Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
Pages: 264
•
Trim: 6 x 9
978-1-4422-1162-9 • Paperback • August 2011 • $49.00 • (£38.00)
978-1-4422-1163-6 • eBook • August 2011 • $46.50 • (£36.00)
Charles Lemert is university professor and John C. Andrus Professor of Social Theory Emeritus at Wesleyan University and senior fellow of the Center for Comparative Research at Yale University. He is the author or editor of many books, including Why Niebuhr Matters, The Structural Lie, Globalization: A Reader (edited with Anthony Elliott, Daniel Chafee, and Eric Hsu), and The New Individualism (with Anthony Elliott).
Preface to the Fifth Edition
Introduction
The Sociological Life
Chapter 1: Imagining Social Things, Competently
Chapter 2: Personal Courage and Practical Sociologies
Chapter 3: Practicing the Discipline of Social Things
Sociology
Chapter 4: Sociology and Lost Worlds of A New World Order: 1848 - 1920
Chapter 5: Sociology Becomes a Science of Structures: 1920 - 1960
Chapter 6: Sociology Reaches Out Into the World: 1968 - 2000s
Social Things
Chapter 7: The Mysterious Power of Social Structures
Chapter 8: The Lively Subjects of Dead Structures
Chapter 9: Well-Measured Lives in a World of Differences
Global Things
Chapter 10: Global Methods
Chapter 11: Global Things on a Fragile Planet
Chapter 12: Living against the Conclusion
Acknowledgments
Notes
Index
About the Author
Charles Lemert makes sociology vital and alive in this provocative yet friendly introduction. Lemert uses personal biography and the life stories of sociologists, including female, gay and lesbian, and black social thinkers too often overlooked. He asks tough questions of race, class, and gender that most other introductions bypass.
— Joe R. Feagin, Texas A&M University
From previous editions:With its significantly updated chapter on the state of the discipline since the 1960s, Lemert's Social Things continues to be the best book about the discipline and practice of sociology since C. Wright Mills's The Sociological Imagination.
— Rhonda F. Levine, Colgate University
Social Things is indispensable for teaching sociology well, with all of its nuances and mind-bending complexities. Lemert meets students where they are and then demonstrates to them how deeply relevant is the discipline for any thoughtful understanding of their social worlds. This has certainly been true of the first four editions and, with the welcome addition of a new chapter on 'global things on a fragile planet' in the fifth edition, it will remain required reading for all of my students.
— Rebecca Overmyer-Velázquez, Whittier College
From previous editions:
Provocative and gracefully written. One of those rare ruminations on the human condition that makes you want to return to it after your first reading to ponder its ideas. (Previous Edition Praise)
— Howard Zinn, author of A People's History of the United States and professor emeritus of Political Science, Boston University
Charles Lemert interweaves biography, sociological inquiry, and social processes into a bright, subtle fabric. (Previous Edition Praise)
— Charles Tilly, Joseph L. Buttenwieser Professor of Social Science, Columbia University
Social Things is a triumph. In a time when sociologists must convince others that sociology is not the study of the obvious, Lemert shows that it is highly relevant, both in the classroom and especially in living in a fulfilled social life. It is a text that will get new students excited about sociology, and it will remind the professional sociologist of sociology's responsibility and possibility. (Previous Edition Praise)
— Christopher Bartley; Sociological Analysis
Not many books can be used in a variety of courses...introduction, theory, methods, capstone seminars. . . . This book is an exception. Students reading the book at different stages of their careers will take something different away . . . every time they read it. (Previous Edition Praise)
— Teaching Sociology
New features
-Provides a lively introduction to the discipline of sociology and practical sociological living.
-Draws students in with vivid personal stories that make sociology real and applicable.
-Introduces key concepts and thinkers in sociology from the mid-1800s through the present.
-Brief, highly readable, and affordably priced, Social Things works well as a supplement in both upper and lower level courses or as a key text in capstone courses.
-A new chapter "Global Things on a Fragile Planet" discusses the sociology of the environment and replaces the chapter "Global Things Queer the Social."
-Key concepts in queer theory and critical race theory are now incorporated into the history of sociology section.