Introduction to Sociology

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Sociology is the study of human social life. Human social life is complex and encompasses many facets of the human experience. Because of the complexity, the discipline of sociology subdivided over time into specialty areas. The first section of this book covers the foundations of sociology, including an introduction to the discipline, the methods of study, and some of the dominant theoretical perspectives. The remaining chapters focus on the different areas of study in sociology.

Part of the Social Sciences Collection

[edit] Table of Contents

• The Foundations of Sociology
  • Introduction
  • Sociological Methods
  • General Sociological Theory

• Social Life
  • Society
  • Culture
  • Socialization
  • Groups
  • Demography
  • Deviance and Norms

• Social Inequality
  • Race and Ethnicity
  • Gender
  • Stratification

• Social Institutions
  • Family
  • Religion
  • Health and Medicine
  • Politics

• Social Change
  • Collective Behavior
  • Social Movements

• Additional Information
  • Famous Sociologists
    • This chapter includes a table of well-known and widely cited sociologists.
  • Sociological Videos
    • This chapter includes a number of suggestions for videos (both fictional and documentary) that illustrate sociological ideas.
  • Being a Sociologist
    • This chapter talks about what you can do with a degree in Sociology.

[edit] Print Version

Download the entire book as a PDF File. This can be done in two ways, you can either right click on the link "PDF File Edition 1.0" and choose "Save target as", this saves the PDF on your computer for viewing at any time; alternatively left click on the link: PDF File Edition 1.0.

Click here to see a continuous, printable version of the book Print version (edit)

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[edit] Instructor Resources

• Noted Contributors (the primary authors of the text)
• Course Adoptions (if you adopt this text for your course, please make a note of it on this page)

[edit] Course Materials

• Introduction to Sociology Resources This will take you to a .zip file that contains my lecture notes, class handouts, syllabus, and final for the course I just taught using this text. If you have any questions, feel free to contact me via my talk. --Rcragun 18:10, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
• Societies Resources This will take you to a .rar file that contains my syllabus, presentations and a blank gradebook. This course is called Societies, it is similar to Intro to Sociology but has a more global focus, comparing US society to other societies as a theme. The course was intended for a summer class - twelve 3-hour sessions (with a little work it can be tweaked for a normal summer/fall term which it was based upon, major modification includes less long videos), and includes a favorite of mine - a Wikipedia-based assignment. The 3h sessions were structured into 1) lecture 2) video 3) discussion. All materials are licensed under CC-BY-SA 3.0, and contributors include myself (Piotr Konieczny), Salvatore Babones (whose original slides form the major part of the course) and Ryan T. Cragun, whose Introduction to Sociology (above) has been partially incorporated into my slides. If the link is broken, please leave me a message and I'll re-upload it. The file does not contain 1) tests and test answers - I can send those to instructors upon request as long as they present some proof they are instructors, not students and 2) copyrighted readings/videos (for obvious reasons)

[edit] Other Websites

• Sociology Internet Library has material for students, teachers, and professionals.
• Statistics Internet Library has material for students, teachers, and professionals.
• Sociological Snippets by Dan Brook, Ph.D. provides a series of nuggets of basic sociology with links for each one.

[edit] Future Chapters

1. Aging
2. Education
3. Organizational Behavior
4. Social psychology (belongs in Social Life section)
5. Social change
6. Sexuality
7. Human Ecology and Urbanization (belongs in Social Change section)
8. Economy (belongs in Institutions section)
9. Media (belongs in Institutions section)
10. Everyday life (currently has only a short chapter on television) (belongs in Social Life section)