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This book argues that the foundations of sociology - key concepts which are necessary to all sociology, from whatever perspective - have become taken-for-granted and require re-assessment. Focusing on society, culture, the individual, and collectivity, the author builds a powerful case for an overhaul of these basic concepts, offering a unified model of the subject matter of sociology as 'the human world' - understood as individual, interactional and institutional orders - which is part of the 'natural world'. Written in a straightforward and accessible style, this is a powerful restatement of the value of sociological sense as a necessary critique of common sense, and its relevance to an audience far beyond academia.
Since the sociology of religion became recognised as a distinct sub-discipline over the last century, the dominance of approaches taking their inspiration from the sociological classics has increasingly been challenged. Empirical findings have brought the notion of secularisation into question; and theorists have sought to deconstruct how we think of ‘religion.’ This collection appraises the continuing influence of the foundational approaches and places these in relation to newly emerging directions in the field. The book is divided into four sections, each section containing one ‘foundational’ chapter written by an established academic followed by two ‘futures’ chapters contributed by emerging scholars in the sub-discipline. These chapters complement one another by placing the overview of future directions in the context of a survey of the development of the sociology of religion over the last century. Topics discussed in these chapters include lived religion, sexuality, ritual, religion and the media. Combining erudite examinations of the British Sociological Association Sociology of Religion Study Group’s work so far with explorations of the future directions its research might take, this book is vital reading for any scholar whose work combines religious studies and sociology.
This vibrant, engaging introduction to society and social life promises to be the book sociology students will want to read. Through his inimitable narrative style, author John Steckley explores the theories, structures, and relationships that make up our social world while encouraging students to think critically about their role in society. Cutting-edge and comprehensive, Foundations of Sociology lays the groundwork students need to succeed in introductory sociology courses and beyond.
This comprehensive collection of classical sociological theory is a definitive guide to the roots of sociology from its undisciplined beginnings to its current influence on contemporary sociological debate. Explores influential works of Marx, Durkheim, Weber, Mead, Simmel, Freud, Du Bois, Adorno, Marcuse, Parsons, and Merton Editorial introductions lend historical and intellectual perspective to the substantial readings Includes a new section with new readings on the immediate "pre-history" of sociological theory, including the Enlightenment and de Tocqueville Individual reading selections are updated throughout
Organizations are a defining feature of the modern world, and the study of organizations (Organization Studies) has become well established in both sociology departments and professional schools, most notably business and management schools. Organization Studies has long drawn inspiration from foundational work in sociology. The sociological lens affords depth of insight into the technological, economic, cultural, and political forces that shape organizations from both within and without. In particular, "classical" works in sociology have long energized organizational research, primarily by suggesting ways of making sense of the ever-accelerating pace of social change. In recent decades, however, the field has lost interest in these sociology classics. This trend reflects and reinforces an increasingly academic focus of contempory Organization Studies. Not only does this trend weaken Organization Studies' engagement with the big social issues of our time, but it isolates the field from the broader field of the social sciences. The aim of this Handbook is to re-assert the importance of classical sociology to the future of Organization Studies. Alongside several thematic chapters, the volume includes chapters on each of nearly two dozen major European and American theorists, each of these chapter addressing: (a) the ideas and their context, (b) the impact of these ideas on the field of Organization Studies, and (c) the potential future research these ideas might inspire. The goal is not reverential exegesis, but rather to examine how the classics can energize organizational research. This wide-ranging Handbook, with contributions from leading American and European scholars, will be a vital, informative, and stimulating resource for anybody undertaking research in, teaching, or interested in learning more about Organization Studies today. About the Series Oxford Handbooks in Business & Management bring together the world's leading scholars on the subject to discuss current research and the latest thinking in a range of interrelated topics including Strategy, Organizational Behavior, Public Management, International Business, and many others. Containing completely new essays with extensive referencing to further reading and key ideas, the volumes, in hardback or paperback, serve as both a thorough introduction to a topic and a useful desk reference for scholars and advanced students alike.
This book examines the connection between sociology and the challenges faced by the modern military. Military sociology has received little attention in the broader academic world, and is mostly focused on civil-military relations. This book seeks to address this gap and combines ideas, theories and insights from sociology’s founding authors, with each chapter focusing on a specific thinker. There are chapters on Max Weber, Emile Durkheim, Karl Marx, Georg Simmel, Jane Addams, W. E. B. Du Bois, Erving Goffman, Michel Foucault, Morris Janowitz, Norbert Elias, Cornelis Lammers, Arlie Russell Hochschild, Cynthia Enloe and Bruno Latour, and each essay discusses their ideas and theories in relation to topics that are of concern in and around the military today. Military studies are taken in a broad sense here, so the volume encompasses a wide range of issues, including civil-military relations, military-political affairs, performance and outcomes of military operations, and organizational arrangements including technology and the composition, performance and well-being of personnel. The book intends to provide views and insights that will help the military to innovate their organizations and practices, not necessarily in the usual functional way of innovating (i.e. faster, more precise, etc.) but in a broader way. This book will be of great interest to students of sociology, military studies, civil-military relations, war and conflict studies, and IR in general.
Why do people like books, music, or movies that adhere consistently to genre conventions? Why is it hard for politicians to take positions that cross ideological boundaries? Why do we have dramatically different expectations of companies that are categorized as social media platforms as opposed to news media sites? The answers to these questions require an understanding of how people use basic concepts in their everyday lives to give meaning to objects, other people, and social situations and actions. In this book, a team of sociologists presents a groundbreaking model of concepts and categorization that can guide sociological and cultural analysis of a wide variety of social situations. Drawing on research in various fields, including cognitive science, computational linguistics, and psychology, the book develops an innovative view of concepts. It argues that concepts have meanings that are probabilistic rather than sharp, occupying fuzzy, overlapping positions in a “conceptual space.” Measurements of distances in this space reveal our mental representations of categories. Using this model, important yet commonplace phenomena such as our routine buying decisions can be quantified in terms of the cognitive distance between concepts. Concepts and Categories provides an essential set of formal theoretical tools and illustrates their application using an eclectic set of methodologies, from micro-level controlled experiments to macro-level language processing. It illuminates how explicit attention to concepts and categories can give us a new understanding of everyday situations and interactions.
The discipline of Sociology has a rich history of including spatial context in the analysis of social issues. Much of this history has revolved around the development and application of spatial theory aimed at understanding the geographic distribution of social problems, the organization of communities, and the relationship between society and the environment. More recently, the social sciences have seen a large number of technological innovations that now make it possible to place social behaviour in spatial context. Consequently, because of the historical disjuncture in the development of spatial theory and the recent development of relevant methodological tools, the relationship between materials describing both the methodological approaches and their theoretical importance a scattered throughout various books and articles. Geographical Sociology consolidates these materials into a single accessible source in which spatial concepts such as containment, proximity, adjacency, and others are examined in relation to such methodological tools as hierarchical linear models, point pattern analysis, and spatial regression. As these methods continue to increase in popularity among social scientists the ability to more generally understand societies relationship to geographic space will continue to increase in it importance in the field. This book represents a starting point to linking these concepts to practice and is presented in an accessible form in which students, researchers, and educators can all learn, and in turn, contribute to its development.
An extended historical and philosophical argument, this book will be a valuable text for all students of the philosophy of the social sciences. It discusses the serious alternatives to positivist and empiricist accounts of the physical sciences, and poses the debate between naturalism and anti-naturalism in the social sciences in new terms. Recent materialist and realist philosophies of science make possible a defence of naturalism which does not make concessions to positivism and which recognizes the force of several of the anti-positivist arguments from the main anti-naturalist (neo-Kantian) tradition. The author presents a critical evaluation of empiricist and positivist theories of knowledge, and investigates some classic attempts at using them to provide the philosophical foundation for a scientific sociology. He takes the Kantian critique of empiricism as the starting point for the main anti-positivist and anti-naturalist philosophical approaches to the social studies. He goes on to investigate the inadequacy of post-Kantian arguments from Rickert, Weber, Winch and others, both against non-positivist forms of naturalism and as the possible source of a distinctive philosophical foundation for the social studies. The book concludes with a critical investigation of the Marxian tradition and an attempt to establish the possibility of a materialist and realist defence of the project of a natural science of history, which escapes the fundamental flaws of both positivist and neo-Kantian attempts at philosophical foundation.