Imagining Society

An Introduction to Sociology

Imagining Society, Second Edition?is an introductory text that presents sociology as a distinctly human enterprise. In every chapter, as they are learning the discipline’s foundational concepts, readers are led on a journey, across time and space, to encounter some of sociology's key "makers"—the creative individuals whose representations of the social world enable us to make sense of it and change it for the better. At each stop they will be immersed in the actions, ideas, and original thoughts of these diverse and seminal thinkers, whose empirical methods and theoretical insights have inspired other sociologists and form the building blocks of the discipline.

Exercises in the text create opportunities for students to activate their own imaginations and to also see familiar contemporary culture and society—TV shows, popular music, advertising, organizations, thought-leaders and authority figures, fads and movements, etc.—through fresh eyes.