Essential Concepts in Sociology

Abstract

My review of this book is not the outcome of my simple reading of it, butof translating it into Arabic. Its 240 pages identify and discuss sixty-sevenessential sociological concepts, most notably those core concepts and ideasthat allow sociologists to make sense of societies, even though our understandingof these concepts is constantly evolving and changing. The twosociologists have arranged their book in the following sections – workingdefinition, origins of the concept, meaning and interpretation, critical pointsand, continuing relevance – and its contents into ten themes. Between thefirst theme of “Thinking Sociologically” and the last theme of “PoliticalSociology,” a variety of other themes are discussed, among them “Structuresof Societies,” “Interaction and Communication,” “Health, Illness, andthe Body,” and “Crime and Social Control.” The authors use this arrangementto provide a portrait of sociology through its essential concepts, rangingfrom capitalism, identity, and deviance to citizenship, the environment,and intersectionality. The concepts of each theme are arranged alphabeticallyso that they may be analyzed, discussed, and debated.Sociological literature shows the important relationship between conceptsand theories: given that concepts are labels that refer to relations ordescriptive properties, they are not statements and therefore are neither truenor false. They simply furnish the vocabulary of a theory and identify itssubject matter. When concepts are interrelated in a scheme, a theory beginsto emerge ...