Social Things

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).

• Preface to the Fifth EditionIntroductionThe Sociological LifeChapter 1: Imagining Social Things, CompetentlyChapter 2: Personal Courage and Practical SociologiesChapter 3: Practicing the Discipline of Social ThingsSociologyChapter 4: Sociology and Lost Worlds of A New World Order: 1848 - 1920Chapter 5: Sociology Becomes a Science of Structures: 1920 - 1960Chapter 6: Sociology Reaches Out Into the World: 1968 - 2000sSocial ThingsChapter 7: The Mysterious Power of Social StructuresChapter 8: The Lively Subjects of Dead StructuresChapter 9: Well-Measured Lives in a World of DifferencesGlobal ThingsChapter 10: Global MethodsChapter 11: Global Things on a Fragile PlanetChapter 12: Living against the ConclusionAcknowledgmentsNotesIndexAbout the Author

Charles Lemert makes sociology vital and alive in this provocative yet friendly introduction. Lemert uses personal biography and the life stories of sociologists, including female, gay and lesbian, and black social thinkers too often overlooked. He asks tough questions of race, class, and gender that most other introductions bypass.