Social Things: An Introduction to the Sociological Life, Edition 5

Charles Lemert

Aug 2011 · Rowman & Littlefield Publishers

About this ebook

In fifteen years, Charles Lemert's Social Things has become a much-loved modern classic among teachers, students, and many other readers for introducing the sociological imagination through lively, memorable stories and interpretations. This fifth edition is fresh: the history of sociology section is updated to incorporate new discussions of the way sociological ideas have spread into numerous other fields to inform the new post-disciplinary social theory; the book now includes original yet practically vivid presentations of globalization, queer theory, critical race theory, and much else; and an entirely new chapter, "Global Things on a Fragile Planet," addresses the environmental crises that challenge our global world. Lemert focuses on man-made disasters like the Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill in 2010 and natural tragedies like the 2011 earthquakes and tsunami in Japan in which the fragility of organized human life and the sociological incompetence of many social structures are dramatically illustrated.

About the author

Charles Lemert is university professor and John C. Andrus Professor of Social Theory Emeritus at Wesleyan University and senior fellow of the Center for Comparative Research at Yale University. He is the author or editor of many books, including Why Niebuhr Matters, The Structural Lie, Globalization: A Reader (edited with Anthony Elliott, Daniel Chafee, and Eric Hsu), and The New Individualism (with Anthony Elliott).