Introducing Sociology, 2nd Edition

I found this book by Richard Osbourne to be an excellent introduction to sociology. He maintains a good balance between breadth and depth, wisely choosing to meaningfully probe the main ideas of sociology rather than disorienting the reader with esoteric details. With less than 200 cartoon-laden pages to work with, I anticipated that Osbourne's treatment may be relatively superficial, but I was pleased to find that this actually a fairly thorough introduction which gives the reader plenty to think about. To give a sense of the scope of this book and the subject of sociology, here's my list of the key points: (1) Sociology is concerned with how and why societies work and change. (2) Doing sociology well requires the ability to look at a society as objectively as possible (like an alien), but this ideal is never achieved in practice. Instead, sociology tends to change with the societies it examines. (3) Sociology faces many methodological difficulties, including theory-ladeness of observation. (4) Sociology began when Enlightenment rationality challenged traditional ideas about how society should be organized. The aspiration was for sociology to be a science, modeled on the natural sciences. Arguably, this hasn't been achieved, and instead we have a plurality of sociological perspectives which are neither individually nor collectively adequate. Perhaps the best we can hope for is that, by using an eclectic approach, we can have partial explanatory and predictive power for some specific domains and questions. (5) Sociology can challenge conventional assumptions in a way that can be disturbing, and some sociologists deliberately pursue social agendas rather than aiming for value-free description and analysis. (6) Societies are abstractions in the sense of being made up of individuals, but they're real in the sense of having emergent characteristics of their own which are preserved as individuals are replaced. The same applies to social institutions. (7) Societies have been and are quite diverse, and each society is associated with a culture. Language is a key element of culture. (8) Smaller societies tend to have closer and more personal relationships, with substantial social conformity. Larger societies tend to have more impersonal relationships, with greater diversity and division of labor. (9) Societies and individuals reciprocally shape each other. The larger influence is usually that of societies on individuals (socialization), which limits the possibility of true individualism, but some rare individuals are exceptions. (10) Societies can be stable for long periods of time, but they can also rise and decline, and the declines can be rapid. In the modern era, many societies have grown and changed rapidly. (11) One view, which is no longer widely accepted, is that societies evolve through stages, developing from simple to complex, possibly with functionally fitter societies (and institutions) outcompeting weaker ones. (12)

This is a slim, well-constructed and very well illustrated graphic text that is an excellent primer to the tradition of sociology. While some inclusions may cause some head scratching in the States (this is from the UK and covers the sociological tradition there, which for the most is overlapping). Overall, this truly is a great little book. While I usually don't write reviews, I do think it's worth providing one here in lieu of the only other review posted. In regards to that review, Zonoras: 1) Is reviewing a copy that is two editions out of date (judging by talk of the cover). The contents has significantly changed as the discipline has changed. 2) Doesn't appear to understand the focus or purpose of the discipline. 3) Seems to be negatively reviewing this brief overview not for being inaccurate in its covering of the discipline, but because it accurately covers important areas in the discipline that he/she has a bone to pick with (the "crack-pipes" of Marxism and Radical Feminism). 4)Is negatively reviewing the book because it - like the vast majority of mainstream sociology - is not inclusive of evolutionary psychology (also known as sociobiology). Both sociologists and biologists are somewhat dismissive of this approach, but regardless, this book isn't Introducing Sociobiology, and needless to say, doesn't deserve to be negatively reviewed for not covering topics it has no reason covering. 5)Finally, seems somewhat confused (e.g. lumping the "PC New Left" with "Neoconservatism" is strange, saying sociology is *mainly* about the study of economic inequality and then lambasting Marxism is even odder). Overall, there are certainly some things I would have done slightly differently if I was writing for a US audience, but this book is still worth a five star review. I'd disagree with the two star review given, and vehemently disagree with it given that the reasons for this review seem to have much more to do with the reader's dislike of sociology than the actual contents of text.