We live in a world of fast-paced change that is being fuelled by new technologies, changing personal and social relationships, and changing cultural values and economic conditions. Sociology is a discipline that can help you understand this change. Looking at their world through the sociological perspective enables you to better understand themselves and their place in an evolving and complex world. Designed for today's students, THINK Sociology shows you how sociologists think and how to understand the rapidly changing world they live in.

We live in a world of fast-paced change that is being fueled by new technologies, changing personal and social relationships, and changing cultural values and economic conditions. Sociology is a discipline that can help you understand this change. Looking at their world through the sociological perspective enables students to better understand themselves and their place in an evolving and complex world. Designed for today's students, THINK SOCIOLOGY shows you how sociologists think and how to understand the rapidly changing world they live in.

Across disciplines, critical thinking is praised, taught, and put into practice. But what does it actually mean to think critically? In this brief volume, sociologist Joel Best examines how to evaluate arguments and the evidence used to support them as he hones in on how to think in the field of sociology and beyond. With inimitable style that melds ethnographic verve with dry humor, Best examines the ways in which sociologists engage in fuzzy thinking through bias, faddish cultural waves, spurious reasoning, and implicit bias. The short chapters cover: A general introduction to critical thinking and logic in the social sciences Sociology as an enterprise Key issues in thinking critically about sociological research Challenging questions that confront sociologists and a call for the discipline to meet those challenges. Students across disciplines will learn the building blocks of critical thinking in a sociological context and come away with key concepts to put into practice.

What's the use of sociology? The question has been asked often enough and it leaves a lingering doubt in the minds of many. At a time when there is widespread scepticism about the value of sociology and of the social sciences generally, this short book by one of the world's leading thinkers offers a passionate, engaging and important statement of the need for sociology. In a series of conversations with Michael Hviid Jacobsen and Keith Tester, Zygmunt Bauman explains why sociology is necessary if we hope to live fully human lives. But the kind of sociology he advocates is one which sees 'use' as more than economic success and knowledge as more than the generation of facts. Bauman makes a powerful case for the practice of sociology as an ongoing dialogue with human experience, and in so doing he issues a call for us all to start questioning the common sense of our everyday lives. He also offers the clearest statement yet of the principles which inform his own work, reflecting on his life and career and on the role of sociology in our contemporary liquid-modern world. This book stands as a testimony to Bauman's belief in the enduring relevance of sociology. But it is also a call to us all to start questioning the world in which we live and to transform ourselves from being the victims of circumstance into the makers of our own history. For that, at the end of the day, is the use of sociology.

Innovative readings and blog posts show how sociology can help us understand everyday life.

Over the past half-century, think tanks have become fixtures of American politics, supplying advice to presidents and policy makers, expert testimony on Capitol Hill, and convenient facts and figures to journalists and media specialists. But what are think tanks? Who funds them? What kind of “research” do they produce? Where does their authority come from? And how influential have they become? In Think Tanks in America, Thomas Medvetz argues that the unsettling ambiguity of the think tank is less an accidental feature of its existence than the very key to its impact. By combining elements of more established sources of public knowledge—universities, government agencies, businesses, and the media—think tanks exert a tremendous amount of influence on the way citizens and lawmakers perceive the world, unbound by the more clearly defined roles of those other institutions. In the process, they transform the government of this country, the press, and the political role of intellectuals. Timely, succinct, and instructive, this provocative book will force us to rethink our understanding of the drivers of political debate in the United States.

Comprehensive and engaging, this textbook introduces students not only to foundational sociological work, but also to insights from contemporary sociological theory and research. This combined approach ensures that students become familiar with the core of sociology: key concepts, theories, perspectives, methods, and findings. Students will acquire the ability to think like a sociologist, investigate and understand complex social phenomena. This text presents a complete sociological toolkit, guiding students in the art of asking good sociological questions, devising a sophisticated theory and developing methodologies to observe social phenomena. The chapters of this book build cumulatively to equip students with the tools to quickly understand any new sociological topic or contemporary social problem. The textbook also applies the sociological toolkit to selected key sociological issues, showing how specific sociological topics can be easily investigated and understood using this approach. Taking a global and comparative perspective, the book covers a rich diversity of sociological topics and social problems, such as crime, immigration, race and ethnicity, media, education, family, organizations, gender, poverty, modernization and religion. The book presents a range of helpful pedagogical features throughout, such as: Chapter overview and learning goals summaries at the start of every chapter; Thinking like a sociologist boxes, encouraging students to reflect critically on learning points; Principle boxes, summarizing key sociological principles; Theory schema boxes, presenting sociological theories in a clear, understandable manner; Stylized facts highlighting key empirical findings and patterns; Key concepts and summary sections at the end of every chapter; and Companion website providing additional material for every chapter for both instructors and students, including PowerPoint lecture notes, discussion questions and answers, multiple-choice questions, further reading and a full glossary of terms. This clear and accessible text is essential reading for students taking introductory courses in sociology. It will also be useful for undergraduate and graduate courses in other social science disciplines, such as psychology, economics, human geography, demography, communication studies, education sciences, political science and criminology.