Jeff Manza - The Sociology Project: Introducing the Sociological Imagination, First Canadian Edition

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[ISBN 0133768910/9780133768916]

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Manza, Jeff, author

The sociology project/Jeff Manza [and twenty-two others].

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-0-13-376891-6 (PDF)

1. Sociology. I. Title.

HM585.M35 2016301C2016-907845-0

ISBN 13: 978-0-13-376891-6

ISBN 10:0-13-376891-0

In The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, his famous study of the history of science, Thomas Kuhn argued that introductory textbooks are inevitably the most backward part of any scientific field. He suggested that because they seek to appeal to the lowest common denominator to maximize their audience, they reproduce out-of-date ideas and findings far removed from the cutting edge of knowledge. Even worse, Kuhn argued, these texts reinforce popular, but out-of-date, dogmas that stand in the way of progress. Worst of all, they provide beginning students an entirely misleading view of the discipline. When it comes to sociology textbooks, Kuhns claim is reinforced because of the simple fact that sociology is such a wide-ranging discipline, with many rich subfields with their own bodies of scholarship and knowledge. No one author (or small team of authors), however well-meaning and determined, can possibly attain mastery of the whole discipline and adequately convey that knowledge to students.

We created this introductory text in the hopes of overcoming the problem Kuhn so famously identified. Our aim is nothing less than to reinvent the way we write introductory sociology texts. We envision an entirely new kind of introduction to the discipline, one that draws on the collective wisdom of a large, successful sociology department and its faculty to bring to our students and readers the real excitement of each of the main subfields of sociology. Rather than reproducing what is said in existing textbooks, as so often happens, the chapters in this book are freshly authored by one or more faculty members from the New York University Sociology Department who write and teach in the area. In this way, we seek to bring together the best of sociology as a discipline to meet the challenge of reaching our students.

At the centre of this book is a set of tools for learning how to ask hard questions about the world around us. These tools are what we call, following , the sociological imagination. In every chapter, we draw upon contemporary research findings, those of our colleagues and in some cases our own, to puzzle through how individuals are shaped by the contexts in which they live and act. We treat social norms, organizations, institutions, and global dynamics as a linked set of puzzles to explore. Rather than simply giving answers, we identify the kinds of questions that sociological researchers ask and introduce some ways of thinking about how to answer those questions. We do not suggest that all of the answers are at hand, but we show how and in what ways sociologists and other social scientists struggle to answer them. If nothing else, we hope that our readers will take away from this book a new determination to question things.