Product Description: Public spaces have long been the focus of urban social activity, but investigations of how public space works often adopt only one of several possible perspectives, which restricts the questions that can be asked and the answers that can be considered...read more

This comprehensive collection of readings shows the broad social bases of politics and identifies how politics and actions by government can influence the fate of nations and their citizens. The text provides insight into recent political sociological theories and helps students make sense of the many major social and political changes taking place in the world. Text focuses on the economy and politics, states and societies, civil society and politics, basic forms of political rule, power and equality in modern America, political parties and citizen participation. For individuals interested in a comprehensive look at social movements and political changes.

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Product Description: Changing Societies offers a fresh, timely approach to sociology. Based upon nested theory, the book explains sociology through processes of global and local change--showing how social change occurs in larger global or national structures and influences events that happen in students' immediate personal and social environments...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

Product Description: Why do some cities grow and expand, while others dwindle and decline? Why is Milwaukee a town of the past, while Minneapolis–St. Paul seems reborn and infused with future dynamism? And what do Milwaukee and the Twin Cities have to tell us about other cities' prospects, the trials and destinies of industrial Cleveland and post-industrial Austin?Anthony Orum's new book tells the story of these cities and, at the same time, of all cities...read more

Since the end of World War II, social science research has become increasingly quantitative in nature. A Case for the Case Study provides a rationale for an alternative to quantitative reserach: the close investigation of single instances of social phenomena. The first section of the book contains an overview of the central methodological issues involved in the use of the case study method. Then, well-known scholars describe how they undertook case study research in order to undersand changes in church involvement, city life, gender roles, white-collar crimes, family structure, homelessness, and other types of social experience. Each contributor contronts several key questions: What does the case study tell us that other approaches cannot? To what extent can one generalize from the study of a single case or of a highly limited set of cases? Does case study work provide the basis for postulating broad principles of social structure and behavior? The answers vary, but the consensus is that the opportunity to examine certain kinds of social phenomena in depth enables social scientists to advance greatly our empirical understanding of social life. The contributors are Leon Anderson, Howard M. Bahr, Theodore Caplow, Joe R. Feagin, Gilbert Geis, Gerald Handel, Anthonly M. Orum, Andree F. Sjoberg, Gideon Sjoberg, David A. Snow, Ted R. Vaughan, R. Stephen Warner, Christine L. Williams, and Norma Williams.