Essential Concepts in Sociology

Abstract

My review of this book is not the outcome of my simple reading of it, but of translating it into Arabic. Its 240 pages identify and discuss sixty-seven essential sociological concepts, most notably those core concepts and ideas that allow sociologists to make sense of societies, even though our understanding of these concepts is constantly evolving and changing. The two sociologists have arranged their book in the following sections – working definition, origins of the concept, meaning and interpretation, critical points and, continuing relevance – and its contents into ten themes. Between the first theme of “Thinking Sociologically” and the last theme of “Political Sociology,” a variety of other themes are discussed, among them “Structures of Societies,” “Interaction and Communication,” “Health, Illness, and the Body,” and “Crime and Social Control.” The authors use this arrangement to provide a portrait of sociology through its essential concepts, ranging from capitalism, identity, and deviance to citizenship, the environment, and intersectionality. The concepts of each theme are arranged alphabetically so that they may be analyzed, discussed, and debated. Sociological literature shows the important relationship between concepts and theories: given that concepts are labels that refer to relations or descriptive properties, they are not statements and therefore are neither true nor false. They simply furnish the vocabulary of a theory and identify its subject matter. When concepts are interrelated in a scheme, a theory begins to emerge ...