Essential Concepts in Sociology

Social life is never static but is in a constant process of change. Over the last thirty years or so the modern world has been transformed by fluid gender relations, shifting migration patterns, multiculturalism, the digital revolution in communications, the Internet and social media, financial crises, global terrorism and numerous political upheavals. Sociology, originally a product of the nineteenth century, cannot afford to stand still but must move with the times or risk becoming irrelevant. The discipline today is theoretically diverse, covers a very wide range of subjects and draws on a broad array of research methods to make sense of the human world. This is the inevitable outcome of attempts to understand and explain the increasingly globalized environment we are entering, and it means that our familiar concepts need to be reassessed and new ones created. This book includes a mix of both long-established and newly minted concepts.