The “untextbook” that teaches students to think like a sociologist, now available in a core edition. You May Ask Yourself gives instructors an alternative to the typical textbook by emphasizing the “big ideas” of the discipline, and encouraging students to ask meaningful questions. Conley employs a “non-textbook” strategy of explaining complex concepts through personal examples and storytelling, and integrates coverage of social inequality throughout the text.
"The bestselling "untextbook" that makes the familiar strange. The market leader for introductory sociology courses and a welcome alternative to traditional textbooks, You May Ask Yourself engages students with an irreverent narrative style. It questions what is often taken for granted and helps students apply sociological ways of thinking to their own experiences. The Seventh Edition features new coverage of pressing social issues related to aging, health, and inequality. Several new video interviews introduce important current research, and a thoughtfully revised InQuizitive course uses what learning experts call the "retrieval effect" to help students master core concepts"--
Comprehensive and engaging, this textbook introduces students not only to foundational sociological work, but also to insights from contemporary sociological theory and research. This combined approach ensures that students become familiar with the core of sociology: key concepts, theories, perspectives, methods, and findings. Students will acquire the ability to think like a sociologist, investigate and understand complex social phenomena. This text presents a complete sociological toolkit, guiding students in the art of asking good sociological questions, devising a sophisticated theory and developing methodologies to observe social phenomena. The chapters of this book build cumulatively to equip students with the tools to quickly understand any new sociological topic or contemporary social problem. The textbook also applies the sociological toolkit to selected key sociological issues, showing how specific sociological topics can be easily investigated and understood using this approach. Taking a global and comparative perspective, the book covers a rich diversity of sociological topics and social problems, such as crime, immigration, race and ethnicity, media, education, family, organizations, gender, poverty, modernization and religion. The book presents a range of helpful pedagogical features throughout, such as: Chapter overview and learning goals summaries at the start of every chapter; Thinking like a sociologist boxes, encouraging students to reflect critically on learning points; Principle boxes, summarizing key sociological principles; Theory schema boxes, presenting sociological theories in a clear, understandable manner; Stylized facts highlighting key empirical findings and patterns; Key concepts and summary sections at the end of every chapter; and Companion website providing additional material for every chapter for both instructors and students, including PowerPoint lecture notes, discussion questions and answers, multiple-choice questions, further reading and a full glossary of terms. This clear and accessible text is essential reading for students taking introductory courses in sociology. It will also be useful for undergraduate and graduate courses in other social science disciplines, such as psychology, economics, human geography, demography, communication studies, education sciences, political science and criminology.
Drawing from a wide selection of classic and contemporary works, the 60 selections in this best-selling reader represent a plurality of voices and views within sociology. In addition to classic works by authors such as Karl Marx, Max Weber, C. Wright Mills, David Rosenhan, Kingsley Davis and Wilbert Moore, this anthology presents a wide range of contemporary scholarship, some of which provides new treatments of traditional concepts. By integrating issues of diversity throughout the book, Ferguson helps students see the inter-relationships of race, social class, and gender, and the ways in which they have shaped the experiences of all people in society.
In this lucid, stimulating and original book, Zygmunt Bauman and Tim May explore the underlying assumptions and tacit expectations which structure our view of the world. The authors elucidate key concepts in sociology: for example, individualism versus community, and privilege versus deprivation. While charting a course through sociology's main concerns, Bauman and May also examine the applicability of sociology to everyday life.
