This award-winning guide to social justice education is appropriate for students from high school through graduate school.Based on the authors’ extensive experience in a range of settings in the United States and Canada, the book addresses the most common stumbling blocks to understanding social justice. This comprehensive resource includes new features such as a chapter on intersectionality and classism; discussion of contemporary activism (Black Lives Matter, Occupy, and Idle No More); material on White Settler societies and colonialism; pedagogical supports related to “common social patterns” and “vocabulary to practice using”; and extensive updates throughout. Accessible to students from high school through graduate school, Is Everyone Really Equal? is a detailed and engaging textbook and professional development resource presenting the key concepts in social justice education. The text includes many user-friendly features, examples, and vignettes to not just define but illustrate the concepts. Book Features:Definition Boxes that define key terms.Stop Boxes to remind readers of previously explained ideas. Perspective Check Boxes to draw attention to alternative standpoints.Discussion Questions and Extension Activities for using the book in a class, workshop, or study group.A Glossary of terms and guide to language use. Read more

None

Beauty today is a paradox. The cult of beauty is ubiquitous but it has lost its transcendence and become little more than an aspect of consumerism, the aesthetic dimension of capitalism. The sublime and unsettling aspects of beauty have given way to corporeal pleasures and 'likes', resulting in a kind of 'pornography' of beauty.In this book, cultural theorist Byung-Chul Han reinvigorates aesthetic theory for our digital age. He interrogates our preoccupation with all things slick and smooth, from Jeff Koon's sculptures and the iPhone to Brazilian waxing. Reaching far deeper than our superficial reactions to viral videos and memes, Han reclaims beauty, showing how it manifests itself as truth, temptation and even disaster.This wide-ranging and profound exploration of beauty, encompassing ethical and political considerations as well as aesthetic, will appeal to all those interested in cultural and aesthetic theory, philosophy and digital media. Read more

First published in 1956, The Power Elite stands as a contemporary classic of social science and social criticism. C. Wright Mills examines and critiques the organization of power in the United States, calling attention to three firmly interlocked prongs of power: the military, corporate, and political elite. The Power Elite can be read as a good account of what was taking place in America at the time it was written, but its underlying question of whether America is as democratic in practice as it is in theory continues to matter very much today.What The Power Elite informed readers of in 1956 was how much the organization of power in America had changed during their lifetimes, and Alan Wolfe's astute afterword to this new edition brings us up to date, illustrating how much more has changed since then. Wolfe sorts out what is helpful in Mills' book and which of his predictions have not come to bear, laying out the radical changes in American capitalism, from intense global competition and the collapse of communism to rapid technological transformations and ever changing consumer tastes. The Power Elite has stimulated generations of readers to think about the kind of society they have and the kind of society they might want, and deserves to be read by every new generation. Read more

None

Current Issues and Enduring Questions is a text and reader that serves as an extensive resource for teaching argument, persuasive writing, critical thinking, and research. It includes readings on topics that matter to students, such as being seen as “the other” and student loan forgiveness, issues that students will want to engage with and debate. Comprehensive coverage of classic and contemporary approaches to argument includes Aristotelian, Toulmin, Rogerian, and a range of alternative views, such as analyzing and writing about visual arguments.This new edition does more than ever to make argument concepts clear, and to give students strategies for crafting effective arguments. For today’s ever-increasingly visual learners who are challenged to separate what’s real from what’s not, new activities and visual flowcharts support information literacy. Newly annotated readings highlight important rhetorical moves. And new readings explore controversial issues such as mass incarceration, cultural appropriation, and the way computer algorithms make biased decisions. Read more

How do millions of Americans navigate today’s demanding and unpredictable work terrain without the protection of strong labor laws, unions, or a reliable social safety net? They turn to trusted colleagues and supervisors to help navigate the chaos. But is interpersonal trust truly a solution, or just another source of vulnerability? In Trust Fall, sociologist Sarah Mosseri delves into the intricate web of workplace trust. Drawing on years of immersive research across diverse industries—from bustling restaurants and tech startups to marketing agencies and ride-hail circuits—she reveals how the very bonds workers rely on to manage instability and insecurity often deepen their exposure to risk and exploitation. Blending vivid storytelling with sharp sociological insight, Trust Fall reveals the seduction and costs of workplace trust. It gives readers the language to recognize and challenge the unspoken bargains workers make to belong, thrive, and survive in today’s precarious labor landscape. Read more

The pace of modern life is undoubtedly speeding up, yet this acceleration does not seem to have made us any happier or more content. If acceleration is the problem, then the solution, argues Hartmut Rosa in this major new work, lies in “resonance.” The quality of a human life cannot be measured simply in terms of resources, options, and moments of happiness; instead, we must consider our relationship to, or resonance with, the world.Applying his theory of resonance to many domains of human activity, Rosa describes the full spectrum of ways in which we establish our relationship to the world, from the act of breathing to the adoption of culturally distinct worldviews. He then turns to the realms of concrete experience and action – family and politics, work and sports, religion and art – in which we as late modern subjects seek out resonance.  This task is proving ever more difficult as modernity’s logic of escalation is both cause and consequence of a distorted relationship to the world, at individual and collective levels. As Rosa shows, all the great crises of modern society – the environmental crisis, the crisis of democracy, the psychological crisis – can also be understood and analyzed in terms of resonance and our broken relationship to the world around us.Building on his now classic work on acceleration, Rosa’s new book is a major new contribution to the theory of modernity, showing how our problematic relation to the world is at the crux of some of the most pressing issues we face today. This bold renewal of critical theory for our times will be of great interest to students and scholars across the social sciences and humanities. Read more

Racially and economically segregated schools across the United States have hosted many interventions from commercial digital education technology (edtech) companies who promise their products will rectify the failures of public education. Edtech's benefits are not only trumpeted by industry promoters and evangelists but also vigorously pursued by experts, educators, students, and teachers. Why, then, has edtech yet to make good on its promises? In Access Is Capture, Roderic N. Crooks investigates how edtech functions in Los Angeles public schools that exclusively serve Latinx and Black communities. These so-called urban schools are sites of intense, ongoing technological transformation, where the tantalizing possibilities of access to computing meet the realities of structural inequality. Crooks shows how data-intensive edtech delivers value to privileged individuals and commercial organizations but never to the communities that hope to share in the benefits. He persuasively argues that data-drivenness ultimately enjoins the public to participate in a racial project marked by the extraction of capital from minoritized communities to enrich the tech sector. Read more

In this new book, Bauman examines how we have moved away from a 'heavy' and 'solid', hardware-focused modernity to a 'light' and 'liquid', software-based modernity. This passage, he argues, has brought profound change to all aspects of the human condition. The new remoteness and un-reachability of global systemic structure coupled with the unstructured and under-defined, fluid state of the immediate setting of life-politics and human togetherness, call for the rethinking of the concepts and cognitive frames used to narrate human individual experience and their joint history. This book is dedicated to this task. Bauman selects five of the basic concepts which have served to make sense of shared human life - emancipation, individuality, time/space, work and community - and traces their successive incarnations and changes of meaning. Liquid Modernity concludes the analysis undertaken in Bauman's two previous books Globalization: The Human Consequences and In Search of Politics. Together these volumes form a brilliant analysis of the changing conditions of social and political life by one of the most original thinkers writing today. Read more

The new, sixth edition of Human Behavior in the Social Environment: Perspectives on Development and the Life Course deepens students’ understanding of the major theories, themes, and issues related to people and how they interact and change over the life span and with respect to their social environments.The new edition has been updated to reflect and build on new developments and awareness related to systemic racism and social justice and mental health and health-related concerns that were exacerbated and exposed by the pandemic. The text also comes with a rich companion website that includes support materials and six unique cases that encourage students to learn by doing and to apply their knowledge of human behavior to practice. The book works to:Provide balanced, thorough, and accessible coverage of the major theories and perspectives that social workers utilize to understand and address the myriad problems their clients encounterIntegrate crucial information on life course development, associated development phases, and related problem areas into a single, engaging frameworkStimulate classroom discussion and application around key concepts, themes, and issuesThe content in this text is supported by a range of fully updated instructor-led and student resources - including presentations; sample test questions; recommended readings; and links for further study/applications to current events - that are available on its companion website, www.routledgesw.com. Comprehensive, engaging, and filled with examples for students to learn how to apply their burgeoning knowledge to realistic practice issues, the new edition of Human Behavior in the Social Environment remains invaluable as a tool for courses by the same name in undergraduate and graduate curriculums. Read more

SOCIOLOGY: THE ESSENTIALS, Tenth Edition, uses the theme of debunking myths to look behind the facades of everyday life, encourage you to question common assumptions, and help you better understand how society is constructed and sustained. This thorough yet streamlined text provides exceptional coverage of diversity, including social factors such as age, religion, sexual orientation, and region of residence, in addition to race, ethnicity, class, and gender. Updated with coverage of the latest findings, trends, and themes, this new edition's reader-friendly presentation teaches you the concepts, methods, and research that will sharpen your "sociological imagination" and help you view the world from a different perspective. Read more

The most relevant textbook for today’s studentsTeachers select The Real World because students love it. Kerry Ferris and Jill Stein set out to write a book that was sorely needed for sociology courses: one that was written for student readers. Now in its Ninth Edition, The Real World been used by over 7,500 high school students.In every chapter, Ferris and Stein use examples from everyday life, the media, and pop culture to get students thinking sociologically and to show the relevance of sociology to their relationships, jobs, and the future of society. Innovative and assignable Data Workshops give students a chance to apply theoretical concepts to their own lives and get hands-on experience with the tools of social science. The new Norton Illumine Ebook features interactives, videos, and concept check questions to support students as they develop their sociological imaginations. Read more

Reassembling the Social is a fundamental challenge from one of the world's leading social theorists to how we understand society and the "social". Bruno Latour's contention is that the word "social" as used by Social Scientists has become laden with assumptions to the point where it has become a misnomer. When the adjective is applied to a phenomenon, it is used to indicate a stabilized state of affairs, a bundle of ties that in due course may be used to account for another phenomenon. Latour also finds the word used as if it described a type of material, in a comparable way to an adjective such as "wooden" or "steely".Rather than simply indicating what is already assembled together, it is now used in a way that makes assumptions about the nature of what is assembled. It has become a word that designates two distinct things: a process of assembling: and a type of material, distinct from others. Latour shows why "the social" cannot be thought of as a kind of material or domain, and disputes attempts to provide a "social explanation" of other states of affairs. While these attempts have been productive (and probably necessary) in the past, the very success of the social sciences mean that they are largely no longer so. At the present stage it is no longer possible to inspect the precise constituents entering the social domain. Latour returns to the original meaning of "the social" to redefine the notion and allow it to trace connections again. It will then be possible to resume the traditional goal of the social sciences, but using more refined tools. Drawing on his extensive work examining the "assemblages" of nature, Latour finds it necessary to scrutinize thoroughly the exact content of what is assembled under the umbrella of Society. This approach, a "sociology of associations" has become known as Actor-Network-Theory, and this book is an essential introduction both for those seeking to understand Actor-Network-Theory, or the ideas of one of its most influential proponents. Read more

The definitive refutation to the argument of The Bell Curve. When published in 1981, The Mismeasure of Man was immediately hailed as a masterwork, the ringing answer to those who would classify people, rank them according to their supposed genetic gifts and limits. And yet the idea of innate limits―of biology as destiny―dies hard, as witness the attention devoted to The Bell Curve, whose arguments are here so effectively anticipated and thoroughly undermined by Stephen Jay Gould. In this edition Dr. Gould has written a substantial new introduction telling how and why he wrote the book and tracing the subsequent history of the controversy on innateness right through The Bell Curve. Further, he has added five essays on questions of The Bell Curve in particular and on race, racism, and biological determinism in general. These additions strengthen the book's claim to be, as Leo J. Kamin of Princeton University has said, "a major contribution toward deflating pseudo-biological 'explanations' of our present social woes." Read more

An exclusive behind-the-scenes look at one of America’s most controversial experiments in police surveillance.    In 2020, the Baltimore Police Department had an aerial surveillance plane that could supposedly photograph and track every person in public view. Spy Plane reveals what happened with this controversial policing experiment. Drawing from incredible access and direct observations inside the for-profit tech startup that ran the program for Baltimore detectives, sociologist Benjamin H. Snyder recounts real criminal cases as they were worked by police using this untested tool.   Deploying aircraft with powerful cameras built by a small company called Persistent Surveillance Systems, the spy plane program promised to help police “solve otherwise unsolvable crimes” by tracking the whereabouts of suspects in violent crime cases. Created for the battlefields of Iraq, it had never been adapted on so large a scale in a U.S. city. This riveting book gives an unprecedented look inside the shadowy world of for-profit law enforcement technology experiments, explaining why police and community leaders place so much faith in unproven technology to fix the problem of urban violence but continually come up short. Read more

Lamanna/Riedmann/Stewart's bestselling MARRIAGES, FAMILIES, AND RELATIONSHIPS: MAKING CHOICES IN A DIVERSE SOCIETY, 14th edition, emphasizes a theme that is especially relevant in our modern and global world: making choices in a diverse society. Combining various theoretical perspectives with relevant examples, the text will help you understand how people are influenced by the society around them, how social conditions change in ways that affect family life, the interplay between families and the larger society, and the family-related choices that individuals make throughout adulthood. You'll gain insightful perspectives on different ethnic traditions and family forms. You will also be empowered to question assumptions and reconcile conflicting ideas and values as you make informed choices in your own life. In addition, MindTap digital learning solution helps you learn on your own terms. Read more

Cybercrime and Digital Deviance, Second Edition, combines insights from sociology, criminology, psychology, and cybersecurity to explore cybercrimes such as hacking, identity theft, and romance scams, along with forms of digital deviance such as pornography addiction, trolling, and “canceling” people for perceived violations of norms.Other issues are explored including cybercrime investigations, nation-state cybercrime, the use of algorithms in policing, cybervictimization, and expanded discussion of the theories used to explain cybercrime. Graham and Smith conceptualize the online space as a distinct environment for social interaction, framing their work with assumptions informed by their respective work in urban sociology and spatial criminology, and offering an engaging entry point for understanding what may appear to be a technologically complex course of study. The authors apply a modified version of a typology developed by David Wall: cybertrespass, cyberfraud, cyberviolence, and cyberpornography. This typology is simple enough for students just beginning their inquiry into cybercrime, while its use of legal categories of trespassing, fraud, violent crimes against persons, and moral transgressions provides a solid foundation for deeper study. In this edition each chapter includes a new “Current Events and Critical Thinking” section, using concepts from the chapter to explore a specific event or topic like the effect of disinformation on social cohesion and politics.Taken together, Graham and Smith’s application of a digital environment and Wall’s cybercrime typology makes this an ideal upper-level text for students in sociology and criminal justice. It is also an ideal introductory text for students within the emerging disciplines of cybercrime and cybersecurity. Read more

Sports buffs know all about famous players and coaches and can recite statistics in endless detail. But do fans know how sport is linked to other institutions of society? Do they understand the role of sport in socializing youngsters in both positive and negative ways? What about the ways in which sport perpetuates race and gender-role stereotypes in society? How do owners, coaches, and other sport authorities exercise power to maintain control over athletes?These issues and more are examined in Sport in Contemporary Society, Tenth Edition, a selection of accessible writing by journalists and leading scholars who represent a new era of critical appraisal of sports--both professional and amateur. Read more

Boilerplate language in contracts tends to stick around long after its origins and purpose have been forgotten. Usually there are no serious repercussions, but sometimes it can cause unexpected problems. Such was the case with the obscure pari passu clause in cross-border sovereign debt contracts, until a novel judicial interpretation rattled international finance by forcing a defaulting sovereign—for one of the first times in the market’s centuries-long history—to repay its foreign creditors. Though neither party wanted this outcome, the vast majority of contracts subsequently issued demonstrate virtually no attempt to clarify the imprecise language of the clause.Using this case as a launching pad to explore the broader issue of the “stickiness” of contract boilerplate, Mitu Gulati and Robert E. Scott have sifted through more than one thousand sovereign debt contracts and interviewed hundreds of practitioners to show that the problem actually lies in the nature of the modern corporate law firm. The financial pressure on large firms to maintain a high volume of transactions contributes to an array of problems that deter innovation. With the near certainty of massive sovereign debt restructuring in Europe, The Three and a Half Minute Transaction speaks to critical issues facing the industry and has broader implications for contract design that will ensure it remains relevant to our understanding of legal practice long after the debt crisis has subsided. Read more