This compact and conceptually sound academic text offers a clear and precise overview of sociology’s main schools of thought, methods and fields of specialization.

The authors carefully explain the discipline’s vocabulary, analytical paradigms and areas of research, and present the latest thinking (key questions and controversies, summations of past experience and research) in regard to some of today’s outstanding issues: the crisis of the family as an institution, the democratization of education, changing life styles, declining job security, the nature and functioning of the bureaucracy etc.

The text presents entirely updated statistics and bibliographical references. It introduces new issues and themed reading guides (for example, inter-cultural relations and cultural integration). The boxed materials along with the text make it more useful than ever.

This is a classic book that presents a conceptual and scholarly approach to sociology as a discipline.