books tagged “sociology”

The Executioner's Song is a work of unprecedented force. It is the true story of Gary Gilmore, who in 1977 became the first person executed in the United States since the reinstitution of the death penalty. Gilmore, a violent yet articulate man who chose not to fight his death-penalty sentence, touched off a national debate about capital punishment. He allowed Norman Mailer and researcher Lawrence Schiller complete access to his story. Mailer took the material and produced an immense book with a dry, unwavering voice and meticulous attention to detail on Gilmore's life--particularly his relationship with Nicole Baker, whom Gilmore claims to have killed. What unfolds is a powerful drama, a distorted love affair, and a chilling look into the mind of a murderer in his countdown with a firing squad. [via]

"In retrospect," writes David Halberstam, "the pace of the fifties seemed slower, almost languid. Social ferment, however, was beginning just beneath this placid surface." He shows how the United States began to emerge from the long shadow of FDR's 12-year presidency, with the military-industrial complex and the Beat movement simultaneously growing strong. Television brought not only situation comedies but controversial congressional hearings into millions of living rooms. While Alfred Kinsey was studying people's sex lives, Gregory Pincus and other researchers began work on a pill that would forever alter the course of American reproductive practices. Halberstam takes on these social upheavals and more, charting a course that is as easy to navigate as it is wide-ranging. [via]

On time, out of time, time out, time is money--if our vernacular is any indication, the concept of time has certainly infiltrated American culture. Does everybody in the world share the same perception of time? In A Geography of Time, psychologist Robert Levine puts time to the test by sending teams of researchers all over the world to measure everything from the average walking speed to the time it takes to buy a stamp at the post office. Levine scatters his findings among engaging accounts of his own encounters with the various perceptions of time in different cultures. From the history of clocks to how people tell time today, A Geography of Time is jam-packed with "timely" information. [via]

On time, out of time, time out, time is money--if our vernacular is any indication, the concept of time has certainly infiltrated American culture. Does everybody in the world share the same perception of time? In A Geography of Time, psychologist Robert Levine puts time to the test by sending teams of researchers all over the world to measure everything from the average walking speed to the time it takes to buy a stamp at the post office. Levine scatters his findings among engaging accounts of his own encounters with the various perceptions of time in different cultures. From the history of clocks to how people tell time today, A Geography of Time is jam-packed with "timely" information. [via]

First published in 1970, this classic of oral history features the voices of men and women who lived through the Great Depression of the 1930s. It includes accounts by congressmen C. Wright Patman and Hamilton Fish, as well as failed presidential candidate Alf M. Landon, who recalls what it was like to be governor of Kansas in 1933:

Men with tears in their eyes begged for an appointment that would help save their homes and farms. I couldn't see them all in my office. But I never let one of them leave without my coming out and shakin' hands with 'em. I listened to all their stories, each one of 'em. But it was obvious I couldn't take care of all their terrible needs.

A collection of 30 essays which explore homosexuality in various cultures, and different eras, from late imperial China and Renaissance Italy to "Jazz-Age" America and from London to Harlem and Japan. Other chapters look at male prostitutes, cross-dressing and schoolgirl crushes in public schools. [via]

Kirkus Reviews Of the many characteristics of Homo sapiens proposed to distinguish the species--symboling, tool-inventing, language-using--let us propose another: human beings feel a need to explain. Certainly the need applies to Peter Farb who sets out to account for the major features of humankind, from inception to the present. The result is a monumental tome of popular anthropology, sociology, psychology, cultural history, forecast. Clearly he's done a lot of homework. . . This new tome reveals the same faculty for synthesis, for clear good writing, for touching the right scholarly bases. But there is a but. Farb has tried to do too much: to explain and sometimes explain away an array of traits, vast but arbitrary--marriage customs and incest taboos, male dominance, aging, Santa Claus, the psychology of learning, memory. . . . It may be the belief that women need man's physical strength to protect them and so have submitted to dominance, or that incest taboos are the result of hominid necessity and exogamy, or that peasants at all times have been suspicious, conservative, improvident as a result of their eternal exploitation by power-wielders. Readers will criticize and carp. Some may like the intellectual battling. The problem with books of this kind is that the traits discussed, the very words used, reveal a cultural boundedness. In the end Farb's version of H. sapiens is that of a liberal 20th-century Western intellectual with a sense of history and a belief in the fundamental capacity of ""modernization"": technology and planning will extricate the species from its present predicaments. The optimistic epilogue may surprise the reader, for the earlier sections present not too sanguine a picture; indeed, there is a kind of yearning for the hunting-gathering society. Farb has given us not a definitive pulsebeat of humanity, but a potpourri of interesting facts and artful speculations, at times heady and subtle, at times simplistic and flat. [via]

"Until one morning in mid-November of 1959, few Americans--in fact, few Kansans--had ever heard of Holcomb. Like the waters of the river, like the motorists on the highway, and like the yellow trains streaking down the Santa Fe tracks, drama, in the shape of exceptional happenings, had never stopped there." If all Truman Capote did was invent a new genre--journalism written with the language and structure of literature--this "nonfiction novel" about the brutal slaying of the Clutter family by two would-be robbers would be remembered as a trail-blazing experiment that has influenced countless writers. But Capote achieved more than that. He wrote a true masterpiece of creative nonfiction. The images of this tale continue to resonate in our minds: 16-year-old Nancy Clutter teaching a friend how to bake a cherry pie, Dick Hickock's black '49 Chevrolet sedan, Perry Smith's Gibson guitar and his dreams of gold in a tropical paradise--the blood on the walls and the final "thud-snap" of the rope-broken necks. [via]

Carter, the author of The Culture of Disbelief and Reflections of an Affirmative Action Baby, turns his attention to integrity, a quality everyone wants but no one knows how to get. Carter examines integrity and its implications in arenas such as politics, the media, marriage, and sports and concludes with a brief assessment of the ideal of Christian integrity in a secular world. [via]

During his first year at Howard University, Claude Brown wrote an article for the magazine Dissent about growing up in Harlem. The piece attracted the attention of a publisher, who encouraged him to write his autobiography. The result, Manchild in the Promised Land, traces Claude Brown's own transformation from a hardened, streetwise young criminal to a successful, self-made man.

This autobiographical novel, in print for more than thirty years, has been widely praised for its portrayal of the "lost" generation of African-Americans whose parents left the sharecropping lifestyle of the South for the crowded inner cities of the North. [via]

Before Elisabeth Bumiller lived in India in the mid-1980s, she had reported mainly on upper-crust Americans for the Washington Post. Her four-year stay turned her romantic image of India and largely unexamined feminist sentiments upside down and shook them hard. Although Indian women are guaranteed equality by their constitution, religious and cultural conceptions of their lowly role make this a hollow boast for many. Bumiller's well-spun book deals with admittedly sensational topics: a bride burning case; a rare death by sati, in which a young widow joined her husband on the funeral pyre; poor villages where girl babies are so unwelcome that some don't survive and cities where boy babies are given the edge by prenatal tests and the availability of abortion. Arranged marriages, the lives of village women, and the great histrionic appeal of the Indian film industry also catch her Western eye. Beneath the surface of each story several others bubble up, sometimes illuminating customs or obscuring easy outrage. Other times, though, they emphasize the limitations of being an outsider. --Francesca Coltrera [via]

To future generations, the late 20th century may come to be known as the time of the DPs: Displaced Persons. Migration and refugeeism are raising inflammatory issues from unified Germany to the Tex-Mex border. Into this whirlpool of half-truths, sermons, prejudices, and fears dives Hoover Institution economist and syndicated columnist Thomas Sowell. It is not necessary to agree with all of Sowell's views to admire his imposing attempt to arrive at a theory of migration and culture. Or to succumb to his fascinating tales of how immigrants from Germany, Japan, China, and other countries have coped--and excelled--on strange new shores. [via]

Miss Manners' down-to-earth collection of wisdom and pithy wit is a joy to read. Under the chapter on Table Manners, she notes "the inevitable slippage of spaghetti from the fork back onto the plate is Nature's way of controlling human piggishness" and suggests "a quick motion of the wrist, such as one uses to shake down a thermometer, will remove excess ketchup" from French fries. From common courtesy and proper attire to the etiquette of weddings, Martin knows right from wrong and sensible from rude. But this is no prissy, preachy tome. Miss Manners is very funny and has impressive insight into life. [via]

"Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie has had a success which few historians experience and which is usually reserved for the winner of the Prix Goncourt...Montaillou, which is the reconstruction of the social life of a medieval village, has been acclaimed by the experts as a masterpiece of ethnographic history and by the public as a sensational revelation of the thoughts, feelings, and activities of the ordinary people of the past."Times Literary Supplement.

"This perceptive book should absorb and enrich anyone who admits to being human."
Benjamin Spock, M.D.
Essayist Judith Viorst, who has humorously eased our journey to middle age, now turns her considerable talents to a more serious and far-reaching subject: how we grow and change through the losses that are an inevitable and necessary part of life. Arguing persuasively that through the loss of our mothers' protection, the loss of the impossible expectations we bring to relationships, the loss of our younger selves, and the loss of our loved ones through separation and death, we gain deeper persepctive, true maturity, and fuller wisdom about life, Judith Viorst has wirtten a life-affirming and life-changing book.


From the Paperback edition. [via]

"This perceptive book should absorb and enrich anyone who admits to being human."
Benjamin Spock, M.D.
Essayist Judith Viorst, who has humorously eased our journey to middle age, now turns her considerable talents to a more serious and far-reaching subject: how we grow and change through the losses that are an inevitable and necessary part of life. Arguing persuasively that through the loss of our mothers' protection, the loss of the impossible expectations we bring to relationships, the loss of our younger selves, and the loss of our loved ones through separation and death, we gain deeper persepctive, true maturity, and fuller wisdom about life, Judith Viorst has wirtten a life-affirming and life-changing book. [via]

Despite what it said in the New York Times or the Congressional Record, not everybody in America got the word right away about the civil rights movement. Thus it was that well into the 1970s, McIntosh County in backwoods Georgia remained a place where the black majority still had never elected one of their own to any county office, where black kids were bused away from the white school, and where the white county sheriff had his hand in every racket there was. Praying for Sheetrock is the saga of how, thanks to the leadership of a black shop-steward-turned-county-commissioner named Thurnell Alston, together with the aid of a cadre of idealistic Legal Services lawyers (Melissa Greene was one of their paralegals) this situation began to change. The story, written as grippingly as a novel, is charged with twists that only nonfiction can deliver; for example, Alston, for all the brave good he did, ultimately got caught in a federal sting and went to jail while the corrupt sheriff walked. This is, writes Greene, a story of "large and important things happening in a very little place." [via]

In almost every country of the developing world, the most active builders are squatters, creating complex local economies with high rises, shopping strips, banks, and self-government. As they invent new social structures, Neuwirth argues, squatters are at the forefront of the worldwide movement to develop new visions of what constitutes property and community.


Visit Robert Neuwirth's blog at: http://squatterci ty.blogspot.com [via]

Published in 1762, Rousseau's thinking is still relevant in these modern times. He believed that all citizens of a state fundamentally have a natural power of equality. This is the 'social contract' between the citizens of a state. Rousseau writes about liberty and law, freedom and justice. A declaration of democratic principles. A Collector's Edition. [via]

Published in 1762, Rousseau's thinking is still relevant in these modern times. He believed that all citizens of a state fundamentally have a natural power of equality. This is the 'social contract' between the citizens of a state. Rousseau writes about liberty and law, freedom and justice. A declaration of democratic principles. A Collector's Edition. [via]

In this ground-breaking contribution to social theory, John Urry argues that the traditional basis of sociology - the study of society - is outmoded in an increasingly borderless world. If sociology is to make a pertinent contribution to the post societal era it must forget the social rigidities of the pre-global order and, instead, switch its focus to the study of both physical and virtual movement. In considering this sociology of mobilities, the book concerns itself with the travels of people, ideas, images, messages, waste products and money across international borders, and the implications these mobilities have to our experiences of time, space, dwelling and citizenship.

Sociology Beyond Society extends recent debate about globalisation both by providing an analysis of how mobilities reconstitute social life in uneven and complex ways, and by arguing for the significance of objects, senses, and time and space in the theorising of contemporary life.

This book will be essential reading for undergraduates and graduates studying sociology and cultural geography. [via]

We are living through a time when old identities - nation, culture and gender are melting down. Spaces of Identity examines the ways in which collective cultural identities are being reshaped under conditions of a post-modern geography and a communications environment of cable and satellite broadcasting. To address current problems of identity, the authors look at contemporary politics between Europe and its most significant others: America; Islam and the Orient. They show that it's against these places that Europe's own identity has been and is now being defined. A stimulating account of the complex and contradictory nature of contemporary cultural identities. [via]

"After reading Teaching to Transgress I am once again struck by bell hooks's never-ending, unquiet intellectual energy, an energy that makes her radical and loving." -- Paulo Freire

In Teaching to Transgress,bell hooks--writer, teacher, and insurgent black intellectual--writes about a new kind of education, education as the practice of freedom.  Teaching students to "transgress" against racial, sexual, and class boundaries in order to achieve the gift of freedom is, for hooks, the teacher's most important goal.

bell hooks speakes to the heart of education today: how can we rethink teaching practices in the age of multiculturalism? What do we do about teachers who do not want to teach, and students who do not want to learn? How should we deal with racism and sexism in the classroom?

Full of passion and politics, Teaching to Transgress combines a practical knowledge of the classroom with a deeply felt connection to the world of emotions and feelings.  This is the rare book about teachers and students that dares to raise questions about eros and rage, grief and reconciliation, and the future of teaching itself.

"To educate is the practice of freedom," writes bell hooks, "is a way of teaching anyone can learn." Teaching to Transgress is the record of one gifted teacher's struggle to make classrooms work.

"Get a life" William Shatner told Star Trek fans. Yet, as Textual Poachers argues, fans already have a "life," a complex subculture which draws its resources from commercial culture while also reworking them to serve alternative interests.  Rejecting stereotypes of fans as cultural dupes, social misfits, and mindless consumers, Jenkins represents media fans as active producers and skilled manipulators of program meanings, as nomadic poachers constructing their own culture from borrowed materials, as an alternative social community defined through its cultural preferences and consumption practices.

Written from an insider's perspective and providing vivid examples from fan artifacts, Textual Poachers offers an ethnographic account of the media fan community, its interpretive strategies, its social institutions and cultural practices, and its troubled relationship to the mass media and consumer capitalism.  Drawing on the work of Michel de Certau, Jenkins shows how fans of Star Trek, Blake's 7, The Professionals, Beauty and the Beast, Starsky and Hutch, Alien Nation, Twin Peaks, and other popular programs exploit these cultural materials as the basis for their stories, songs, videos, and social interatctions.

Addressing both academics and fans, Jenkins builds a powerful case for the richness of fan culture as a popular response to the mass media and as a challenge to the producers' attempts to regulate textual meanings.  Textual Poachers guides readers through difficult questions about popular consumption, genre, gender, sexuality, and interpretation, documenting practices and processes which test and challenge basic assumptions of contemporary media theory.

384pages. in8. Broché. [via]

Wicked stepmothers and beautiful princesses ...magic forests and enchanted towers ...little pigs and big bad wolves ...Fairy tales have been an integral part of childhood for hundreds of years. But what do they really mean? In this award-winning work of criticism, renowned psychoanalyst Dr Bruno Bettelheim presents a thought provoking and stimulating exploration of the best-known fairy stories. He reveals the true content of the stories and shows how children can use them to cope with their baffling emotions and anxieties. [via]

Beginning with the bold claim, "There can be no culture without the transvestite," Marjorie Garber explores the nature and significance of cross-dressing and of the West's recurring fascination with it. Rich in anecdote and insight, Vested Interests offers a provocative and entertaining view of our ongoing obsession with dressing up--and with the power of clothes. [via]

Drawing on both her roots in Kentucky and her adventures with Manhattan Coop boards, Where We Stand is a successful black woman's reflection--personal, straight forward, and rigorously honest--on how our dilemmas of class and race are intertwined, and how we can find ways to think beyond them. [via]

Many of us pursue fitness because we want to remain attractive to partners and potential partners, and we stay healthy so we can continue to have sex with those partners. But why do people care so much about sex? This book, written by an evolutionary biologist, explains how all the weird quirks of human sexuality came to be: sex with no intention of procreation, invisible fertility, sex acts pursued in private--all common to us, but very different from most other species. Why Is Sex Fun? asks us to look at ourselves in a brand-new way, and richly rewards us for doing so. [via]

Despite scientific evidence to the contrary, as far as the health care profession is concerned the standard operating design of the human body is male. So when a book comes along as beautifully written and endlessly informative as Natalie Angier's Woman: An Intimate Geography, it's a cause for major celebration. Written with whimsy and eloquence, her investigation into female physiology draws its inspiration not only from scientific and medical sources but also from mythology, history, art, and literature, layering biological factoids with her own personal encounters and arcane anecdotes from the history of science. Who knew, for example, that the clitoris--with 8,000 nerve fibers--packs double the pleasure of the penis; that the gene controlling cellular sensitivity to male androgens, ironically enough, resides on the X-chromosome; or that stress hormones like cortisol and corticosterone are the true precursors of friendship?

The mysteries of evolution are not a new subject for Angier, a Pulitzer Prize-winning biology writer for the New York Times whose previous books include The Beauty of the Beastly and Natural Obsessions. The strengths of Woman begin with Angier's witty and evocative prose style, but its real contribution is the way it expands the definition of female "geography" beyond womb, breasts, and estrogen, down as far as the bimolecular substructure of DNA and up as high as the transcendent infrastructure of the human brain. --Patrizia DiLucchio [via]