Table of Contents

Introduction 1


About This Book 1


Conventions Used in This Book 2


Sociology is Controversial: Brace Yourself! 3


How This Book is Organized 4


Part I: The Basic Basics 4


Part II: Seeing Society Like a Sociologist 4


Part III: Divided — er, United — We Stand: Equality and Inequality in Our Diverse World 5


Part IV: All Together Now: The Ins and Outs of Social Organization 5


Part V: Sociology and Your Life 5


Part VI: The Part of Tens 6


Icons Used In This Book 6


Where To Go From Here 7


Part I: The Basic Basics 9


Chapter 1: Sociology: Getting Your Head Around It 11


Understanding Sociology 12


Defining sociology 12


The history of sociology 12


Doing sociology 13


Seeing the World as a Sociologist 14


Understanding culture 14


Microsociology 15


Network sociology 15


Understanding Differences Among People and Groups 16


Social stratification 16


Race and sex 16


Religion 17


Crime and deviance 17


Social Organization 18


Corporate culture 18


Social movements and political sociology 18


Urban sociology 19


Sociology and Your Life 19


The life course 19


Social change 20


Sociology for Dummies, for Dummies 20


Chapter 2: What is Sociology, and Why Should I Care? 23


Figuring Out What Sociology is 24


Defining sociology 24


Studying society scientifically 25


Asking and answering sociological questions 26


Discovering Where Sociology is “Done” 28


Colleges and universities 29


Think tanks and research institutes 29


Nonprofit organizations 30


Government 30


Journalism and reporting 31


Business and consulting 32


Everyday life 32


Recognizing How Sociology Affects Your Life and Your World 33


Thinking about the social world in an objective, value-free way 33


Visualizing connections across times and places 35


Uncovering what really matters and what doesn’t 35


Informing social policy 37


Keeping a unique perspective for everyday problems 38


Chapter 3: Making It Up as They Went Along: The History of Sociology 39


So Who Cares about History? 39


Thinking about Society before There Was Sociology 40


People are the same everywhere you go except when they aren’t 41


Pre-sociologists: People with ideas about society 42


Political and industrial revolution: Ready or not, here it comes 42


The Development of “Sociology” 44


Figuring out life with positivism 44


Common themes of early sociologists 45


Sociology: The most ambitious science 46


Sociology’s Power Trio 47


Karl Marx.48


Emile Durkheim 50


Max Weber 52


Sociology in the 20th Century 53


Taking it to the streets: The Chicago School 54


Mass society: are we, or are we not, sheep? 55


The Power Elite: Marx’s revenge 56


Sociology Today 58


Chapter 4: Research Methods: Because You Can’t Put Society in a Test Tube 59


The Steps of Sociological Research 60


Ask your question 60


Check the literature 61


Operationalize your question and fi nd your data 62


Analyze your data 64


Interpret your results 64


Choosing a Method 66


Quantitative vs. qualitative 66


Cross-sectional vs. longitudinal 68


Hybrid methods 69


Analyzing Analytical Tools 70


Statistics 70


Qualitative data 72


Preparing For Potential Pitfalls 73


Data/theory mismatch 73


Getting overzealous 73


The missing links 75


Statistical snafus 77


Mistakes just plain oops! 77


Part II: Seeing Society Like a Sociologist 79


Chapter 5: Socialization: What is “Culture,” and Where Can I Get Some? 81


Understanding What Culture is — and Isn’t 82


Defi ning “culture” 82


Breaking down structure 83


Examining the culture-structure continuum 85


Studying Culture: Makin’ It and Takin’ It 87


Other angles on culture 88


The production of culture 89


The reception of culture 90


Paddling the “Mainstream” 91


Subculture 92


Microcultures 93


Socialization: Where You Connect in Culture 94


Nature vs. nurture: Social psychology 95


You are who other people think you are 96


Culture Paradox: Pulling Us Together and Pushing Us Apart 98


Uniting through culture 98


Dividing because of culture 99


Chapter 6: Microsociology: If Life is a Game, What are the Rules? 101


Within You and Without You: The Paradox of Society 102


Social facts: The sum of our parts 102


Use a tool (from your social repertoire) — don’t be one 104


Rational — and Irrational — Choices 106


Making rational choices — or, at least, trying to 107


D’oh! Making poor choices 109


Symbolic Interactionism: Life is a Stage 114


Play ball! The rules of the game 115


Stop frontin’: Switching roles, changing frames 116


Chapter 7: Caught in the Web: The Power of Networks 119


The Global Village: Seeing Society as a Network 119


It’s all about you: Egocentric networks 120


A web of relationships 122


The Strength of Weak Ties 124


Why your acquaintances are more valuable than your best friends 124


Find a structural hole and jump in! 127


Insights from Network Analysis 129


The difference between “your society” and your society 129


Opening the channels of communication 132


Social networking online: Making the invisible visible 133


Part III: Equality and Inequality in Our Diverse World 137


Chapter 8: Social Stratification: We’re All Equal, But Some of Us are More Equal Than Others 139


Excavating the Social Strata 140


Understanding social inequality 140


The perennial debate: is inequality necessary? 142


The Many Means of Inequality 145


Income and wealth 145


Occupation 146


Innate ability 147


Motivation 148


Connections 149


Credentials 150


Education 151


Specialized knowledge 151


Race/sex/caste discrimination 153


Age discrimination 153


Comparing inequality internationally 154


Chapter 9: Gender and Ethnicity: I Know My Race, But Where’s the Finish Line? 157


Bias and Discrimination: A Two-Sided Coin 158


Race and Ethnicity 160


You can choose your ethnicity, but you can’t choose your race 160


Racial discrimination: Conscious and unconscious 162


The myth of the “model minority” 165


Immigration and “assimilation” (or not) 167


Sex and Gender 169


“You’ve come a long way, baby”?: The women’s movement and its discontents 169


GBLTQ rights and the deconstruction of gender 172


Race, Ethnicity, Sex, and Gender: Why They Still Matter 173


Chapter 10: Getting Religion: Faith in the Modern World. 175


Understanding Religion in History 176


Marx: Opiate of the people 176


Emile Durkheim: A metaphor for society177


Weber: A switchman on the tracks 180


Religion in Theory and in Practice 181


Religious ideas, ideology, and values 181


Open the church: Religious organizations 183


Faith and Freedom in the World Today 185


Shopping for God 185


Belief, action, and everything in between.187


Chapter 11: Crime and Deviance: I Fought the Law and I Won! 191


All Crime is Deviance, but Not All Deviance is a Crime 192


Criminals in Society 193


Some criminals are just bad people (but ) 193


Some criminals are “driven to it” (but ) 194


Some crime is simply normal 195


The Social Construction of Crime 197


In the courts 197


On the streets 199


Becoming Deviant 201


Fighting Crime 203


What works, and what doesn’t 203


America’s high incarceration rate 206


Part IV: All Together Now: The Ins and Outs of Social Organization 211


Chapter 12: Corporate Culture: The Study of Organizations (and Disorganizations) 213


The Corporate Conundrum: Making a Profi t Isn’t as Easy — or as Simple — as it Sounds 214


Weber’s Big Idea About Organizations 215


Rational Systems: Bureaucracy at its Purest 218


Measuring the shovels: Efficiency! Efficiency! 218


The bounds of reason 220


Natural Systems: We’re Only Human 222


Making people feel special: The Hawthorne Studies and the Human Relations Movement 222


Corporate culture: Trust falls and free coffee 224


Open Systems: The Whole Wide World of Work 226


Keeping the riff-raff out: Setting organizational boundaries 227


Organizations as networks, networks in organizations 228


Institutional isomorphism: If that company jumped off a cliff, would your company jump off a cliff, too? 229


Mission drift: Searching for a purpose 231


Chapter 13: The Rules of the Game: Social Movements and Political Sociology 233


Government: Governing and Being Governed 234


Social structure and the state 234


The big takeover: Causes of political revolution 236


Sharing (or Not Sharing) Power in Society 238


Conflict models: Every man, woman, and child for themselves 239


Pluralist models: Fair is fair 241


Social Movements: Working for Change 244


Getting off the ground 244


Rounding up the posse 248


What it means for a social movement to be successful 250


Chapter 14: Urban Sociology and Demographics: (Ain’t No) Love in the Heart of the City 253


Sociology in the City 254


The loneliness of a crowd 254


Street corner society 256


Changing Neighborhoods 258


It’s 10 PM. Do you know who your neighbors are? 258


Neighborhoods on the tipping point 260


The rise and fall of the suburbs 262


Life in the City: Perils and Promise 264


The upper class, the lower class, and the underclass 264


Gentrifi cation and the new creative class 266


Order and disorder on the streets.267


Part V: Sociology and Your Life 271


Chapter 15: Get Born, Get a Job, Get a Kid, Get Out of Here: The Family and the Life Course 273


The Social Construction of Age 274


The “invention” of childhood 274


18 again: The new senior citizens 276


Running the Course of Life 278


Demographics and life transitions 278


Different shapes of the circle of life 280


Taking Care: Health Care and Society 282


Deciding what counts as “healthy” 282


Organizing and distributing health care 285


Families Past and Present 287


The way we never were 287


The family today 290


Chapter 16: Future Passed: Understanding Social Change 295


Why Societies Change 296


Marx: If it’s not one revolution, it’s another 296


Durkheim: Increasing diversity 298


Weber: Into the iron cage 300


What Comes Next? 301


Globalization.302


Increasing — and decreasing — diversity 305


The march of technology 307


The growth of the middle class 308


A lesson from the past: Work for change, but don’t panic 310


Sociology in the Future 312


Will sociology continue to exist? 312


The paradox: More data, less information 313


Part VI: The Part of Tens 315


Chapter 17: Ten Sociology Books That Don’t Feel Like Homework 317


Randall Collins: Sociological Insight 317


William Foote Whyte: Street Corner Society 318


William H. Whyte: The Organization Man 319


Erving Goffman: The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life 319


Elijah Anderson: Streetwise 320


Arlie Hochschild: The Second Shift 320


Viviana Zelizer: Pricing the Priceless Child 320


Michael Schwalbe: Unlocking the Iron Cage 321


Richard Peterson: Creating Country Music 321


Katherine Newman: No Shame in My Game 322


Chapter 18: Ten Ways to Use Sociological Insight in Everyday Life 323


Think Critically About Claims That “Research Proves” One Thing or Another 324


Beware of Unprovable Assertions About Society 324


Understand Barriers to Effective Communication 325


Know the Difference Between the Identity You Choose and the Identities Others Choose For You 326


Understanding Art: If It Seems Confusing, That’s Exactly the Point 327


Be Smart About Relationship-Building 327


Changing Society: Be Optimistic, But Keep Your Expectations Reasonable 328


Learn How to Mobilize a Social Movement 329


Run Your Company Effectively 330


Understand How We Can All Be Different, Yet All Be the Same 330


Chapter 19: Ten Myths About Society Busted by Sociology 333


With Hard Work and Determination, Anyone Can Get What They Deserve 334


Our Actions Refl ect Our Values 334


We’re Being Brainwashed by the Media 335


Understanding Society is Just a Matter of “Common Sense” 336


Race Doesn’t Matter Any More 337


In Time, Immigrant Families Will Assimilate and Adopt a New Culture 337


Bureaucracy is Dehumanizing 338


People Who Make Bad Choices are Just Getting the Wrong Messages 338


Society Prevents Us From Being Our “True Selves” 339


There is Such a Thing as a Perfect Society 340


Index 341

About the Author

Jay Gabler, PhD, is a writer, editor, and college instructor. Gabler received his PhD from Harvard University and now teaches at Rasmussen College in Minnesota.