Product Description: K-Pop: Popular Music, Cultural Amnesia, and Economic Innovation in South Korea seeks at once to describe and explain the emergence of export-oriented South Korean popular music and to make sense of larger South Korean economic and cultural transformations...read more

Product Description: This book demonstrates sociology's relevance by illustrating sociological concepts and theories in a fun, hip way with examples from pop culture that you know and enjoy. The new title, SOCIOLOGY: POP CULTURE TO SOCIAL STRUCTURE, underscores this approach by reflecting the book's themes, which 1) apply sociological concepts to everyday pop culture phenomena, 2) illustrate how technological change drives social change through examples that are familiar to you, and 3) engage you in thinking critically by asking you where you fit in to the larger context of social patterns in the world...read more

Product Description: In modern states, John Lie argues, ideas of race, ethnicity, and nationality can be subsumed under the rubric of "peoplehood." He argues indeed, that the modern state has created the idea of peoplehood. That is, the seemingly primitive, atavistic feelings of belonging associated with ethnic, racial, and national identity are largely formed by the state...read more

Product Description: [A] most impressive achievement by an extraordinarily intelligent, courageous, and--that goes without saying--'well-read' mind. The scope of this work is enormous: it provides no less than a comprehensive, historically grounded theory of 'modern peoplehood, ' which is Lie's felicitous umbrella term for everything that goes under the names 'race, ' 'ethnicity, ' and nationality...read more

Product Description: This book traces the origins and transformations of a people-the Zainichi, or Koreans “residing in Japan.” Using a wide range of arguments and evidence-historical and comparative, political and social, literary and pop-cultural-John Lie reveals the social and historical conditions that gave rise to Zainichi identity, while exploring its vicissitudes and complexity...read more

Product Description: This student study tool contains learning objectives, a list of key terms with page references to the text, detailed chapter outlines, study activities, learning objectives, InfoTrac discussion exercises, Internet exercises, and practice tests consisting of 25-30 multiple choice questions, 10-15 true-false questions, 5-10 short answer questions, 5 essay questions...read more

Product Description: This balanced,, mainstream, beautifully written and totally up-to-date text is unrivalled in its ability to get students to see the connection between themselves and the social world. It teaches students "how" to think sociologically, not just "what" to think,, and emphasizes the importance of diversity and a global perspective...read more

Product Description: This balanced, mainstream, beautifully written and totally up-to-date text is unrivalled in its ability to get students to see the connection between themselves and the social world. It teaches students how to think sociologically, not just what to think, and emphasizes the importance of diversity and a global perspective...read more

Product Description: This student study tool contains learning objectives, a list of key terms with page references to the text, detailed chapter outlines, study activities, learning objectives, InfoTrac discussion exercises, Internet exercises, and practice tests consisting of 25-30 multiple choice questions, 10-15 true-false questions, 5-10 short answer questions, 5 essay questions...read more

Product Description: By Judith Pintar, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. Each chapter of this student study tool includes learning objectives, detailed chapter outlines, key terms, study activities, InfoTrac College Edition exercises, and practice tests consisting of approximately 5-10 multiple-choice and 10 true/false questions with answers and page references, as well as five short-answer and 3-5 essay questions...read more

This brief, balanced, totally up-to-date text is characterized by its focus on the connection between oneself and the social world. It teaches students "how" to think, rather than just "what" to think, draws the connection between objectivity and subjectivity in sociological research, and places an emphasis on the importance of diversity and the global perspective. It is heralded for its inclusion of pop culture examples that truly connect with the students of today, and for its presentation of sociological concepts in a fresh, new contemporary way.

Product Description: Improve your grade & save study time with Now, a revolutionary online learning system that isn't just reading --it's a CUSTOMIZED study plan that lets you master what YOU need to know without wasting your time on what you already know...read more

Product Description: This balanced, mainstream, beautifully written and totally up-to-date text is unrivalled in its ability to get students to see the connection between themselves and the social world. It teaches students "how" to think sociologically, not just "what" to think, and emphasizes the importance of diversity and a global perspective...read more

Product Description: Multiethnic Japan challenges the received view of Japanese society as ethnically homogeneous. Employing a wide array of arguments and evidence--historical and comparative, interviews and observations, high literature and popular culture--John Lie recasts modern Japan as a thoroughly multiethnic society...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

Product Description: This balanced, mainstream, beautifully written and totally up-to-date text is unrivalled in its ability to get students to see the connection between themselves and the social world. It teaches students "how" to think sociologically, not just "what" to think, and emphasizes the importance of diversity and a global perspective...read more

This book reveals how South Korea was transformed from one of the poorest and most agrarian countries in the world in the 1950's to one of the richest and most industrialized states by the late 1980's. The author argues that South Korea's economic, cultural, and political development was the product of a unique set of historical circumstances that cannot be replicated elsewhere, and that only by ignoring the costs and negative consequences of development can South Korea's transformation be described as an unqualified success.The historical circumstances include a thoroughgoing land reform that forced children of former landlords to move to the cities to make their fortunes, a very low-paid labor force, and the threat from North Korea and the consequent American presence. The costs of development included the exploitation of labor (as late as 1986, South Korean factory workers had the longest hours in the world and earned less than their counterparts in Mexico and Brazil), undemocratic politics, and despoliation of the environment. The title of the book suggests the ambivalence of South Korean development: "Han" refers both to South Korea (Han'guk) and to the cultural expression of resentment or dissatisfaction (han).Because the author sees South Korean development as contingent on a variety of particular circumstances, he ranges widely to include not only the information typically gathered by sociologists and political economists, but also insights gained from examining popular tastes and values, poetry, fiction, and ethnography, showing how all of these aspects of South Korean life help elucidate his main themes. The result is the most comprehensive and informative account available of the extraordinary changes that brought South Korea to the forefront among major industrialized nations at the end of the twentieth century. (view table of contents)

No one will soon forget the image, blazed across the airwaves, of armed Korean Americans taking to the rooftops as their businesses went up in flames during the Los Angeles riots. Why Korean Americans? What stoked the wrath the riots unleashed against them? Blue Dreams is the first book to make sense of these questions, to show how Korean Americans, variously depicted as immigrant seekers after the American dream or as racist merchants exploiting African Americans, emerged at the crossroads of conflicting social reflections in the aftermath of the 1992 riots. The situation of Los Angeles's Korean Americans touches on some of the most vexing issues facing American society today: ethnic conflict, urban poverty, immigration, multiculturalism, and ideological polarization. Combining interviews and deft socio-historical analysis, Blue Dreams gives these problems a human face and at the same time clarifies the historical, political, and economic factors that render them so complex. In the lives and voices of Korean Americans, the authors locate a profound challenge to cherished assumptions about the United States and its minorities. Why did Koreans come to the United States? Why did they set up shop in poor inner-city neighborhoods? Are they in conflict with African Americans? These are among the many difficult questions the authors answer as they probe the transnational roots and diversity of Los Angeles's Korean Americans. Their work finally shows us in sharp relief and moving detail a community that, despite the blinding media focus brought to bear during the riots, has nonetheless remained largely silent and effectively invisible. An important corrective to the formulaic accounts that have pitted Korean Americans against African Americans, Blue Dreams places the Korean American story squarely at the center of national debates over race, class, culture, and community.