This third expanded and definitive collection of essays by Stanley Milgram, the creator of the iconoclastic 'obedience experiments' and the originator of the concept of 'six degrees of separation'. Original, thought provoking and fascinating. Milgram was years ahead of his time, and this book should be read by every social scientist who is interested in behaviour beyond the laboratory. Richard Wiseman, author of Quirkology

What it socialization? What is interaction? What do we mean by identity? How can we explain the notion of self? What do we mean by intra-action? The Sociology of the Individual is an innovative and though-provoking sociological exploration of how the ideas of the individual and society relate. Expertly combining conceptual depth with clarity of style, Athanasia Chalari: explains the key sociological and psychological theories related to the investigation of the social and the personal analyses the ways that both sociology and psychology can contribute to a more complete understanding and theorising of everyday life uses a mix of international cases and everyday examples to encourage critical reflection. The Sociology of the Individual is an essential read for upper level undergraduates or postgraduates looking for a deeper and more sophisticated understanding of the connection between the social world and the inner life of the individual. Perfect for modules exploring the sociology of the self, self and society, and self and identity.

How data science and the analysis of networks help us solve the puzzle of unintended consequences. Social life is full of paradoxes. Our intentional actions often trigger outcomes that we did not intend or even envision. How do we explain those unintended effects and what can we do to regulate them? In Decoding the Social World, Sandra González-Bailón explains how data science and digital traces help us solve the puzzle of unintended consequences—offering the solution to a social paradox that has intrigued thinkers for centuries. Communication has always been the force that makes a collection of people more than the sum of individuals, but only now can we explain why: digital technologies have made it possible to parse the information we generate by being social in new, imaginative ways. And yet we must look at that data, González-Bailón argues, through the lens of theories that capture the nature of social life. The technologies we use, in the end, are also a manifestation of the social world we inhabit. González-Bailón discusses how the unpredictability of social life relates to communication networks, social influence, and the unintended effects that derive from individual decisions. She describes how communication generates social dynamics in aggregate (leading to episodes of “collective effervescence”) and discusses the mechanisms that underlie large-scale diffusion, when information and behavior spread “like wildfire.” She applies the theory of networks to illuminate why collective outcomes can differ drastically even when they arise from the same individual actions. By opening the black box of unintended effects, González-Bailón identifies strategies for social intervention and discusses the policy implications—and how data science and evidence-based research embolden critical thinking in a world that is constantly changing.

There are few more important philosophers at work today than John Searle, a creative and contentious thinker who has shaped the way we think about mind and language. Now he offers a profound understanding of how we create a social reality--a reality of money, property, governments, marriages, stock markets and cocktail parties. The paradox he addresses in Making the Social World is that these facts only exist because we think they exist and yet they have an objective existence. Continuing a line of investigation begun in his earlier book The Construction of Social Reality, Searle identifies the precise role of language in the creation of all "institutional facts." His aim is to show how mind, language and civilization are natural products of the basic facts of the physical world described by physics, chemistry and biology. Searle explains how a single linguistic operation, repeated over and over, is used to create and maintain the elaborate structures of human social institutions. These institutions serve to create and distribute power relations that are pervasive and often invisible. These power relations motivate human actions in a way that provides the glue that holds human civilization together. Searle then applies the account to show how it relates to human rationality, the freedom of the will, the nature of political power and the existence of universal human rights. In the course of his explication, he asks whether robots can have institutions, why the threat of force so often lies behind institutions, and he denies that there can be such a thing as a "state of nature" for language-using human beings.

Because of its unique focus on teaching the critical social skills that autistic children lack, this book has been cited by "Library Journal" as "Essential to All Collections."

Unlike other texts for undergraduate sociological social psychology courses, this text presents the three distinct traditions (or "faces") in sociological social psychology (symbolic interactionism, social structure and personality, and group processes and structures) and emphasizes the different theoretical frameworks within which social psychological analyses are conducted within each research tradition. With this approach, the authors make clear the link between "face" of sociological social psychology, theory, and methodology. Thus, students gain an appreciably better understanding of the field of sociological social psychology; how and why social psychologists trained in sociology ask particular kinds of questions; the types of research they are involved in; and how their findings have been, or can be, applied to contemporary societal patterns and problems. Great writing makes this approach successful and interesting for students, resulting in a richer, more powerful course experience. A website offers instructors high quality support material, written by the authors, which you will appreciate and value."

The book argues for an understanding of the person where the social world is not a set of variables that affect a pre-existing individual, but is instead the arena where the person becomes formed.