Contents
Acknowledgements
Introduction – The Sociological
Perspective
viii
1
10 What is a Social Survey?
Alan Buckingham and Peter Saunders
54
11 Researching Individual Lives
Barbara Merrill and Linden West
60
65
1 Private Troubles, Public Issues
C. Wright-Mills
5
12 Sociology’s Historical Imagination
Philip Abrams
2 The Scope of Sociology
Anthony Giddens
9
3 What is Sociology For?
Richard Jenkins
13
13 Participant Observation / Observant
Participation
Loïc Wacquant
Further Reading
Further Reading
16
1 Theories of Society
17
69
74
3 Natural and Urban Environments
75
14 Individuality in the Modern City
Georg Simmel
79
15 Creating Humane Cities
Richard Sennett
82
25
16 The Global City
Saskia Sassen
88
6 Structuring Patriarchal Societies
Sylvia Walby
30
7 Intimations of Postmodernity
Zygmunt Bauman
36
17 A New Ecological Paradigm for
Sociology
Riley E. Dunlap
8 Riding the Juggernaut of Modernity
Anthony Giddens
39
18 A Politics for Global Warming
Anthony Giddens
4 Human History as Class Conflict
Karl Marx
5 From Mechanical to Organic
Solidarity
Emile Durkheim
21
Further Reading
Further Reading
42
2 Research Methods
9 Quantitative versus Qualitative
Methods?
Alan Bryman
92
98
103
4 Institutions and Organizations
105
43
19 The Spirit of Capitalism
Max Weber
109
47
20 The Essence of Religion
Emile Durkheim
112
vi
CONTENTS
21 Families in Global Perspective
Göran Therborn
119
35 Throwing Like a Girl
Iris Marion Young
206
22 The Hidden Curriculum – A Teacher’s
View
124
John Taylor Gatto
36 Hollywood’s Misrepresentation of
Arabs
Jack G. Shaheen
23 Work in the Next Industrial
Revolution
Alan S. Blinder
217
128
37 The Internet Galaxy
James Slevin
225
133
38 Building Virtual Communities
Howard Rheingold
Further Reading
Further Reading
211
230
5 Social Inequalities
135
24 What is Social Stratification?
Wendy Bottero
137
8 Health and the Body
231
143
39 Defending Parsons’ Sick Role
Bryan S. Turner
235
25 Woman – The Second Sex?
Simone de Beauvoir
147
40 What Makes Women Sick?
Lesley Doyal
243
26 Intersecting Inequalities
Patricia Hill Collins
27 The Rise, Fall and Rise of Social
Class
Rosemary Crompton
28 The Social Model of Disability
Colin Barnes, Geof Mercer and
Tom Shakespeare
Further Reading
154
161
167
6 Relationships and the Life-Course 169
41 The Experience of Illness and
Recovery
Mike Bury
248
42 The Problem with Medicine
Ivan Illich
254
43 Sociology and the Body
Chris Shilling
262
Further Reading
268
9 Crime and Deviance
269
273
175
44 The Normality of Deviance
Emile Durkheim
275
31 The Normal Chaos of Love
Ulrich Beck and Elisabeth
Beck-Gernsheim
181
45 Crime as Deviant Adaptation
Robert Merton
46 The Birth of the Prison
Michel Foucault
280
32 Ageing and Ageism
Bill Bytheway
190
47 Principles of Restorative Justice
John Braithwaite
285
33 The Loneliness of the Dying
Norbert Elias
196
48 How Serious are ‘Cybercrimes’?
David S. Wall
291
29 Life-Cycle or Life-Course?
Stephen Hunt
171
30 Social Constructions of Sexuality
Jeffrey Weeks
199
Further Reading
296
7 Interaction and Communication
201
10 Political Sociology
297
34 Presenting the Self in Social Life
Erving Goffman
203
49 Defining Power
Steven Lukes
301
Further Reading
CONTENTS
50 New Wars in a Global Age
Mary Kaldor
308
51 The Social Movement Society?
David S. Meyer and Sidney Tarrow
312
52 The New Terrorism
Walter Laqueur
321
53 Cosmopolitan Democracy
Daniele Archibugi
vii
328
Further Reading
335
Index
336
Introduction –
The Sociological Perspective
This new Reader replaces the previous
edition, which was last published in 2001.
However, it is a significantly different book
this time. Firstly, it contains fewer readings,
selected as representative of key issues and
subjects. Secondly, the material is organized
into ten key themes reflecting the development of sociology’s central concerns since the
classical founders: Marx, Durkheim and
Weber. Thirdly, the Reader tries to strike
a productive balance between the older
and classical work and more contemporary
research that reflects the present state of the
art. Fourthly, we have provided stronger and
more effective summary essays for each of
the themes in order to make this a genuinely
student-friendly text. Finally, the impact of
globalization will be seen in most of the
themes as recognition that the global dimension of modern life is becoming ever more
important. One last thing to note is that,
with the exception of Anthony Giddens on
‘the scope of sociology’, all of the readings
are new to this edition.
In making these changes we have tried to
create a Reader that accurately reflects established and emerging trends in sociology as
well as in society at large. For example, environmental issues, the transformation of
work, sexualities and romantic love, the
impact of the Internet, cybercrimes, shifting
patterns of health and illness, terrorism and
democratization are all included here. But
these are included alongside, not instead of,
classical readings on stratification and class
conflict, social solidarity, the nature of power,
deviance and crime, the social self, the essence
of religion and the origins of capitalism. Our
aim is to offer a concise yet comprehensive
resource that will be useful for both lecturers
and students.
The book is designed as a standalone text
for introductory level sociology and can be
readily used as an accompaniment to any
sociology textbook. For those who may
already have or use Polity’s Giddens Sociology, 7th Edition (2013), a guide to the relevant chapters and sections in that book is
provided alongside recommendations for
Further Reading at the end of each themed
section. The Further Reading boxes point
readers towards some of the relevant works
which take further the issues that are introduced here. These are of course only our
suggestions and there are many more
possibilities.
Sociology remains a vibrant, wide-ranging
and exciting academic enterprise in the
twenty-first century and one that has to be
able to adapt and change quite rapidly in
order to keep pace with the similarly fastmoving social world. Today’s sociology is very
different from that of the 1950s or even
1980s. It is more diverse, both theoretically
and in terms of its subject matter. It has incorporated many more areas of social life in
more specialized fields of enquiry. The older,
staple subjects are still there – education,
work, organizations, urban life, inequality,
research methods, families and religion. But
2
INTRODUCTION
these now compete for our attention with
new subjects such as globalization, global
warming, cybercrime, disability, the body,
death and dying, virtual communities and
terrorism. Reflecting on these lists is enough
to suggest why sociology cannot stand still
and has to continually reinvent itself. Can we
really expect theories devised to understand
late-nineteenth-century societies to help us
to understand and explain how virtual identities operate, why new forms of terrorism are
emerging or what may be the consequences
of global warming? At the very least they
would need to be updated and modified, but
in all likelihood we will need to be theoretically creative if sociology is to fulfil its promise
of helping people to grasp the contours and
direction of the social world they have created
together.
This opening section contains three readings which set out answers to the question,
what is sociology? It is very easy to give a
simple answer, sociology is the study of
human societies. However, in order to grasp
all that the discipline has to offer, we need
something rather more informative than this.
Hence these three readings discuss the relationship between individual experience and
social structures, scientific work and commonsense knowledge, the natural and social
sciences and what sociology may actually be
used for.
One of the most widely adopted accounts
of the sociological perspective is C. WrightMills’s book, The Sociological Imagination
(1959). Although this is clearly quite old, its
central message remains remarkably contemporary. Wright-Mills argues that sociology is
the discipline which combines an interest
in the personal troubles of individuals
with public issues of concern to everyone. In
Reading 1, this approach is explained with
several examples as illustrations. When
people divorce, the consequences for the
individuals concerned can be traumatic. The
divorcing couple may face emotional distress
for quite some time and may ultimately
change their attitudes towards marriage and
the family. For children, divorce can be a devastating and incomprehensible experience
and as adults, many reflect that seeing their
parents permanently separate was the worst
time of their lives.
However, rising divorce rates in society as
a whole is a public issue that demands social
policy changes and government attention. Is
there enough marriage counselling available? Are family courts equipped to cope
with rising rates? Should child benefits be
increased to ensure women with children do
not fall into poverty? Do we need new agencies to deal with the financial implications
(such as the Child Support Agency in the UK)?
There are even wider social issues too. How
do rising divorce rates affect decisions to
marry? Are young people delaying marriage
or giving up on it altogether? Is the social
stigma previously attached to divorce now
being eroded? Are people remarrying in
large numbers and, if so, does that mean
marriage retains its popularity? What is the
experience of stepfamilies and exactly how
do they differ from conventional families? As
Wright-Mills says, the job of sociologists is
to bring together the personal trouble of
divorce with the public issues raised by rising
divorce rates. In doing so, we should be able
to provide reliable evidence for policymakers as well as helping people to understand better their own situation.
In Reading 2, Anthony Giddens argues that
sociology is an inherently controversial discipline, one that has a subversive character.
This is because sociology demands a sceptical
approach to commonsense and taken-forgranted ideas and beliefs. Often, sociological
research shows that these are at best partial
and at worst, just plain wrong. For Giddens
though, this is a positive benefit as it allows
the discipline to keep pace with the fastchanging modern world. This doesn’t mean
that sociology is not scientific, just that the
INTRODUCTION
kind of systematic study engaged in by sociologists does not result in the same kind of
knowledge that the natural sciences generate. After all, natural processes operate on a
very different timescale to social life. It is also
clear that good sociology can be found in
micro studies of small-scale interactions, midrange studies of social institutions and in
large-scale analyses of globalization and very
long-term social change.
If sociology brings together public and
private issues and its enquiries are enormously
wide and varied in scope, then what is sociology actually used for? Richard Jenkins in
Reading 3 provides some answers, though
not all sociologists would agree with these.
Jenkins makes the point that previous generations had a very clear view of the use of
sociology. It was a discipline that aimed to
make the world a better place. Many sociologists today would agree and this desire certainly motivates students to study sociology.
However, Jenkins thinks, as an academic
discipline, sociology is not inevitably about
3
improving the human world. Sociological
knowledge can be used for both good and ill
depending upon who makes use of it and in
what ways. This may not be a popular conclusion, but it is one which reflects the situation
we find ourselves in today, when the dark
side of science has been exposed and ideas
of inevitable progress in the modern age now
seem threadbare after the massive loss of life
in two world wars and recent episodes of mass
killing, genocide and ethnic hatred which
many thought were things of the past. In this
context, perhaps a less certain and more
circumspect view of sociology’s role is
warranted.1
NOTE
1. Editors’ note: An ellipsis in square brackets
has been used whenever material from the
original has been omitted. Where a paragraph
or more has been omitted, a line space appears
above and below [. . .].