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Articles and Authors
Roger E. Axtell - " DOs and TABOOs of Body Language around the World" - courtesies and manners in a time of cultural diversity and globalization.
Ben Barber - "Jihad and McWorld" -- An article appearing in Atlantic Monthly, "J ust beyond the horizon of current events lie two possible political futures—both bleak, neither democratic. The first is a retribalization of large swaths of humankind by war and bloodshed: a threatened Lebanonization of national states in which culture is pitted against culture, people against people, tribe against tribe—a Jihad in the name of a hundred narrowly conceived faiths against every kind of interdependence, every kind of artificial social cooperation and civic mutuality. The second is being borne in on us by the onrush of economic and ecological forces that demand integration and uniformity and that mesmerize the world with fast music, fast computers, and fast food—with MTV, Macintosh, and McDonald's, pressing nations into one commercially homogenous global network: one McWorld tied together by technology, ecology, communications, and commerce...."
Peter L. Berger - "Invitation to Sociology" -
Dr C. George Boeree - Outlines the theoretical position of Sociobiology. Other articles on this site about the major thought of the founders of Psychology/Psychoanalysis. - http://www.ship.edu/~cgboeree/sociobiology.html
C. H. Cooley - "Primary Groups" -
W.E.B. DuBois - excerpt from Souls of the Black Folks-- A website regarding Du Bois -http://members.tripod.com/~DuBois/supp.html
Emile
Durkheim - excerpt from
his work in Suicide
Fernea and Fernea - "A
Look Behind the Veil" -
A husband and wife team examine some of the meanings and motivations of
veiling in Islamic societies.
Clifford
Geertz - "Cockfight
in Bali" -
An example of 'thick description' - being able to see the mountain in
the grain of sand. Geertz writes about a gathering in Bali which reveals
much about Balinese society.
Erving Goffman -"The
Presentation of Self in Everyday Life"
The dramas and motivations in daily interpersonal encounters.
John Howard Griffin wrote BLACK LIKE
ME -
John Howard Griffin stained his face dark, and took on the social status
of a Black man in the American south in the early 1960s. He 'passed' and
then wrote a book about that experience. Go to
http://www.reportingcivilrights.org/authors/selections.jsp?authorId=22
for some selections from book and more about the author.
Henig - "Genome
in Black and White" -
FDA recently approved a drug for hypertension to be prescribed only to
African-Americans. This has re-opened the discussion about the whether
the races are biologically distinct
Ivan Illich - a profound social thinker and critic.
"Energy and Equity" -
"Silence is a Commons" - http://www.oikos.org/ecology/illsilence.htm
Full text of Deschooling Society
Illich writings on the web
Owen Lovejoy - Theory of Upright Walking, ex Origins by Richard Leakey. Owen Lovejoy sees pair-bonding among early hominids as a new form of associating for these and later hominid primates.
Macionis
-"Welcome
to Cyber Society" article considering some of the social consequences
of high-speed at-a-distance communications.
Charles C. Mann- writes a thought provoking article on the nature of property, particularly intellecual property. "Who Will Own Your Next Good Idea"
Russell Means - leader of American Indian Movement writes clearly about the insidious and slippery way in which cultural change/domination/subordination often occurs."For America to Live, Europe Must Die"
C.Wright Mills - "The Promise of Sociology"
Horace Miner -"Body
Ritual among the Nacirema" courtesy of American Anthropological
Association, or as a pdf, "Body
Ritual Among the Nacirema"
A brief article about the unusual ways that some tribes have.
K. Marx and F. Engels -
"Communist Manifesto"
19th Century statement of a pair of controversial social thinkers and
political activists.
PDF version
Robert Merton - "Manifest and Latent Functions"
Messner
- "Masculinities
and Athletic Careers" -
The meanings of sports for gender and race and class in U.S. - Athletics
have different meanings and social consequences in the lives of American
men and in the lives of American women.
Rothman -"
Recreating Motherhood"
Some thoughts on conflict between producing and relating.
Tonnies -"Gemeinschaft, Gesellschaft" - early sociologist thinking about the differences between small scale society, and modern mass society
Max Weber - "Definition of Sociology" - "The Case for Value-free Sociology"
West and Zimmerman - "Doing Gender" - - An attempt to look at sex and gender as required performative roles. The problematic is 'social interaction' in the school of Erving Goffman.