Peter L. Berger, Sociology as an Individual Pastime
What sociology is and what sociologists do is not well understood by everyone, nor is the motivation for being a sociologist
C. Wright Mills, from The Sociological Imagination
If we understand the social context and social processes around us, we can better understand ourselves.
Emile Durkheim, What Makes Sociology Different?
More than the sum of its parts, society is real and can be studied usefully if we know how to see it for what it is.
Horne, McIlwaine, Taylor, Civility and Order: Adult social Control of Children in Public Places
What do you do when children misbehave? Smack 'em, scold 'em, or reason with 'em? IT depends on the context, the audience, and the rules of social interaction.
Joel Best, Telling the Truth about Damned Lies and Statistics
We can't avoid statistics, so we need to become better consumers who can distinguish a fact from a fantasy
Julie Bettie, Women Without Class: Chicas, Cholas, Trash, and the PResence/Absence of Class identity
Individual identity is hard to establish when gender and ethnicity are in flux and social class is only vaguely understood.
Erving Goffman, On face-work
Encounters, the presentation of who we are, and the communication of what we want, need, and can offer all begin with face-work
Herbert J. Gans, Use of the Underclass in America
While countries such as Sweden and Norway have ended poverty, it persists in the US, perhaps because it benefits in many ways those who are not poor
Max Weber, From the Protestant Ehtic and the Spirit of Capitalism
Written in 1904-1905, Weber's thesis tries to make sense of the rise of industrial capitalism, and how it has become an "iron cage
Robert Goldman and Stephen Papson, Nike Culture: THe sign of the Swoosh
Where does culture come from? Increasingly, as postmodernists have shown, it comes from those who stand to gain from our appetite for identity and community
John A. Hostetler, Amish Society
The Amish hold on to a simple lifestyle in order to sustain deeply held beliefs
Herbert C. Kelman and V. Lee Hamilton, The My Lai Massacre: A Crime of Obedience?
Was it madness and temporary insanity, or were there social and circumstantial reasons for men to do the unthinkable?
Elijah Anderson, The Code of the Street
In a world that offers little hope, the ability to assert oneself and make a claim of who one is takes the form of ritualized challenges
Annette Lareau, Concerted Cultivation and the Acomplishment of Natural Growth
Raising children is no easy task. But is it always better to give children more- lessons, activities, and experiences- at the expense of finding their own way?
Lorna A. Rhodes, Total confinement: madness and reason in the maximum security Prison
Prisons are America's "#1 Growth Industry" and solitary confinement is an increasingly popular way to deal with the troublesome, and the mentally ill, inmate.
Bellah, Madsen, Sullivan, Swidler, Tipton, Religious Community and American Individualism
Belonging and believing do not necessarily go hand-in-hand for American worshipers.