Sociology: Diversity, Conflict, and Change

This text offers students a lively, provocative introduction to the principles of sociology. It encourages students to develop what C. Wright Mills called a "sociological imagination," enabling them to see how their position in society and in history shapes their personal lives. Using a critical approach, the authors raise analytical questions and explore the social forces that affect each individual's life and life chances. While focusing on the influence of power and privilege on society’s haves and have-nots, the authors suggest the need for social change.

Kenneth J. Neubeck is Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Connecticut-Storrs. His articles have appeared in such journals as Social Problems, Social Policy, and Teaching Sociology, as well as several anthologies. Much of his work has focused upon issues of social and economic justice, covering such topics as the politics surrounding income maintenance programs, cultural values supporting economic inequality, and the relationship between central city downtown developmental and local neighborhood decline. The author of Corporate Response to Urban Crisis (Lexington Books) and Social Problems: A Critical Approach (McGraw-Hill), he is currently conducting research on the impact of racism on U.S. welfare policy.

Davita Silfen Glasberg is Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Connecticut-Storrs. She has published extensively on issues of bank hegemony, the state in finance capitalism, and political economy, including The Power of Collective Purse Strings: The Effects of Bank Hegemony on Corporations and the State (University of California Press). She is currently working on an examination of corporate welfare and the welfare state in a study of bank deregulation and the savings and loan bailout, a study of the effect of bank political action committees (PACs) on bank deregulation and the bailout, and a collaborative study (with Kathryn Ward) on the effects of global debt on development and on the status of women in the world system.