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Sociology

Resources and research that focuses on attitudes, values, and behaviors.

Browzine

BrowZine allows patrons to browse and stay current with the electronic journals in their academic fields. Fields are organized by major headings, e.g. Technology, Humanities, etc. with subdivisions beneath. BrowZine provides multiple entry points to connect with scholarly materials, including: via the BrowZine web and mobile applications and from within Search It.

Databases

How to Find Books in the Library

The TSU Library uses the Library of Congress Classification to organize books based on subject. For sociology resources, try browsing Class H - Social Sciences, which is broken down into the following subcategories below:

  • H    -- Social Sciences (General)
  • HA  -- Statistics
  • HB  -- Economic Theory - Demography
  • HC  -- Economic History, Condition
  • HM  -- Sociology (General)
  • HQ  -- The Family. Marriage. Women
  • HS  -- Societies: Secret, Benevolent, etc.
  • HT  -- Communities, Classes, Races
  • HX  -- Socialism. Communism. anarchism 

Book Highlights

Pillars of Social Psychology

This collection of first-person accounts from legendary social psychologists tells the stories behind the science and offers unique insight into the development of the field from the 1950s to the present. One pillar, the grandson of a slave, was inspired by Kenneth Clark. Yet when he entered his PhD program in the 1960s, he was told that race was not a variable for study. Other pillars faced first-hand a type of sexism that was hardly subtle, when women were not permitted into the faculty dining room. Still others have lived through a tremendous variegation of social psychology, not only in the United States but in Europe and Asia, that characterizes the field today. Together these stories, always witty and sometimes emotional, form a mosaic of the field as a whole - its legends, their theories and research, their relationships with one another, and their sense of where social psychology is headed.

Disciplinary Futures: sociology in conversation with American, ethnic, and indigenous studies

Reimagines how race, ethnicity, imperialism, and colonialism can be central to social science research and methods There is a growing consensus that the discipline of sociology and the social sciences broadly need to engage more thoroughly with the legacy and the present day of colonialism, Indigenous/settler colonialism, imperialism, and racial capitalism in the United States and globally. In Disciplinary Futures, a cross-section of scholars comes together to engage sociology and the social sciences by way of these paradigms, particularly from the influence of disciplines of American, Ethnic, and Indigenous Studies. 

The future of sociology : ideology or objective social science?

This book explores the shift in sociology away from the shared aspiration of the classical transition, of transcending partiality through the construction of a 'science of society', in the face of challenges to the notion of objectivity. With the increasing subjugation of sociology to political ideologies and a growing emphasis on 'policy', which casts sociology in the role of a provider of intellectual content for political programs, this volume asks whether the situation is the result of an exhaustion of ideas or might perhaps be rooted in the failure in the very program of establishing sociology as a science. Taking seriously the challenges to the classical aspiration of constructing theories that both explain and are grounded in empirical reality, The Future of Sociology asks whether the core idea of transcending ideology is still worth pursuing, and whether there remains scope for making sociology scientific. As such, it will appeal to scholars and students of sociology, social theory and social scientific methodology.

Sociology: exploring the architecture of everyday life

In Sociology: Exploring the Architecture of Everyday Life, David Newman shows students how to see the "unfamiliar in the familiar"--to step back and see organization and predictability in their personal experiences. With his approachable writing style and lively personal anecdotes, the author's goal from the first edition has been the same: to write a textbook that "reads like a real book." Many adopters of this book are fans of Peter Berger′s classic works, which helped introduce the idea of "social constructionism" to sociology. Newman uses the metaphors of "architecture" and "construction," to help students understand that society is not something that exists "out there," independently of themselves; it is a human creation that is planned, maintained, or altered by individuals. Using vivid prose, current examples, and fresh data, the Thirteenth Editionpresents a unique and thought-provoking overview of how society is constructed and experienced. Instead of surveying every subfield in sociology, the more streamlined coverage (14 chapters) focuses on the individual and society, the construction of self and society, and social inequality in the context of social structures.   

SAGE Readings for Social Problems

SAGE Readings for Social Problems, is a convenient and economical option for instructors who want to introduce students to scholarly literature in their social problems courses. It contains 16 short readings on topics covered in typical courses, including economic inequality, race, gender, crime, substance abuse, education, health/medicine, the environment, family, and the social construction of social problem. The articles in this collection were all chosen because they are accessible to undergraduate, avoid complicated statistical analysis, and demonstrate the range of methodological approaches to studying social problems.

Race in Society: the enduring American dilemma

Comprehensive yet concise, Margaret Andersen's Race in Society, Second Edition is a topical introduction to race and ethnicity organized around four key questions: What does the idea of race mean and where does it come from? What are the consequences of the social construction of race? How is racial inequality structured into social institutions? What are different policies and approaches for change toward racial justice? In her accessible, student-friendly style, Andersen introduces readers to the current scholarship on race, including recent studies conducted during the COVID-19 pandemic and the protests following the murder of George Floyd. 

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