The sociology book

Big ideas simply explained

Big ideas simply explained.

A physical defeat has never marked the end of a nation / Mankind have always wandered or settled, agreed or quarreled, in troops and companies / Science can be used to build a better world / The Declaration of Independence bears no relation to half the human race / The fall of the bourgeoisie and the victory of the proletariat are equally inevitable / Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft / Society, like the human body, has interrelated parts, needs, and functions / The iron cage of rationality / Many personal troubles must be understood in terms of public issues / Pay to the most commonplace activities the attention accorded extraordinary events / Where there is power there is resistance / Gender is a kind of imitation for which there is no original / Social inequalities. I broadly accuse the bourgeoisie of social murder / The problem of the 20th century is the problem of the color line / The poor are excluded from the ordinary living patterns, customs, and activities of life / There ain't no black in the Union Jack / A sense of one's place / The Orient is the stage on which the whole East is confined / The ghetto is where the black people live / The tools of freedom become the sources of indignity / Men's interest in patriarchy is condensed in hegemonic masculinity / White women have been complicit in this imperialist, white-supremacist capitalist patriarchy / The concept of "patriarch" is indispensable for an analysis of gender inequality / Strangers are not really conceived as individuals, but as strangers of a particular type / The freedom to remake our cities and ourselves / There must be eyes on the street / Only communication can communicate / Society should articulate what is good / McDonaldization affects virtually every aspect of society / The bonds of our communities have withered / Disneyization replaces mundane blandness with spectacular experiences / Living in a loft is like living in a showcase / Abandon all hope of totality, you who enter the world of fluid modernity / The modern world-system / Global issues, local perspective / Climate change is a back-of-the-mind issue / No social justice without global cognitive justice / The unleashing of productive capacity by the power of the mind / We are living in a world that is beyond controllability / It sometimes seems as if the whole world is on the move / Nations can be imagined and constructed with relatively little historical straw / Global cities are strategic sites for new types of operations / Different societies appropriate the materials of modernity differently / Processes of change have altered the relations between peoples and communities / The "I" and the "me" / The challenge of modernity is to live without illusions and without becoming disillusioned / The civilizing process is constantly moving "forward" / Mass culture reinforces political repression / The danger of the future is that men may become robots / Culture is ordinary / Stigma refers to an attribute that is deeply discrediting

We live in a world where there is more and more information, and less and less meaning / Modern identities are being decentered / All communities are imagined / Throughout the world, culture has been doggedly pushing itself center stage / Conspicuous consumption of valuable goods is a means of reputability to the gentleman of leisure / The Puritan wanted to work in a calling-- we are forced to do so / Technology, like art, is a soaring exercise of the human imagination / The more sophisticated machines become, the less skill the worker has / Automation increases the worker's control over his work process / The Romantic ethic promotes the spirit of consumerism / In processing people, the product is a state of mind / Spontaneous consent combines with coercion / Things make us just as much as we make things / Feminization has had only a modest impact on reducing gender inequalities / Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature / The iron law of oligarchy / Healthy people need no bureaucracy to mate, give birth, and die / Some commit crimes because they are responding to a social situation / Total institutions strip people of their support systems and their sense of self / Government is the right disposition of things / Religion has lost its plausibility and social significance / Our identity and behavior are determined by how we are described and classified / Economic crisis is immediately transformed into social crisis / Schooling has been at once something done to the poor and for the poor / Societies are subject, every now and then, to periods of moral panic / The time of the tribes / How working-class kids get working-class jobs / Differences between the sexes are cultural creations / Families are factories that produce human personalities / Western man has become a confessing animal / Heterosexuality must be recognized and studied as an institution / Western family arrangements are diverse, fluid, and unresolved / The marriage contract is a work contract / Housework is directly opposed to self-actualization / When love finally wins it has to face all kinds of defeat / Sexuality is as much about beliefs and ideologies as about the physical body / Queer theory questions the very grounds of identity

Great books of the Western World : Encyclopaedia Britannica, inc., in collaboration with the University of Chicago

Great books of the Western world.

The great conversation / The great ideas -- The Iliad of Homer. The Odyssey / The suppliant maidens. The Persians. Seven against Thebes. Prometheus bound. The Oresteia / Oedipus the king. Oedipus at Colonus. Antigone. Ajax. Electra. The Trachiniae. Philoctetes / Rhesus. Medea. Hippolytus. Alcestis. Heracleidae. The suppliants. Trojan women. Ion. Helen. Andromache. Electra. Bacchantes. Hecuba. Heracles mad. Pheonician women. Orestes. Iphigenia in Tauris. Iphigenia in Aulis Cyclops / The Acharnians. The knights. The clouds. The wasps. Peace. The birds. The frogs. Lysistrata. Thesmophoriazusae. Ecclesiazousae. Plutus / The history / History of the Peloponnesian War / Charmides. Lysis. Laches. Protagoras. Euthydemus. Cratylus. Phaedrus. Ion. Symposium. Meno. Euthyphro. Apology. Crito. Phaedo. Gorgias. The Republic. Timaeus. Critias. Parmenides. Theaetetus. Sophist. Statesmen. Philebus. Laws / The seventh letter / Categories. On interpretation. Prior analytics. Posterior analytics. Topics. Sophistical refutations. Physics. On the heavens. On generation and corruption. Meteorology. Metaphysics. On the soul / History of animals. Parts of animals. On the motion of animals. On the gait of animals. On the generation of animals. Nicomachean ethics. Politics. The Athenian constitution. Rhetoric. Poetics / Works / On the natural faculties / The thirteen books of Euclid's Elements / On the sphere and cylinder. Measurement of a circle. On conoids and spheroids. On spirals. On the equilibrium of planes. The sand reckoner. The quadrature of the parabola. On floating bodies. Book of lemmas. The method treating of mechanical problems / On conic sections / Introduction to arithmetic / On the nature of things / The discourses / The meditations / Eclogues. Georgics. Aeneid / The lives of the noble Grecians and Romans / The annals. The histories / Almagest / On the revolutions of heavenly spheres / Epitome of Copernican Astronomy (Books IV-V). The harmonies of the world (Book V) / The six Enneads / The confessions. The city of God. On Christian doctrine / Summa theologica / The divine comedy / Troilus and Criseyde. The Cantebury tales / The prince / Leviathan / Gargantua and Pantagruel / Essays / The first part of King Henry the Sixth. The second part of King Henry the Sixth. The third part of King Henry the Sixth. The tragedy of Richard the Third. The comedy of errors. Titus Andronicus. The taming of the shrew. The two gentlemen of Verona. Love's labour's lost. Romeo and Juliet. The tragedy of King Richard the Second. A midsummer night's dream. The life and death of King John. The merchant of Venice. The first part of King Henry the Fourth. The second part of King Henry the Fourth. Much ado about nothing. The life of King Henry the Fifth. Julius Caesar. As you like it / Twelfth night; or, What you will. The tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark. The merry wives of Windsor. Troilus and Cressida. All's well the ends well. Measure for measure. Othello, the Moor of Venice. King Lear. Macbeth. Antony and Cleopatra. Coriolanus. Timon of Athens. Pericles, Prince of Tyre. Cymbeline. The winter's tale. The tempest. The famous history of the life of King Henry the Eighth. Sonnets / On the loadstone and magnetic bodies / Dialogues concerning the two new sciences / On the motion of the heart and blood in animals. On the circulation of blood. On the generation of animals / The history of Don Quixote de la Mancha / The adventure of learning. Novum organum. New Atlantis / Rules for the direction of the mind. Discourse on the method. Meditations on first philosophy. Objections against the meditations and replies. The geometry / Ethics / English minor poems. Paradise lost. Samson agonistes. Areopagitica / The provincial letters. Pensées. Scientific and mathematical essays / Mathematical principles of natural philosophy. Optics / Treatise on light / A letter concerning toleration. Concerning civil government, second essay. An essay concerning human understanding / The principles of human knowledge / An enquiry concerning human understanding / Gulliver's travels / The life and opinions of Tristram Shandy, gentleman / The history of Tom Jones, a foundling / The spirit of the laws / A disourse on the origin of inequality. A disourse on political economy. The social contract / An inquiry into the nature and causes of the wealth of nations / The decline and fall of the Roman Empire / Critique of pure reason. Fundamental principles of the metaphysic of morals. Critique of practical reason. Excerpts from The metaphysics of morals / American state papers. The Federalist / On liberty. Considerations on representive government. Utilitarianism / The life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. / Elements of chemistry / Analytical theory of heat / Experiment researches in electricity / The philosophy of right. The philosophy of history / Faust / Moby Dick; or, The whale / The origin of species by means of natural selection. The descent of man, and selection in relation to sex / Capital / Manifesto of the Communist Party / War and peace / The brothers Karamazov / The principles of psychology / The origin and development of psycho-analysis. Selected papers on hysteria. The sexual enlightenment of children. The future prospects of psycho-analytic therapy. Observations on "wild" psycho-analysis. The interpretation of dreams. On narcissism. Instincts and their vicissitudes. Repression. The unconscious. A general introduction to psycho-analysis. Beyond the pleasure principle. Group psychology and the analysis of the ego. The Ego and the Id. Inhibitions, symptoms, and anxiety. Thoughts for the times on war and death. Civilization and its discontents. New introductory lectures on pscyho-analysis