The challenges of teaching a successful introductory sociology course today demand materials from a publisher very different from the norm. Texts that are organized the way the discipline structures itself intellectually no longer connect with the majority of student learners. This is not an issue of pandering to students or otherwise seeking the lowest common denominator.

On the contrary, it is a question of again making the practice of sociological thinking meaningful, rigorous, and relevan...

This book offers an accessible and scholarly introduction to comparative criminal justice, examining the ways different countries and jurisdictions deal with its main stages, from policing, to systems of trial, to sentencing, to punishment.

White-Collar Crime: An Opportunity Perspective analyzes white-collar crime within a coherent theoretical framework. Using the opportunity perspective, which assumes that all crimes depend on offenders recognizing an opportunity to commit an offense, the authors uncover the processes and situational conditions that facilitate white-collar crimes. In addition, they offer potential solutions to this persistent and widespread social problem without being reductive in their treatment of the diffic...

Corruption, crime, economic inequality, religious fundamentalism, financial crises, environmental degradation, population ageing, gender inequality, large-scale migration... This book tackles many of the most pressing problems facing societies today. The authors demonstrate that similar social mechanisms lie behind many of these seemingly disparate problems.

Indeed, many societal problems can be traced back to behaviours that are perfectly rational and often well-intended from an individual p...

NYPD "Cop Doc" Rudofossi delves into what it meant to live as a deep-cover operative through narratives with Joe Pistone, the FBI agent who spent six years living as Donnie Brasco as a member of the Bonanno crime family.

Illuminates the social pretentions of the middle classes in the modern world, focusing on the tastes and preferences of the French bourgeoisie. This book argues that the social world functions simultaneously as a system of power relations and as a symbolic system in which minute distinctions of taste become the basis for social judgement.

COMPREHENSIVE: The book offers an unbiased introduction to all three methodological paradigms: positivist, interpretive, critical/cultural (quantitative, qualitative, critical). - INNOVATIVE: The book includes new sample student papers along with critiques of these papers to that students can model their own work on that of their peers.

FOCUSED ON THE STUDENT: Specific attention is given to presenting conceptual and theoretical information regarding methods, and to providing real-life exampl...

Crime, Criminal Justice & Religion: A Critical Appraisal seeks to bridge a gap in the examination of crime and criminal justice by taking both a historical and contemporary lens to explore the influence of religion.

The eighth edition of The Dynamics of Persuasion again guides readers in understanding the power and limits of persuasion in contemporary society. This edition continues its accessible and detailed illustration of the theoretical underpinnings of persuasive communication through contemporary and relevant examples of persuasion in action. It features coverage of new scholarship on misinformation, health communication, and persuasion effects, including careful attention to persuasion’s r...

Hebdige's Subculture: The Meaning of Style is so important: complex and remarkably lucid, it's the first book dealing with punk to offer intellectual content. Hebdige [...] is concerned with the UK's postwar, music-centred, white working-class subcultures, from teddy boys to mods and rockers to skinheads and punks.' - Rolling Stone With enviable precision and wit Hebdige has addressed himself to a complex topic - the meanings behind the fashionable exteriors of working-class youth subcultures...