More than half a century after the first Jim Crow laws were dismantled, the majority of urban neighborhoods in the United States remain segregated by race. The degree of social and economic advantage or disadvantage that each community experiences—particularly its crime rate—is most often a reflection of which group is in the majority. As Ruth Peterson and Lauren Krivo note in Divergent Social Worlds, "Race, place, and crime are still inextricably linked in the minds of the public." This book broadens the scope of single-city, black/white studies by using national data to compare local crime patterns in five racially distinct types of neighborhoods. Peterson and Krivo meticulously demonstrate how residential segregation creates and maintains inequality in neighborhood crime rates. Based on the authors' groundbreaking National Neighborhood Crime Study (NNCS), Divergent Social Worlds provides a more complete picture of the social conditions underlying neighborhood crime patterns than has ever before been drawn. The study includes economic, social, and local investment data for nearly nine thousand neighborhoods in eighty-seven cities, and the findings reveal a pattern across neighborhoods of racialized separation among unequal groups. Residential segregation reproduces existing privilege or disadvantage in neighborhoods—such as adequate or inadequate schools, political representation, and local business—increasing the potential for crime and instability in impoverished non-white areas yet providing few opportunities for residents to improve conditions or leave. And the numbers bear this out. Among urban residents, more than two-thirds of all whites, half of all African Americans, and one-third of Latinos live in segregated local neighborhoods. More than 90 percent of white neighborhoods have low poverty, but this is only true for one quarter of black, Latino, and minority areas. Of the five types of neighborhoods studied, African American communities experience violent crime on average at a rate five times that of their white counterparts, with violence rates for Latino, minority, and integrated neighborhoods falling between the two extremes. Divergent Social Worlds lays to rest the popular misconception that persistently high crime rates in impoverished, non-white neighborhoods are merely the result of individual pathologies or, worse, inherent group criminality. Yet Peterson and Krivo also show that the reality of crime inequality in urban neighborhoods is no less alarming. Separate, the book emphasizes, is inherently unequal. Divergent Social Worlds lays the groundwork for closing the gap—and for next steps among organizers, policymakers, and future researchers. A Volume in the American Sociological Association's Rose Series in Sociology

In the Third Edition of Ken Allan's highly-praised Contemporary Social and Sociological Theory book, sociological theories and theorists are explored using a straightforward approach and conversational, jargon-free language. Filled with examples drawn from everyday life, this edition highlights diversity in contemporary society, exploring theories of race, gender, and sexuality that address some of today's most important social concerns. Through this textbook students will learn to think theoretically and apply to their own lives.

This reissue of the now classic Sociological Worlds (originally published in 1995) attempts to present a comprehensive picture of human social life--from the perspective of the comparative-historical revolution in sociology and presents some of the best theoretical and empirical work that is now being done by comparative-historical sociologists, as well as work by their close cousins, socio-cultural anthropologists. From this perspective, readers gain a picture of the major ways in which human societies differ. For this new library edition, Professor Sanderson has provided both a new preface and three contributions that did not appear in the original edition.

This text looks at the sociology of sport. Narrative case studies of sports sociology from all over the world provide examples of how to interpret issues in professional and elite sports from a sociological perspective.

This new introduction to the sociology of gender and sexuality provides fresh insight into our rapidly changing attitudes towards sex and our understanding of masculine and feminine identities, relating the study of gender and sexuality to recent research and theory, and wider social concerns throughout the world.

Praised for its conversational tone, personal examples, and helpful pedagogical tools, the Fourth Edition of Explorations in Classical Sociological Theory: Seeing the Social World is organized around the modern ideas of progress, knowledge, and democracy. With this historical thread woven throughout the chapters, the book examines the works and intellectual contributions of major classical theorists, including Marx, Spencer, Durkheim, Weber, Mead, Simmel, Martineau, Gilman, Douglass, Du Bois, Parsons, and the Frankfurt School. Kenneth Allan and new co-author Sarah Daynes focus on the specific views of each theorist, rather than schools of thought, and highlight modernity and postmodernity to help contemporary readers understand how classical sociological theory applies to their lives.

"Raquel Sosa Elízaga has assembled an incredibly complete set of analyses of inequality written by a range of scholars about a wide range of issues. Incomparable essential reading." - Immanuel Wallerstein, Senior Research Scientist, Sociology, Yale University Over recent decades, living conditions in poorer countries have deteriorated, leaving us faced with the present phenomenon of global inequality. Arguably the biggest challenge of the 21st Century is the confrontation and eventual elimination of the processes of structural inequality that affect these millions of human beings today. Facing an Unequal World tackles and critically examines key issues and challenges for global sociology across these interrelated themes: The dimensions of inequality and the configurations of structural inequalities and structures of power Conceptions of justice in different historical and cultural traditions Conflicts on environmental justice and sustainable futures The social injuries of inequality, and overcoming inequalities Written by a selection of international key sociologists and academics, this is a valuable resource for undergraduate and postgraduate students, and researchers in sociology alike.

This comprehensive and authoritative statement of fundamental principles of sociological analysis integrates approaches that are often seen as mutually exclusive. John Scott argues that theorising in sociology and other social sciences is characterised by the application of eight key principles of sociological analysis: culture, nature, system, structure, action, space-time, mind and development. He considers the principal contributions to the study of each of these dimensions in their historical sequence in order to bring out the cumulative character of knowledge. Showing that the various principles can be combined in a single disciplinary framework, Scott argues that sociologists can work most productively within an intellectual division of labour that transcends artificial theoretical and disciplinary differences. Sociology provides the central ideas for conceptualising the social, but it must co-exist productively with other social science disciplines and disciplinary areas.