Deeply Private, Incredibly Public: Readings on the Sociology of Human Reproduction

Deeply Private, Incredibly Public: Readings on the Sociology of Human Reproduction

Author: Catherine Marrone

Publisher:

Published: 2018-11-27

Total Pages: 422

ISBN-13: 9781516549870

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Deeply Private, Incredibly Public: Readings on the Sociology of Human Reproduction educates readers about cultural attitudes toward reproduction and pregnancy, changes taking place in reproductive medicine and technology, the meaning of reproductive power, and what the impact of reproduction and family might mean for them someday. The book is organized into three sections. The first addresses reproduction from both medical and cultural perspectives. The readings cover a range of topics, including the medicalization of birth, family planning, and fertility rates and birth statistics around the world. The second section explores autonomy, patriarchy, and reproductive control. Students read about the impact of social structures on reproduction, factors involved in abortion, the role of men in reproductive freedom, and what reproduction means in societies where women struggle to receive equal treatment. Section three considers what is actually being created and how this creation occurs. Diverse methods of reproduction and parenting including adoption, surrogacy, genetic engineering, and the harvesting of embryos introduce students to issues that redefine conception, birth, and parenthood. Sensitive and insightful, Deeply Private, Incredibly Public is a valuable resource for courses in sociology. Catherine Marrone received both her B.A. and Ph.D. in sociology from Stony Brook University in New York and completed two years of post-doctoral work at the Yale School of Medicine Department of Epidemiology and Public Health. Dr. Marrone is a senior lecturer of sociology at Stony Brook University, where she teaches courses in sociology to undergraduate students and is the director of undergraduate studies. She also serves as a faculty advisor in the multidisciplinary studies major. Her areas of interest include medical sociology, gender, and the sociology of human reproduction.


Between Women

Between Women

Author: Sharon Marcus

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2009-07-10

Total Pages: 369

ISBN-13: 1400830850

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Women in Victorian England wore jewelry made from each other's hair and wrote poems celebrating decades of friendship. They pored over magazines that described the dangerous pleasures of corporal punishment. A few had sexual relationships with each other, exchanged rings and vows, willed each other property, and lived together in long-term partnerships described as marriages. But, as Sharon Marcus shows, these women were not seen as gender outlaws. Their desires were fanned by consumer culture, and their friendships and unions were accepted and even encouraged by family, society, and church. Far from being sexless angels defined only by male desires, Victorian women openly enjoyed looking at and even dominating other women. Their friendships helped realize the ideal of companionate love between men and women celebrated by novels, and their unions influenced politicians and social thinkers to reform marriage law. Through a close examination of literature, memoirs, letters, domestic magazines, and political debates, Marcus reveals how relationships between women were a crucial component of femininity. Deeply researched, powerfully argued, and filled with original readings of familiar and surprising sources, Between Women overturns everything we thought we knew about Victorian women and the history of marriage and family life. It offers a new paradigm for theorizing gender and sexuality--not just in the Victorian period, but in our own.


Liquid Modernity

Liquid Modernity

Author: Zygmunt Bauman

Publisher: John Wiley & Sons

Published: 2013-07-10

Total Pages: 183

ISBN-13: 074565701X

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In this new book, Bauman examines how we have moved away from a 'heavy' and 'solid', hardware-focused modernity to a 'light' and 'liquid', software-based modernity. This passage, he argues, has brought profound change to all aspects of the human condition. The new remoteness and un-reachability of global systemic structure coupled with the unstructured and under-defined, fluid state of the immediate setting of life-politics and human togetherness, call for the rethinking of the concepts and cognitive frames used to narrate human individual experience and their joint history. This book is dedicated to this task. Bauman selects five of the basic concepts which have served to make sense of shared human life - emancipation, individuality, time/space, work and community - and traces their successive incarnations and changes of meaning. Liquid Modernity concludes the analysis undertaken in Bauman's two previous books Globalization: The Human Consequences and In Search of Politics. Together these volumes form a brilliant analysis of the changing conditions of social and political life by one of the most original thinkers writing today.


Sociology: The Basics

Sociology: The Basics

Author: Martin Albrow

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 1999

Total Pages: 257

ISBN-13: 1136943293

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This is a book for anyone who wants to know what sociology is and what sociologists do. In a subject which has changed dramatically over the last twenty years, Sociology: The Basics offers the most up-to-date guide to the major topics and areas of debate. It covers among other things: sociology and society; laws, morality and science; social relations; power and communication; society in the future becoming a sociologist. Clearly written, concise and comprehensive, Sociology: The Basics is an essential introductory handbook.


Common Ground?

Common Ground?

Author: Anthony M. Orum

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2009-09-10

Total Pages: 238

ISBN-13: 1135257558

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Public spaces have long been the focus of urban social activity, but investigations of how public space works often adopt only one of several possible perspectives, which restricts the questions that can be asked and the answers that can be considered. In this volume, Anthony Orum and Zachary Neal explore how public space can be a facilitator of civil order, a site for power and resistance, and a stage for art, theatre, and performance. They bring together these frequently unconnected models for understanding public space, collecting classic and contemporary readings that illustrate each, and synthesizing them in a series of original essays. Throughout, they offer questions to provoke discussion, and conclude with thoughts on how these models can be combined by future scholars of public space to yield more comprehensive understanding of how public space works.


In Defense of Housing

In Defense of Housing

Author: Peter Marcuse

Publisher: Verso Books

Published: 2024-08-27

Total Pages: 257

ISBN-13: 1804294942

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In every major city in the world there is a housing crisis. How did this happen and what can we do about it? Everyone needs and deserves housing. But today our homes are being transformed into commodities, making the inequalities of the city ever more acute. Profit has become more important than social need. The poor are forced to pay more for worse housing. Communities are faced with the violence of displacement and gentrification. And the benefits of decent housing are only available for those who can afford it. In Defense of Housing is the definitive statement on this crisis from leading urban planner Peter Marcuse and sociologist David Madden. They look at the causes and consequences of the housing problem and detail the need for progressive alternatives. The housing crisis cannot be solved by minor policy shifts, they argue. Rather, the housing crisis has deep political and economic roots—and therefore requires a radical response.


The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life

The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life

Author: Erving Goffman

Publisher: Anchor

Published: 2021-09-29

Total Pages: 272

ISBN-13: 0593468295

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A notable contribution to our understanding of ourselves. This book explores the realm of human behavior in social situations and the way that we appear to others. Dr. Goffman uses the metaphor of theatrical performance as a framework. Each person in everyday social intercourse presents himself and his activity to others, attempts to guide and cotnrol the impressions they form of him, and employs certain techniques in order to sustain his performance, just as an actor presents a character to an audience. The discussions of these social techniques offered here are based upon detailed research and observation of social customs in many regions.


Premarital Sex in America

Premarital Sex in America

Author: Mark Regnerus

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2011-01-10

Total Pages: 307

ISBN-13: 0199792836

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The period of young adulthood, from ages 18 to 23, is popularly considered the most sexualized in life. But is it true? What do we really know about the sexual lives of young people today? Premarital Sex in America combines illuminating personal stories and comprehensive research surveys to provide the fullest portrait of heterosexuality among young adults ever produced. Mark Regnerus and Jeremy Uecker draw upon a wealth of survey data as well as scores of in-depth interviews with young adults from around the country, both in and out of college. Digging underneath stereotypes and unexamined assumptions, the authors offer compelling--and often surprising--answers to such questions as: How do the emotional aspects of sexual relations differ between young men and women? What role do political orientations play in their sexual relations? How have online dating and social networking sites affected the relationships of emerging adults? Why are young people today waiting so much longer to marry? How prevalent are nontraditional forms of sex, and what do people think of them? To better understand what drives the sexual behaviors of emerging adults, Regnerus and Uecker pay special attention to two important concepts: sexual scripts, the unwritten and often unconscious rules that guide sexual behavior and attitudes; and sexual economics, a theory which suggests that the relative scarcity of men on college campuses contributes to the "hookup" culture by allowing men to diminish their level of commitment and thereby lower the "price" they have to "pay" for sex. For anyone wishing to understand how sexual relations between young adults have changed and are changing, Premarital Sex in America will serve as a touchstone for years to come.


Nothing About Us Without Us

Nothing About Us Without Us

Author: James I. Charlton

Publisher: Univ of California Press

Published: 1998-03-27

Total Pages: 215

ISBN-13: 0520925440

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James Charlton has produced a ringing indictment of disability oppression, which, he says, is rooted in degradation, dependency, and powerlessness and is experienced in some form by five hundred million persons throughout the world who have physical, sensory, cognitive, or developmental disabilities. Nothing About Us Without Us is the first book in the literature on disability to provide a theoretical overview of disability oppression that shows its similarities to, and differences from, racism, sexism, and colonialism. Charlton's analysis is illuminated by interviews he conducted over a ten-year period with disability rights activists throughout the Third World, Europe, and the United States. Charlton finds an antidote for dependency and powerlessness in the resistance to disability oppression that is emerging worldwide. His interviews contain striking stories of self-reliance and empowerment evoking the new consciousness of disability rights activists. As a latecomer among the world's liberation movements, the disability rights movement will gain visibility and momentum from Charlton's elucidation of its history and its political philosophy of self-determination, which is captured in the title of his book. Nothing About Us Without Us expresses the conviction of people with disabilities that they know what is best for them. Charlton's combination of personal involvement and theoretical awareness assures greater understanding of the disability rights movement.