Includes bibliographical references.

Preface -- The study of sociology -- Sociology as an individual pastime (from invitation to sociology) / Peter L. Berger -- From the sociological imagination / C. Wright Mills -- What makes sociology different? (from the Rules of Sociological Method.) / Emile Durkheim -- Public sociologies: contradictions, dilemmas, and possibilities / Michael Burawoy -- The My Lai massacre: a crime of obedience? (from Crimes of Obedience: Toward a Social Psychology of Authority and Responsibility) / Herbert C. Kelman and V. Lee Hamilton -- Telling the truth about damned lies and statistics / Joel Best -- Racism and research: the case of the Tuskegee syphilis study / Allan M.brandt -- Culture and society -- From Nike culture: the sign of the swoosh / Robert Goldman and Stephen Papson -- McDonald's in Hong King: consumerism, dietary change and the rise of a children's culture (from Golden Arches East) / James L. Watson -- A look behind the veil / Elizabeth W. Fernea and Robert A. Fernea -- Code of the street / Elijah Anderson -- Deviance and liminality (from Something Old, Something Bold: Bridal Showers and Bachelorette Parties) / Beth Montemurro -- Social interaction and identity -- On face-work / Erving Goffman -- Civility and order: adult social control of children in public places / Christine Horne, Mary Kris Mcilwaine, and Kristie A. Taylor -- The body and bathing: help with personal care at home / Julia Twigg -- Boyhood, organized sports and the construction of masculinities / Michael Messner -- Women without class: chicas, cholas, trash, and the presence/absence of class identity / Julie Bettie -- My secret life as a black man / Anthony Walton -- Love and race caught in the public eye / Heidi Ardizzone and Earl Lewis -- Go north, young man / Richard Rodriguez.

Optional ethnicities (for Whites Only?) / Mary C. Waters -- Social inequality and labor -- Nickel-and-dimed: on (not) getting by in America / Barbara Ehrenreich -- Manifesto of the communist party / Karl Marx and Frederich Engels -- Hanging tongues: a sociological encounter with the assembly line / William E. Thompson -- Getting and "making" a tip (from Dishing It Out: Power and Resistance / Greta Foff Paules -- From Unequal Childhoods: Class, Race and Family Life / Annette Lareau -- Upward mobility through sport? / D. Stanley Eitzen -- From maid in the USA / Mary Romero -- The saints and the roughnecks / William J. Chambliss -- From When Work Disappears: the World of the New Urban Poor / William Julius Wilson -- Uses of the underclass in America / Herbert J. Gans -- Social control and organizational power -- From the Panopticon to Disney World / Clifford D. Shearing and Phillip C. Stenning -- From total confinement: madness and reason in the maximum security prison / Lorna A. Rhodes -- Police accounts of normal force / Jennifer Hunt -- The rise and fall of mass rail transit (from Building American Cities: the Urban Real Estate Game) / Joe R. Feagin and Robert Parker -- America's national eating disorder (from the Omnivore's Dilemma: a Natural History of Four Meals) / Michael Pollan -- Size does count, at least for French fries: Minnesota' s straight river (from Water Follies: Groundwater Pumping and the Fate of America's Fresh Waters) / Robert Glennon -- The foundations of Third World poverty (from Promises Not Kept: the Betrayal of Social Change in the Third World) / John Isbister -- Social institutions -- From the Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism / Max Weber -- Love, arranged marriage, and the Indian social structure / Giri Raj Gupta -- Shared paternity / Kim A. Mcdonald -- Domestic networks (from All Our Kin: Strategies of Survival in a Black Community) / Carol B. Stack -- From same-sex marriage: the cultural politics of love and law / Kathleen E. Hull -- The emotional geography of work and family life (from the Time Bind: When Work Becomes Home and Home Becomes Work) / Arlie Hochschild -- The McDonald's system (from the McDonaldization of Society) / George Ritzer -- Religious community and American individualism (from Habits of the Heart: Individualism and Commitment in American Life) / Robert N. Bellah, Ricard Madsen, William M. Sullivan, Ann Swidler, and Steven M. Tipton -- From Amish society / John A. Hostetler -- Social change -- Job on the line / William M. Adler -- Grassroots activism: mothers of East Los Angeles / Mary Pardo -- House bound: women's agency in white separatist movements / Jennifer Fluri and Lorraine Dowler -- The Cuban diet / Bill McKibbin -- Jihad vs. Macworld / Benjamin R. Barber.