Customer Reviews

Sociology for the 21st Century

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I just wish there was a way to get reviews on textbooks. I previewed several books ultimately deciding on this text. Do yourself a favor if you are a teacher and don't touch this book. The information is presented in the most dull way and further everything is DATED. I have never become so frustrated with a text that discusses current race relations with data from the 1980's. If you are considering this text, just glance at some of the data and you will get my point.

Three sociologists studied the same male-female interactions and got different fuel for blaming men. One studying Native american tribes said that the men protecting the women was how they maintained a "protection racket", the second said that they were as usual leaving all the work to women, and the last said that it was a patriarchal system where men had all the power. That above quote is from a book by Jack Kammer where he discusses sociology breifly as being an arm of feminism that being said in this book they do everything to blame whatever they can on men like me. Me and my white male privelege of working 40hrs a week and going to school. I understand in Chapter 9 Inequalities of gender it would mostly be written with feminist asides but if sociology is a science as our teacher insisted they could at least be objective or at the very least check their facts. For example in discussing the wage gap they never once mention that women tend to take majors in careers that pay less and stay away from most hard science classes like engineering ie the careers that pay well, of course, they dont mention having kids will interrupr your career either, which is something that many women do. The usual culprits reads like its out of a Faludi book: Sexism, exclusion from the old boys network, glass cieling. They even attempt to use the idea of a glass cliff when discussing two women who lost their ceo positions, Fuller was fired when Mirant went bankrupt something that happens to male ceos as well, but the second example they cited was just too ludicrious. Carly Fiorina of HP who dumped a profitable printing section and the company was bleeding money left and right until finally she was fired due to her lack of any business sense. Of course they do not mention that they just say it happened to her after she attempted to merge with Compaq thereby subtly blaming the invisible hand of patriarchy. Then they talk about gender equality and the law, all that I can say to that is women have more than equality under the law they have free liscense to murder their husbands and get away with it rather easily. Under inclusive feminism they attempt to say that men are threatened by feminism and dont want to lost their priveleged position, again aside from the top ten percent of men who are filthy rich......I dont feel that priveleged.

At least at the end of the chapter on gender inequality they make mention of the fact that men are more likely to kill themselves at least society isnt exactly friendly to men either, so at least there was some hope of a balanced chapter at the end.

But it doesnt end there in Chapter 12 RIGHT before they discuss Domestic Violence, They say, "The loosening of economic dependency has had consequences for men as well," you would think that maybe its going to swing a bit to the fair side but your disappointed, "a divorced man whose former wife has a job can more easily escape the need to make custody payments...the gender gap in pay means that women suffer more than men." Of course they dont mention the stat that says women dont make payments more often, when compared to men. Also I would like to mention they also have the feminist stat that a man standard of living goes up 10% after a divorce.....tell me what kind of financial planner would tell you to get married and divorced so your standard of living would go up? The only thing I am going to mention about the Domestic violence section is that they dont mention that studies have found that women and men are equally likey to use violence in a relationship, which again means if you werent well versed on the issue before you would assume a man is guilty of domestic violence in all cases when the cops are called. The reality is a lot different do a search for Erin Pizzey.

In closing I would like to say that I hated Intro To Sociology, not only due to the horrible research that was done on the issues contained therein, because I was forced to take it as part of my psychology degree path I didnt have a choice. Many people failed or got Ds in the class because they couldnt read the book itself, not much of an edorsement there. Please if you are a professor reading this use a better book.

I myself have changed my major to Biology since this class essentailly soured me on social sciences as a whole (I still cant figure out how sociology is a science aside from the fact that they do historical studies but the interpretation is up to the researcher and his/her biases) and secondly because they dont earn much with a four year degree *hint* *hint*.

This book is so easy to read and everything is organized the same way in each chapter, making note-taking a breeze. Each chapter ends with quizzes and the answers are in the back to check. Also, the website offers an additional quiz in terminology and multiple choice. To prepare for my exams, I simply studied the quizzes at the end of each chapter as well as online and I got an A on every test. I learned a lot about the different sociological viewpoints of each subject studied in each chapter. This textbook is great for students.