"Belonging in the two Berlins is an ethnographic investigation into the meaning of German selfhood during the Cold War. Taking the practices of everyday life in the divided Berlin as his point of departure, Borneman shows how ideas of kin, state, and nation were constructed thro…
John Dardess has selected a region of great political and intellectual importance, but one which local history has left almost untouched, for this detailed social history of T'ai-ho county during the Ming dynasty. Rather than making a sweeping, general survey of the region, he f…
"What are the causes of inequality in capitalist society? In Understanding Class, leading left sociologist Erik Olin Wright returns to the fundamental concept underlying this question, and interrogates the different theories and paradigms that have arisen for understanding it. B…
by Sarbin, Theodore R., Kitsuse, John I.
fromInquiries in social construction
"Recent years have witnessed a fundamental shift across the social sciences towards a social constructionist perspective. The time-honored notion that social objects are out there to be discovered is being rejected in favor of the view that they are created by people. This influ…
by Sarbin, Theodore R., Kitsuse, John I.
fromInquiries in social construction
"The State of Families: Law, Policy, and the Meanings of Relationships collects essential readings on the family to examine the multiple forms of contemporary families, the many issues facing families, the policies that regulate families, and how families-and family life-have be…
"A leading social thinker examines the key structural features of our disillusioned age"--.
The years since World War II have seen rapid shifts in the relative positions of different countries and regions. Leading political economist Mancur Olson offers a new and compelling theory to explain these shifts in fortune and then tests his theory against evidence from many p…
