Sociological Dilemmas: Toward a Dialectic Paradigm aims to build a new paradigm in sociological theory by using the method of dialectical critique, patterned on the approach utilized by Karl Marx. The book explores the sociological heritage, with the theoretical works of Karl Marx as the primary basis of exposition and analysis. Chapters are devoted to the discussion of the theoretical crisis of sociology; the division of sociology between two opposing methodologies; dissociation of sociology from the prescientific traditions of social thought; and the conclusion reached by the author after an extensive analysis of sociological theories presented in the book. The book will be of value to sociologists, teachers, and students of the social sciences.

Sociology: An Introduction for Nurses, Midwives, and Health Visitors focuses on the approaches, principles, and methodologies involved in sociology, including health care, patient care, social class, educational achievement, and kinship. The book first elaborates on health care from the classical era to the present, population structure and change, and family and kinship. Discussions focus on the family in a changing society, future of the family, population theory of Malthus, world population, developments in anatomy, physiology, and public health in Renaissance Europe, and origins in ancient Greece and Rome. The manuscript then examines social class and social stratification, education, religion, and secularization, and the provision of health care. Concerns include relationship between health care and health need, religion and total patient care, religion in contemporary society, social class and educational achievement, and social class and health. The text takes a look at the need for collaboration between nursing and sociology, sociological aspects of the care of the chronic sick, elderly, and the dying, and the sociological aspects of the care of the mentally ill, including challenges to the concept of mental illness, care of the chronic sick in institutions, and institutional care of the elderly. The manuscript is a dependable source of information for sociologists and researchers interested in sociology.

Talcott Parsons needs little introduction to anyone acquainted with the literature of sociology. Few men have dominated their fields so much as Dr. Parsons does his. In this collection of nineteen essays, Dr. Parsons focuses his attention on subjects ranging from the social structure of Japan to propaganda and social control, from sociological aspects of Fascist movements to the place of psychoanalysis in society. Also dealt with are such topics as: The role of ideas in social action, the motivation of economic activities, American social structure, social classes and class conflict, and the prospects for contemporary sociological theory. The whole body of essays presented here belongs in the broad field of "application" of sociological theory. It stands in the line of scientific development of the most advanced techniques for sociological investigation and evaluation of data.

This introductory text provides nurses with the foundations of a sociological understanding of health issues which they should find of great help in thinking about their work and the role of their profession. It explains the key sociological theories and debates with humour and imagination in a way which will encourage an inquisitive and reflective approach on the part of any student who engages with the text.

The stories in this book are about ordinary everyday human beings as we are each challenged and often socially seduced biologically, psycho-socially, spiritually, and economically as biopsychosocial and spiritual beings. These are also riveting true stories of the biopsychosocial and spiritual being who demonstrates the courage to stand strong during challenges of social seduction not just for oneself, but also for others. Many of us muster up the courage to do the things that are right according to our spiritual faith which for me includes my Christian ethics meaning even when we do not necessarily feel like doing them. We find the courage to not do the things were being hedonistically enticed or seduced into doing when we know its not morally right, or against our practicing spiritual ethics which clearly tells us not to do them. While many biopsychosocial and spiritual beings pray, some chant, others meditate, study/tarry, etc. Often this is based upon our individually unique beliefs and practices we are allowed here in America. My Christian Ethics however are rooted in the Science of Biblical Hermeneutics which truly empowers me with full armor and the sword of the spirit that sustains and keeps me steady allowing me to maintain my inner peace in the midst of storms including the ones shared in this book.

""One of our most original social thinkers,"" according to the New York Times, Robert Nisbet offers a new approach to sociology. He shows that sociology is indeed an art form, one that has a strong kinship with literature, painting, Romantic history, and philosophy in the nineteenth century, the age in which sociology came into full stature. Sociology as an Art Form is an introduction for the initiated and the uninitiated in so-ciology.Nisbet explains the degree to which sociology draws from the same creative impulses, themes and styles (rooted in history), and actual modes of representa-tion found in the arts. He shows how the founding sociologists such as Marx, Weber, Durkheim, and Simmel constructed portraits (of the bourgeois, the worker, and the intellectual) and landscapes (of the masses, the poor, the factory system), all reflecting and contribut-ing to identical portraits and landscapes found in the literature and art of the period. In addition to marking the similarities between sociologists' and artists' efforts to depict motion or movement, Nisbet emphasizes the relation of sociology to the fin de siecle in art and literature, with examples such as alienation, anomie, and degeneration. He creates an elegant, brilliantly reasoned appraisal of sociology's contribution to modern culture.This book will be of interest to sociologists, artists, and anyone interested in how the fields relate to one another.

This outstanding collection of essays by Renee C. Fox encompasses almost thirty years of original, pioneering research in the sociology of medicine. Based on fieldwork in a variety of medical settings in the United States, Belgium, and Zaire, these ethnographic essays examine chronic and terminal illness, medical research, therapeutic innovation, medical education and socialization, and bio-ethics. Within this framework, three empirical "cases" have been singled out for special scrutiny--the process of becoming a physician, the development of the artificial kidney machine and organ transplantation, and the evolution of medical research in Belgium. Without ignoring social structural or psychodynamic factors, Dr. Fox has explored basic cultural phenomena and questions associated with health, illness, and medicine: values, beliefs, symbols, rites, and the nuances of language: ethical and existential dilemmas and dualities; and the complex interrelationships between medicine, science, religion, and magic. She draws systematically and imaginatively upon anthropological, psychological, historical, and biological insights and integrates observations and analyses from her own studies in American, Western European, and Central African societies. This second, augmented edition includes Professor Fox's more recent contributions to the expanding field of the sociology of medicine. They are "The Evolution of Medical Uncertainty; The Human Condition of Health Professionals; Reflections on the Utah Artificial Heart Program; Is Religion Important in Belgium?; Medical Morality is Not Bioethics"--"Medical Ethics in China and the United States; "and "Medicine, Science and Technology. "The work also includes a new introduction, "Endings, Beginnings and Continuities." Now, anthropologists, sociologists, medical educators, scientists, researchers, and students can join her on her "journeys into the field" and share with her the priceless insights to be gained from the physicians, nurses, medical students, patients, and their families, who are working, living, and dying on the edge of what is known, scrutable, and remediable--on the edge of medical science.

Providing an up-to-date portrait of the concepts and methods of analytical sociology, this pivotal Research Handbook traces the historical evolution of the field, utilising key research examples to illustrate its core principles. It investigates how analytical sociology engages with other approaches such as analytical philosophy, structural individualism, social stratification research, complexity science, pragmatism, and critical realism, exploring the foundations of the topic as well as its major explanatory mechanisms and methods.