Peter L. Berger is arguably the best-known American sociologist living today. Since the 1960s he has been publishing books on many facets of the American social scene, and several are now considered classics. So it may be hard to believe Professor Berger's description of himself as an "accidental sociologist." But that in fact accurately describes how he stumbled into sociology. In this witty, intellectually stimulating memoir, Berger explains not only how he became a social scientist, but the many adventures that this calling has led to. Rather than writing an autobiography, he focuses on the main intellectual issues that motivated his work and the various people and situations he encountered in the course of his career. Full of memorable vignettes and colorful characters depicted in a lively narrative often laced with humor, Berger's memoir conveys the excitement that a study of social life can bring. The first part of the book describes Berger's initiation into sociology through the New School for Social Research, "a European enclave in the midst of Greenwich Village bohemia." Berger was first a student at the New School and later a young professor amidst a clique of like-minded individuals. There he published The Social Construction of Reality (with colleague Thomas Luckmann), one of his most successful books, followed by The Sacred Canopy on the sociology of religion, also still widely cited. The book covers Berger's experience as a "globe-trekking sociologist" including trips to Mexico, where he studied approaches to Third World poverty; to East Asia, where he discovered the potential of capitalism to improve social conditions; and to South Africa, where he chaired an international study group on the future of post-Apartheid society. Berger then tells about his role as the director of a research center at Boston University. For over two decades he and his colleagues have been tackling such important issues as globalization, the secularization of Europe, and the ongoing dialectic between relativism and fundamentalism in contemporary culture. What comes across throughout is Berger's boundless curiosity with the many ways in which people interact in society. This book offers longtime Berger readers as well as newcomers to sociology proof that the sociologist's attempt to explain the world is anything but boring.

"This is a rather strange book, as tends to be true of Memoirs. They of course have to be autobiographical, and are sometimes little more than that, but (to my mind, at least) a Memoir should be more than that: It should be about the life and times of the author. In my case, the life and times of the author comes down to what I like to call the author's adventures. In my case, too, those adventures are both what are ordinarily called adventures and what are sometimes called intellectual adventures. Put otherwise, the true hero of this tale is not Mel Kohn, but an academic field, Sociology. It is the story of the wonderful adventures I have had in a long lifetime of doing research, in this country and in several others, in the marvelous field of sociology. There are other ways of having adventures in sociology, in teaching or in administration for example, but in my case it was research. The basic theme of the entire book is an examination of the life of one sociologist - me - whose life illustrates a remarkable range of adventures, entirely contrary to most readers' expectations of what life in this professional domain entails. Moreover, half of my working life was spent working for a governmental organization, half for a university, suggesting that the adventures were there to be pursued no matter which of the primary career paths open to a sociologist one pursued. My argument is that a career in sociological research can lend itself to an exciting life of adventure, as it certainly did for this sociologist. I speak not of sociological teaching, nor of sociological activities of any other sort, as necessarily leading to an adventurous life. I only argue that sociological research can,"--

From the names of cruise lines and bookstores to an Australian ranch and a nudist camp outside of Atlanta, the word serendipity--that happy blend of wisdom and luck by which something is discovered not quite by accident--is today ubiquitous. This book traces the word's eventful history from its 1754 coinage into the twentieth century--chronicling along the way much of what we now call the natural and social sciences. The book charts where the term went, with whom it resided, and how it fared. We cross oceans and academic specialties and meet those people, both famous and now obscure, who have used and abused serendipity. We encounter a linguistic sage, walk down the illustrious halls of the Harvard Medical School, attend the (serendipitous) birth of penicillin, and meet someone who "manages serendipity" for the U.S. Navy. The story of serendipity is fascinating; that of The Travels and Adventures of Serendipity, equally so. Written in the 1950s by already-eminent sociologist Robert Merton and Elinor Barber, the book--though occasionally and most tantalizingly cited--was intentionally never published. This is all the more curious because it so remarkably anticipated subsequent battles over research and funding--many of which centered on the role of serendipity in science. Finally, shortly after his ninety-first birthday, following Barber's death and preceding his own by but a little, Merton agreed to expand and publish this major work. Beautifully written, the book is permeated by the prodigious intellectual curiosity and generosity that characterized Merton's influential On the Shoulders of Giants. Absolutely entertaining as the history of a word, the book is also tremendously important to all who value the miracle of intellectual discovery. It represents Merton's lifelong protest against that rhetoric of science that defines discovery as anything other than a messy blend of inspiration, perspiration, error, and happy chance--anything other than serendipity.

This undergraduate textbook provides a broad overview of the ways in which ‘adventurous practices’ influence, and are influenced by, the world around them. The concept of adventure is one that is too often tackled within subject silos of philosophy, education, tourism, or leisure. While much of the analysis is strong, there is little cross-pollination between disciplines. Adventure & Society pulls together the threads of these discourses into one coherent treatment of the term ‘adventure’ and the role that it plays in human social life of the 21st century. It explores how these practices can be considered more deeply through theoretical discourses of capitalism, identity construction, technology and social media, risk-taking, personal development, equalities, and sustainability. As such, the book speaks to a broad audience of undergraduate and postgraduate students across diverse subject areas, and aims to be an accessible starting point for deeper inquiry.

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Adventure and outdoor sports - from rock climbing to freestyle kayaking – are a modern social phenomenon that can tell us much about the relationship between sport, culture and contemporary society. In this engaging new introductory text, adventure sports are used to illustrate key concepts in social theory and to demonstrate why an understanding of social theory is essential for any student taking a course in sport, adventure, or outdoor education. Each chapter in the book introduces a key ‘classical’ or modern social theorist, including Marx, Durkheim, Weber and Elias, or a universal topic or issue in social theory, such as sustainability, commodification or identity. Within each of those chapters the theorist or topic is brought to life through case studies of adventurous activities and lived experiences, helping the reader to connect their own sporting and adventurous interests with the frameworks we use to understand wider culture and society. Concise and full of cutting-edge contemporary examples, Outdoor Adventure and Social Theory is the perfect companion for any module on the sociology of sport, adventure or outdoor recreation.

In the summer of 1934, an American professor of sociology at the University of Cincinnati, Earle Edward Eubank, travelled through Europe and, in doing so, visited the most famous sociologists of the time in England, Germany, Austria, Czechoslovakia, and France. This book is a description of this journey, its results and consequences.