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 A GLOBAL

PLUMMER
MACIONIS &
INTRODUCTION
4TH EDITION
Sociology: A Global Introduction represents a unique and complete learning resource for
sociology students worldwide. International in outlook and culturally wide-ranging, it also
reminds us that sociology is not entirely value free. Unlike most textbooks, a narrative –
of social change and its attendant problems – drives the text throughout. Each chapter
addresses new forms that society is taking, showing progress, but often at a price,
and the long journey still to travel for a better world. Technology is also now em-
bedded firmly in contemporary social life, and rapidly changing us. Thus new
information technologies – their uses and their problems as tools –
are discussed: Google searches, Wikipedia, YouTube.

New to this edition:

• Fully updated to include the latest key debates, topics and data –
conflicts throughout the world, the Muslim world, African poverty,
and the role of China in the twenty-first century.
• New chapter on Disabilities, Care and the Humanitarian Society.
• New ‘Interlude’ sections integrate the chapter themes in each Part
through a specific focus: sport, food, global youth and biography.
• Re-organised coverage of theory with new material on major modern
theorists – Mary Douglas, Martha Nussbaum, Stanley Cohen, Manuel Castells,
Ulrich Beck and Donna Haraway.
• New boxes look at ‘Living in the Twenty-First Century’ and ‘Public Sociology’.

But this edition is also about helping you do sociology – seeing, hearing, investigating and interacting as a sociologist.
To that end, this edition includes other key new features:

1. The Sociological E-Lab, for each chapter – guidance on websites to investigate, DVDs to watch, reading to do,
the big debates in sociology and questions to ask.
2. New Part Six Resources for Critical Thinking brings together key words, video lists, a major webliography, reading
lists and YouTube. It provides a key resource in itself for further investigation.
3. Art and Sociology: Major works of art open each chapter and questions for discussion are in Part Six. A new
visual sociology is suggested throughout.
4. Extensive Website Resources – for students and lecturers – link to and extend the book content.

Visit the website at www.pearsoned.co.uk/plummer

For Lecturers: For Students: COVER IMAGES: FRONT AND BACK

(BOTTOM LEFT) EVERARD LONGLAND;
• Instructor’s Manual • Podcasts introducing sections and ‘Global BACK AND SPINE © STEVE BLOOM/GETTY
IMAGES.
• PowerPoint lecture slides Voices’

INTRODUCTION
• ‘Big Vote’ online with other students on key 4TH EDITION
sociological debates
• Interactive questions A GLOBAL
• Key sociological concepts explored
• Weblinks 4TH EDITION
• Videography links
• Revision flashcards
www.pearson-books.com

John J Macionis is Professor of Sociology at Kenyon College

in Gambier, Ohio.
A GLOBAL INTRODUCTION
Ken Plummer is Emeritus Professor of Sociology at the University of Essex. JOHN J MACIONIS & KEN PLUMMER

CVR_MACI1583_04_SE_CVR.indd 1 12/6/08 09:33:39

A01.QXD 4/6/08 08:44 Page i

SOCIOLOGY
Visit the Sociology: A global introduction, fourth edition, Companion Website at
www.pearsoned.co.uk/plummer to find valuable student learning material including:

• Podcasts introducing key topics in the book and global voices in sociology
• Chapter-by-chapter resources, including interactive questions, key sociological concepts
explored, web and videography links, and revision flashcards
• The Big Vote, allowing you to give your view on a key debate or issue and see what other
students think
A01.QXD 7/28/09 4:53 PM Page ii

Severnaya Zemlya

Franz Josef Land

SVALBARD New Siberian Islands
(to Norway)

Novaya Zemlya

ICELAND

N
DE
FAEROE ISLANDS
(to Denmark) FINLAND

SWE
NORWAY R U S S I A N F E D E R A T I O N
EST. E u r o p e a n
RUSS.
ISLE OF MAN FED. LAT. A s i a t i c R u s s i a
DENMARK R u s s i a
(to UK) LITH.

BELA.
Y
IRELAND POLAND
AN

NETH.
M

BELG. R SLVK.
CHANNEL ISLANDS GE CZ.REP. U K R A IN E
LUX. LIECH.
(to UK)
FRANCE AUT. HUNG. MOLD. K A Z A K H S T A N
SWITZ.
M O N G O L I A
SLVN. ROM.
MONACO CRO. SERBIA
S.M. BULG.
ANDORRA B.&H.
VAT. CITY KOSAVO GEORGIA
MON. UZBEK. KYRG.
Azores ALB. ARMENIA AZERB. JAPAN
(to Portugal)
PORT.
S PA I N I TA LY N. KOREA
MACED. TURKMEN.
TURKEY AZ. TAJ.

GIBRALTAR (to UK) GREECE S. KOREA

MALTA SYRIA C H I N A
Madeira TUNISIA CYPRUS LEBANON
(to Portugal) O TURKISH REP. I R A N AFGH.
CC OF N. CYPRUS ISRAEL IRAQ
O NEPAL

N
(only recognised BHUTAN
R
O

A
Canary Islands by Turkey) T
M

KUWAIT
ALGERIA S
KI
(to Spain) JORDAN Ryukyu Islands
L I B Y A BAHRAIN PA (to Japan)
WESTERN SAHARA EGYPT QATAR BANGLADESH LAOS
(disputed) U.A.E. TAIWAN
IA

SAUDI
AN

AN I N D I A MYANMAR
(BURMA) NORTHERN
ARABIA
IT

R MARIANA
M

AU O ISLANDS

V
M MALI PARACEL

IE
NIGER ISLANDS
(to US)

TN
CAPE ERITREA THAI.
VERDE SENEGAL CHAD YEMEN
Socotra (disputed)
SUDAN

AM
A (to Yemen) Laccadive Andaman GUAM
GAMBIA IN CAMB.
RK O Islands Islands (to US)
GUINEA-BISSAU U FAS DJIBOUTI PHI LI PPI NES
GUINEA
(to India) (to India)
NIGERIA
B

SPRATLY
SRI LANKA ISLANDS
SIERRA LEONE MICRONESIA
N

BENIN ETHIOPIA
OO

Nicobar (disputed)
IA

LIBERIA C.A.R. Islands PALAU

ER

AL

BRUNEI
M

(to India)
M

CÔTE D’IVOIRE EQ MALDIVES

SO
CA

(IVORY COAST) GHANA

.G UINEA UGANDA MALAYSIA
SINGAPORE
O

TOGO KENYA
NG

GABON
DEM.REP. RWANDA
O

SAO TOME & PRINCIPE C BURUNDI

C O N GO I N D O N E S I A PAPUA
TA

BRITISH INDIAN NEW

N

Cabinda OCEAN TERRITORY

ZA

(to Angola) SEYCHELLES GUINEA

IA (to UK) CHRISTMAS ISLAND
N

ASCENSION ISLAND
(to St. Helena) (to Australia) EAST TIMOR
Agalega Islands
ANGOLA COMOROS (to Mauritius)
MALAWI COCOS (KEELING) ISLANDS ASHMORE &
ST. HELENA MAYOTTE (to France) (to Australia) CARTIER ISLANDS
ZAMBIA (to Australia)
AR
UE

(to UK)
BIQ

ASC

ZIMB.
AM

AG

NAMIBIA MAURITIUS
AD
MOZ

BOTS. REUNION (to France)

M

SWAZILAND
I N D I A N A U S T R A L I A
A T L A N T I C
LESOTHO

O C E A N S O UT H
AFR ICA
O C E A N

TRISTAN DA CUNHA
(to St. Helena)
Gough Island
(to Tristan da Cunha) Tasmania

Prince Edward Islands FRENCH SOUTHERN

(to South Africa) & ANTARCTIC TERRITORIES
(to France)
MAPPING THE WORLD
There are many maps of the world and
its regions to be found on the internet. HEARD & MCDONALD ISLANDS
(to Australia)
The map here is intended to serve only
as a quick general guide and resource as
you read this book. For more detail look at: POLITICAL STATUS:
MAPS OF THE WORLD Eg. MEXICO: independent state
http://www.mapsofworld.com/ Eg. FAEROE ISLANDS (to Denmark): self-governing territory, with
parent state indicated
GOOGLE MAPS Eg. Andaman Islands (to India): non self-governing territory, with
http://maps.google.co.uk/maps parent stated indicated

A N T A R C T I C A
 A01.QXD 7/28/09 4:53 PM Page iii

A R C T I C
Queen Elizabeth Islands
O C E A N GREENLAND
(to Denmark)

Baffin Island

Arctic Circle
Alaska
(to US)

C A N A D A
)
US
Aleutian Islands (to
Kurile Islands
(to Russ. Fed.)

ST. PIERRE
& MIQUELON
(to France)
P A C I F I C
U N I T E D S T A T E S A T L A N T I C
O C E A N O F A M E R I C A
BERMUDA
O C E A N
(to UK)
PUERTO RICO (to US)
DOM. REP. BRITISH VIRGIN ISLANDS (to UK)
MIDWAY ISLANDS
(to US) Guadelupe
TURKS & CAICOS ISLANDS (to UK) VIRGIN ISLANDS (to US)
M
(to Mexico)
CAYMAN ISLANDS ANGUILLA (to UK)
E
(to UK) BAHAMAS ST. KITTS & NEVIS Tropic of Cancer
X

HONDURAS ANTIGUA & BARBUDA

I

Hawai i CUBA MONTSERRAT (to UK)

C

Revillagigedo BELIZE
WAKE ISLAND (to US) Islands
O
(to US) JAMAICA GUADELOUPE (to France)
(to Mexico) NAVASSA I. HAITI DOMINICA
JOHNSTON ATOLL (to US) (to US) NETH. ANT. MARTINIQUE (to France)
GUATEMALA (to Neth.)
ARUBA ST. LUCIA
EL SALVADOR
MARSHALL (to Neth.) BARBADOS
ISLANDS CLIPPERTON ISLAND NICARAGUA
WALLIS & FUTUNA KINGMAN REEF (to US) (to French Polynesia) COSTA RICA
SIA GRENADA
(to France) VENEZUELA
PALMYRA ATOLL (to US) TRINIDAD & TOBAGO
PANAMA
BAKER &
HOWLAND COLOMBIA
FRENCH GUIANA
ISLANDS JARVIS ISLAND Galapagos Islands (to France)
(to US) (to US) (to Ecuador) Equator
NAURU ECUADOR GUYANA
K I R I B A T I SURINAME
A

EA TUVALU
P E

SOLOMON TOKELAU B R A Z I L
(to NZ)
ISLANDS
R

COOK
ISLANDS
U

(to NZ)

VANUATU B O L I VI A
NEW
CALEDONIA FIJI FRENCH POLYNESIA
(to France) (to France) PARAGUAY Tropic of Capricorn
TONGA NIUE (to NZ) San Felix Island
CORAL SEA ISLANDS
A (to Australia) SAMOA AMERICAN (to Chile)
SAMOA Sala y Gomez San Ambrosia
Easter Island
A

NORFOLK ISLAND (to US) PITCAIRN

(to Australia) (to Chile) (to Chile) Island
I N

ISLANDS (to Chile)

Lord Howe Island Kermadec Island (to UK)
(to Australia) (to NZ) URUGUAY
N T

Juan Fernandez Island

(to Chile)
NEW
G E

ZEALAND CHILE
A R

Chatham Island
(to NZ) P A C I F I C
Bounty Island O C E A N
Campbell Island (to NZ)
FALKLAND ISLANDS
(to NZ) (to UK)
Macquarie Island (to Australia)

ABBREVIATIONS: AFGH. Afghanistan, ALB. Albania, AUT. Austria, MACED. Macedonia, MOLD. Moldova, MON. Montenegro, SOUTH GEORGIA &
AZ. or AZERB. Azerbaijan, BELG. Belgium, BELA. Belarus, NETH. Netherlands, NETH. ANT. Netherlands Antilles, SOUTH SANDWICH ISLANDS
(to UK)
B.&H. Bosnia & Herzegovina, BOTS. Botswana, BULG. Bulgaria, PORT. Portugal, ROM. Romania, RUSS. FED. Russian Federation,
CAMB. Cambodia, C.A.R. Central African Republic, CRO. Croatia, S.M. San Marino, SLVK. Slovakia, SLVN. Slovenia, SWITZ. Switzerland,
CZ. REP. Czech Republic, DOM. REP. Dominican Republic, EST. Estonia, TAJ. Tajikistan, THAI. Thailand, TURKMEN. Turkmenistan,
HUNG. Hungary, KOS. Kosovo, KYRG. Kyrgyzstan, LAT. Latvia, U.A.E. United Arab Emirates, UZBEK. Uzbekistan,
LIECH. Liechtenstein, LITH. Lithuania, LUX. Luxembourg, VAT. CITY Vatican City, ZIMB. Zimbabwe. Antarctic Circle

ANTARCTI CA
A01.QXD 4/6/08 08:44 Page iv

appeared. The second section, Our Human Origins,

SOCIETY IN HISTORY: TIME LINES
A time line is a visual device that helps us understand
historical change. The upper time line represents 5 billion
years of the history of the planet Earth. This time line is
divided into three sections, each of which is drawn to a
different scale of time. The first section, The Earth’s
Origins, begins with the planet’s origins 5 billion years
before the present (B.P.) and indicates that another full
billion years passed before the earliest forms of life
shows that plants and animals continued to evolve for
billions more years until, approximately 12 million years
ago, our earliest human ancestors came onto the scene. In
the third section of this time line, Earliest Civilisation,
we see that what we term civilisation is relatively recent,
indeed, with the first permanent settlements occurring in
the Middle East a scant 12,000 years ago. But the written
record of our species’ existence extends back only half this
long, to the time humans invented writing and first
farmed with animal-driven ploughs some 5,000 years B.P.
Age of dinosaurs All humans are
hunters and gatherers

Earth takes Evolutionary divide,

form Oldest existing Earliest Bones in Ethiopia
eventually yielding
fossils mammals attest to ‘Stone
humans and apes
Age’ human
Earliest life who used tools
Earliest
forms primates and fire.

THE EARTH’S ORIGINS OUR HUMAN ORIGINS

5 billion 4 billion 3 billion 2 billion 1 billion 500 million 400 million 300 million 200 million 100 million 1 million
B.P. B.P. B.P. B.P. B.P. B.P. B.P. B.P. B.P. B.P. B.P.

World population 1 billion

Death rates fall in

Europe and United
States

Colonisation of Opening of US European colonisation

Latin America/India Western frontier of Africa

 Red Cross
first established
 First postage
stamp
 Emancipation of
Great age Women’s Russian serfs
 Rousseau’s of orchestral suffrage
Social Contract music movement
 First passenger  Comte coins the begins
 Franco-
French Revolution steam train, term ‘sociology’  Charles Prussian War
begins England Darwin’s
Origin of
 European  Malthus dies Species  Karl Marx
Enlightenment dies

THE MODERN ERA

1775 1800 1825 1850 1875
 Adam Smith
 Telegraph  Light bulb
dies  Photography  Telephone
 Steam invented
invented invented invented
locomotive
invented
 Rubber  Coca Cola
condoms  Pasteur evolves
invented
invented
germ theory of
Industrial Revolution disease
transforms Europe Industrialisation underway

Adam Smith applauds Comte coins term ‘sociology’ Marx challenges capitalist class conflict
capitalism Malthus warns of perilous Darwin’s ‘Origin of the
Comte Spencer
population increase Species’ published (1859)
A01.QXD 4/6/08 08:44 Page v

Sociology came into being in the wake of the many development of sociological thought are traced along
changes to society wrought by the Industrial the very bottom of this time line.
Revolution over the last few centuries – just the blink of Events are coded according to the broad themes as
an eye in evolutionary perspective. The lower time line follows:
provides a close-up look at the events and trends that
 Technology
have defined The Modern Era, most of which are
discussed in this text.  National/global events and trends
Innovations in technology are charted in the panel
 Sociology as a discipline
below the line and provide a useful backdrop for
viewing the milestones of social progress highlighted in For Time Lines on the world wide web, see
the panel above the line. Major contributions to the www.hyperhistory.com
European
Middle Ages
Earliest horticultural Rise of agriculture
and pastoral societies and bureaucracy Roman Empire
Settlement in Settlement in Italian
Domestication
Nile region Indus region Renaissance
of dogs Invention of European
First humans reach
North America the wheel Writing colonisation begins Galileo
First permanent invented Great pyramids
from Asia via
settlements in Horticulture of Egypt Confucius
Peking land bridge Horticulture in Austrian
Cave art Middle East and pastoralism Buddha Muhammad
Latin America ‘Iceman’ Plato Jesus
in Asia Moses

EARLIEST CIVILISATION

50,000 14,000 13,000 12,000 11,000 10,000 9,000 8,000 7,000 6,000 5,000 4,000 3,000 2,000 1,000
B.P. B.P B.P. B.P. B.P. B.P. B.P. B.P. B.P. B.P. B.P. B.P. B.P. B.P. B.P.

2 billion 3 billion 4 billion 5 billion

Birth rates fall in ‘Baby boom’ Student protests Child’s life expectancy
Child’s life Europe and US 76 years (in the west)
expectancy Evolution of the European
 Long period of
47 years Economic Community
Conservative government
 Einstein’s in UK: Thatcherism 2001

P R E S E N T
 Rapid expansion of Destruction
Theory  Great Depression Sociology in UK universities Newly Industrialising of Twin
of Relativity Countries (NICs) (e.g. Towers
 Herzl’s The
Jewish State Bolshevik Emergence of Second wave Thailand, Singapore) and
 First Pentagon:
Revolution Feminism, The Black Persian First working Terrorist
McDonald’s draft of the crisis
 First poverty Movement and The Lesbian Gulf War
restaurant Human
surveys in UK & Gay Movement: Civil Rights Genome World
of Booth &  Russian  G. H. Revolutions Project
in USSR Trade
Rowntree Revolution Mead Chinese
 Emile and Eastern Kosovo Organ-
 First dies revolution  CD Refugee isation
Durkheim  European Europe
sociology invented Crisis estab-
department dies  C.H. United colonisation lished
at University Cooley dies Chemist Nations of Africa ends
 George Albert First earth
of Chicago founded day
Simmel  Max Hoffman
takes 1st Berlin Wall First AIDS
dies Weber dies cases
LSD ‘trip’  Goffman
reported
dies
World World Korean Iraq War
Vietnam War
War I War II War (2003–)

1900 1925 1950 1975 2000

Splitting of
 Invention of  Sputnik  Space
 First car the atom
(the Duryea) aerosol spray Computer launched  First shuttle
can  Foucault
 Aeroplane
invented human dies
 Radio  Television  Discovery on moon
invented  Ford
invented invented First atomic of DNA
assembly
explosion in  First heart
line Postindustrial era
Hiroshima  Cable TV transplant
information revolution

Durkheim studies suicide Cooley and Mead Du Bois describes Piaget probes how we learn Feminism impacts sociology
study the self racial consciousness
Simmel analyses small groups Goffman debuts’dramaturgical analysis’ Postmodernism
Freud formulates Student protests, +
Weber sees expanding bureaucracy psychoanalysis rise of conflict theories Ethnomethodology Multiculturalism
A01.QXD 4/6/08 08:44 Page vi

Dedicated to all those involved in the saving of lives through transplant surgery: especially the skills
of doctors, the kindness of carers and the greatest gift of life from the donors and their loved ones.
A01.QXD 4/6/08 08:44 Page vii

SOCIOLOGY
A Global Introduction

Fourth edition

John J. Macionis
Ken Plummer
A01.QXD 4/6/08 08:44 Page viii

Pearson Education Limited

Edinburgh Gate
Harlow
Essex CM20 2JE
England

and Associated Companies throughout the world

Visit us on the World Wide Web at:

www.pearsoned.co.uk

Authorised adaptation from the United States edition, entitled SOCIOLOGY, 11th Edition,
ISBN: 0132184745 by MACIONIS, JOHN J, published by Pearson Education, Inc, publishing
as Prentice Hall, Copyright © 2007.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by
any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information
storage retrieval system, without permission from Pearson Education, Inc.

Fourth adaptation edition published by PEARSON EDUCATION LTD, Copyright © 2008.

First published 1997

Second edition published 2002
Third edition published 2005
Fourth edition published 2008

© Prentice Hall Inc. 1997

© Pearson Education Limited 2002, 2005, 2008

The rights of John J. Macionis and Ken Plummer to be identified as authors of this work
have been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval
system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical,
photocopying, recording or otherwise, without either the prior written permission of the
publisher or a licence permitting restricted copying in the United Kingdom issued by the
Copyright Licensing Agency Ltd, Saffron House, 6–10 Kirby Street, London EC1N 8TS.

ISBN: 978-0-13-205158-3

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
12 11 10 09 08

Typeset in 10/12pt Minion by 30

Printed and bound by Rotolito Lombarda, Italy

The publisher’s policy is to use paper manufactured from sustainable forests.

A01.QXD 4/6/08 08:44 Page ix

BRIEF CONTENTS

Guide to boxes and features xvii

Preface: How to use this book xxv
About the authors xxxi
Guided tour to the book and website xxxii
Acknowledgements xxxvi

Part One: Introducing Sociology 1

1 The Sociological Imagination 2
2 Thinking Sociologically, Thinking Globally 26
3 Doing Social Science: An Introduction to Method 50
Interlude 1: Sociological Thinking about Sport 81

Part Two: The Foundations of Society: From Macro to Micro 87

4 Societies 88
5 Culture 126
6 Groups, Organisations and the Rise of the Network Society 160
7 Micro-sociology: the Social Construction of Everyday Life 190
Interlude 2: Introducing a Sociology of Food 222

Part Three: The Unequal World: Social Divisions, Social Inequalities and
Social Exclusion 229
8 Social Divisions and Social Stratification 230
9 Global Inequalities and Poverty 260
10 Class, Poverty and Welfare 298
11 Racism, Ethnicities and Migration 326
12 The Gender Order and Sexualities 364
13 Age Stratification, Children and Later Life 402
14 Disabilities, Care and the Humanitarian Society 432
Interlude 3: Social Divisions and Global Youth 458
A01.QXD 4/6/08 08:44 Page x

x Brief contents

Part Four: Social Structures, Social Practices and Social Institutions 461
15 Economies, Work and Consumption 462
16 Power, Governance and Social Movements 502
17 Control, Crime and Deviance 540
18 Families, Households and Personal Cultures 578
19 Religion and Belief 608
20 Education 638
21 Health, Medicine and Well-being 668
22 Communication and the New Media 708
23 Science, Cyberspace and the Risk Society 740
Interlude 4: Our Life Stories: The Sociology of Biography 767

Part Five: Social Change and the Twenty-First Century 769

24 Populations, Cities and the Space of Things to Come 770
25 Social Change and the Environment 800
26 Living in the Twenty-First Century 836
Interlude 5: Epilogue: Social Sufferings, Utopias and the Problem of Values 857

Part Six: Resources for Critical Thinking 859

Film: 100 or so key films of sociological interest 862
Novels: 100 or so novels of sociological interest 863
Art and Sociology: Paintings and Photos of Sociological Interest 865
Time and Space: Review the Book for History and World Cultures 868
Websites: 100 sites of interest 869
YouTube: 100 YouTube themes 876
Thinkers: 25 key social thinkers 878
Statistics: The Ten Boxes 879
Questions: 25 key debates of our time 879

Glossary 880
Select References 893

Names Index 919

Subject Index 927
A01.QXD 4/6/08 08:44 Page xi

CONTENTS

Guide to boxes and features xvii

3 Doing Social Science: An
Preface: How to use this book xxv
About the authors xxxi Introduction to Method 50
Guided tour to the book and website xxxii
The basics of sociological investigation 52
Acknowledgements xxxvi
What is a sociological ‘truth’? Matters of
epistemology 53
Part One: Introducing Making sense of sociological data 59
Sociology 1 The tools of sociological research 64
Ethical, political and policy questions 71
1 The Sociological Imagination 2 Putting it all together: planning a sociological
What is sociology? 4 project 75
The sociological perspective in everyday Summary 77
life 9 Sociological e-lab 78
Social change and the origins of sociology 12 Interlude 1: Sociological Thinking about
Sociologists look to the future 17 Sport 81
Summary 19
Sociological e-lab 20 Part Two: The Foundations of
Society: From Macro to Micro 87
2 Thinking Sociologically, Thinking
Globally 26 4 Societies 88
Changing patterns of society 90
Starting a short tour of sociological
theory: or how to think about society 28 Explaining modern industrial society: the
classical sociological accounts 101
‘Classical’, traditional perspectives in
sociology 28 Karl Marx: capitalism and conflict 101
Contemporary perspectives in sociology: Max Weber: the rationalisation of society
multiple perspectives, other voices and the disenchantment of the world 106
and the postmodern 35 Emile Durkheim: the bonds that tie us
Thinking globally: a global perspective in together: from mechanical to organic 109
sociology 39 Reviewing the theories 111
Taking stock and looking ahead 44 The contemporary shape of world
Summary 45 societies 114
Sociological e-lab 46 Conclusion: Change and societies 119
Summary 120
Sociological e-lab 121
A01.QXD 4/6/08 08:44 Page xii

xii Contents

5 Culture 126 Sociological e-lab 219

What is culture? 128
The major components of culture 130
Cultural diversity: many ways of life in
one world 138
Muslim cultures 141
A global culture? 146
Understanding culture 148
From culture to cultural studies 150
Looking ahead: culture and human
freedom 153
Summary 154
Sociological e-lab 155
6 Groups, Organisations and the
Rise of the Network Society 160
Social groups 162
Organisations 168
‘Social networks’ and the rise of the
network society 180
Looking ahead: the network society 184
Summary 186
Sociological e-lab 187
7 Micro-sociology: The Social
Construction of Everyday Life 190
The social construction of reality 192
Becoming social: the process of
socialisation 193
Becoming biographies? Two theories of
socialisation 195
The life course and generations 200
Constructing situations: Erving Goffman
and drama 204
Ethnomethodology and conversational
analysis 209
The sociologies of identity, emotion and
the body 210
Conclusion: micro-sociology 217
Summary 217
Interlude 2: Introducing a Sociology of Food
222
Part Three: The Unequal World:
Social Divisions, Social Inequalities
and Social Exclusion 229
8 Social Divisions and Social
Stratification 230
What is social stratification? 232
Closed and open systems of stratification:
slavery, estate, caste and class 234
Some examples of stratification at work:
Japan and Russia 240
The role of ideology: stratification’s
‘staying power’ 243
Explaining social stratification 244
Marxist and neo-Marxist ideas on
stratification and conflict 246
Max Weber: class, status and power 249
Stratification and technology in global
perspective 250
Inequalities, stratification and divisions in the
twenty-first century 253
Summary 256
Sociological e-lab 257
9 Global Inequalities and
Poverty 260
What is global stratification? 262
Global wealth and poverty 266
The globalisation of the ‘super rich’ and the
localisation of the ‘bottom billion’ 272
Who are the global poor? 276
Global inequality: how is it to be
explained? 280
Global inequality: looking ahead 290
Summary 292
Sociological e-lab 293
A01.QXD 4/6/08 08:44 Page xiii
10 Class, Poverty and Welfare
The nature of social class 300
Some dimensions of class and social
inequality in the UK 300
Layers of social class in the UK 305
Social exclusion and the idea of an
underclass 309
Poverty: the lower ends of inequality in
capitalist society 310
The ‘Death of Class’ debate 315
Citizenship and the rise of welfare states
Looking ahead: class in the twenty-first
century 320
Summary 321
Sociological e-lab 322
11 Racism, Ethnicities and
Migration 326
The social significance of race and
ethnicities 329
Prejudice and racism 332
Explaining racism 333
Discrimination 336
Majority and minority: patterns of
interaction 338
Migration, ethnicity and race 341
Ethnicity in the UK 347
Racism and ethnic antagonism in Europe
The future of ethnic relations 358
Summary 359
Sociological e-lab 360
12 The Gender Order and
Sexualities 364
The Gender Order 367
Key terms and basic distinctions: sex and
gender? 367
Patriarchy, gender stratification and sexism 369
Becoming gendered: the case of gender
socialisation 376
Contents xiii
298 Nancy Chodorow and the reproduction of
mothering 377
Understanding gender 381
Resisting patriarchy: the Women’s Movement
and feminism 382
Sexualities 387
Sexuality and stratification 387
Understanding sexualities 389
Key elements of sexual stratification: gay and
lesbian relations 392
Social change and sexuality 395
317
Looking ahead: gender and sexuality in the
twenty-first century 396
Summary 397
Sociological e-lab 399
13 Age Stratification, Children and
Later Life 402
A sociology of children 404
Growing older: age populations in the
twenty-first century 408
The social implications of ageing 413
Researching ageing 421
Looking ahead: ageing in the twenty-first
century 423
Summary 426
Sociological e-lab 428
354
14 Disabilities, Care and the
Humanitarian Society 432
Clarifying disabilities and differences 434
The classical social theories and disability 435
Stigma and outsiders: cultural responses to
disabilities 437
Contemporary disabling responses: legal
responses and social policy 440
The Disability Movement 442
Globalisation: differences and disabilities 445
Humanitarianism, care and the humane
society 447
A01.QXD 4/6/08 08:44 Page xiv
xiv Contents
Looking for the signs of an emerging
compassionate society 448
Looking ahead: disability, difference and
change 453
Summary 454
Sociological e-lab 455
Interlude 3: Social Divisions and Global Youth
458
Part Four: Social Structures,
Social Practices And Social
Institutions 461
15 Economies, Work and
Consumption 462
Changing economies: the great
transformations 464
Economies: differing kinds 468
The changing nature of work 474
Unemployment 486
The world of corporations 488
Consumption in modern economies
Looking ahead 497
Summary 497
Sociological e-lab 499
16 Power, Governance and Social
Movements 502
Types of political system 505
The globalisation of politics 509
Gender and power 511
Political organisation in Europe 512
Explaining power? Theoretical analysis of
power in society 514
Power beyond the rules 517
New politics: The rise of social
movements 525
The globalisation of ‘human rights
regimes’? 528
Summary 534
Sociological e-lab 536
17 Control, Crime and Deviance
540
Some opening definitions 542
The social and global shapes of crime 543
Changes in social control 550
Explaining crime and deviance 559
Looking ahead 573
Summary 573
Sociological e-lab 574
18 Families, Households and
Personal Cultures 578
What are families? 580
Family and history 582
Thinking about families: theories and
ideas 583
Family differences in the UK: class, ethnicity
492 and gender 586
Practices of family life 587
Towards the postmodern family? 590
Looking ahead: families in the twenty-first
century 600
Summary 602
Sociological e-lab 603
19 Religion and Belief 608
What is religion? 610
Understanding religion 611
The nature of religious organisations 613
The social shapes of global religions 616
Religion in Europe 623
Religion in the twenty-first century 626
Taking stock and looking ahead 632
Summary 633
Sociological e-lab 634
A01.QXD 4/6/08 08:44 Page xv

Contents xv

20 Education 638 23 Science, Cyberspace and the

Global education and literacy 640
Schooling around the world 642
Understanding education in the
modern world 644
Social divisions and schooling 646
Education in the twenty-first century:
some current issues 654
Looking ahead 663
Summary 664
Sociological e-lab 665
21 Health, Medicine and
Well-being 668
What is health? 670
Health: a global survey 671
Some social links to illness 675
Healthcare provision and medicine 679
Understanding health and medicine 686
A growing health problem: the overweight
and the underweight 691
HIV/AIDS and sociology 693
Death, dying and sociology 699
Taking stock and looking ahead: health in the
twenty-first century 701
Summary 702
Sociological e-lab 704
22 Communication and the
New Media 708
The media age 710
Communications and social change 712
The twentieth century: harbinger of new
media 716
Media theories 719
Three key questions in media analysis 724
The globalisation of the media 730
Looking ahead: the future of the media 734
Summary 735
Sociological e-lab 736
Risk Society 740
Risk and the three scientific revolutions of the
twentieth century 742
Knowledge and science: traditions of study
743
The quantum revolution: human society and
the cosmos 748
The ‘biotechnology revolution’: social issues
751
The computer revolution and the information
society 757
Looking to the future: technology and the risk
society 761
Summary 763
Sociological e-lab 764
Interlude 4: Our Life Stories: The Sociology of
Biography 767
Part Five: Social Change and the
Twenty-First Century 769
24 Populations, Cities and the
Space of Things to Come 770
The sociology of space 772
Demography and population 772
Key factors shaping the population 773
Population growth 776
Urbanisation: space and the city 781
Understanding cities? 789
Looking ahead: population and urbanisation in
the twenty-first century 794
Summary 795
Sociological e-lab 797
25 Social Change and the
Environment 800
Sociology, natural disasters and the global
environment 802
Sociology and the natural environment 805
A01.QXD 4/6/08 08:44 Page xvi

xvi Contents

The changing global environment 806 In conclusion 852

Growth and its limits 812 Summary 853
The ‘social practices’ of degrading the Sociological e-lab 854
environment 816 Interlude 5: Epilogue: Social Sufferings, Utopias
Constructing the social problem of the and the Problem of Values 857
environment 822
The environmental movement 827 Part Six: Resources for Critical
Taking stock and looking ahead: for a
sustainable world? 828 Thinking 859
Summary 831 Eleven Pathways into Critical Sociological
Sociological e-lab 833 Thinking 860
Film: 100 or so key films of sociological
interest 862
26 Living in the Twenty-First
Novels: 100 or so novels of sociological
Century 836 interest 863
Sociology tells one grand story, and a Art and Sociology: 25 or so paintings and
multitude of smaller ones 838 photos of sociological interest 865
Social change and modernity 840 Time and Space: Review the book for history
and world cultures 868
Causes of social change 841
Websites: 100 or so sites of interest 869
Recalling modernity 843
YouTube: 100 or so YouTube themes 876
The world as it is now: the good news and
the bad news 844 Thinkers: 25 or so key social thinkers 878
The future and change: new kinds of society Statistics: The Ten Boxes 879
in the making? 845 Questions: 25 key debates of our time 879
Globalisation revisited 847
The cyber-information society revisited 848 Glossary 880
Postmodernism revisited 848 Select References 893
The risk society revisited 850
Names Index 919
The shape of societies to come – A New World
Subject Index 927
Order? 851

Supporting resources For instructors

Visit www.pearsoned.co.uk/plummer to find valuable
online resources
Companion Website for students
• Podcasts introducing key topics in the book and global
voices in sociology
• Chapter-by-chapter resources, including interactive
questions, key sociological concepts explored, web and
videography links, and revision flashcards
• The Big Vote, allowing you to give your view on a key
debate or issue and see what other students think
• Complete, downloadable Instructor’s Manual
• PowerPoint lecture slides that can be downloaded and
used as OHTs
Also: The Companion Website provides the following features:
• Search tool to help locate specific items of content
• E-mail results and profile tools to send results of quizzes
to instructors
• Online help and support to assist with website usage and
troubleshooting
For more information please contact your local Pearson
Education sales representative
or visit www.pearsoned.co.uk/plummer
A01.QXD 4/6/08 08:44 Page xvii
GUIDE TO BOXES AND FEATURES
Classical Social Thinkers
C. Wright Mills: The sociological imagination 11
Auguste Comte: Weathering a storm of change 13
The Enlightenment and the Age of Reason 17
Herbert Spencer: The survival of the fittest 30
The foundational three: Marx, Durkheim, Weber 32
Georg Simmel: A sociology of forms 168
George Herbert Mead: The self is born of society 198
The dramatic world of Erving Goffman 205
Norbert Elias: The civilising of bodies and societies 215
W.E.B. Du Bois: Race and conflict 334
Margaret Mead and Samoa 368
Robert Ezra Park: Walking the city streets 790
Contemporary Social Thinkers
On twenty-first century society: Apocalypse Now? 115
Stuart Hall: From culture to cultural studies 151
Manuel Castells: The network society and the Information Age
183
Mary Douglas: Danger, disability and purity 437
Martha Nussbaum: Human capabilities and human rights 442
Ulrich Beck: A brave new world of work in a globalised risk
society 485
Anthony Giddens: The politics of ‘life choice’ and the ‘Third
Way’ 529
Michel Foucault: Power and surveillance 551
Stanley Cohen: From Mods and Rockers to states of denial 558
Paulo Freire: Empowering the poor 642
Pierre Bourdieu: Reproducing class 649
Carol Gilligan: In a different voice 650
Jürgen Habermas: The changing public sphere 734
Donna Haraway: The cyborg society 754
European Eye
What is European society? 112
Disneyland: Old cultures and new cultures in Europe 149
Bureaucracy’s darkest hour: Killing millions of people in the
Nazi genocide 171
The Social Charter: Social policies in the European Union 319
Ethnic divides in the UK: A chronology 350
The Roma and the skinheads 356
The elderly and social policy in Europe 425
Violence beyond the rules: A report from the former
Yugoslavia 519
How to control drugs: case studies from Sweden and The
Netherlands 552
A less central family? A report from Sweden 581
What’s going on in the family in the UK? 591
The politics of curriculum 653
Healthcare in Europe 681
The Eurovision Song Contest: Globalising music, queering
worlds? 724
European environmental policy 829
Speaking Lives
Youth cultural styles 144
Disability, interaction and facial disfigurement 208
What the poor say 279
Living through ethnic cleansing 345
The voices of child soldiers 406
Living over a hundred years: Immigrants in time 423
The Elephant Man 440
The story of an eight-year-old agricultural worker in
Guatemala 476
The Jack-Roller and criminological life stories 569
World religions and patriarchy: Do gods favour men? 614
A self-fulfilling prophecy: From the autobiography of
Malcolm X 645
World obesity 693
Worldwatch
The globalisation of music: hip hop in Japan 43
What is ‘Chinese society’? 93
From ‘race as caste’ to social class: A report from South Africa
238
The troubles in Africa 272
Dealing with world poverty 276
Patriarchy breaking down: A report from Botswana 373
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xviii Guide to boxes and features

Sex trafficking, tourism and the sex trade in Thailand 374 Transplant bodies 698
The killing of the children: Infanticide in India 407 The possibility of space travel 750
The global politics of disabilities 446 Cybersexualities 762
‘Soft authoritarianism’ or planned prosperity? A report from The malling of the world 781
Singapore 506 The new cyberworlds 849
Global governance: The United Nations 530
Marriage patterns 582
The globalisation and glocalisation of Mexican families 509
Public Sociology
Bollywood and the diaspora 717 So what is sociology? 4
Empowering women: The key to controlling population Looking across divides: Sociology and other disciplines 18
growth 780 The meanings of globalisation 41
The global ecosystem: The environmental consequences of Knowing your averages: Three useful (and simple) statistical
everyday choices 811 measures 60
Turning the tide: A report from Egypt 814 So what is public sociology? 73
The world at risk: A dramatically changing environment 816 Issues of ethics in sociology 74
Back to China: Is China the country of the twenty-first Cultural difference, value conflicts? 137
century? 839 Social science and the problem of ‘evil’ 175
Are the rich worth what they earn? 247
Country Fact Files The Bell Curve debate: Are rich people really smarter? 251
Problems with poverty and inequality measurement: What
China 95 does a statistical table mean? 286
South Africa 239 Two approaches to poverty reduction 289
Philippines 261 Debating the Muslim veil 353
Botswana 373 Gender matters and the gender gap 370
Thailand 375 ‘It’s only natural’: Are gender and sexuality really socially
Singapore 507 constructed? 379
India 717 Talking about Alzheimer’s 414
Mexico 771 What are the goals of a penal system? How to deal with
Brazil 811 crime? 549
Egypt 815 The Acheson Report: Social divisions and health in the UK 678
The ‘Science Wars’ 747
Note: These tables are adapted from The World Guide (2007), The language and rhetoric of a social problem: A glossary of
the World Bank (2007) and Human Development Report environmental terms 807
(2006). They are constantly changing and often not wholly Constructing the environment as a social problem 823
accurate, but the files provide a general indication.

Living in the Twenty-First Century
The audit culture 178
The Hi-Tech Harry Potter Generation 203
The unequal world we live in now 271
The parade of class: what a difference a class makes 308
The commercialisation of sex 395
The capitalism of Wal-Mart world 490
The new social movements 527
Human rights Bills and Acts 533
The ever-present gaze: CCTV surveillance in Britain 555
The God delusion or the twilight of atheism? 627
Structuring homosexuality out of education 651
Education as a major issue of our time: More questions than
answers 655
Research In Action
The population census 63
Asking questions of photographs 68
Circuits of culture: Doing cultural studies research 152
The ‘Who am I?’ test 211
Interviews and suffering 234
History in sociology: Examining ethnic cleansing 341
Queer ethnography 394
The degradation and alienation of work in the Western world
473
Ethics in educational fieldwork and life stories 659
How to make sick societies healthier 676
Studying micro-media in the world of Goths 715
Anderson: Fieldwork and sociology 791
Heatwave: Disaster in Chicago 806
A01.QXD 4/6/08 08:44 Page xix
The Big Debate
1 Keeping up with the times: Sociology in the generation of
Wikipedia, Google and YouTube 24
2 The Sociological Puzzle: Do we make social life or does
social life make us? 47
3 Damned Lies and Statistics: So do statistics tell us the
truth? 79
4 Progress: Is society getting better or worse? 123
5 Whose culture? Whose voice? The problem of
Eurocentrism, multiculturalism and postcolonialism in
sociology 157
6 The New Tech World: What is it doing to our personal
lives? 188
7 Identity crisis in our time: Just who am I? 220
8 Living in an unequal world: just how do divisions shape
your life? 258
9 Will the world starve? 295
10 Blaming the poor: who is to blame? 323
11 Dangerous extremists: Islamic fundamentalists or
Islamophobes? 361
12 Gender, sexuality and the politics of pornography 401
13 A sad or a happy old age? What are the social
implications of living longer? 430
14 Bio-ethics and disability rights 456
15 Neo-liberalism and the problem with markets 500
16 Beyond left and right: the politics of difference 537
17 Is crime really decreasing – or increasing? The endless
debate 576
18 The future of the family and the family values debate 604
19 The death of God or the triumph of religion? 636
20 The dumbing down of education: The case of mass
higher education 666
21 Pulling the plug? The ‘right to die’ debate 705
22 Are the media destroying society? 737
23 The Human Genome Project: Do we really
want to look? 765
24 Apocalypse soon? Will people overwhelm the earth? 798
25 What is to be done? Armageddon and the
environment 834
26 Putting it all together: sensing a postmodern future? 855
Art and Sociology
1 Pieter Brueghel the Younger: The Battle between Carnival
and Lent, 1559 2
2 Michael Simpson, World in sky 26
3 Leonardo da Vinci, Vitruvian Man, c. 1492 50
4 A detail from an illustration from the Khamsa of Nizami
by Aqa Mirak, copied in Tabriz, 1543, for Tahmasp I 88
5 Frank McMahon, Mexican musicians at celebration 126
Guide to boxes and features xix
6 Evelyn Williams, Face to Face 160
7 Masked ball by Lincoln Seligman 190
8 Two boys scavenge in view of the world’s largest
cathedral, Notre Dame de la Paix Basilica in
Yamoussoukro, Ivory Coast 230
9 Gerard Sekoto, Yellow houses: a street in Sophiatown,
South Africa 1940 260
10 William Hogarth’s engraving Gin Lane 298
11 Ron Waddams, We the Peoples … 1984 326
12 Salvador Dali (1904–1989) Gala Contemplating the
Mediterranean Sea Which at Eighteen Metres Becomes the
Portrait of Abraham Lincoln, 1976 364
13 Deidre Scherer, Gifts 402
14 Pieter Breughel the Elder, The Cripples 432
15 Ford Maddox Brown, Work, a detail 462
16 Lenin addresses the workers to encourage them to
support him 502
17 Artist’s dark vision of life in prison 540
18 Carl Larsson, My Loved Ones 578
19 Aqa Mirak, The Ascent of the Prophet Mohammed to
Heaven, sixteenth-century Persian manuscript 608
20 Jacob Lawrence, The Libraries are appreciated 638
21 Edward Kienholz, The State Hospital 668
22 Max Ferguson, News Vendor, 1986 708
23 Lynn Randolph, Cyborg, 1989 740
24 Yann Arthus-Bertrund, Aerial view of a market in St Paul,
Reunion 770
25 Terrified children flee down Route 1 near Trang Ban,
South Vietnam, in June 1972 800
26 R. B. Kitaj, If Not, Not (detail) 836
27 Beryl Cook, Tango 860
TOP 10
Most popular sports in the UK 81
Richest football clubs 84
Most spoken languages 132
Leading food companies 223
Leading global food retailers 223
Richest individuals in the UK 272
Poorest countries 273
Largest populations with HIV/AIDS 274
Highest and lowest gender gap indices, 2006 371
Fundraising charities in the UK 451
Largest transnational corporations 489
Largest prison populations 554
Universities, 2005 656
Pharmaceutical companies 2006, by revenue 690
All-time worldwide box office hits 716
Countries with highest ownership of computers 758
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xx Guide to boxes and features

Most populous countries 773 Figure 5.1 Living languages by location 131
Largest cities 785 Figure 5.2 Where the words won’t be heard 131
Fastest growing cities 786 Figure 5.3 The world’s leading primary languages (in
Largest energy consumers 809 millions) 132
Highest and lowest environmental performance indices, 2007 Figure 5.4 Recorded immigration to the United States, by
823 region of birth, 1891–1900 and 1991–2000 138
Facts about China 840 Figure 5.5 The circuit of culture 152
Figure 6.1 Cards used in Asch’s experiment in group
conformity 164
Maps Figure 6.2 Group size and relationships 166
Map 4.1 Main nomadic groups by region 92 Figure 6.3 A basic social network 180
Map 4.2 The five Chinas 93 Figure 6.4 A more complex social network 181
Map 4.3 Greater Europe: the new enlarged European Union Figure 6.5 Internet usage by world region 185
in 2007 114 Figure 7.1 Building on social experience 199
Map 4.4 The world according to (a) The World Bank; (b) Figure 7.2 The seasons of life 201
UNDP; (c) UNICEF 118 Figure 7.3 The social body: from classical bodies to
Map 5.1 World values: Cultural map of the world 136 postmodern bodies 213
Map 5.2 Contemporary Muslim areas of the world 142 Figure 8.1 Economic inequality in selected countries,
Map 9.1 Median age at death in global perspective 270 1993–2001 242
Map 9.2 Major refugee populations worldwide, 1999 278 Figure 8.2 Social stratification and technological
Map 9.3 Africa’s colonial history 285 development: the Kuznets curve 253
Map 11.1 Post-1945 Yugoslavia: republics, autonomous Figure 9.1 Distribution of world income 262
provinces, historic regions and cities 328 Figure 9.2 Regional distribution of people living on less
Map 11.2 The 1995 Dayton Agreement for Bosnia and than $1 a day (PPP) 265
Herzegovina 328 Figure 9.3 Global disparities in HDI 268
Map 11.3 Ethnic map of Eastern Europe, 1996 355 Figure 9.4 Relative share of income and population by level
Map 12.1 Women’s paid employment in global perspective of economic development 268
372 Figure 10.1 Percentage of people with incomes below 60 per
Map 12.2 World homosexuality laws 393 cent of the median: EU comparison, 2000 302
Map 16.1 Map of freedom, 2006 508 Figure 10.2 What the top 200 were worth over the years 303
Map 16.2 Women and the vote 511 Figure 10.3 The shapes of class 305
Map 16.3 ‘Trouble spots’: some world conflicts in focus 522 Figure 10.4 Poverty rate and relative income of people aged
Map 16.4 Life after Communism 532 65 and over: EU comparison, 1998 314
Map 17.1 The death penalty in global perspective 557 Figure 10.5 Assessing the causes of poverty 324
Map 19.1 Religion in global perspective 616 Figure 11.1 Prejudice and discrimination: the vicious cycle
Map 21.1 World health expenditure per person 674 338
Map 21.2 World health life expectancy 674 Figure 11.2 Minority populations in 13 countries in Europe
Map 21.3 A global view of HIV infection 694 343
Figure 11.3 The Rainbow Coalition, US Census 2000:
Figures percentages of population by race and Latino
categories 348
Society in history: timeline iv Figure 12.1 Use of contraception by married women of
Figure 2.1 A simplified map of sociological theory 29 childbearing age 383
Figure 3.1 Correlation and cause: an example 62 Figure 12.2 Rubin’s sex hierarchy: the struggle over where to
Figure 3.2 Deductive and inductive logical thought 75 draw the line 387
Figure 4.1 The increasing number of technological Figure 13.1 Proportion of children living in households
innovations 98 in poverty 404
Figure 4.2 Karl Marx’s model of society 102 Figure 13.2 The greying of society: two centuries of world
Figure 4.3 Marx’s conflict model of social change 104 population ageing 411
Figure 4.4 The Protestant Ethic and the spirit of capitalism Figure 15.1 The size of economic sectors by income level
107 of country 467
A01.QXD 4/6/08 08:44 Page xxi
Figure 15.2 Global manufacturing: the component network
for the European model of the Ford Escort 469
Figure 15.3 Economic activity and inactivity in the UK by
sex and age, 2006 476
Figure 15.4 Labour costs per standard minute in the clothing
industry 481
Figure 15.5 Average hourly wages for workers in
manufacturing, 2002 482
Figure 15.6 World unemployment rates, 2004 487
Figure 15.7 Breakdown of household consumption
expenditure, EU-25, 2004 493
Figure 15.8 The world’s top ten tourist destinations 494
Figure 16.1 Government spending: percentage of GDP spent
by national governments 510
Figure 16.2 The new European Parliament, 2004 513
Figure 16.3 Four types of social movement 525
Figure 16.4 Stages in the life of social movements 526
Figure 17.1 Proportion of boys and girls who have been
drunk at the age of 13 or younger, 1999 541
Figure 17.2 A falling crime rate? 544
Figure 17.3 Homicide: long-term national recorded crime
trend 545
Figure 17.4 Flows through the criminal justice system 546
Figure 17.5 Ratio of male to female offenders found guilty
or cautioned for selected offence groupings in
the UK 547
Figure 17.6 The ‘square of crime’ has become the organising
framework for those theorists who call
themselves the Left Realists 570
Figure 18.1 Marriage and divorce rates: EU comparison,
2002 593
Figure 18.2 Marriages and divorces, United Kingdom
1950–2005 593
Figure 18.3 Lone-parent families by marital status in the UK,
1971–1998 596
Figure 18.4 The shift in household structure, Great Britain,
1972–2006 596
Figure 18.5 Ethnic group and lone-parent households, Great
Britain, 1991 and 2001 596
Figure 19.1 Major religions of the world ranked by
percentage and number of adherents 617
Figure 19.2 World religions, a humorous view 622
Figure 20.1 Computer usage of 15-year-old students, 2003
641
Figure 20.2 Growth in the number of tertiary students
worldwide since 1991 657
Figure 20.3 Growth in the number of mobile students
worldwide since 1975 657
Figure 20.4 Number of young people graduating from
tertiary education across the world, 2004 658
Guide to boxes and features xxi
Figure 20.5 Permanent exclusion rates in England by ethnic
group, 2004/05 662
Figure 20.6 Percentage of 18-year-olds in education,
selected countries, 2004 667
Figure 21.1 Number of deaths by cause and region:
estimates for 2002 (thousands) 671
Figure 21.2 Leading causes of mortality, by age, 2002 672
Figure 21.3 Anticipated shift in global burden of disease
1990–2020, by disease group in developing
countries 672
Figure 21.4 The main determinants of health 679
Figure 21.5 Land of the fry 692
Figure 21.6 Obesity among adults, by gender and
occupation 693
Figure 21.7 25 years of AIDS 696
Figure 22.1 UK households with selected information and
communication technology 710
Figure 22.2 A model of media analysis: three questions 725
Figure 22.3 A model of media specialisation 729
Figure 22.4 Size and fragmentation of audiences 729
Figure 22.5 The wonderful world of Disney’s media empire
732
Figure 22.6 Cinema attendance by age, Great Britain 733
Figure 24.1 World population growth, 1750–2050 773
Figure 24.2 World fertility rates, births per woman, 1980
and 1999 774
Figure 24.3 Percentage of world population by region in
2000 and projected to 2100 776
Figure 24.4 World population pyramids 777
Figure 24.5 Demographic transition theory 778
Figure 24.6 The urbanisation of the world 789
Figure 25.1 Rising tide of major disasters, by decade 802
Figure 25.2 Global deaths by disaster type, 1985–99 803
Figure 25.3 Biggest insurance losses 2003, $bn 803
Figure 25.4 Worst human costs – number of victims dead
and missing 2003 (thousands) 803
Figure 25.5 Meeting Kyoto targets 808
Figure 25.6 The limits to growth: projections 813
Figure 25.7 Rating the local environment: a global survey 816
Figure 25.8 Waste in the UK 818
Tables
Table 1.1 Suicide rates around the world per 100,000
population by country and gender (as of May
2003) 9
Table 2.1 Three traditional perspectives: a summary 35
Table 3.1 A bridgeable divide? Humanistic and positivist
research contrasted 57
Table 3.2 A continuum of interview forms 65
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xxii Guide to boxes and features

Table 3.3 Four classic research methods: a summary 67 Table 13.1 Countries with the oldest population at the turn
Table 4.1 Kinds of society: a summary 100 of the twenty-first century 408
Table 4.2 Some landmarks in the making of the European Table 13.2 Numbers of older people in developed and
Union 113 developing regions 409
Table 4.3 The classic theorists briefly contrasted 114 Table 13.3 The over 75s: men and women in the United
Table 5.1 The quick history of world societies: only seconds Kingdom 410
before midnight in Sagan’s schema 129 Table 13.4 Population change in the UK: by sex and age,
Table 5.2 Who speaks what? Where do languages come 1821 and 2005 410
from and where do they go to? The distribution of Table 13.5 Population: by age, EU comparison, 2005 411
languages by area of origin 133 Table 13.6 Issues and implications for the worlds of older
Table 5.3 Muslim population in different countries 141 people: a summary 412
Table 6.1 Primary groups and secondary groups: a summary Table 13.7 Self-reported illness: by sex and age, 2005 413
163 Table 13.8 Growing older: the good and not-so-good news
Table 6.2 Small groups, formal organisations and networks: 420
a comparison 170 Table 14.1 Definitions and pure/ideal models of disability
Table 6.3 World Internet usage and population statistics 434
184 Table 14.2 Types of ‘disablement’/’impairment’ 434
Table 7.1 The median ‘I’ and ‘ME’ 199 Table 14.3 A sample of disabilities in the UK 435
Table 7.2 Mapping a life: life cohorts and life stages 202 Table 14.4 Total public expenditure on services in the UK,
Table 7.3 The shifting nature of identities 213 2006/2007 (estimated), selected rubrics 449
Table 8.1 Two explanations of social stratification: a Table 14.5 Modes of care provision: a basic schema 449
summary 247 Table 14.6 Global Human Rights Conventions 452
Table 8.2 A matrix of inequalities 254 Table 15.1 A comparison of ideal types of production system:
Table 9.1 Changes in the share and number of people living from Fordist to post-Fordist 466
on very low income 263 Table 15.2 Employment rates for selected population groups
Table 9.2 Human Development Index 267 in Europe 475
Table 9.3 The orphans of AIDS in Africa 274 Table 15.3 Highest- and lowest-paid occupations, and
Table 9.4 Modernisation theory and dependency theory: a average gross weekly pay (£) for Great Britain,
summary 291 April 2003 478
Table 10.1 Median weekly earnings: by sex, occupation and Table 15.4 Economic activity by gender and employment
age, April 2006 301 status in the UK, 1988 and 2003 480
Table 10.2 Distribution of marketable wealth 302 Table 15.5 Unemployment rates in Europe, 2005(%) 487
Table 10.3 The twentieth-century Registrar General scale Table 15.6 Crouch’s characteristics of capitalist economies –
categories 304 from pure to modified 489
Table 10.4 Eight-, five- and three-class versions of the Table 16.1 The extent of global freedom: 30-year global
NS-SEC scale, and their nested relationship 304 trend, 1973–2003 509
Table 10.5 The possible shapes of class 306 Table 16.2 Participation in EU elections (per cent). Voter
Table 10.6 Mack and Lansley’s ‘lack of necessities’ as a turnout in 1979 and 2004 in the EU-15 and
poverty measure 312 EU-25 514
Table 11.1 ‘Asians in Britain’: contrasting groups 331 Table 16.3 Three models of contemporary politics and
society 516
Table 11.2 Racial and ethnic categories in the United States,
2000 347 Table 16.4 The evolution of ‘old wars’ 521
Table 11.3 UK population, by ethnic group and age, 2001 Table 17.1 A timeline of criminology 543
348 Table 17.2 Offenders found guilty of or cautioned for
Table 12.1 Traditional notions of a polarised gender identity indictable offences: by gender and type of offence,
369 England and Wales 2005 544
Table 12.2 Questions for Weinberg’s standard homophobia Table 17.3 Merton’s theory of anomie and its adaptations
scale 389 563
Table 12.3 Timeline: A few landmarks in the homosexual’s Table 18.1 People in households: by type of household and
progress 393 family, 1971–2006 591
A01.QXD 4/6/08 08:44 Page xxiii

Guide to boxes and features xxiii

Table 19.1 UK population by religious identification 625 Table 23.2 A map of misreading: how scientists ‘socially
Table 19.2 Belonging to a religion, 2005 625 construct’ science studies 748
Table 20.1 Literacy rates across the world, 2000 640 Table 23.3 Timeline of space exploration 750
Table 20.2 Education and qualifications in the UK, 2002 646 Table 23.4 The ‘new reproduction’: chronology of key events
Table 20.3 GCSE attainment: by parents’ socio-economic in the UK 755
classification, 2002 647 Table 24.1 World population, 2005–2050 772
Table 21.1 Samples of the transformation of health and Table 24.2 Crude birth and death rates, and annual rates of
disease 685 natural population change, for selected countries
Table 21.2 The world’s major pharmaceutical companies, 775
2004 690 Table 24.3 Percentage of population residing in urban areas,
Table 21.3 Percentage of obese people in the world 692 1950–2030 788
Table 21.4 Regional HIV and AIDS statistics, 2001 and 2007 Table 24.4 How the global population is increasing 798
695 Table 25.1 A brief history of environment degradation 810
Table 22.1 New Communications in a global media age Table 25.2 The dangers of cars: what they release into the
711 environment 820
Table 22.2 Stages in the development of human Table 25.3 Modern timeline: the environment 824
communication 712 Table 25.4 Models of technocentric and ecocentric solutions
Table 22.3 Some modern landmarks in media history 713 to environmental problems 830
Table 22.4 Ownership of press media in the UK 720 Table 26.1 Traditional and modern societies: the big picture
Table 22.5 National newspaper circulation 721 838
Table 22.6 Television programmes and genre 725 Table 26.2 The state of the future index 845
Table 22.7 European cable and satellite reception equipment, Table 26.3 Globalisation as homogenisation or
1994 731 diversification? 848
Table 23.1 Landmarks of science 743 Table 26.4 Some antagonisms of the New World Order
851
A01.QXD 4/6/08 08:44 Page xxiv
A01.QXD 4/6/08 08:44 Page xxv
PREFACE: HOW TO USE THIS BOOK
Welcome to the fourth edition
The book Sociology: A Global Introduction has fast
become one of the more prominent sociology texts in
many countries. This fourth edition consolidates some
of its past achievements, but also makes clearer its
humanistic perspective on global concerns in a rapidly
changing high-tech twenty-first century. Its key goals are:
 to introduce all the main areas of study, the key
concepts, the historical debates and basic approaches
to the discipline of sociology. It assumes you know
nothing about sociology; and thus it is not an
advanced text. It is only an introduction, but a
challenging one we hope. It sets its goals as opening
up the field of enquiry for the very first time; and to
stimulate you to want to take it all further. And if
you do want to go further, there are suggestions at
the end of each chapter for doing this (Sociological
e-lab), guidance at the end of the book (Part Six) as
well as a website which has been designed to give
you further links, readings, questions and food for
thought. Indeed you could see this book as a key
resource to link you up to many topics on your own
personal website studies.
 to tell a story about the parallel rise of sociology and
the modern world and how it is persistently shaped
by both technologies and inequalities. This is not
meant to be a text which just summarises vast
streams of sociological studies. It does not aim to tell
you everything that has ever been written on
sociology (an impossible task). It aims, rather, to tell
a story about how the contemporary world
developed from more traditional ones, and how now
in the twenty-first century it may well be moving
into yet another new – possibly post-modern –
phase. The term to be used to discuss this change is
one that sociologists constantly discuss. The book
provides some suggestions on evaluating whether
the modern world is progressing or not.
 to recognise that sociology these days must be
global. Many textbooks focus upon one country.
Whilst this textbook does often focus on UK and
Europe – its main readership – it also takes its orbit
to be the world. It is impossible to understand one
country in isolation from others. Indeed, a recurrent
theme through this book is that the (post) modern
world is becoming progressively globalised. One
society cannot be understood in isolation.
 to be wide-ranging and hence to introduce analyses
of a number of newer topics that are not always
included in introductory sociology textbooks. We
have selected some issues that are becoming
increasingly critical in the twenty-first century.
These include the role of globalisation (Chapter 2);
the new areas of body, emotions and identity
(Chapter 7); the importance of age, children and the
growing number of the elderly (Chapter 13); the
significance of disability in the modern world
(Chapter 14); the emergence of a humanitarian
society (Chapter 14); the importance of human
rights regimes (Chapter 16); the rising (global)
power of the mass media (Chapter 22); the
significance of many countries outside the West that
are facing poverty (Chapter 9); the importance of
science, cyberspace and the new reproductive
technologies (Chapter 23); the global significance of
environmental hazards (Chapter 25); the
sociological significance of AIDS (Chapter 21); and
debates around post-modernity and the new kind of
society that may be appearing in the twenty-first
century (Chapters 2 and 26 in particular).
 to suggest that all the social sciences should work
together and that they are inevitably bound up with
political and ethical thought. Social science –
despites its pretensions – cannot be value free. The
position of this book is quite clear: it is a firm belief
in the equal value of all human lives, to reduce
human suffering across each generation, and to
provide tools to help make the world a better place
to live in. You do not have to agree with this, but
you must debate the ethical and political
foundations of sociology.
 to present all of this in a distinctly fresh and ‘user
friendly’ way. We hope the book looks good with its
A01.QXD 4/6/08 08:44 Page xxvi
xxvi Preface: How to use this book
crisp style, clean design and full colour. Although we
have tried to present it in a highly readable way, there
is still a lot of material to digest, even in a book as
introductory as this. It is worth spending a little bit of
time looking at the book as a whole – its chapter
organisation, why the Interludes have been written,
what the new Part Six may be used for. There is a
definite point to the structure of the book, a logic
that should become apparent if you take time to
grasp it. But in addition there are a number of tools
that have been provided to help study. We hope the
book is written in a lively style. Some sections will be
easier to read than others. Skip around and enjoy
what you find. We have tried to illustrate arguments
with visuals, maps, debating boxes and charts which
should stimulate discussions. Films and DVD – and
sometimes novels – are suggested to take you further
in your thinking. We encourage you to use Wikipedia,
the YouTube and to blog away! But always – as we
suggest throughout the book – work to develop your
critical skills in all this: some material on the Internet
is garbage and you need to spot it.
The first set of podcasts – Studying Sociology – are
designed to help you do this. These are 10 minute
recordings which guide you through the book overall
and through each Part. They aim to show you how to
use the book as a whole. It is worth spending a little
time listening to these. An hour of your time to break
up some iPod listening! (Go to www.pearsoned.co.uk
/plummer).
Above all, sociology is about lively and critical
thinking about society. It is not in our view the learning
of facts, theories or names of sociologists. It is driven
by a passion to understand just what is going on in the
modern world and to make it a better place for all.
Some features of the text and how
to use it
Sociology: A Global Introduction not only aims to
provide a highly readable text, it also provides a
number of special features that will help you to study.
We hope that this is a ‘user friendly’ book pitched at an
introductory level for those who have never studied
sociology before. Amongst the tools in the book that
you should note and work with are the following:
1 The boxes. These are aimed at focusing you on
specific issues. We believe, and hope you do too,
that they provide handy tools for thinking and
analysing. They come in six forms each identified
by an icon.
European Eye boxes highlight issues in Europe and
the European Union.
Speaking Lives boxes focus on multicultural issues
and amplify the voices of people who are outside
the mainstream of sociological analysis – such as
women, gays and ethnic groups.
Thinkers boxes which highlight both Classical and
Contemporary Social Thinkers who have shaped or
are shaping the discipline of sociology, and provide
a capsule guide to some of their ideas.
Worldwatch boxes focus on issues over a range of
different countries and provide Fact Files detailing
these countries.
Research In Action boxes which show sociological
research actually being conducted.
Some miscellaneous boxes focus on a range of other
issues that are of importance within sociology.
2 The Interludes. Each section of the book ends with
a short interlude. This is designed to provide a
topical issue through which you can now review the
issues raised in each section. We hope it will be a
good way to review the features of each section and
think about what the section has tried to achieve.
The topics raised in the Interludes are sport (Part
One), food (Part Two), youth cultures (Part Three),
autobiography and lives (Part Four).
3 Global and national maps. These are aimed at
helping you locate many of the issues discussed in
the text through graphic illustration. They come in
three forms:
 The Social Shapes of the World global maps are
sociological maps offering a comparative look at a
range of sociological issues such as favoured
languages and religions, permitted marriage forms,
the degree of political freedom, the extent of the
world’s rain forests, and a host of other issues.
 National maps focus on social diversity within a
country or a group of countries.
 The World at a Glance at the back of the book
suggests very quickly some of the major regional
divides in the world and can be used as a handy
reference as you are studying the book.
4 The Time Line. This three-part time line found at
the front of the book (page iv)locates every era and
important development mentioned in the text, and
tracks the emergence of crucial trends.
5 Glossary and Key Concepts. A listing of key
concepts with their definitions appears on the
book’s website, and a complete Glossary is to be
found at the end of the book.
A01.QXD 4/6/08 08:44 Page xxvii
6 A numbered Summary of each chapter is given at
the end of chapters and on the book’s website.
7 Each chapter ends with the e-lab. This is a short list
of resources for going further. This aims to provide:
 a few key websites
 some probing questions
 a short introductory reading list
 a few videos or films of relevance
 links to other chapters
 and a novel or two that may be of interest
Again, you can take these further on the book’s website.
8 The Big Debate section at the end of each chapter
presents different points of view on an issue of
contemporary importance.
9 A new Part Six aims to be a handy standby
resource centre for you to use in your own
researches. Here you will find:
 A list of suggestions for using the YouTube.
 A guide to the key ‘sociological’ artwork found in
the book with questions to think about.
 Lists of novels and films that may connect to
sociology and be of interest.
 A list of best websites (also see ‘Search the Web’
at the end of Chapter 1, pages 21–23).
 A glossary of key words used throughout the
book.
 A consolidated/select end of book bibliography.
 Basic data lists: time lines, maps, statistics and
key theorists.
10 In addition the book provides:
 Images A key opening image to each chapter as
well as numerous photographs throughout.
 Vignettes that begin each chapter. These
openings, we hope, will spark the interest of the
reader as they introduce important themes.
 Recognition of differences Readers will
encounter the diversity of societies. Although
there is an emphasis on Europe and the USA in
the book – the dominant Western cultures –
there is also a concern with global issues and
people from other cultures. There is also an
inclusive focus on women and men. Beyond
devoting a full chapter to the important concepts
of sex and gender, the book mainstreams gender
into most chapters, showing how the topic at
hand affects women and men differently, and
explaining how gender operates as a basic
dimension of social organisation.
Preface: How to use this book xxvii
 Theoretically clear and balanced presentation
The discipline’s major theoretical approaches are
introduced in Chapter 2. They are then
systematically treated on the book’s website and
often reappear in later chapters. The text
highlights not only the conflict, functional and
action paradigms, but incorporates social-
exchange analysis, ethnomethodology, cultural
theory, sociobiology and developments in the
newer postmodern theories where different
voices can be heard.
 A debate on value issues which leads you into
the value base line of this book which can be
loosely defined as a critical humanism.
 Key Theorists Students are also provided with
easy-to-understand brief introductions to
important social theorists. They are divided into
two kinds of boxes: those which look at early or
‘classical’ thinkers; and those which look at
recent or ‘contemporary’ ones. The foundational
ideas of Max Weber, Karl Marx and Emile
Durkheim appear in distinct sections.
 Emphasis on critical thinking Critical-thinking
skills include the ability to challenge common
assumptions by formulating questions,
identifying and weighing appropriate evidence,
and reaching reasoned conclusions. This text not
only teaches but encourages students to discover
on their own recent sociological research. Part
Six provides a major resource for doing this.
Sociology in a fast and hi-tech
world
Computers and the new information technology are
now playing a major role in sociology. The most
common ways in which you use these in your daily
studies are:
 Word processing (when you prepare your essays and
projects).
 Linking to websites. The World Wide Web is a system
that helps you gain systematic access to all the
information housed in the vast worldwide computer
network known as the Internet. It connects you to
libraries, businesses, research centres, voluntary
organisations, etc., all over the world.
 Research (when you need statistical techniques such
as those discussed in Chapter 2).
 Searching various databases (the most common of
which is probably your university library, when you
retrieve information on books).
A01.QXD 4/6/08 08:44 Page xxviii
xxviii Preface: How to use this book
 Using e-mail and blogs to talk to both lecturers and
fellow students. Often this can link students and
others with similar interests (such as wanting to find
out more about postmodern culture, feminism or
Marx), who can then communicate readily with
each other.
 Simulated gaming. A number of games help you
create alternative realities and other societies.
A word of warning
There is a huge amount of sociological data on the
Web, and although it can be very easy to access, it can
also bring problems. Throughout this book, we will
suggest useful websites, but we do so with some anxiety
for the following reasons:
 Websites keep changing. There is no guarantee that
a site will not be closed or its name changed. Even
while preparing this book, we found a number had
‘vanished’ and others that had opened for just a
few weeks.
 The quality of websites is very variable: we have
checked most of the sites listed in this book and they
were ‘good’ at that time. But they change, and
sometimes they can be the home page of one ‘crank’
who is really only listing his or her own private
interests. So use websites carefully and critically.
 The usage of websites at key times can be very
intensive. So a cardinal rule is to be patient!
 And, finally, note that accuracy matters. Do not
change addresses from lower-case to capitals, or
miss out slashes and points. The website address
must be precise.
 Look out for discussions throughout this book of the
pitfalls and problems in using these technologies.
Organisation of this text
Part One introduces the foundations of sociology.
Underlying the discipline is the sociological
perspective, the focus of Chapter 1, which explains how
this invigorating point of view brings the world to life
in a new and instructive way. Chapter 2 spotlights some
of the key sociological perspectives and suggests the
importance of globalisation as an idea. Chapter 3 looks
at some of the issues involved in the practice of
sociology, and explains how to use the logic of science
to study human society. It also provides a guide to
planning research.
Part Two targets the foundations of social life. It
may be useful to see this section as layered: society,
culture, groups, interactions and biographies constitute
the matrix of the social worlds we live in. Chapter 4
looks at the concept of society, presenting three
time-honoured models of social organisation
developed by Emile Durkheim, Karl Marx and Max
Weber. It also looks at societies of the past and societies
of the present. Chapter 5 focuses on the central concept
of culture, emphasising the cultural diversity that
makes up our society and our world. Chapter 6 offers
coverage of groups and organisations, two additional
and vital elements of social structure. Chapter 7
provides a micro-level look at the patterns of social
interaction and biographical work that make up our
everyday lives.
Part Three looks at the Unequal World we live in. It
offers a wide discussion of social inequality, beginning
with three chapters devoted to social stratification.
Chapter 8 introduces major concepts and presents
theoretical explanations of social inequality. This
chapter is rich with illustrations of how stratification
has changed historically, and how it varies around the
world today. Chapter 9 extends the analysis with a look
at global stratification, revealing the extent of
differences in wealth and power between rich and poor
societies. Chapter 10 surveys social inequality in a
number of Western countries, but mainly the UK,
exploring our perceptions of inequality and assessing
how well they square with research findings. Race and
ethnicity, additional important dimensions of social
inequality in both Europe and the rest of the world, are
detailed in Chapter 11. The focus of Chapter 12, gender
and sexuality, explains how societies transform the
distinction of biological sex into systems of gender
stratification, and looks at the ways sexuality is
produced. Childhood and the ageing process are
addressed in Chapter 13. And in Chapter 14, we
introduce a major new topic: disabilities and the ways
in which equalities evolve around them. We also use it
as an opportunity to discuss issues around care and the
evolution of a more civilized humanitarian society.
Part Four includes a full chapter on major social
institutions and the practices that accompany them.
Chapter 15 leads off investigating the economy,
consumption and work, because most sociologists
recognise the economy as having the greatest impact on
all other institutions. This chapter highlights the
processes of industrialisation and postindustrialisation,
explains the emergence of a global economy, and
A01.QXD 4/6/08 08:44 Page xxix
suggests what such transformations mean. Chapter 16
investigates the roots of social power and looks at the
modern development of social movements. In
addition, this chapter includes discussion of the threat
of war, and the search for peace. Chapter 17 looks at
the control process, as well as some of the theories that
explain why crime and deviance appear in societies.
Chapter 18, on families, examines the many changes
taking place around our personal ways of living
together in the modern world, looking at some of the
diversity of family life. Chapter 19, on religion,
addresses the human search for ultimate meaning,
surveys world religions, and explains how religious
beliefs are linked to other dimensions of social life.
Chapter 20, on education, traces the expansion of
schooling in industrial societies. Here again,
educational patterns in the United Kingdom are
brought to life through contrasts with those of many
other societies. Chapter 21, on health and medicine,
shows how health is a social issue just as much as it is a
matter of biological processes, and compares UK
patterns to those found in other countries. It also
considers a major subject: HIV/AIDS. Chapter 22, on
mass media, looks at forms of communications in
societies, focusing especially on the rise of the modern
global media. Lastly, in Chapter 23, we look at the
institution of ‘science’ and consider some of its most
recent manifestations, including the Human Genome
Project, the New Reproductive Technologies and the
importance of computing and the World Wide Web.
Part Five examines important dimensions of global
social change. Chapter 24 focuses on the powerful
impact of population growth and urbanisation in
Europe and throughout the world. Chapter 25 presents
issues of contemporary concern by highlighting the
interplay of society and the natural environment.
Chapter 26 concludes the text with an overview of
social change that highlights traditional, modern and
postmodern societies. This chapter rounds out the text
by explaining how and why world societies change, and
by critically analysing the benefits and liabilities of
traditional, modern and postmodern ways of life.
Preface: How to use this book xxix
Part Six provides a new, major resource for the
critical student. Closely linked to the book’s website, it
provides 11 key resources which enable students to
actively pursue ideas about society on their own. Not
only does it provide the usual list of key words
(Glossary) and reading lists (References), it also
provides a major website listing. For the first time, a
new key resource is suggested in the YouTube and a list
of suggested searches are provided. In addition, the
significance of the humanities for studying social life is
indicated through guides for reading novels, watching
films, and looking at art.
A note on authorship
This book is a radical re-writing of the highly successful
North American textbook Sociology by John J. Macionis,
which is now in its 12th edition (Macionis, 2008).
In 1996, the UK sociologist, Ken Plummer, was
commissioned to write an adaptation of this original
text in order to make it more suitable for a European
audience. Since that time it has grown and changed into
a distinctively different book under the revisions
progressively carried out by the adapting author
working alone. Apart from nine completely new
chapters, five ‘Interludes’, a new Part (Part Six) and
substantial changes throughout the text, it also marks a
major shift towards both a global and humanistic
perspective as its foundation. John J. Macionis has not
been involved with how this book has subsequently
evolved, but a debt should be acknowledged to the
original organisation of the American text, along with
the original content, some of which endures in this
latest European edition. This European edition of
Sociology: A global introduction, 4th edition, is available
worldwide, but not in the USA. Since sociology is a
changing and conflictual discipline, neither author
necessarily agrees with everything the other has written.
But there is strong agreement that sociology is a lively
and challenging discipline that should be presented in a
lively and challenging way. We hope that this book
succeeds in this aim.
A01.QXD 4/6/08 08:44 Page xxx
A01.QXD 7/7/09 9:56 AM Page xxxi
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Ken Plummer
is Emeritus Professor of Sociology at the University of
Essex, and has been actively involved in teaching
introductory sociology for the past thirty years. He has
been a Senior Lecturer at Middlesex University, and a
visiting Professor at the University of California (Santa
Barbara) and the University of New York (Stony
Brook), as well as giving lectures in many countries
around the world.
Apart from a passion for introductory teaching, his
major research interests lie in the fields of sexuality,
stigma, humanism, story telling, methodology and
symbolic interactionist theory. He is the author of
Sexual Stigma (1975), Telling Sexual Stories (1995),
Documents of Life-2 (2001) and Intimate Citizenship
(2003) as well as the editor of The Making of the Modern
Homosexual (1981), Symbolic Interactionism (1991, 2
vols), Modern Homosexualities (1992), The Chicago
School (1997, 4 vols) and Sexualities: Critical Assessments
(2001, 4 vols). He is also the founder (and continuing)
editor of the journal Sexualities.
After the last edition of Sociology: A global
introduction (3rd edition, 2005) he became seriously ill
and underwent life-saving transplant surgery. He is truly
grateful to all those involved in saving his life, and was
delighted to make the new revisions for this text, his first
major task after recovery! Still crazy after all these years,
he believes that sociology at its best has a lot to
contribute to the modern world, but that it needs to
become more accessible and less pretentious and
pompous. He hopes this textbook will help towards this.
John J. Macionis
is Professor of Sociology at Kenyon College in
Gambier, Ohio, having graduated from Cornell
University and the University of Pennsylvania. At
Kenyon, he has chaired the Anthropology–Sociology
Department, directed the multidisciplinary programme
in Humane Studies and presided over the College’s
Faculty. He has also been active in academic
programmes in many other countries.
His publications are wide-ranging, focusing on
community life in the US, interpersonal intimacy
in families, effective teaching, humour and the
importance of global education. He is co-editor of
Seeing Ourselves: Classic, Contemporary and
Cross-Cultural Readings in Sociology, co-author of Cities
and Urban Life and author of the concise introductory
text, Society: The Basics.
Professor Macionis considers himself ‘first and
foremost … a teacher’ who wishes to share his expertise
and experience with students both in person and
through his textbooks.
A01.QXD 4/6/08 08:44 Page xxxii

GUIDED TOUR
The sociologies of identity, emotion and the body 215

10% of the US population are estimated to be and the need then is to find some socially organised

Going further
cyborgs in the technical sense, including people
with electronic pacemakers, artificial joints, drug
implant systems, implanted corneal lenses and
artificial skin. A much higher percentage
participate in occupations that make them into
metaphoric cyborgs, including the computer
keyboard joined in cybernetic system with the
screen, the neurosurgeon guided by fibre optic
microscopy during an operation, and the teen
game player in the local video arcade.
(Hayles, 1995: 321)
Health and illness
The sociology of health and illness – discussed more
Classical and Contemporary fully in Chapter 21 – may also be seen as looking at the
way in which the body breaks down and needs to be
way of dealing with dead bodies.
Sarah Nettleton has suggested a number of reasons
for the growing sociological interest in the body. First
has been the recent attempts by women to gain control
over their bodies from male-dominated professionals
(evidenced in the Boston Women’s Health Book
Collective, Our Bodies, Ourselves (1978; orig. 1971)).
Second has been the growth of the new reproductive
technologies (described in Chapter 18), which are ‘Social networks’ and the rise of the network society 183
shifting the meaning of foetus, birth and body. Third,
the ‘greying of the population’ (highlighted in Chapter
calls are emerging. Just as you have access to all on the life. Thus going shopping, being in lectures, eating in a
13) means that larger numbers of people will have
phones, so they to have access to you. This means that restaurant, having sex, or simply while talking with
come to terms not only with the ‘ageing body’things
but also
several
the possibility of taking their own life. First,
Fourth,
have happened in networking contacts. someone else, the mobile can ring or you can ring it and
there has been a breakdown of the old split between the network of interaction abruptly shifts. New rules are
consumer patterns (see Chapter 15) arehome
concerned with body products: everything
increasingly
and street, etc. – people can now talk anywhere.
from
Second, it is‘the
intrusive – it can interrupt other streams of
having to be evolved as to how we can manage this
perpetual contact. (Katz and Aakhus, 2002)
fitness industry’ to the ‘cosmetics industry’. Fifth, the

social thinkers focus on key socially repaired. Medical regimes are required to
organise all this work around disease, decay and death.
The final inability to repair the body results in death,
arrival of AIDS in the early 1980s served to remind us
of the limits of medical technology. And finally, ethical
issues around the body – from abortion to research on

theorists and their ideas in context. Manuel development – that is reordering

Chris Shilling (1993)
Norbert Elias: summarises three key processes
the civilising involved in civilising:
socialisation, rationalisation and
of bodies and individualisation. People are
taught to hide natural functions
societies – like defecating and urinating;
our very sense of time and
Castells: The space. It creates a capitalist
network economy.
network society Crucial to Castell’s work is
the idea of networks and flows.
and the Networks provide a series of
information age hubs and points – people, cities,

Contemporary Social
Thinkers
businesses, states – connected
rationalisation makes us less
by flows of different sorts –
Classical Social
Thinkers

The German–English sociologist
Norbert Elias (1897–1990) made
important contributions to the
study of both sociology and
social change. A refugee from
Hitler’s Germany, his studies of
The Civilizing Process (originally
published in Germany in 1939!)
suggest how from the Middle
Ages onwards in most of Europe,
people came to exert greater
self-control over their behaviour
and their bodies. Through a
series of studies of ways of
eating, sleeping, dressing,
spitting, having sex, defecating,
dying and eliminating, he charts
the changing ways of life.
Medieval life was
unpredictable, highly emotional,
often chaotic and indulgent, and
there were few codes around
Norbert Elias (1897–1990)
Source: © akg-images, London.
bodily functions. Court society
slowly started to change all this,
by bringing about etiquette for
body management, locations for
defecation, and sleeping.
Restraint appeared in codes such
as those managing table
manners. The state developed
side by side with a ‘civilised’
system of self-control. The
civilised society has self-
discipline, self-control, higher
shame and embarrassment, etc.
emotional; individualisation Manuel Castells is Emeritus
suggests we come to see Professor of Sociology at the
ourselves and our bodies as University of California, Berkeley.
distinctively separate. Born in Spain in 1942, he studied
All of this is part of Elias’s law and economics at the
wider approach to sociology, University of Barcelona from
developed in his What is 1958 to 1962. He was a student
Sociology? (1978b; orig. 1970), activist against Franco's
and known as ‘figurational dictatorship and had to escape
sociology’. Interactions between to Paris, where he eventually
individuals and societies are his gained his PhD in Sociology from
area of study: ‘the network of the University of Paris in 1967.
inter-dependencies among His first book, La Question
human beings is what binds Urbaine, was translated into ten
them together’ (1978a: 261; languages, became a classic
orig. 1939). around the world, and he
Elias’s work has been became known as one of the
influential on a range of scholars intellectual founders of the ‘New
who study everyday life Urban Sociology’.
processes. Stephen Mennell, for Castell’s trilogy, The
instance, has studied food. Information Age, is considered to
Source: Elias (1978a; orig. 1939). be one of the most sustained
and readable accounts of the
rise of the information society
and the new networks that
come with it. He analyses the
ways economic and social
transformations in capitalism
connect to the information
technology revolution, and have
brought about a new world
social order in the twenty-first
century. His three books look at
Manuel Castells (1942–)
Source: Permission from Manuel
Castells.
the rise of new communications,
the creation of new identities,
and the shifting political
contours of the world in the
twenty-first century – especially
the role of social movements.
Long and detailed as the books
are, Castells tries to make
himself intelligible (he does not
use incomprehensible jargon)
and provides much data,
evidence and illustration for his
arguments (it is not a work of
abstract theory). The volumes
have come to be regarded as one
of the major statements of
changing times and what
sociology in the twenty-first
century should have to deal
with. Unlike Marx’s view of the
mode of production, for Castells
it is the new telecommunications
– the informational mode of
information, money, people.
With these ‘flows’ time changes:
there is a speeding up of time
but also a lack of standard
sequencing. Time becomes a
‘perpetual present’ – the past
comes back to us in sound bites,
and the future arrives almost
before we’ve experienced it. In
this new world, our sense of
space and time becomes
dramatically reordered: the local
now goes global; the past and
the future are the present. We
can be everywhere and nowhere
at the same time – sitting at our
computers. All this has great
importance for the way we
think about ourselves (our
identities), our political actions
(through social movements),
and our ways of living through
work and families. International
forms of money, international
forms of crime, environmental
issues – all change under this
new order and Castells discusses
each. The Information Age
touches all globally.
A very useful guide to all this can be
found in David Bell’s Cyberculture
Theorists (2007).

The major components of culture 137

are the more industrialised corruption is greater in

Cultural societies; static ones are those static societies.
which have not changed a great 8 Justice and fair play:
difference, deal. Among the value

value differences he notes are:

Universal impersonal
expectations in progressive
cultures. In static societies,
Speaking lives and
1 Education: This is a key to
conflicts? progress for progressive
cultures, but of marginal
justice is often a function of
who you know and how Public sociology engage with
Public Sociology

Many social scientists argue that
culture is the key to
understanding how societies
grow and change. They explain
the fact that some have become
advanced industrialised nations
and others have not by
considering their core values.
Core values are seen to shape
society. We have already seen
how Weber saw the rise of
capitalism as having a strong
affinity with Protestantism
through the ‘Protestant Ethic’.
To have an effective public
sociology, ‘values’ need to be
made explicit. They often are
not. Once values are openly on
the table, they can be discussed
and debated.
For example, Lawrence
Harrison overtly states that
there are real cultural value
differences between what he
terms ‘progressive’ and ‘static’
societies. Progressive societies
Mores and folkways
William Graham Sumner (1959; orig. 1906), an early
US sociologist, recognised that some norms are more
crucial to our lives than others. Sumner used the term
mores to refer to a society’s standards of proper moral
conduct. Sumner counted among the mores all norms
essential to maintaining a way of life; because of their
importance, he contended that people develop an
emotional attachment to mores and defend them
publicly. In addition, mores apply to everyone,
everywhere, all the time. Violation of mores – such as
our society’s prohibition against sexual relations
between adults and children – typically brings a swift
and strong reaction from others.
importance except for the much you can 144pay. Chapter 5 Culture
elites in static cultures.
2 Time orientation:
Progressives look to the
9 Authority: Dispersed in
progressive societies;
Variation and divisions
concentrated in static
and they generally hold strong views based on history key sociological issues and
and a strict interpretation of the Koran.
future, statics look to the
past or the present.
3 Work: Central for progressive
societies.
Mulsim cultures do have common themes, as suggested
10 Secularism: Progressive
above. But they are also very different. There is
Politically too there are major splits across Muslim
cultures. There are, for example, many radical groups people in the real world.
societies find religious that have appeared to fight the jihad (or holy war)
societies, but often a burden Morrocan Islam, Pakistani Islam, Malay Islam and so
influence on civic life across the world: the Muslim Brotherhoood in Egypt,
in static cultures. dwindles. In static on. South Asian Muslim cultures are not always at the Islamic Revolution Front in Algeria, Hizbolllah in
4 Frugality: A major value for home
societies, religion has a with Arab cultures. To suggest only one Muslim Lebanon, Hamas in the West Bank, and the now very
progressive societies – culture, then, would be like suggesting there is only one
substantial influence. well known Al Quaeda (in Afghanistan). These more
leading to investment and
Christian culture: that Christians in England are
Source: Harrison and Huntingdon the militant paths all have their own distinctive cultures –
financial security; often a
(2000: 299). same as Christians in Brazil, or that Methodist language, world views, identities, knowledge.
threat to static cultures.
5 Merit: Central to Christians in England were like Catholic Christians in
Capturing general values like this
Italy! Common themes, yes; but great variety.
advancement in progressive
is fraught with difficulties. They
cultures; connections and
family are what count in
After the death of the Prophet Muhammad (632CE),
are far too general and suggest
the Muslim a community split and it is a key divide that
Asabiyya: understanding
static cultures. moral split between ‘Modern
still works into conflicts today. In many Muslim cultures
Societies’ (progressive) there
and much
Muslim cultures
6 Community: In progressive is a split between the Sunni and the Shi’ite.
cultures, community of the rest of the world (static).
Sunni Muslims follow the customs of Muhammad. Living in a culture brings deep understanding that is not
extends beyond the locality You may like to ponder They
the originally thought that Muhammad’s successor or always easy to see with outsider’s eyes. Yes, we can look at
and the family; in static weaknesses and strengths of such
caliph should be the best qualified man. Today they the rules, see the building and dress, read the Koran. But
cultures, the family a depiction. Is the author being
base their lives on his sayings and actions. In contrast, cultures are much more finely grained than this – they rest
circumscribes community. ethnocentric? How might the Shi’at Ali – the party of Ali – thought Muhammad’s on hidden assumptions and rules. Items that go much
7 Ethics: More rigorous in culturalist explanationsnearest
of change relative should become their Imam. Sunni sees deeper than the surface observables. Akbar Ahmed
advanced societies; differ from materialist ones?
Islamic leadership in the consensus of the community suggests a key idea to grasp is that of Asabiyya – an
rather than religious and political authorities. In honour found through group loyalty. The loss of honour
Sumner used the term folkways to designategeneral,a they have more tolerant views based on the may be a key idea to understanding the workings of
Muslim culture (Ahmed, 2003:14). Indeed, it is so
society’s customs for routine, casual interaction. Koran (sometimes a parallel is drawn with Protestants
Folkways, which have less moral significance than in Christianity, as being a more flexible and less important that he talks about the modern world as ‘the
traditional approach). Shia – the ‘partisans of Ali’ – are
mores, include notions about proper dress, appropriate post-honour society’. (Bowker (2006); Ahmed (1988;
greetings and common courtesy. In short, whilethe majority in Iran; there are more than 165 million
mores 2003); Rosen (2007)).
distinguish between right and wrong, folkways draw a
line between right and rude. Because they are less
important than mores, societies afford individuals a the extension of schooling, and the Clock); Mods and Rockers
measure of personal discretion in matters involving Youth cultural the emergence of a pervasive followed in the 1960s and
folkways, and punish infractions leniently. For
example, a man who does not wear a tie to a formal
styles consumer market. Relatively
disconnected from the
adopted distinctive dress, music
styles and values. These were
dinner party is, at worst, guilty of a breach of etiquette. responsibilities of adult family followed by a whole gallery of
The idea of ‘culture’ and all its life, young people were a youth types: skinheads, hippies,
If, however, the man were to arrive at the dinner party linked concepts becomes clearer noticeable consumer market. punks, rastas, grunge, goths, acid
wearing only a tie, he would be challenging the social once we focus on a particular Many new products – from heads, New Age travellers and
mores and inviting more serious sanctions. group. Young people are a good records and films, to sports gear others. Some of these
example. In many societies, new
Speaking Lives

and clothing styles – could be dominated for brief periods, but

cultures spring from adolescence
(Spates, 1976, 1983; Spates and
Perkins, 1982). These have
certainly not always been with
us: most societies have no
conception of a youth culture.
Indeed, they only started to
appear in very distinctive form
in the period after the Second
World War. Here was a period of
relative affluence in the West,
directed at them. From these
‘material conditions’, youth
cultures started to appear with
their own ‘ways of life’, their
own ‘webs of meaning’. In the
United Kingdom, for instance, a
string of cultural styles
developed: Teddy Boys came
first in the 1950s (in the wake of
the first rock ‘n’ roll record and
film – Bill Haley’s Rock around
by the mid-1990s the situation
was largely one of mixture –
what some have called
postmodern youth styles.
Sociologists in the cultural
studies tradition (see
‘Contemporary social thinkers’
on page 151) have asked many
questions about the nature and
development of such cultures. At
one level, these sociologists
A01.QXD 4/6/08 08:44 Page xxxiii
This edition is also about helping you do sociology – seeing,
hearing, investigating and interacting as a sociologist.
Sociological
e-lab
Suggestions for going
further
A Review the chapter
Briefly summarise (in about five sentences or one paragraph)
just what this chapter has been about. Consider:
1 What you have learned from this chapter.
2 What do you disagree with? Be critical.
3 How would you develop all this? How could you get
more detail on matters that interest you?
B Pose questions
1 What does it mean to state that there are various kinds
of truth? What is the basic rationale for relying on
science as a way of knowing? Is sociology a science?
Should it be? And if so, what kind? Identify several ways
in which sociological research is similar to – and different
from – research in the natural sciences.
2 What sorts of measure do scientists adopt as they strive
for objectivity? Why do some sociologists consider
objectivity an undesirable goal?
3 Dissect any one sociological study in order to evaluate its
methodology.
4 If there can be a feminist methodology, can there also be
an anti-racist methodology, or a gay/queer
methodology?
C Enhance key words
Many concepts have been introduced in this chapter. You can
review them from the website or from the listing at the back
of this book. You might like to give special attention to just
five words and think them through – how would you define
them, what are they dealing with, and do they help you see
the social world more clearly or not?
Part Six
Part Six: Resources for Critical
Thinking
This new section in the book
brings together key words, film
lists, a major webliography,
reading lists, YouTube themes and
key organisations. It provides a
key resource in itself for further
investigation.
See:
Victor Jupp The Sage Dictionary of Social Research
Methods (2006).
Duncan Cramer and Dennis Laurence Howitt, The Sage
Dictionary of Research Methods (2004).
D Search the web
When you net search, make sure you have your critical
faculties with you. What is the source of your site? Is it
reliable authority, a pressure group, or one that is known to
be a little bit shaky (like Wikopedia)? If it has weaknesses,
what are they and are you taking them on board? Is it up to
date? How will you cite it?
Some useful sources for this chapter are:
The Qualitative Report
http://www.nova.edu/ssss/QR/
An online journal that provides a major listing of qualitative
research websites.
Data on the Net
http://3stages.org/idata/
Based at the University of California at San Diego, this is a
useful site for quantitative data. It houses some 850 sources
for gathering data.
National Statistics
http://www.statistics.gov.uk
The British government’s website for all official statistics.
UK Data Archive
http://www.data-archive.ac.uk/
This site, based at Essex University, is home for most of the
major surveys and researches conducted in the UK.
Refresh your understanding, assess your progress and
investigate further with interactive questions, weblinks,
podcasts and much more at
www.pearsoned.co.uk/globalsociology
E Watch a DVD

Akira Kurosawa’s Rashomon (1951): a much celebrated
introduction to the idea of different perspectives
capturing a common reality.
It will also be valuable now to watch some classic
documentary films and consider whether they can offer
more to understanding than conventional sociological
research. For example, see:

Robert Flaherty’s Nanook of the North (1922): a classic
early documentary about the Innu

Leni Riefenstahl’s Triumph of the Will (1935): a
controversial documentary made at the start of
Hitler’s rule

Tod Browning’s Freaks (1932): a very disturbing
introduction to deviance, not really a documentary. See
also Chapter 14.
F Think and read
Alan Bryman, Social Research Methods (3rd edn, 2008). This
is one of a number of wide-ranging textbooks that cover the
whole field.
Ann Gray, Research Practice for Cultural Studies (2003). A
helpful guide to methods for cultural studies.
Karen 0’Reilly Ethnographic Methods (2004). A useful guide
to fieldwork in sociology.
Ken Plummer, Documents of Life 2: An Invitation to a Critical
Humanism (2001a) A guide to humanistic and qualitative
research.
Liz Stanley and Sue Wise, Breaking Out Again: Feminist
Consciousness and Feminist Research (2nd edn, 1993). One
of the founding statements for a feminist methodology,
here updated
Stuart Stein, Sociology on the Web (2003). An account of
how to make the most out of web research.
Liz Wells (ed.) Photography: A Critical Introduction (3rd edn,
2004). Good general introductory textbook on photography
and visual sociology.
C. Wright Mills, The Sociological Imagination (1959). This has
already been introduced in Chapter 1. It has a very useful
appendix on how to do sociology and is strongly
recommended.
G Relax with a novel
Several novels have tried to capture the life of a social
researcher. See Alison Lurie’s Imaginary Friends (1967) which
looks at the researchers of a strange religious cult.
H Connect to other chapters

Inspect some of the many tables and statistics
throughout this book. Ask how they were produced and
how valid and reliable they are. View them critically.

See life stories in ‘Speaking Lives’ boxes. What are the
problems with such stories? Look at similar boxes
throughout this book.

For more on the growth of multiple voices and feminism,
see Chapter 2.
The Sociological e-lab for
each chapter collects
together key related
sources – websites, key
reading, novels, questions
to ponder, big debates – for
The big debate 79
you to follow up and
consider.
I The big debate
Damned lies and statistics:
So do statistics tell the truth?
‘Fact, fact, fact!’ said the gentleman … ‘You are to be in all
things regulated and governed’ ... by fact. We hope to have,
before long, a board of fact, composed of commissioners of
fact. Who will force the people to be a people of fact, and of
nothing but fact. You must discard the word Fancy altogether.
(Charles Dickens, Hard Times, Chapter 2)
You will soon notice that this book is littered with statistics.
That is the sociologist’s weakness, and you cannot trust him
or her! As the English politician Benjamin
80 Disraeli
Chapter once
3 Doing social science: an introduction to method
noted wryly: ‘There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies,
and statistics!’ Every method of data collection is prone to
error, and data do not speak for themselves. 4 Throughout
Who created this
this statistic? There is always someone who 8 Why was this statistic selected to be presented? Often
book – as well as in much of the press – you will made find a statistic – from a big world agency like the
the the data we confront are not wrong; they just do not tell
generous sprinkling of ‘statistics’ as well as ‘statistical tables’ to the smallest undergraduate survey.
United Nations the whole story.
that aim to summarise much data. Indeed, weKnowing live in a aworld
that bombards us with ‘scientific facts’ and ‘official
sources
bit about them may help you see possible
figures’
of error and bias.
9 How is the statistic being presented? Very often graphs
and it is well worth pausing to consider what such and charts can be used to ‘spin’ the truth. The picture tells
5 Why
‘statistical evidence’ means. People are so fond was this
of saying: ‘Asstatistic created? What were the author(s) only part of the story. A graph of the crime rate over only
the last several years, for example, would reveal a
the evidence shows…’ But what does it show?trying to achieve by making these statistics? For example,
if it issome
a poverty statistic produced by campaigners downward trend; shifting the time frame to include the
As you find statistics in this book, ask yourself of
against poverty, it is good to know this! And if it is a
the questions below. You will soon learn that statistics last few decades, however, would show a sharp increase.
should never be taken at simple face value and you willofstart
measure church memberships produced by devout Above all, initially be suspicious of all statistics. Put them
to see that some seem more reasonable thanChristians,
others. Some it is good to know this too! through some of the above tests, and then make your mind
of the questions you should ask of data include: up about them.
6 How was this statistic actually created? Was it, for
1 Are the statistics valid? Do they measure what they say
example, part of a multi-million-pound bureaucratic
they are trying to measure – like the ‘suicide’ rate, the involving the filling of many forms by many
enterprise Continue the debate
‘crime’ rate or ‘human development’? If youdifferent
simply think of across the world? If it was
people 1 Look at some of the statistics in this book. Consider
the problems of just how ‘suicide’ (see Chapter 1), ‘crime’
bureaucratically produced, how did the various
where they have come from, why they are being used and
(Chapter 17), ‘class’ (Chapter 10) or ‘human contributors
development’play their role – what rules guided them?
just what it is they purport to measure.
(Chapter 4) can be defined (and indeed what they mean),
7 How is the statistic being used? Was the statistic 2 When would you trust a statistic?
you should soon see some of the problems.
produced as part of a political campaign and is it 3 Why do you think people are so quick to accept
2 Are the statistics possible to disaggregate or break down ‘statistics’ as true?
being used perhaps to get more resources? How
into different parts? Thus statistics can conceal 4 Consider the opening quote from the hugely insightful
statistics are used may give clues as to hidden biases.
differences between groups – such as men and women, or Victorian novelist Charles Dickens. Do we now have this
There are usually plenty of statistics available for
young and old, or region to region. Is it possible to break ‘Board of Fact’ and ‘People of Fact’ and is it a sign of our
people on all sides of a political debate to use as
the statistics down to see these differences at work? progress as a civilisation?
ammunition to bolster their arguments. Watch out for
5 More questions are asked about statistics in Chapter 9.
3 Are the statistics consistently measured over time? under-use, misuse, political abuse, and
over-use, See the ‘Public Sociology’ box there on page 286.
Statistics may be produced at different times using
oversimplification.
different measuring devices. Again, you need to check See Joel Best’s Damned Lies and Statistics (2001).
how the statistics were made in order to see if they were
measuring the same things.
P A R T 6
A01.QXD 4/6/08 08:44 Page xxxiv

xxxiv Guided tour

On the web
Visit
www.pearsoned.co.uk/globalsociology
to find a whole host of resources that
allow you to revise, test, and investigate
further as well as engage with real
sociology people and participate in real
sociology debates!

The Internet Sociologist: web use

for sociologists
Quick course on using web resources
critically, discerningly and wisely.

The Podcasts Including an

introduction to each Part from the
author, seven ‘Global voices’ where a
student from another part of the
world talks about sociology from
their country’s perspective, and
additional pods on specific issues
related to the book.
A01.QXD 4/6/08 08:44 Page xxxv

Guided tour xxxv

The Big Vote: 10 topics for you to

vote on. Vote on some of the key
sociological debates presented in the
book and see what other sociology
students think.

Chapter-by-chapter resources: links

to each chapter
including: true/false questions that
test your understanding of the text,
interactive flashcards and key
concepts explored, to test your
understanding of key sociological
terms, and web and videography links
to information on films that deal
with sociological issues.

General resources: links to Part Six

Go way beyond the textbook and
follow ‘clickable’ links to films, key
websites, YouTube clips, novels, great
art, and much more to enrich your
study of sociology.
A01.QXD 4/6/08 08:44 Page xxxvi
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Ken Plummer wishes to thank Daniel Nehring in
helping with this edition, and especially for his work on
the website and the resources. He has been a marvellous
support. Assistance with earlier editions came from
Kimberley Fisher, Travis Kong, John Stevens, Annemarie
Naylor, Agnes Skamballis and Beverley Chaplin. It is still
appreciated and remembered. Former colleagues and
students at Essex have always been stimulating and
enjoyable to be with; and I thank especially Rob Stones,
Colin Samson, Eamonn Carrabine, Pam Cox, Andrew
Canessa, Lucinda Platt, John Scott, Maggy Lee, Ewa
Marokowska, Roísín Ryan-Flood, Dawn Lyon, Paul
Thompson, Ted Benton, Nigel South, Mike Roper,
Leonore Davidoff, and Hiroko Tanaka for their
continuing support and friendship. Steve Smith and
Travis Kong helped me to think about China.
At Pearson Education, I have always had a legion of
colleagues who have provided me with massive
support. This is the third edition of the book on which I
have worked with Andrew Taylor and he has always
been the greatest of pleasures to work with – and a
wonderful editor: I thank him here too for his kindness
to me during my illness and his tolerance of my quirky
ways. I am also very grateful to my ever-accommodating
desk editor, Philippa Fiszzon, to Maggie Wells for her
work on the book’s design and to Daniel Russell-
Brimson for his work on the book’s website.
Finally, as always, my dear partner, Everard
Longland, read the entire proofs and commented with
interest. So having just nursed me through major
illness for three years, he cheerfully and calmly
continues to support me in my work. I am indeed a
very fortunate person.
Ken Plummer
Wivenhoe, March 2008
Publisher’s Acknowledgements
We would like to thank the following reviewers for
their valuable comments on the book:
Dr Rodanthi Tzanelli, University of Leeds
Dr Liza Schuster, City University, London
Paul Littlewood, University of Glasgow
Dr Justin Cruickshank, University of Birmingham
Dr Esther Dermott, University of Bristol
Dr Amanda Haynes, University of Limerick
Dr Judith Burnett, University of East London
Professor Richard Jenkins, University of Sheffield
Dr Christopher Wright, University of Aberdeen
Professor Carol Allais, University of South Africa
Dr Alastair Greig, The Australian National University
Dr Joanne van der Leun, Leiden University
Dr Yoke-Sum Wong, University of Lancaster
The publishers would like to record a huge debt of
gratitude to Ken Plummer for his continued
dedication, good humour and generosity with his
expertise during the production of this 4th edition.
Most importantly, his courage and indomitable spirit
sustained him through a period of serious ill health, yet
even during extremely difficult times, Ken continued to
work on the book. His energies now fully and happily
restored, this new edition displays all his joie de vivre
and desire to innovate, as well as his great passion for
his subject and the rich diversity of the world.
The publishers gratefully thank Everard Longland
for use of his artwork in sections of the book and on
the cover.
A01.QXD 4/6/08 08:44 Page xxxvii
We are grateful to the following for permission to reproduce
copyright material:
Table 1.1 adapted from http://www.who.int/mentalrhealth/
prevention/suicide/suiciderates/en/print.html, World Health
Organization (WHO 2003); Chapter 3 Interlude 1 Top 10
Box p. 81, Tables 11.3, 13.3 and 13.7, Figure 17.2, Table 18.1,
Figures 18.2, 18.4, 18.5, 22.1 and 22.6 from Social Trends,
reproduced under the terms of the Click-Use Licence (ONS
2007); Chapter 4 Table p. 94 from Special Report: The Five
Chinas in Newsweek, 28 October 2002, reprinted by
permission of Newsweek; Figure 4.1 this material previously
appeared in Patrick Nolan and Gerhard Lenski, Human
Societies: An Introduction to Macrosociology, Tenth Edition,
Boulder, CO: Paradigm Publishers 2006, p. 52 (Lenski, G. and
Nolan, P. 2006); Chapter 5 Top 10 Box p. 132 and Table 5.2
adapted from Ethnologue, reprinted by permission of SIL
International; Figure 5.3 adapted from The Future of English?,
The British Council (Graddol, D. 1997); Figure 7.2 adapted
from The Seasons of a Man’s Life by Daniel Levinson,
copyright © 1978 by Daniel J. Levinson. Used by permission
of Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc.
Reprinted by permission of SLL/Sterling Lord Literistic, Inc.
Copyright 1975 by Daniel Levinson (Levinson, D. J. et al.
1978); Chapter 7 Interlude 2 Top 10 Boxes p. 223 from Food
Wars: Public Health and the Battle for Mouths, Minds and
Markets, Earthscan Ltd. (Lang, T. and Heasman, M. 2004);
Figure 8.1 republished with permission of World Bank, from
World Development Indicators 2003 by World Bank, copyright
2003; permission conveyed through Copyright Clearance
Center, Inc. (World Bank 2003); Table 9.1 republished with
permission of World Bank, from Global Poverty Monitoring
by World Bank, copyright 2002; permission conveyed
through Copyright Clearance Center, Inc. (World Bank
2002); Figures 9.2 and 9.3 from Human Development Report
2003, copyright © 2003 by the United Nations Development
Programme, by permission of Oxford University Press, Inc.
(UNDP 2003); Table 9.2 adapted from United Nations
Development Programme, Human Development Report 2007,
2007, pub. Palgrave Macmillan, reproduced with permission
of Palgrave Macmillan (UNDP 2007); Chapter 9 Top 10 Box
p. 272 and Figure 10.2 from Rich List, Sunday Times, 22 April
2007, © NI Syndication Limited, 22.4.07; Chapter 9 Top 10
Box p. 273, Chapter 9 Top 10 Box p. 274, Chapter 17 Top 10
Box p. 554, Chapter 23 Top 10 Box p. 758, Chapter 24 Top 10
Box p. 786, Chapter 25 Top 10 Box p. 809 adapted from
Pocket World in Figures, reprinted by permission of Profile
Books Ltd. (The Economist 2007); Table 9.3 data from 2006
Report on the global AIDS epidemic, www.unaids.org, original
source data courtesy of UNAIDS (UNAIDS 2006); Figures
10.1 and 10.4, Tables 19.1 and 20.3 from Social Trends,
reproduced under the terms of the Click-Use Licence (ONS
2004); Table 10.1 from Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings,
reproduced under the terms of the Click-Use Licence (ONS
2006); Tables 10.2 and 17.2 adapted from Social Trends,
reproduced under the terms of the Click-Use Licence (ONS
Acknowledgements xxxvii
2007); Figure 10.5 from Modernization, cultural change, and
the persistence of traditional values, American Sociological
Review, Vol. 65, No. 1, Looking Forward, Looking Back:
Continuity and Change at the Turn of the Millennium,
February, reprinted by permission of American Sociological
Association and R. Inglehart (Inglehart, R. and Blake, W.
2000); Figure 11.2 adapted from Social Change in Western
Europe, by permission of Oxford University Press (Crouch, C.
1999); Chapter 12 Top 10 Box p. 371 from The Global Gender
Gap Report 2006, http://weforum.org/, reprinted by
permission of World Economic Forum (World Economic
Forum 2006); Figure 12.1 republished with permission of
World Bank, from World Development Report 1995: Workers
in an Integrating World by World Bank, copyright 1995;
permission conveyed though Copyright Clearance Center,
Inc. (World Bank 1995); Figure 12.2 reproduced from
Pleasure and Danger: Exploring Female Sexuality edited by
Carol S. Vance, Pandora Press, London (Rubin, G. 1989);
Table 12.3 from The World We Have Won, pub. Routledge,
reprinted by permission of Taylor & Francis Books UK
(Weeks, J. 2007); Tables 13.1 and 13.2 and Figure 24.4 from
Ageing Societies, pub. Hodder Arnold, reproduced by
permission of Edward Arnold (Publishers) Ltd. (Harper, S.
2006); Figure 13.2 adapted from Long-Range World
Population Projections, http://www.un.org/esa/socdev/ageing,
United Nations (United Nations 2003); Table 13.4 data from
Office for National Statistics and General Register Office for
Scotland, reproduced under the terms of Click-Use Licence;
Table 13.8 from New frontiers in the future of ageing: from
successful ageing of the young old to the dilemmas of the
fourth age in Gerontology, 49, S. Karger AG, Basel (Baltes, P. B.
and Smith, J. 2003); Table 14.1 from M. Oliver, Understanding
Disability: From theory to practice, 1996, pub. Macmillan,
reproduced with permission of Palgrave Macmillan (Oliver,
M. 1996); Table 14.4 from http://www.hm-treasury.gov.uk,
HM Treasury National Statistics Public Expenditure
Statistical Analyses (PESA), reproduced under the terms of
the Click-Use Licence (HM Treasury 2007); Table 14.5 from
M. D. Fine, A Caring Society? Care and dilemmas of human
service in the 21st century, 2007, pub. Palgrave, reproduced
with permission of Palgrave Macmillan (Fine, M. D. 2007);
Chapter 14 Top 10 Box p. 451 from Charity Trends 2006,
Charities Aid Foundation and CaritasData (CAF 2006);
Figure 15.2 reproduced by permission of Sage Publications,
London, Los Angeles, New Delhi and Singapore, from Peter
Dicken, Global Shift: Transforming the World Economy, 1st
Edition, copyright © Peter Dicken, 1986 (Dicken, P. 1986);
Tables 15.2 and 15.5 adapted from Europe in Figures –
Eurostat Yearbook 2006-07, reprinted by permission of the
European Communities (Eurostat 2007); Figure 15.4
reproduced by permission of Sage Publications, London, Los
Angeles, New Delhi and Singapore, from Peter Dicken, Global
Shift: Transforming the World Economy, 3rd Edition, copyright
© Peter Dicken, 1998, (Dicken, P. 1998); Figure 15.3 from
Labour Force Survey, reproduced under the terms of the
Click-Use Licence (ONS 2007); Table 15.4 from Labour Force
A01.QXD 4/6/08 08:44 Page xxxviii
xxxviii Acknowledgements
Survey, reproduced under the terms of the Click-Use Licence;
Chapter 15 Top 10 Box p. 490 extract from World Investment
Report 2006,
http://www.unctad.org/sections/dite_dir/docs/wir2006top100
_en.pdf, United Nations (UNCTAD 2006); Figures 15.7 and
20.6 from Europe in Figures – Eurostat Yearbook 2006-07,
reprinted by permission of the European Communities
(Eurostat 2007); Figure 16.1 adapted from The Economist, 31
July 1999, © The Economist Newspaper Ltd., London,
31.7.99; Figure 16.2 adapted from The Guardian, 15 June
2004, Copyright Guardian News & Media Ltd. 2007; Table
16.2 from http://www.euractiv.com/Article?rlang
=EN&tcmuri=tcm:29-117482-16&type=LinksDossier,
reprinted by permission of EurActiv.com; Chapter 16 Figure
p. 531 from The United Nations System, Principal Organs,
United Nations Department of Public Information 06-39572
– August 2006 – 10,000 – DPI/2431, United Nations (United
Nations Department of Public Information 2006); Figure
17.1 from ESPAD 1999 Report, reprinted by permission of
The European School Survey Project on Alcohol and Other
Drugs (ESPAD) and The Swedish Council for Information on
Alcohol and Other Drugs (CAN), more information about
ESPAD and the ESPAD 2003 Report are available at
www.espad.org; Figure 17.3 from Home Office, Crime
Statistics for England and Wales,
http://www.crimestatistics.org.uk, reproduced under the
terms of the Click-Use Licence; Figure 17.4 from Criminal
Statistics, England and Wales 2002, reproduced under the
terms of the Click-Use Licence; Figure 18.3 adapted from
Office for National Statistics, http://www.statistics.gov.uk,
reproduced under the terms of the Click-Use Licence; Figure
19.2 original design by Barbara Shoolery © Game Plan
Design. Published as greeting card by Recycled Paper
Greetings, Inc. All rights reserved; Table 19.2 from British
Social Attitudes Survey, NatCen (National Centre for Social
Research 2005); Table 20.1 from The Official Summary of the
State of the World’s Children, United Nation’s Children’s Fund
(UNICEF 2004); Figures 20.2, 20.3 and 20.4 from Global
Education Digest 2006 – Comparing Education Statistics
Around the World, reprinted by permission of UNESCO
Institute for Statistics (UIS 2006); Figure 20.5 data from
Department for Education and Skills, reproduced under the
terms of the Click-Use Licence; Figures 21.1 and 21.2 adapted
from Shaping the Future, World Health Report, reprinted by
permission of World Health Organization (WHO 2003);
Figure 21.3 from Evidence, Information and Policy, reprinted
by permission of World Health Organization (WHO 2000);
Table 21.4 from 2007 AIDS epidemic update, reproduced by
kind permission of UNAIDS, www.unaids.org (UNAIDS
2007); Figure 21.5 from Land of the Fry in The Economist, 13
December, © The Economist Newspaper Ltd., London,
13.12.03 (Popkin, B. 2003); Figure 21.6 from Department of
Health, Health Survey for England, reproduced under the
terms of the Click-Use Licence; Figure 21.7 from
http://data.unaids.org/pub/GlobalReport/2006, reproduced
by kind permission of UNAIDS, www.unaids.org (UNAIDS
2006); Table 22.1 from The World Guide, 11th Edition,
reprinted by kind permission of the New Internationalist.
Copyright New Internationalist. www.newint.org (Brazier, C.
and Hamed, A. eds 2007); Figure 22.5 reproduced with
permission from The Global Media Atlas, copyright © Myriad
Editions/www.MyriadEditions.com (Balnaves, et al. 2001);
Table 22.5 from The Guardian, 10 September 2007, Copyright
Guardian News & Media Ltd. 2007, reprinted by permission
of Guardian News & Media Ltd. and ABC Ltd. (Bilton, J.
2007); Figures 24.1 and 24.2 republished with permission of
World Bank, from Beyond Economic Growth: Meeting the
Challenges of Global Development by Katherine Sheram and
Tatyana P. Soubbotina, copyright 2000; permission conveyed
through Copyright Clearance Center, Inc. (Sheram, K. and
Soubbotina, T. P. 2000); Table 24.1 from World Population
Prospects: The 2006 Revision – Population Database,
http://esa.un.org/unpp/p2k0data.asp, United Nations
(Population Division, Dept. of Economic and Social Affairs,
UN Secretariat 2007); Figure 24.3 adapted from The
Guardian, 2 August 2001, Copyright Guardian News & Media
Ltd. 2007; Chapter 24 Top 10 Box p. 785, Table 24.3 and
Figure 24.6 from World Urbanization Prospects: The 2005
Revision, United Nations (Population Division, Dept. of
Economic and Social Affairs, UN Secretariat 2006); Figure
24.7 adapted from A Geography of the European Union, by
permission of Oxford University Press (Nagle, G. and
Spencer, K. 1996); Figure 24.8 adapted from The City,
published and reprinted by permission of The University of
Chicago Press (Park, R. E. and Burgess, E. W. 1967, orig.
1925); Figures 25.3 and 25.4 from The Economist, 20 March
2004, © The Economist Newspaper Ltd., London, 20.3.04;
Figure 25.5 from Atlas of Climate Change, Earthscan Ltd.
(Earthscan 2006); Figure 25.8 from Fortnightly rubbish
collection leads to more recycling, says government in The
Guardian, 26 April, Copyright Guardian News & Media Ltd.
2007 (Vidal, J. 2007); Table 26.2 from 2007: The State of the
Future, United Nations (Glenn, J. C. and Gordon, T. J. 2007).
Map 4.1 adapted from Nomads and the Outside World, pub.
Cambridge University Press, reprinted by permission of
Cambridge University Press and the author (Khazanov, A. M.
1984); Map 4.2 from Special Report: The Five Chinas in
Newsweek, 28 October 2002, reprinted by permission of
Newsweek; Map 4.4 from The World Guide, 11th Edition,
reprinted by kind permission of the New Internationalist.
Copyright New Internationalist. www.newint.org (Brazier, C.
and Hamed, A. eds 2007); Map 5.1 from Inglehart-Welzel
Cultural Map of the World, reprinted by permission of Ronald
Inglehart; Map 5.2 from Discovering Islam, pub. Routledge,
reprinted by permission of Taylor & Francis Books UK
(Ahmed, A. S. 1986); Map 11.1 adapted from Bosnia: A Short
History, pub. Macmillan, reprinted by permission of the author
(Malcolm, N. 1994); Map 11.3 adapted from Ethnicity in East
Central Europe and the Former Soviet Union edited by David
Turnock, pub. Arnold, copyright © 2001 Arnold, reproduced
by permission of Edward Arnold (Publishers) Ltd. (Kocsis, K.
A01.QXD 4/6/08 08:44 Page xxxix
2001); Maps 12.1 and 16.2 reproduced with permission from
The State of Women in the World Atlas, copyright © Myriad
Editions/www.MyriadEditions.com (Seager, J. 2008); Map 16.1
from http://www.freedomhouse.org, Freedom House, Inc.
(Freedom House 2007); Map 16.4 adapted from Life after
Communism: The facts, New Internationalist, 366, April 2004,
reprinted by kind permission of the New Internationalist.
Copyright New Internationalist, www.newint.org; Map 17.1
adapted from Amnesty magazine, Issue 117, Jan./Feb. 2003,
http://www.amnesty.org, courtesy Amnesty International UK,
2003; Maps 21.1 and 21.2 adapted from www.who.int/statistics,
World Health Organization (WHO 2000); Map 21.3 from
http://data.unaids.org/pub/ GlobalReport/2006, reproduced by
kind permission of UNAIDS, www.unaids.org (UNAIDS 2006).
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C01.QXD 4/6/08 08:16 Page 1

P A R T 1
C01.QXD 4/6/08 08:16 Page 2

THE SOCIOLOGICAL
IMAGINATION
C01.QXD 4/6/08 08:16 Page 3
IMAGINE YOU WERE BORN SOME 300
YEARS AGO, IN THE YEAR 1700.
Although this is very recent in terms of
the billions of years of the existence of
planet earth, you would still be living in
a remarkably different world. You
would probably be living in a very
small community and you would not
have travelled anywhere except
perhaps to a nearby town.
You would never have been to a
shop, let alone a shopping centre. You
would not have encountered the world
of railways, cars, telephones, cameras,
PCs, faxes, mobile phones, planes,
videos, McDonald’s, holiday tours,
laptops or DVDs. And more than this,
the idea of voting for your
government, going to a university,
choosing your religion, or even
choosing your identity would all have
been rare. And all the countries of the
world would have been mapped
somewhat differently. Welcome to our
modern world!
Now imagine again: this time that
you were born and living in the Republic
of Sierra Leone, one of the poorest
places in the world today. If you are a
man, your life expectancy at birth would
be no more than 42 years (if a woman,
it would be slightly more at 43). By
contrast, if you were born in the UK,
your expectations would be double this.
Indeed, in Sierra Leone, 165 children out
of every thousand born die shortly after
birth; in the UK, it is only five per
thousand. Your chances of going on to
further or higher education (tertiary
education) would be only one in 50
(and there would be virtually no chance
at all if you were a woman, as 82 per
cent of women are still illiterate). In the
UK, by contrast, almost every other
person has some kind of further
education. Likewise, media
communications would be much rarer:
in Sierra Leone, there are five telephone
lines and 13 television sets per
thousand people; in the UK, there are
563 telephone lines and 950 TV sets for The first wisdom of
the same number. As in most of Africa,
personal computers are very rare.
sociology is this: things are
(World Guide, 2007). not what they seem.
But now have another leap of Peter Berger
imagination: this time to a world that is
yet to come – the world perhaps of your
own grandchildren or great
grandchildren.We cannot of course K E Y THEME S
predict the future, but we can often see
trends. For instance, we started to see
The nature of sociology
‘babies in test tubes’ being born at the
end of the twentieth century, a trend How sociological
that seems to be accelerating. This could
perspectives help in
mean that much of the future
population will be born through new everyday life
genetic engineering. It may even mean
Some problems in doing
the start of ‘designer babies’.We also
saw the miniaturisation of electronics as
sociology
new computers, cameras, mobile
The development of
telephones etc. started to become
pocket size and ubiquitous in the rich
sociology
world. Could this mean that the future
will see major conflicts between those
who have access to these technologies
and those who do not? Could it mean
that the new technologies will be
implanted into our bodies and our
homes? Many think so. Medicine may
prolong our living – so we will have many
more older people, and some predict we (Left) Pieter Brueghel the Younger:
may become immortal! Our music and The Battle between Carnival and Lent,
media, shops and work situations, 1559
families and government structures may Source: The Battle between Carnival and
all change beyond today’s recognition. Lent (oil on canvas). Brueghel, Pieter the
Younger, (c1564–1638)/Private Collection,
And we could give many more examples
Johnny Van Haeften Ltd., London/ The
of a futuristic landscape. Bridgeman Art Library.
The power of sociology is to
demonstrate just how strong are the Note: For more information, see:
social forces that organise society in http://www.artcyclopedia.com/artists/
very, very different ways. Throughout bruegel_the_younger_pieter.html;
http://wwar.com/masters/b/brueghel-
this book, over and over again, you will
pieter.html.
see the variety of societies and the
different opportunities that people
have within them. Just where you were
Q
Brueghel’s painting is a world
born – and when – has radically shaped classic. Examine it closely.
much of what you know and what you What issues of social life does it
can do. Having encountered sociology, depict? Can you imagine what a
contemporary version of this would
you may never see the world with the
look like?
same eyes again.
C01.QXD 4/6/08 08:16 Page 4

4 Chapter 1 The sociological imagination

In this section, and subsequently in the whole book,

we ask what is distinctive about this way of seeing, this
What is sociology? new consciousness? The box below gives a few standard
definitions which you may like to consider.

We can start by saying that sociology is the systematic

study of human society. At the heart of sociology we
may say there is a distinctive point of view. It should be
more than you find in a good documentary on a social
issue. It is certainly more than listings of facts and
figures about society. Instead it becomes a form of
consciousness, a way of thinking, a critical way of seeing
the social. It takes a while, sometimes years, for this
‘consciousness’ to become clear. It certainly has the
potential to change your life forever.
But a health warning is needed. Sociology could
change your life – maybe even damage it! Contrary to
the popular view that sociology is just common sense,
it often strains against the common sense. Once it
becomes ingrained in your thinking, it will always be
asking for you to ‘think the social’, and it will entail
challenging the obvious, questioning the world as it is
taken for granted, and de-familiarising the familiar.
This is personally enlightening, even empowering, but
it can also make you a very critical person. It can
develop critical thinking.
Seeing the general in the
particular
Peter Berger’s short book Invitation to Sociology
(1963) has tempted several generations of students
into seeing this perspective. In it he characterised the
sociological perspective as seeing the general in the
particular. He meant that sociologists can identify
general patterns of social life by looking at concrete
specific examples of social life. While acknowledging
that each individual is unique, in other words,
sociologists recognise that society acts differently
on various categories of people (say, children
compared to adults, women versus men, the rich as
opposed to the poor). We begin to think sociologically
once we start to realise how the general categories into
which we happen to fall shape our particular life
experiences.

Sociology is . . . first and The term has two stems – the

So what is foremost a way of thinking Latin socius (companionship)

Sociology? about the human world … [It

When you start to study sociology,
people – friends, families, even
Public Sociology
asks how] does it matter that
humans live always (and
cannot but live) in the
company of, in communication
with, in an exchange with, in
and the Greek logos (study
of) – and literally means the
study of the processes of
companionship. In these
terms, sociology may be
defined as the study of the

strangers – will probably ask you
what it is. You may well mumble
something about ‘the study of
society’, but that is very vague. So
you might want to prepare a
practical answer to give people. The
following defintions might help you
a little in this (but they all raise
more questions than they resolve):
The sociologist . . . is
someone concerned with
understanding society in a
disciplined way. The nature of
this discipline is scientific.
(Peter Berger, Invitation to Sociology,
1963: 27)
competition with, in
cooperation with other human
beings? … Its questions
‘defamiliarise the familiar’.
(Zygmunt Bauman, Thinking
Sociologically,1990: 8, 15)
The ‘human world’, or the
‘world of humans’, is the
distinctive realm of human
experience and existence
. . . and the subject matter
with which sociology is
concerned.
(Richard Jenkins: Foundations of
Sociology, 2002: 3)
bases of social membership.
More technically, sociology
is the analysis of the
structure of social
relationships as constituted
by social interaction, but no
definition is entirely
satisfactory because of the
diversity of perspectives.
(Nicholas Abercrombie, Sociology,
2004: 232)
The science or study of the
origin, history and
constitution of human
society.
(Shorter Oxford English Dictionary)
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
 After taking off his hat, and making a low bow,
Nibbles said:

“I think I have found your lordship’s ring, which

you lost. I have it around my neck.”

The Prince lifted Nibbles up, and looked at the

ring.

“That is most surely my Lucky Ring,” said he.

“Where did you find it?”

“In the sand at the bottom of the river,” answered

Nibbles, and he told the Prince how nearly drowned
he had been, and about Mr. Scratchetty-Claw.

“My old friend, the Alligator,” laughed the Prince.

“Oh, I know him well, the lazy scamp, for he eats up
all my best trout.”

Then he took the ring carefully from Nibbles’s

neck, and put it on his own finger.

“You have given me back what I prize most in the

world,” he said, “and your reward shall be in
proportion. Every year, as long as you live, you shall
receive a bag of gold.”

Nibbles was almost too happy to speak, but he

thanked the Prince and kissed his hand. A page was
sent to bring the gold, and a few minutes later,
Nibbles and Teenie Weenie, carrying the precious
bag between them, were hurrying back to the raft.

They found Mr. Scratchetty-Claw fast asleep, but

Nibbles, dancing with joy, woke him up to hear the
great news.

“Good enough!” said the Alligator. “It’s a lucky

thing for you that I tipped you into the river.”

“It certainly was,” said Nibbles, “for now my

mother will never have to work any more. Let us
hurry home to her as fast as we can, Teenie Weenie.”

“I’ll take you part of the way,” yawned Mr.

Scratchetty-Claw, “although I am fearfully sleepy.”
 Chapter VIII

Nibbles’ Return

Away they sailed towards home, as happy as two

little mice could be.

Mr. Scratchetty-Claw towed them for a long way,

until he became so sleepy that he had to stop and
take a nap. He shed tears when he said good-bye to
Nibbles and Teenie Weenie, but he soon settled
himself comfortably on a mud bank in a shady spot,
and in two minutes was snoring so loudly that you
could have heard him half a mile away.

Nibbles and Teenie hoisted their sail, and, as they

floated along, Teenie Weenie sang this song:

“Two little mice sailed down the stream

 One lovely summer day.
The sky was blue, the banks were green,
The birds in the tree tops sang unseen,
As they merrily sailed away.

“Their silken flag was red and white,

Their sail a butterfly’s wing;
With a firefly their pilot light,
They went to seek their fortune bright,
And found it in a ring.

“Deep buried in the golden sand,

Beneath the water blue,
Far away in a distant land
The little mice went hand in hand,
And sought the token true.”

For more than a week they sailed up the pretty

river, but at last, one afternoon at sunset, they
reached home. Quietly they stole up to the cottage
and peeped in at the window.
 There was Mrs. Poppelty-Poppett cooking supper,
while Sniffy and Snuffy were peeling potatoes, and
Gobble was eating an apple behind the door.
 Nibbles tapped gently on the window-pane, and
Mrs. Poppelty-Poppett turned quickly around. With a
squeak of perfect delight, she cried: “Oh, here is
Nibbles!” and ran to the door, upsetting the soup-
kettle right into the fire in her haste. Of course, Sniffy
and Snuffy, Gobble and the baby, all ran out, too, and
then they all talked together so fast that no one knew
what any one else was saying. Pretty soon they
quieted down, and Nibbles told them of his wonderful
adventures, and of the finding of the Lucky Ring.
When he gave his mother the bag of gold, poor little
Mrs. Poppelty-Poppett did not know whether to laugh
or cry with happiness, so she did both. She had
worked hard for her children, and now there would be
comfort and plenty for the rest of her life.

After a little while she dried her eyes, and thought

of supper. It was all in the fire and burned up!
 “Never mind,” said Nibbles. “Teenie Weenie and I
would far rather have some of your nice corn cake
and toasted cheese than soup.”

“Indeed we would,” said Teenie Weenie.

So they all helped, and in a few minutes

everything was ready; and how good the supper
tasted!
 When at last they went to bed, they all dreamed of
bags of Lucky Rings, and rivers of gold, guarded by
Alligators, who ate nothing but toasted cheese and
corn bread.
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