Sociology: Windows on Society.

• Author: Gesualdi, Louis
• Position: Review

John Heeren, Marylee Requa, Robert Lauer and Jeanette Lauer, Sociology: Windows on Society. California: Roxbury Publishing Company, 2000. No price given.

Sociology: Windows on Society is a very interesting collection of sociological readings. The volume is divided into five units containing forty-four articles, both classic and contemporary. These examine culture, social organization, socioeconomic inequalities, institutions and societal problems and issues in general.

Unit I, "The Sociological Enterprise," includes articles by C. Wright Mills, Stan Bernstein, Emile Durkheim and Stephen A. Holmes. In his classic article Mills indicated that people's lives are lived in historical consciousness, are influenced by their society, and at the same time help shape society. Bernstein looks at the extensive justifications that students give to themselves for not doing student assignments in response to felt tensions to work. Durkheim shows that a society's rate of suicide varies conversely with the rate of unity of its social groups. Holmes demonstrates that the media are an important reference for information but the information presented can be misleading and needs to be investigated critically.

Unit II, "Culture, Social Organizations, and the Individual," includes a variety of articles, some of which have been included in other works. Two especially helpful items are Theodore Caplow's "Rule Enforcement Without Visible Means: Christmas Gift-Giving in Middletown" and Joseph Tobin, David Wu, and Dana Davidson's "Socialization in Three Cultures." Caplow focuses on social change, finding that the vast majority of people in Middletown closely follow unwritten and thoroughly indistinguishable rules guiding gift-giving. Tobin, Wu, and Davidson studied preschool education in Japan, China, and the United States and reveal critical differences in the three cultures.

Unit III, "Inequality" in addition to Karl Marx and Friederich Engel's "Communist Manifesto," has numerous articles from magazines, texts, and research studies. A...