Sociology

I'll first say that I am 42 years old and I am finally finishing my degree after many years away. I imagine because of this that I found many of the examples in the book to be simplistic and geared towards what they think a young barely-adult student might be interested in. The book is filled with large, colorful pictures of rock stars and models. It could probably be half as large if they cut out all the meaningless photos. They have "stories" you read to understand issues, but these stories are often set up between fairly inane students who are being snide to each other. The stereotype is a little heavy.

There are certainly interesting issues covered. They explain that when you try to survey a group of people to find out how they feel, the very act of you surveying them may affect their answers. The group can be biased by how you ask the questions. Statistics can be manipulated and packaged to be misleading. The book is trying to get you to think critically about issues and to evaluate them - even when it comes to this very book. Everything is open to interpretation.

But amongst the quite useful foundation information are entire pages on symbols used in instant messaging, pictures of American Idol contestants, and pictures of Spider-Man. I really don't think the use of the pages for this content was worth the extremely high price I paid for the textbook. I'd rather have half the textbook, pay half as much, and learn the same information.

The book makes a good attempt to present multiple sides to issues. Yes, industrialization was good, in that it brought more products to the masses. But it was also bad, because human workers began to be treated like machines and dehumanized. Yes, some people use sociology to help other people live more happy lives. But others use sociology to find ways to control people and make sure they keep quiet. There are always two sides (or more!) to stories.

There are discussions that anybody could use, for example on the roles we juggle in life and how we prioritize the different demands placed on us. We all have to deal with non-verbal communication and dealing with impressions others have of us.

There are also issues which some will find challenging, and this gets into areas where some people will think it is "OK" to discuss the issues and others feel it is "not appropriate". For example, chapter 8 is on sexuality. It talks about transsexuals, the incest taboo, and sexual orientation. If a person feels that only monogamous, male-female sex is OK, then any of the other discussions are going to be very uncomfortable. If a person is interested in learning how different cultures view these topics, and learning about how these topics are handled around the world, then it's almost necessary to talk about them. So you could certainly say it's "liberal" to have a chapter that includes transgenders and bisexuals / homosexuals in its discussion of sexuality. On the other hand, though, you could say that having a book about the world's views on sex, and then to only include what male-female-only oriented people have to say on the topic, would be a book which did not adequately cover the topic.

Similarly, there are discussions about social class and how things like personal wealth, skin color, gender, and family background affect how people feel you rank in their society. Is this liberal or conservative to say these things happen? The book doesn't make judgments in general about any of this being "good" or "bad". It just seems to look at what happens and examine the changes in different countries or different time periods.

I agree that sometimes issues are explained in simplistic terms, just as they are accompanied by photos of bikini-clad teen girls ogling the camera. I imagine they're trying to cater to what they feel their target audience wants to see. I wish they'd give that audience a bit more credit. I think college students of all ages can appreciate a maturely presented set of material. But I don't see any overreaching problem with the actual text presented; unlike other reviewers, I don't see a massive liberal slant. If you take the point of view that even just discussing homosexuals and similar topics is a liberal thing to do, then I suppose you will probably be stuck if you read any sociology text.

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