Public Sociology

Covering diversity and equality, globalization, human rights, modern urban living and the role of work and institutions, The Sociology Book looks at the big questions of how we cooperate: What is society? What makes it tick? Why do we interact in the way that we do with our friends, co-workers, and rivals?

Thomas Piketty’s best-selling Capital in the Twenty-First Century galvanized global debate about inequality. In this audacious follow-up, Piketty challenges us to revolutionize how we think about politics, ideology, and history. He exposes the ideas that have sustained inequality for the past millennium, reveals why the shallow politics of right and left are failing us today, and outlines the structure of a fairer economic system.

The public intellectual in India is an endangered species. Should we care? In this well-argued book, Romila Thapar and others tell us why we should. Thapar begins by defining the critical role that such individuals play in our societies today. Collectively they are the objective, fearless, constructive voice that asks the awkward questions when government, industry, religious leaders and other bulwarks of society stray from their roles of ensuring the proper functioning of a country.

Life expectancy in the United States has recently fallen for three years in a row - a reversal not seen since 1918 or in any other wealthy nation in modern times. In the past two decades, deaths of despair from suicide, drug overdose, and alcoholism have risen dramatically, and now claim hundreds of thousands of American lives each year - and they're still rising. Case and Deaton, known for first sounding the alarm about deaths of despair, explain the overwhelming surge in these deaths and shed light on the social and economic forces that are making life harder for the working class.

The Vision of the Anointed is a devastating critique of the mindset behind the failed social policies of the past thirty years. Thomas Sowell sees what has happened not as a series of isolated mistakes, but as a logical consequence of a vision whose defects have led to disasters in education, crime, family disintegration, and other social pathology. In this book, "politically correct" theory is repeatedly confronted with facts-and sharp contradictions between the two are explained in terms of a whole set of self-congratulatory assumptions held by political and intellectual elites.

More Damned Lies and Statistics encourages all of us to think in a more sophisticated and skeptical manner about how statistics are used to promote causes, create fear, and advance particular points of view. Best identifies different sorts of numbers that shape how we think about public issues: missing numbers are relevant but overlooked; confusing numbers bewilder when they should inform; scary numbers play to our fears about the present and the future.

Piven and Cloward have updated their classic work on the history and function of welfare to cover the American welfare state's massive erosion during the Reagan, Bush, and Clinton years. The authors present a boldly comprehensive, brilliant new theory to explain the comparative underdevelopment of the US welfare state among advanced industrial nations. Their conceptual framework promises to shape the debate within current and future administrations as they attempt to rethink the welfare system and its role in American society.

Há quinze anos que a economia de Portugal não cresce. Apesar da expansão nos anos de 1950 a 1973 e da segunda metade da década de 1980, assim como de uma evolução razoável após a intervenção da troika e antes da Covid-19, o PIB per capita estagnou desde 2005. Dado este comportamento medíocre, a economia portuguesa tem divergido face à média europeia e os indicadores sociais do país têm melhorado muito lentamente.

O presente ensaio actualiza uma radiografia crucial iniciada em 2010...

"Dass ich den Dieselmotor erfunden habe, ist schön und gut. Aber meine Hauptleistung ist, dass ich die soziale Frage gelöst habe." Jeder kennt Rudolf Diesel (1858 - 1913) als Erfinder des gleichnamigen Motors. Doch weit wenigeren ist bekannt, dass er im Jahre 1903 mit seinem Werk "Der Solidarismus" das Bild einer neuen Wirtschafts- und Gesellschaftsordnung entwarf, das Konzepte wie Grundeinkommen und Crowdfunding praktisch einhundert Jahre vorwegnahm!

The sometimes fragmentary tales of these people, their lives and deaths, are not included in official histories of a place. How, Ensign asks, has a large, socially progressive city like Seattle responded to the health needs of people marginalized by poverty, mental illness, addiction, racial/ethnic/sexual identities, and homelessness? Drawing on interviews and extensive research, Ensign shares a diversity of voices within contemporary health care and public policy debates.

Everywhere we turn, a new device promises to transfigure our lives. But at what cost? In this urgent and revelatory excavation of our Information Age, leading technology thinker Adam Greenfield forces us to reconsider our relationship with the networked objects, services, and spaces that define us. It is time to re-evaluate the Silicon Valley consensus determining the future. We're told that innovations - from augmented - reality interfaces and virtual assistants to autonomous delivery drones and self-driving cars - will make life easier, more convenient, and more productive.

At the close of the twentieth century, corporate capitalism extended its reach over the globe. While its defenders argue that globalization is the only way forward for modern, democratic societies, the spread of this system is failing to meet even the most basic needs of billions of individuals around the world. Moreover, the entrenchment of this free market system is undermining the foundations of healthy societies, caring communities, and personal wellbeing.

Can a country be a democracy if its government only responds to the preferences of the rich? In an ideal democracy, all citizens should have equal influence on government policy - but as this book demonstrates, America's policymakers respond almost exclusively to the preferences of the economically advantaged.

We've all heard that the American Dream is vanishing, and that the cause is rising income inequality. The rich are getting richer by rigging the system in their favor, leaving the rest of us to struggle just to keep our heads above water. To save the American Dream, we're told that we need to fight inequality through tax hikes, wealth redistribution schemes, and a far higher minimum wage.

In this provocative book, Mugambi Jouet describes why Americans are far more divided than other Westerners over basic issues, including wealth inequality, health care, climate change, evolution, gender roles, abortion, gay rights, sex, gun control, mass incarceration, the death penalty, torture, human rights, and war.

The poor die sooner. Blacks die sooner. And poor urban Blacks die sooner than almost all other Americans. David Ansell has spent nearly four decades as a doctor at hospitals serving some of the poorest communities in Chicago, and has witnessed firsthand the lives behind these devastating statistics. In

The Death Gap, he gives a grim survey of these realities, drawn from observations and stories of his patients.

Finanskrise, klimaforandringer og voksende social og økonomisk ulighed har de seneste år fået stadig flere til at sætte spørgsmålstegn ved den kapitalistiske økonomi. Samtidig er socialistiske idéer om en demokratisering af økonomien igen sat på dagsordenen. Men hvordan kan økonomien styres mere demokratisk? Hvad betyder det at demokratisere ejerskabet, og hvem skal egentlig eje virksomheder og banker? Hvilken rolle skal markedsmekanismer spille? Og hvordan skaber vi en økonomi, der sikrer mest mulig frihed og indflydelse for den enkelte.

For years, America has been plagued by slow economic growth and increasing inequality. In The Captured Economy, Brink Lindsey and Steven M. Teles identify a common factor behind these twin ills: breakdowns in democratic governance that allow wealthy special interests to capture the policymaking process for their own benefit.

Based on firsthand experiences from six years of professional work as a librarian in high-poverty neighborhoods of Washington, DC, as well as interviews and research, Overdue begins with Oliver's first day at an "unusual" branch: Northwest One. Using her experience at this branch allows Oliver to highlight the national problems that have existed in libraries since they were founded: racism, segregation, and class inequalities.

Unsettling Choice traces the contestations that surfaced when, in the wake of the 2007-2009 Great Recession, public schools navigated austerity by expanding choice-based programs. Ujju Aggarwal argues that this strategy mobilized mechanisms rooted in market logics to recruit families with economic capital on their side, solidifying a public sphere that increasingly resembled the private.