General

Would a good mother sleep with her children in a car parked on a city street in the dead of winter? Would a good mother send her child to school in shoes two sizes too big because that's all she could find? Would a good mother tell her child to shut up...

Historians consider the previous century to have been one of the most violent periods in human history. As we move into an era where violence is sanitized and normalized in the media, and depicted as glamorous and fun, how will we relate to the violence...

Throughout the twentieth century, beauty shops have been places where women could enjoy the company of other women, exchange information, and share secrets. The female equivalent of barbershops, they have been institutions vital to community formation...

Throughout the twentieth century, beauty shops have been places where women could enjoy the company of other women, exchange information, and share secrets. The female equivalent of barbershops, they have been institutions vital to community formation...

Most American college campuses are home to a vibrant drinking scene where students frequently get wasted, train-wrecked, obliterated, hammered, destroyed, and decimated. The terms that university students most commonly use to describe severe alcohol...

Most American college campuses are home to a vibrant drinking scene where students frequently get wasted, train-wrecked, obliterated, hammered, destroyed, and decimated. The terms that university students most commonly use to describe severe alcohol...

In January 2009, Barack Obama became the 44th president of the United States. In the weeks and months following the election, as in those that preceded it, countless social observers from across the ideological spectrum commented upon the cultural,...

In January 2009, Barack Obama became the 44th president of the United States. In the weeks and months following the election, as in those that preceded it, countless social observers from across the ideological spectrum commented upon the cultural,...

Since its introduction in 1998, Viagra has launched a new kind of sexual revolution. Quickly becoming one of the most sought after drugs in history, the little blue pill created a sea change within the pharmaceutical industry-from how drugs could be...

The Pacific Northwest is known for its diverse, unusual politics. There are thriving gay and lesbian communities and populations of staunchly conservative Christians. Both groups wield political power out of proportion to their numbers and yet both feel...

What is power? Is it, as Betrand Russell suggested, "the production of intended effects", or is it the capacity to produce them? And which effects count? Or is Max Weber's definition of power as "the probability that an actor in a social relationship...

The collapse of the World Trade Center shattered windows across the street in Battery Park City, throwing the neighborhood into darkness and smothering homes in debris. Residents fled. In the months and years after they returned, they worked to restore...

Time, it has been said, is the enemy. In an era of harried lives, time seems increasingly precious as hours and days telescope and our lives often seem to be flitting past. And yet, at other times, the minutes drag on, each tick of the clock...

How did Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday become a national holiday? Why do we exchange presents on Christmas and Chanukah? What do bunnies have to do with Easter? How did Earth Day become a global holiday? These questions and more are answered in this...

From youth violence, to the impact of high stakes educational testing, to editorial hand wringing over the moral failures of hip-hop culture, young people of color are often portrayed as gang affiliated, "troubled," and ultimately, dangerous...

In this study, James Greenaway explores the philosophical continuity between contemporary Western society and the Middle Ages. Allowing for genuinely modern innovations, he makes the claim that the medieval search for order remains fundamentally unbroken...

This book takes a unique stance on a controversial topic: zoos. Zoos have their ardent supporters and their vocal detractors. And while we all have opinions on what zoos do, few people consider how they do it. Irus Braverman draws on more than seventy...

Contrasting views of race and society make for heated debate in the United States. From the perspective of assimilation, society operates in a fair, open, and meritocratic fashion. Racial discrimination, while not completely eliminated, arguably has...

This is a rich and comprehensive study of beggars' culture and the institution of mendicancy in China from late imperial times to the mid-twentieth century, with a glance at the resurgence of beggars in China today. Generously illustrated, the book...

Sociology has long sought to find out how acting in a situation and observing that situation may differ and nevertheless belong to a single kind of social operation. George Spencer-Brown's Laws of Form (1969) provides one way to conceive of such an...

Written by one of the world's leading paleographers, this book poses two fundamental questions: When did human beings begin-and why have they continued-to decide that a certain number of their dead had a right to a "written death"? What...

This is the story of one of the most ambitious agrarian reforms in Latin American history. The book argues that the economic, political, and cultural dynamics set in motion by the reforms are central to understanding the brutal civil war that ensued in...

The Tiandihui, also known as the Heaven and Earth Association or the Triads, was one of the earliest, largest, and most enduring of the Chinese secret societies that have played crucial roles at decisive junctures in modern Chinese history. These...

This innovative approach to consumer culture places less emphasis on ideological representations and resistances to ideology than on the educative powers of mass culture and the way that social position is determined through the politics of consumer...

This is the first attempt at synthesis of the varied data-ethnographic, historical, archaeological, and archival-on the impact of the Spanish conquest and Spanish rule on Indian society in Peru. Although the Huarochiri region is a source of most of the...

When Pax Americana began to disintegrate in the late 1960s, economic leaders in corporate America joined with their counterparts in Western Europe and Japan to develop a self-interested strategy for dealing with the political and social impacts of a...

Stress researchers have become increasing aware of the ways in which structural and psychosocial variations in the life course shape exposure and vulnerability to social stress. This volume of Advances in Life Course Research explores, theoretically and...

In this exciting and original work, Gerald Alper, illuminates the crucial elements that together constitute intimacy. Knowing If It's the Real Thing offers a radical departure from today's popular, yet mythological belief that if two people stay...

Inspired by the O.J. Simpson case, Protecting Our Own explores the reasons behind the rise of the 'black protectionism' phenomenon and its implications for the future. Comparing the plight of the African American community to the melancholy lyrics but...

This collection of articles presents a critical, issue-oriented approach to law and society, emphasizing its important relationship to contemporary social problems. By exploring the interstitial area between the sociology of law, social problems and...

The Crisis of Welfare in East Asia adopts a unique and critical perspective on contemporary social welfare policies in East Asia. This edited volume reflects on current welfare theories and challenges the dominant productivist ideology that...

When Communities Assess their AIDS Epidemics is a detailed ethnographic description of the AIDS epidemic in ten U.S. cities and the U.S. Virgin Islands. Employing a rapid ethnographic assessment methodology, cities from the Atlantic to the Pacific have...

The Evolution of the Social Sciences charts the development of the main social sciences-religion, history, philosophy, law, sociology, anthropology, and economics-through an examination of the lives and works of each discipline's key historical figures...

In the initial volume of a three-volume study, historian Norman Saul presents a comprehensive survey of early Russian-American relations. Drawing upon more than two decades of research in secondary and documentary publications as well as archival...

Woman's voice and body are closely entwined in the Arabo-Islamic tradition, argues Fedwa Malti-Douglas in this pioneering book. Spanning the ninth through twentieth centuries and covering a wide range of texts-from courtly anectdote to mystical and...

This book presents a review and criticism of all sociological literature on suicide, from Emile Durkheim's influential Suicide (1897) to contemporary writings by sociologists who have patterned their own work on Durkheim's. Douglas points out fundamental...

Spain's most productive, creative, and highly regarded anthropologist, Carmelo Lison-Tolosana was born in the small Aragonese community he calls Belmonte." This work reflects both his deep knowledge of the village and the objectivity of his...

Despite the persistence of the fraternal form of association in guilds, trade unions, and political associations, as well as in fraternal social organizations, scholars have often ignored its importance as a cultural and social theme. This provocative...

Mrs. St. Ehrlich, a leading Yugoslav sociologist, seized the opportunity just before World War II to examine objectively the fast-vanishing style of life of Yugoslav peasants and villagers. This book, based on a widely distributed questionnaire and many...

The author traces 19th-century origins of sociology in post-Revolutionary Europe, and contrasts European and American approaches to sociological data. Using the concepts of mass behavior and mass society as case studies, he suggests the continuing...