Sociology

The family is hotly contested ideological terrain. Some defend the traditional two-parent heterosexual family while others welcome its demise. Opinions vary about how much control parents should have over their children's upbringing. Family Values...

There's a scene in Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking Glass in which the Red Queen, having just led a chase with Alice in which neither seems to have moved from the spot where they began, explains to the perplexed girl: "It takes all the running you can...

When it comes to politics, we often perceive our own beliefs as fair and socially beneficial, while seeing opposing views as merely self-serving. But in fact most political views are governed by self-interest, even if we usually don't realize it...

A fundamentally new approach to the history of science and technologyThis book presents a new way of thinking about the history of science and technology, one that offers a grand narrative of human history in which knowledge serves as a critical factor...

For any market to work properly, certain key elements are necessary: competition, pricing, rules, clearly defined offers, and easy access to information. Without these components, there would be chaos. Orderly Fashion examines how order is maintained in...

A sociologist and former fashion model takes readers inside the elite global party circuit of 'models and bottles' to reveal how beautiful young women are used to boost the status of men Million-dollar birthday parties, megayachts on...

Music, and folk music in particular, is often embraced as a form of political expression, a vehicle for bridging or reinforcing social boundaries, and a valuable tool for movements reconfiguring the social landscape. Reds, Whites, and Blues examines the...

Recent decades have seen a dramatic shift away from social forms of gambling played around roulette wheels and card tables to solitary gambling at electronic terminals. Slot machines, revamped by ever more compelling digital and video technology, have...

Most people in the world today think democracy and gender equality are good, and that violence and wealth inequality are bad. But most people who lived during the 10,000 years before the nineteenth century thought just the opposite. Drawing on...

As countless love songs, movies, and self-help books attest, men and women have long sought different things. The result? Seemingly inevitable conflict. Yet we belong to the most cooperative species on the planet. Isn't there a way we can use this...

Political science and sociology increasingly rely on mathematical modeling and sophisticated data analysis, and many graduate programs in these fields now require students to take a "math camp" or a semester-long or yearlong course to acquire the...

Identity Economics provides an important and compelling new way to understand human behavior, revealing how our identities--and not just economic incentives--influence our decisions. In 1995, economist Rachel Kranton wrote future Nobel Prize-winner...

Networks of relationships help determine the careers that people choose, the jobs they obtain, the products they buy, and how they vote. The many aspects of our lives that are governed by social networks make it critical to understand how they impact...

Mathematical models and computer simulations of complex social systems have become everyday tools in sociology. Yet until now, students had no up-to-date textbook from which to learn these techniques. Introduction to Mathematical Sociology fills this...

On the night of the 2000 presidential election, Americans watched on television as polling results divided the nation's map into red and blue states. Since then the color divide has become symbolic of a culture war that thrives on...

An authoritative overview of the concepts and applications of biological demographyThis book provides a comprehensive introduction to biodemography, an exciting interdisciplinary field that unites the natural science of biology with the social science of...

A vital and underappreciated dimension of social interaction is the way individuals justify their actions to others, instinctively drawing on their experience to appeal to principles they hope will command respect. Individuals, however, often misread...

Is all human behaviour based on self-interest? Many social and biological theories would argue so, but such a perspective does not explain the many truly herioc acts committed by people willing to risk their lives in order to help others. In "The Heart...

Life today for citizens of the developed world is safer, easier, and healthier than for any other people in history thanks to modern medicine, science, technology, and intelligence. So why is an epidemic of fear sweeping America? The answer, according to...

Back in print after thirty years, this is a classic collection of Chomsky essays. It is particularly valuable as the first of Chomsky's works to fully demonstrate his power as a political thinker. In his biting critiques of American foreign policy, the...

How the largest social movement in history is making the world a better place.

Originally published separately,Weber's "Science as a Vocation" and "Politics as a Vocation" stand as the classic formulations of his positions on two related subjects that go to the heart of his thought: the nature and status of science and its claims...

American society has become anti-male. Men are sensing the backlash and are consciously and unconsciously going "on strike." They are dropping out of college, leaving the workforce and avoiding marriage and fatherhood at alarming rates. The trend is so...

Assisted dying is perhaps one of the most divisive issues of the modern age, generating endless headlines and moral debates. Published in conjunction with the organization Dignity in Dying, this important new book provides a forum...

Time poverty is a problem for many Australian households and work is the main culprit. Australians start work young, and we are working more, and longer into old age. While maximising our productivity and enhancing our professional skills, we must also...

Australian universities are not happy places. Despite the shiny rhetoric of excellence, quality, innovation and creativity, universities face a barrage of criticism over claims of declining standards, decreased funding, compromised assessment, increased...

Ana and her son, Philippe, are grieving the loss of Philippe's father when Ana's hairstylist Kimi dies in an apparent suicide. Driven by a force she doesn't understand, Ana starts digging into Kimi's past in Guyana in 1978, which leads to nested tales of...

A unique and definitive reader on our "national passion"-buying stuff-and its consequences for American society. We are citizens, owners and workers, believers and heathens, but today more than anything else we are consumers. How this came to be and its...

Marry the one you love and love the one you marry. It sounds simple enough. But staying in love turns out to be a whole lot different than falling in love. In a world of constant distraction, marriage experts agree that the little things matter—a lot. ...

A compelling exploration of generational divides informed by exclusive studies from around the world, by the author of The Perils of Perception. 'Subtle and compelling.' - Observer 'One of the best books of 2021.' - The Times Are we in the middle of a...

On Grief and Grieving: Finding the Meaning of Grief Through the Five Stages of Loss

Learn about how we organise our society in The Sociology Book. Part of the fascinating Big Ideas series, this book tackles tricky topics and themes in a simple and easy to follow format. Learn about Sociology in this overview guide to the subject,...

An examination of the contemporary medicalization of death and dying that calls us to acknowledge instead death's existential and emotional realities. Death is a natural, inevitable, and deeply human process, and yet Western medicine tends to view it as...

Could the end of your marriage be the first step toward reclaiming your personal power and joyfully living the life of your dreams? If the answer is yes, this book is for you.  Divorce rocks the very foundation of our beings, leaving us feeling lonely,...