Description
The challenges of teaching a successful introductory sociology course today demand materials from a publisher very different from the norm. Texts that are organized the way the discipline structures itself intellectually no longer connect with the majority of student learners. This is not an issue of pandering to students or otherwise seeking the lowest common denominator. On the contrary, it is a question of again making the practice of sociological thinking meaningful, rigorous, and relevant to today’s world of undergraduates.
This comparatively concise, highly visual, and affordable book offers a refreshingly new way forward to reach students, using one of the most powerful tools in a sociologist’s teaching arsenal—the familiar stuff in students’ everyday lives throughout the world: the jeans they wear to class, the coffee they drink each morning, or the phones their professors tell them to put away during lectures.
A focus on consumer culture, seeing the strange in the familiar, is not only interesting for students; it is also (the authors suggest) pedagogically superior to more traditional approaches. By engaging students through their stuff, this book moves beyond teaching about sociology to helping instructors teach the practice of sociological thinking. It moves beyond describing what sociology is, so that students can practice what sociological thinking can do. This pedagogy also posits a relationship between teacher and learner that is bi-directional. Many students feel a sense of authority in various areas of consumer culture, and they often enjoy sharing their knowledge with fellow students and with their instructor. Opening up the sociology classroom to discussion of these topics validates students’ expertise on their own life-worlds. Teachers, in turn, gain insight from the goods, services, and cultural expectations that shape students’ lives.
While innovative, the book has been carefully crafted to make it as useful and flexible as possible for instructors aiming to build core sociological foundations in a single semester. A map on pages ii–iii identifies core sociological concepts covered so that a traditional syllabus as well as individual lectures can easily be maintained. Theory, method, and active learning exercises in every chapter constantly encourage the sociological imagination as well as the "doing" of sociology.
Table of Contents
CONTENTS IN BRIEF
Preface for Instructors
Preface for Students
Acknowledgements
Chapter 1. A Day in the Life of Your Jeans: Using Our Stuff to Discover Sociology
Part I. Surviving (and thriving) in Consumer Culture
Chapter 2. You Are What You Eat: Culture, Norms, and Values
Chapter 3. Fast Food Blues: Work in a Global Economy
Chapter 4. Coffee: Status, Distinction, and ‘Good’ Taste
Part II. Fitting In: Being Part of the Group
Chapter 5. Shopping Lessons: Consuming Social Order
Chapter 6. Get in the Game: Race, Merit, and Group Boundaries
Chapter 7. Barbies and Monster Trucks: Socialization and ‘Doing Gender’
Chapter 8. Dreaming of a White Wedding: Marriage, Family, and Heteronormativity
Chapter 9. I <3 My Phone: Technology and Social Networks
Part III. Standing Out: Individuals Negotiating the Social World
Chapter 10. Branding Your Unique Identity™: Consumer Culture and the Social Self
Chapter 11. Looking Good: Ideology, Intersectionality, and the Beauty Industry
Chapter 12. What’s On Your Playlist? Subcultures, Racism, and Cultural Appropriation
Chapter 13. Our Love-Hate Relationship with the Car: Masculinity, Industry, and Environmental Sustainability
Appendix: Advertising and Society: An Overview of Sociological Methods
Glossary / Index
Index of Key Sociological Concepts
Bibliography
