Социология
Различные книги в жанре СоциологияRace and Ethnicity in America
Race and Ethnicity in America examines patterns and trends in racial and ethnic inequality over recent decades. John Iceland shows how color lines have generally softened over time in the United States but deep-seated inequalities remain—generally, blacks, American Indians, and some Hispanics fare less well than others. Among these groups, the underlying causes of the disadvantages vary, ranging from the legacy of racism, current discrimination, differences of human capital, the unfolding process of immigrant incorporation, and cultural responses to structural conditions. Throughout the book, Iceland also demonstrates that the ways Americans define racial and ethnic groups, along with changing patterns of identification in the U.S. population, influence our understanding of patterns and trends in racial and ethnic inequality.The Sociology in the Twenty-First Century Series introduces students to a range of sociological issues of broad interest in the United States today, with each volume addressing topics such as family, race, immigration, gender, education, and social inequality. These books—intended for classroom use—will highlight findings from current, rigorous research and demographic data while including stories about people’s experiences to illustrate major themes in an accessible manner. Learn more at The Sociology in the Twenty-First Century Series.
Lives in Limbo
“My world seems upside down. I have grown up but I feel like I’m moving backward. And I can’t do anything about it.” –Esperanza Over two million of the nation’s eleven million undocumented immigrants have lived in the United States since childhood. Due to a broken immigration system, they grow up to uncertain futures. In Lives in Limbo, Roberto G. Gonzales introduces us to two groups: the college-goers, like Ricardo, who had good grades and a strong network of community support that propelled him to college and DREAM Act organizing but still landed in a factory job a few short years after graduation, and the early-exiters, like Gabriel, who failed to make meaningful connections in high school and started navigating dead-end jobs, immigration checkpoints, and a world narrowly circumscribed by legal limitations. This vivid ethnography explores why highly educated undocumented youth share similar work and life outcomes with their less-educated peers, despite the fact that higher education is touted as the path to integration and success in America. Mining the results of an extraordinary twelve-year study that followed 150 undocumented young adults in Los Angeles, Lives in Limbo exposes the failures of a system that integrates children into K-12 schools but ultimately denies them the rewards of their labor.  
The Practice of Everyday Life
In this incisive book, Michel de Certeau considers the uses to which social representation and modes of social behavior are put by individuals and groups, describing the tactics available to the common man for reclaiming his own autonomy from the all-pervasive forces of commerce, politics, and culture. In exploring the public meaning of ingeniously defended private meanings, de Certeau draws brilliantly on an immense theoretical literature to speak of an apposite use of imaginative literature.
Reproducing Race
Reproducing Race , an ethnography of pregnancy and birth at a large New York City public hospital, explores the role of race in the medical setting. Khiara M. Bridges investigates how race—commonly seen as biological in the medical world—is socially constructed among women dependent on the public healthcare system for prenatal care and childbirth. Bridges argues that race carries powerful material consequences for these women even when it is not explicitly named, showing how they are marginalized by the practices and assumptions of the clinic staff. Deftly weaving ethnographic evidence into broader discussions of Medicaid and racial disparities in infant and maternal mortality, Bridges shines new light on the politics of healthcare for the poor, demonstrating how the «medicalization» of social problems reproduces racial stereotypes and governs the bodies of poor women of color.
From the Soil
This classic text by Fei Xiaotong, China's finest social scientist, was first published in 1947 and is Fei's chief theoretical statement about the distinctive characteristics of Chinese society. Written in Chinese from a Chinese point of view for a Chinese audience, <i>From the Soil</i> describes the contrasting organizational principles of Chinese and Western societies, thereby conveying the essential features of both. Fei shows how these unique features reflect and are reflected in the moral and ethical characters of people in these societies. This profound, challenging book is both succinct and accessible. In its first complete English-language edition, it is likely to have a wide impact on Western social theorists.<br /><br />Gary G. Hamilton and Wang Zheng's translation captures Fei's jargonless, straightforward style of writing. Their introduction describes Fei's education and career as a sociologist, the fate of his writings on and off the Mainland, and the sociological significance of his analysis. The translators' epilogue highlights the social reforms for China that Fei drew from his analysis and advocated in a companion text written in the same period.
Longing and Belonging
Even as they see their wages go down and their buying power decrease, many parents are still putting their kids' material desires first. These parents struggle with how to handle children's consumer wants, which continue unabated despite the economic downturn. And, indeed, parents and other adults continue to spend billions of dollars on children every year. Why do children seem to desire so much, so often, so soon, and why do parents capitulate so readily? To determine what forces lie behind the onslaught of Nintendo Wiis and Bratz dolls, Allison J. Pugh spent three years observing and interviewing children and their families. In <i>Longing and Belonging: Parents, Children, and Consumer Culture</i>, Pugh teases out the complex factors that contribute to how we buy, from lunchroom conversations about Game Boys to the stark inequalities facing American children. Pugh finds that children's desires stem less from striving for status or falling victim to advertising than from their yearning to join the conversation at school or in the neighborhood. Most parents respond to children's need to belong by buying the particular goods and experiences that act as passports in children's social worlds, because they sympathize with their children's fear of being different from their peers. Even under financial constraints, families prioritize children «feeling normal». Pugh masterfully illuminates the surprising similarities in the fears and hopes of parents and children from vastly different social contexts, showing that while corporate marketing and materialism play a part in the commodification of childhood, at the heart of the matter is the desire to belong.
Home Bound
Filipino Americans, who experience life in the United States as immigrants, colonized nationals, and racial minorities, have been little studied, though they are one of our largest immigrant groups. Based on her in-depth interviews with more than one hundred Filipinos in San Diego, California, Yen Le Espiritu investigates how Filipino women and men are transformed through the experience of migration, and how they in turn remake the social world around them. Her sensitive analysis reveals that Filipino Americans confront U.S. domestic racism and global power structures by living transnational lives that are shaped as much by literal and symbolic ties to the Philippines as they are by social, economic, and political realities in the United States. <br /><br />Espiritu deftly weaves vivid first-person narratives with larger social and historical contexts as she discovers the meaning of home, community, gender, and intergenerational relations among Filipinos. Among other topics, she explores the ways that female sexuality is defined in contradistinction to American mores and shows how this process becomes a way of opposing racial subjugation in this country. She also examines how Filipinos have integrated themselves into the American workplace and looks closely at the effects of colonialism.
Everything but the Coffee
Everything but the Coffee casts a fresh eye on the world's most famous coffee company, looking beyond baristas, movie cameos, and Paul McCartney CDs to understand what Starbucks can tell us about America. Bryant Simon visited hundreds of Starbucks around the world to ask, Why did Starbucks take hold so quickly with consumers? What did it seem to provide over and above a decent cup of coffee? Why at the moment of Starbucks' profit-generating peak did the company lose its way, leaving observers baffled about how it might regain its customers and its cultural significance? Everything but the Coffee probes the company's psychological, emotional, political, and sociological power to discover how Starbucks' explosive success and rapid deflation exemplify American culture at this historical moment. Most importantly, it shows that Starbucks speaks to a deeply felt American need for predictability and class standing, community and authenticity, revealing that Starbucks' appeal lies not in the product it sells but in the easily consumed identity it offers.
Popular Culture in the Age of White Flight
Los Angeles pulsed with economic vitality and demographic growth in the decades following World War II. This vividly detailed cultural history of L.A. from 1940 to 1970 traces the rise of a new suburban consciousness adopted by a generation of migrants who abandoned older American cities for Southern California's booming urban region. Eric Avila explores expressions of this new «white identity» in popular culture with provocative discussions of Hollywood and film noir, Dodger Stadium, Disneyland, and L.A.'s renowned freeways. These institutions not only mirrored this new culture of suburban whiteness and helped shape it, but also, as Avila argues, reveal the profound relationship between the increasingly fragmented urban landscape of Los Angeles and the rise of a new political outlook that rejected the tenets of New Deal liberalism and anticipated the emergence of the New Right. <br /><br />Avila examines disparate manifestations of popular culture in architecture, art, music, and more to illustrate the unfolding urban dynamics of postwar Los Angeles. He also synthesizes important currents of new research in urban history, cultural studies, and critical race theory, weaving a textured narrative about the interplay of space, cultural representation, and identity amid the westward shift of capital and culture in postwar America.
Sociology
Sociology is the study of how communities work together to come to agreements and live in harmony with one another. Our history has greatly been formed through mutual agreements and uniting within the communities people have lived in. However, such harmonious communities may not have been formed if it wasn't for some of our past's social scientists. Still to this day, we are progressing as communities all throughout the world. A sociology study guide can help a prospective sociologist to understand the world better, while giving them the tools necessary for becoming a part of society that contributes to mending the communities that are broken towards cohesiveness.