: Managing Human Impact - A conversation with Mark Maslin, Professor of Geography, UCL. This conversation provides a detailed exploration of Maslin's research on the Anthropocene which according to his definition began when human impacts on the planet irrevocably started to change the course of the earth's biological and geographical trajectory, leading to climate change, loss of biodiversity, deforestation, and more. IV. The Joy of Mathematics - A conversation with Ian Stewart, Emeritus Professor of Mathematics, University of Warwick and bestselling author. For Ian Stewart, mathematics is far more than dreary arithmetic, while mathematical thinking is one of the most important-and overlooked-aspects of contemporary society. This conversation explores what mathematics is and why it's worth doing, symmetry, networks and patterns, the relationship between logic and proof, the role of beauty in mathematical thinking, the future of mathematics, linking mathematical oscillations to animal gaits, how to deal with the peculiarities of the mathematical community, and much more. V. On Atheists and Bonobos - A conversation with primatologist Frans de Waal, the Charles Howard Candler Professor of Primate Behavior in the Department of Psychology at Emory University. Frans de Waal is renowned for his work on the behaviour and social intelligence of primates. This thought-provoking conversation examines fascinating questions such as: Are we born with an innate sense of "the good"? Do we learn from others what is "wrong"? Does religion determine, or is it a result of, morality? and more. Howard Burton is the host and editor of all Ideas Roadshow conversations and was the Founding Executive Director of Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics. He holds a PhD in theoretical physics and an MA in philosophy. Ideas Roadshow offers a series of 20 Collections, including Conversations About History, Volumes 1-3, Conversations About Politics, and Conversations About Language and Culture.

The Sociology of Knowledge Approach to Discourse by Reiner Keller (Editor); Anna-Katharina Hornidge (Editor); Wolf J. Schünemann (Editor) The Sociology of Knowledge Approach to Discourse (SKAD) has reoriented research into social forms, structuration and processes of meaning construction and reality formation; doing so by linking social constructivist and pragmatist approaches with post-structuralist thinking in order to study discourses and create epistemological space for analysing processes of world-making in culturally diverse environments. SKAD is anchored in interpretive traditions of inquiry and allows for broadening - and possibly overcoming - of the epistemological biases and restrictions still common in theories and approaches of Western- and Northern-centric social sciences. An innovative volume, this book is exactly attentive to these empirically based, globally diverse further developments of approach, with a clear focus on the methodology and its implementation. Thus, The Sociology of Knowledge Approach to Discourse presents itself as a research program and locates the approach within the context of interpretive social sciences, followed by eleven chapters on different cases from around the world that highlight certain theoretical questions and methodological challenges. Presenting outstanding applications of the Sociology of Knowledge Approach to Discourse across a wide variety of substantive projects and regional contexts, this text will appeal to postgraduate students and researchers interested in fields such as Discourse Studies, Sociology, Cultural Studies and Qualitative Methodology and Methods.