Sociology for the Twenty-first Century: Continuities and Cutting Edges [Hardcover]

These original essays by eminent sociologists probe issues of central importance to North American societies in the twenty-first century.

The chapters in part 1 revise theory and methods to comprehend the economic and political institutions that increasingly dominate the lives of individuals and groups, arguing that these giants must be made more democratically accountable. Part 2 explores the social effects that growing globalization, transnationalization, and information technologies are having on politics, economics, and the environment. The final chapters compare how new immigrants from increasingly diversified backgrounds are being absorbed in Canada and the United States, exploring the impact that immigrants are having on preexisting ethnic minorities and on the dominant political culture.

While it is a major attempt to refocus the discipline of sociology, the book's clear, nontechnical style and its attention to issues of central concern to all citizens make it also highly accessible to nonspecialists.

Contributors are Janet L. Abu-Lughod, Tomas Almaguer, Giovanni Arrighi, Gilles Bourque, Randall Collins, Jules Duchastel, Joe Feagin, Harriet Friedmann, Pierre Hamel, Moon-Kie Jung, Joel Levine, Henri Lustiger-Thaler, Louis Maheu, Joel Perlmann, Saskia Sassen, Gideon Sjoberg, Dorothy Smith, Roger Waldinger, and Barry Wellman.

Janet Abu-Lughod, professor emerita of the Graduate Faculty of the New School, is the author of eleven books, most recentlyNew York, Chicago, Los Angeles: America's Global Cities.

Foreword by Felice J. Levine
Preface
Acknowledgments
Part One - Theory (ies) and Method (s)
1. The Heritage and Future of Sociology in North America
Janet L. Abu-Lughod
2. The European Sociological Tradition and Twenty-First-Century World Sociology
Randall Collins
3. Some Observations on Bureaucratic Capitalism: Knowledge about What and Why?
Gideon Sjoberg
4. Fromlƒ+