In this examination of self-taught artists who are often on the fringes of the social system, the inner workings of a traditional network of money, status, and values are revealed, describing how authenticity is central to this system.

Product Description: The goal of this volume is to explore the social and political dynamics of rumor and the related concept of urban or contemporary legend. These forms of communication often appear in tandem with social problems, including riots, racial or political violence, and social and economic upheavals...read more

Travels the nation's color line in search of myths, rumors, urban legends, and half truths that cloud relations between the races.

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Product Description: Talking Sociology examines controversial social issues from libertarian, conservative, and social democratic points of view, demonstrating the philosophical basis of social life. (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

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Kitchens takes us into the robust, overheated, backstage world of the contemporary restaurant. In this rich, often surprising portrait of the real lives of kitchen workers, Gary Alan Fine brings their experiences, challenges, and satisfactions to colorful life. He provides a riveting exploration of how restaurants actually work, both individually and as part of a larger culinary culture. Working conditions, time constraints, market forces, and aesthetic goals all figure into the food served to customers—who often don't know quite what they're getting.The kitchen is a place of constant compromise, of quirks, approximations, dirty tricks, surprises, and short cuts, as Fine demonstrates in his deft, readable narrative. He brings to life the complicated relationships among kitchen workers—servers, dishwashers, pantry workers, managers, restaurant critics, and customers—and reveals the effects of organizational structure on individual relations.

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Explains how to select and define a topic, do research, develop a bibliography, take notes, organize a paper, and prepare the final manuscript (view table of contents)

Product Description: Featuring articles reprinted from Studies in Symbolic Interaction and the Symbolic Interaction, this book discusses such topics as socialization, deviance and control, emotions, social organization, and sociological social psychology.

Product Description: To help the researcher understand why and how children react to adults who are doing ethnographic research, Fine and Sandstrom explore the methodological and ethical problems of qualitative research with minors. They correct numerous fallacies held by researchers that children think like adults and that they cannot hide their thoughts and feelings from adults, especially strangers...read more

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