Sociology

A Very Short Introduction

By: Steve Bruce

Narrated by: John Lee

Drawing on studies of social class, crime and deviance, education, work in bureaucracies, and changes in religious and political organizations, this Very Short Introduction explores the tension between the individual's place in society and society's role in shaping the individual, and demonstrates the value of sociology for understanding the modern world.

In this new edition, Steve Bruce discusses the continuing arguments for social egalitarianism, considering issues such as gay marriage, women in combat roles, and the 2010 Equality Act to debunk contemporary arguments against parity. As gender divisions are increasingly questioned, he looks ahead to the likely consequences of this for society. Delving into the theory of sociology, Bruce also argues that the habit of dividing sociology into apparently competing "sects" is misleading, and shows how a new understanding of the disciplinary background of many of the most famous theorists, which shows that much social theory is actually philosophy or literary theory, will prove useful to today's sociologists.

©1999, 2018 Steve Bruce (P)2021 Tantor

Ok overview but has factual errors and bad faith arguments at the end

I’ve read perhaps a dozen books by sociologists but not an overview book, so I came in excited about this book.

It was kind of painful to get through the assumptions littered throughout, for example early on there are description’s roughly saying bulls just eat, ram, mate and not much else; then using that to compare to humans. That’s simply not true… there is a rich field of research on animal behaviors to debunk it.

Later on there are arguments about feminist sociology that read closer to a news pundit, I’m very open to to a serious argument about aspects of that literature, but this was mainly straw man arguments that don’t engage with the actual reasoning in high quality research from those areas. It did at least acknowledge topics that were under-studied through such a lens are worth investigating.

There was some basic essential information that was there, such as the observation of there being flaws in the conception of objectivity, and that it isn’t achievable, plus it did an overview of a couple key subfields.

I’ll keep looking for a better high level sociology intro.

Not a fan of the narration

Tired actually of Brit narrators who take basic material and overwork their accent and intonation to make themselves and every line of the book sound super smart. But Americans can’t resist a posh accent. Material like this should receive a more neutral presentation.