Society: The Basics (Hardcover)

by John J. Macionis (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Review
Professors who reviewed Macionis: Society, the Basics 9e:

Boyejo Adefuye	Collin County Community College
Anita Gardner	Mitchell Community College
Jennifer Haskin-Corwin	Washtenaw Community College/Eastern Michigan University
Roneiko Henderson	Tidewater Community College
Jeanne Humble	Bluegrass Community & Technical College
Carol Jenkins	Glendale Community College
Chalane Lechuga	University of New Mexico - Albequerque
J Beth Mabry	Indiana University of Pennsylvania
Barbara Miller	Pasadena City College
Kendra Murphy	University of Memphis
Juanita Ortiz	University of Oklahoma-Norman
Timothy Sexton	Chippewa Valley Technical College
Karen Stewart-Cain	Trident Technical College
Dolores Wunder	College of Dupage

--This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Product Description
Society: The Basics, Fifth Edition, is now the first multimedia, interactive learning package in sociology. Computers and other new information technology are changing the way we learn, and Society: The Basics is now a twenty-first-century resource. The heart of the learning package, the book itself, comes with many new features, and in addition, the text is supported by two new, high technology resources, the CD-ROM and the Web site. --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 499 pages
• Publisher: Prentice Hall; Tch edition (June 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 013021115X
• ISBN-13: 978-0130211156
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (36 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #527,035 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars From an instructor's perspective, February 7, 2009

By	Jonathan McKellar (Savannah, GA United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Society: The Basics (10th Edition) (MySocLab Series) (Paperback)

I have to use this book to teach Sociology 101, and it frustrates me to no end. The book is a failure in every aspect.

Introductory textbooks have to simplify things, of course, but Macionis oversimplifies to the point where my students feel that their intelligence has been insulted, and worst of all, don't realize that the sociological concepts he's talking about are more than simple stereotypes and platitudes. He writes at one point, essentially, that "white people don't understand poverty", while every college freshmen knows that poor whites do exist, and that the author must be either a racist or an idiot for thinking otherwise. But what does the cultural construct of race have to do with social hierarchy and economics? Macionis doesn't start that conversation, you'll have to do it yourself.

And that's the general flaw of the book, Macionis writes chapter after chapter of superficial lists of concepts, theorists, and vocabulary, but never does the real work of laying out key sociological theories in a simple and thorough way, which of course is exactly what a textbook is for. As a teacher, I'm then forced to spend class time laying out the basics that Macionis didn't cover, everything from culture to symbolic interactionism. He'll give a few paragraphs to Weber, Marx, or Freud, but doesn't actually explain them in any coherent way.

Some things are completely absent. Macionis doesn't mention some key concepts, like social capital, and doesn't explain at all how sociologists use statistics. With glaring omissions like those, it's obvious that Macionis simply doesn't understand sociology.

Finally, the book just isn't organized in any worthwhile way. Macionis puts the three big "approaches" (StrucFunc, Conflict, Interaction) in the first chapter, before the students have been exposed to enough material to understand why they're useful or important. Then the rest of the book is a laundry list of concepts, clumped into chapters without any real theme. For example, chapter 4 is about social interaction, status, role, emotion, and humor, but gender, class, race, social groups, and social stratification are spread out in other chapters. Sure, the students learn their vocabulary, but it becomes very difficult to connect the different concepts to each other.

Macionis offers snippets of narrative to help explain the concepts, but nothing big enough for actual analysis, so you'll have to do it instead. All in all, this book does nothing that it's supposed to do, and should not be bought by anyone.

9 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Wonderful Introduction, July 9, 2002

By	Emily (Boston, Massachusetts USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Society: The Basics (6th Edition) (Paperback)

I found this book to be very interesting and learned quite a bit from it. I bought it last semester for a sociology course I took. Because my professor was also the dean of that department - it amplified the learning experience I got out of the book. Each chapter also starts out with a little snippet of a story that relates to the theme of the chapter. I very much enjoyed the course and the learning experience gained out of the book.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The cover explains it all=), April 23, 2009

By	J. Juarez "the_philosoph3r" - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Society: The Basics (10th Edition) (MySocLab Series) (Paperback)

I now understand the symbolism of the man wearing his glasses on the cover. The glasses themselves represent the knowledge of the information you WILL learn after reading each chapter. And the reflection on the glasses represents your wisdom of the "sociological imagination." In other words, your ability to see your personal position in a societal context. My professor has continuously told us that for EACH chapter in the book there is an actual course that we can take to find out more about them. To put it simple: If you feel as if you've lived in a vacuum your entire life, enroll in a "Intro to Sociology" (making sure that it has this textbook before) and be prepared to be BLOWN AWAY! (in a positive and good way)