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The book’s title tells the reader what to expect once the first page is turned. This textbook concentrates on basic, fundamental, vital sociological concepts, theories, and ideas. From the very beginning of Sociology as a separate discipline within the broader family of Social Sciences, concepts of power, authority, social integration, socialization, interaction, community, civil society were among the stepping stones that led to exploration and discovery of specifically sociological issues. Among those issues, which other social sciences are not prepared to investigate while Sociology is uniquely suited to analyze and explore, are the questions of social change and social integration. These two questions are dealt with from the very beginning of this book as we discuss theories of Max Weber, Emile Durkheim, Talcott Parsons, and other sociological thinkers who devoted their intellectual energy to find out what makes societies to change and what keeps societies together.
In this book we also establish the place of Sociology among other social and behavioral sciences. In our discussion of Symbolic Interactionism and Dramaturgical Perspective, we invite the reader to explore connections between Sociology and Psychology. As social processes, themselves vaguely structured and not easy to observe, take place in the context of economic and political systems which are much more structurally precise, we investigate connections between state and society and economy and society.
While an introductory level textbook, Basic Sociology opens the door into complex and important theoretical reasoning and analytical process which makes Sociology a useful scholarly discipline.
Preface: What Is Sociology?
Part One. Theories, Perspectives, and Methods in Sociology
Chapter 1. What is social theory and why we need it
Chapter 2. Methods, data, and other ways to look at the world
Chapter 3. Conflicting conflict theories— Karl Marx versus Lewis Coser
Chapter 4. Max weber and sociology of economic transformation
Chapter 5. What keeps society together—functional approach to social integration
Chapter 6. Precision and simplicity—two centuries of utilitarian perspective
Part Two. Socialization, Interaction, Community
Chapter 7. How human beings become social beings
Chapter 8. How society shapes ourselves
Chapter 9. How conversation builds societies
Chapter 10. Interaction as a stage play—the dramaturgical perspective
Chapter 11. Communities—real and imagined
Chapter 12. What happens when there are no communities
Part Three. State and Society
Chapter 13. Why people obey—power and authority
Chapter 14. The state has its own interests
Chapter 15. States ancient and modern— differences and evolution
Chapter 16. Bureaucracy, not as bad as it sounds
Chapter 17. Organizational pathologies
Part Four. Economy and Society
Chapter 18. What traditional economies look like
Chapter 19. How social change propelled economic transformation
Chapter 20. Trust, culture, and economic efficiency—how economy and society interact
Chapter 21. Social inequality, stratification, and elites
Suggestions for Further Reading.