Talk:Introduction to Sociology

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Contents

[edit] Introduction

I plan to use this book for an upcoming Introduction to Sociology course, so I will be making frequent updates as I prepare the text for my class. I should also note that I will be using some of the entries from wikipedia as the original source and will also try to make most of contributions there to begin with then copy them and paste them here. My question to you is: what is the point in all of this? Is it mere personal gratification or have you a master plan? Could you please define what the reason behind the vision is?

[edit] Table of Contents and Organization

Note: Because I do have something of a vision for how I'd like this book to look, please contact me before making any significant changes to any of the chapters.

I worry that for an introductory course this might actually be getting too big. Timothy J Scriven
This Introduction to Sociology book is lacking any mention of feminism the fourth paradigm in Sociology.
I have some suggestions in terms of theory. It seems to me that there should be remarks on micro, meso, and macro-sociology -- in other words, on social psychology & interaction, collective action & emergent systems, and political organizations & aggregates. You might even be able to model the entire textbook by fitting it into these sections. The benefit of such a system is to give the student an overall idea of the shape of the discipline. Lucidish 20:32, 20 July 2005 (UTC)
Hi lucidish. Sorry I haven't responded sooner; my attention has been focused elsewhere recently. I agree that the text book needs a clear theoretical focus. So, your proposal is probably agreeable. My only hesitation is that I don't want to make this textbook focus on just one specific area of theory (as some intro. textbooks do). I have no qualms about integrating additional theories and expanding the approaches. I just want to make sure that all of the major theoretical lines are touched upon in the text - basically to do what you say in your last sentence: give the students an overall idea of the shape of the discipline. Can you give me an example of what it is you'd like to do?

--

Sure thing. I was thinking of a table of contents that looks something like this:

  • Intro stuff
    • Introduction
    • Sociological Methods
    • General Sociological Theory
    • Society
    • Culture (Cultural anthropology)
  • Micro-sociology
    • Social psychology (includes decision theories, ala game theory; action models; nature/nurture; theories of meaning)
    • Socialization (feat. Education, Identity/personality/role constructions) (Social psych)
    • Groups (feat. Communities)
    • Family
  • Meso-sociology
    • Deviance and Norms (feat. functional/dysfunctional behavior)
    • Ecology (feat. Urbanization) (Geography, Archeology)
    • Influence (feat. persuasion, trust and power) (Social psych)
    • Negotiation, contract, and emergent norms
    • Collective Behavior
  • Macro-sociology
    • Aggregates
      • Demography (feat. population density)
      • Social Movements
      • Work and economy (Economics)
    • Organizations (feat. discussion of social structures, communicative networks)
      • Religion
      • Politics and Government (Political science)
      • Media
    • Historical (History)
      • Nation and Civilization
      • Social change (revolution, evolution, etc)

Issues in sociology: Stratification, Gender relations and Sexuality, Race relations and Ethnicity, Health and Medicine, social inequality, aging, social change, ideology, intergroup conflict, technology, societal collapse, the nature of societies

What's been called the "issues in sociology" section here might actually be better off as components of individual chapters instead of chapters in and of themselves. IE: "Education" might be a part of "Socialization".

It would also help the student to point out where sociology draws from other social scientific disciplines, or otherwise relies upon them. I'll mark such points of overlap in bold. Lucidish 05:43, 17 September 2005 (UTC)

Looks good to me. Let me know what I can do to help. I am actually taking a hiatus from teaching the course for at least a year while I'm focusing on my dissertation, but I would at least be willing to proof chapters and sections as they are modified.

In rethinking the organization of the textbook, I have to wonder if the above format is ideal if it does not include some of the mainstays of sociological investigation, namely: race, social inequality, and gender. I'm thinking the micro, meso, macro idea is a nice one but it leaves too much out. I'm going to rearrange the contents as follows:

  • Basic Sociological Ideas
    • Introduction
    • Sociological Methods
    • General Sociological Theory
  • Social Life
    • Society
    • Culture
    • Socialization
    • Demography
    • Groups
    • Sexuality
    • Deviance and Norms
    • Social psychology
    • Aging
  • Social Inequality
    • Race and Ethnicity
    • Gender
    • Social Stratification
  • Social Institutions
    • Family
    • Work and Economy
    • Religion
    • Politics and Government
    • Media
    • Education
    • Health and Medicine
    • Organizations
  • Social Change
    • Collective Behavior
    • Ecology
    • Social Movements


[edit] Reference

Basis for the table of contents: http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/How_To_Build_A_Computer


Eventually, each chapter should have research examples as a section.


[edit] Cleanup of broken copies from Wikipedia

[edit] Cleanup of copies from Wikipedia

Some of the modules of this book are in excellent condition. Other modules are broken copies of Wikipedia articles. Some symptoms of broken modules:

  • lots of red links
  • broken calls to templates
  • calls to missing templates
  • no credit to Wikipedia

I will be diverting some links to Wikipedia and marking the broken copies for speedy deletion. It should be trivial to copy newer versions of the Wikipedia articles, if one wants to again work on them. --Kernigh 18:30, 1 January 2006 (UTC)

Marked for deletion:

I can understand that you want to clean up the pages with duplicate content. That makes sense to me. However, the goal of the wikibook project is to eventually turn that content into chapters of the sociology textbook. I made a very active effort on that book starting about a year ago as I was preparing to use it for a class. The chapters that didn't get finished were ones I didn't use for the class last year. I do intend to continue working on that book as I plan to continue using it for classes in the future, but it is not currently a top priority. I probably won't continue work on it for another 6 months or so (except maybe some sporadic additions here or there). So, if you feel like the content of those pages should be deleted in the interim, that's probably okay - but I will eventually just end up recreating them when I start active work on the book again in the future.
One last thing, please don't delete the chapter on Social Psychology. I know it still has duplicate information, but I have also done quite a bit of work on that chapter. If you were to delete it now, I would lose all of that work - even though it is only about 1/10th the way done.

I have now marked Introduction to Sociology/Social psychology with {{wikify}} instead of {{delete}}, and inserted an obligatory credit to Wikipedia. You might want to watch that module, though; someone else might want to delete it. --Kernigh 00:22, 22 January 2006 (UTC)

I'm changing all of the above pages to a cleanup tag instead. This should be deleted if it really is a straight copy from Wikipedia, but I'm going to give the benefit of the doubt to the current group of contributors. If there is no real progress on these modules, they will be deleted in a few months, but there is no reason to push for that at the moment. --Rob Horning 18:30, 23 January 2006 (UTC)
Just weighing in a bit... they actually do have to be deleted, since they're copyvios (the GFDL requires attribution, and the chapters I saw contained no attribution). I'll be happy to help you fix that, but I need to know the names of the original wp articles that were copied :).
In the future, you can also just list things on WB:RFI to get a proper import (or at least we can attempt one, it doesn't always work).
BTW, when you're making links to wikipedia, it's better to use a pipe at the end of the wikilink... this will hide the ugly "w;". Like this: [[w:Sociology|]] renders as Sociology, rather than w:Sociology. --SB_Johnny | talk 02:58, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
Oh, it's 2007 now, isn't it? Is anyone still working on this book? --SB_Johnny | talk 02:59, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Completion status

I don't think that we should call this book 'comprehensive' and give it the green 100% icon, considering how 25+% of the sections are simple links to wikipedia. A few sections need the green and are still marked as empty - I'll take care of that, but I think we need some kind of consensus about where to place the status. Should it be at 50% or 75% complete? Rarr 04:28, 16 July 2006 (UTC)

It is also lacking any mention to the fourth paradigm of Sociology, Feminism.

[edit] Move Sociologist Wikipedia Warning

To editor, please move the warning about back button for socioligists links under the bulletpoint, instead of above, it is confusing right now.

[edit] Need "Soft Science" Warning

An objective text will make note of the soft science designation that Sociology (and all social sciences) receive within the scientific disciplines. There is an excellent lead in where human social complexity is mentioned in the introductory paragraph. The body of publications that are called "sociology" is vast and is all over the map. There is no widely accepted sociological theory that could place this work into a framework by which it could be interpreted. There has been no Newton (physics), Mendel (genetics), or Lyle (geology) for the science of Sociology. Moreover, much of the work has been tainted by historically controversial ideology and politics (e.g. the citation of Karl Marx). It is imperative that these problems be recognized before the student is led too far down a "primrose path". There has been a huge ongoing and long-standing discussion surrounding these issues that must be cited. Bob 19:50, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Famous Sociologists

I have added Manuel Castells to the list:

(Михал Орела 09:55, 13 August 2008 (UTC))

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