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This guide provides information for resources on Sociology, ranging from books and journals to electronic databases and audio-visual material. It supports the study of Politics and Sociology, Sociology of Childhood, Sociology of Education, and more.
In this guide you will find information about searching and making the most of library resources and how to access further training on offer at UCL. Please use the menu to see how the library can support your learning and research in Sociology.
You may also find these subject guides useful to you:
A large number of contemporary resources on sociology can be found online, as e-books or e-journals. Print collections which hold sociology can be found in the IOE, SSEES and Main Libraries, but you can use Click and Collect to pick them up from any other UCL library.
UCL Library Services has many subject-specific databases that will help you find useful resources. Two key databases for Sociology are below.
Male and white privilege are on the decline, yet elite privilege has gone from strength to strength. The privileges enjoyed by the rich and powerful are not only unfair but cause widespread harm, from the everyday slights and humiliations visited on those lower down the scale to the distortions in the labour market when elites use their networks to secure plum jobs, not least in new domains such as professional sports. In this book, Clive Hamilton and Myra Hamilton show that elite privilege is not a mere by-product of wealth but an organising principle for society as a whole.
This holistic guide provides practical advice on conducting meaningful research within the social sciences, focusing on practices which are sensitive and bespoke. Mapping out the field and inviting further exploration, its insights reflect lessons from a wide variety of social science research projects, all of which have crucial epistemological and methodological consequences. Drawing on diverse experiences of international and interdisciplinary scholars, 'How to do Social Science that Matters' presents methodology as a result of choices and stances related to values, context, and research interests. Each chapter focuses on one particular perspective, considering relationships, systemic inequalities, mutual meanings, and heterodoxy. A vast range of techniques are employed to conceptualise meaningful research methods, from ethnographies to poetry. Ultimately, this How To guide foregrounds the importance of impactful social science in peacemaking and building understanding.
In the world of online dating, race-based discrimination is not only tolerated, but encouraged as part of a pervasive belief that it is simply a neutral, personal choice about one's romantic partner. Indeed, it is so much a part of our inherited wisdom about dating and romance that it actually directs the algorithmic infrastructures of most major online dating platforms, such that they openly reproduce racist and sexist hierarchies. In Not My Type: Automating Sexual Racism in Online Dating, Apryl Williams presents a socio-technical exploration of dating platforms' algorithms, their lack of transparency, the legal and ethical discourse in these companies' community guidelines, and accounts from individual users in order to argue that sexual racism is a central feature of today's online dating culture.
This insightful book argues for a broader transnational perspective on the concept of forced migration and its multiple contexts and catalysts. It analyzes the different social groups of forced migrants, treating them neither as passive victims nor as activist heroes, but as social actors under highly constrained conditions. Using an interdisciplinary, longitudinal approach to forced migration as a social practice, Ludger Pries and Rafael Bohlen show the multiple causes of the issue, and how the responsibility for refugee protection is usually externalized. They present a fresh life-course perspective on forced migration, exploring the everyday lives and social spaces of those who live with the protracted uncertainty of livelihoods and belonging that it generates. Finally, the book explores a wide range of possible responses to the challenges of forced migration at the policy, organizational, and civil society levels.
Play is a key part of human relationships, and we engage in it during every stage and in every facet of our lives. We develop games to include decision-making, risk, chance, competition, and cooperation, which mirror how we navigate social engagement in our everyday lives. In Playing Sociology: Theory and Games for Coping with Mimetic Crisis and Social Conflict, Martino Doni and Stefano Tomelleri employ gaming as a lens through which they analyze the underlying and sometimes hidden aspects of social relationships and conventions. They also provide five sociological games that can be played by teams in workplaces, classrooms, and other settings to encourage creative thinking and to create abstract ways to explore systemic or ongoing conflicts among group members.
We are inclined to assume that digital technologies have suddenly revolutionized everything - including our relationships, our forms of work and leisure, and even our democracies - in just a few years. Armin Nassehi puts forward a new theory of digital society that turns this assumption on its head. Rather than treating digital technologies as an independent causal force that is transforming social life, he asks: what problem does digitalization solve? Digital technologies were so successful in such a short period of time and were able to penetrate so many areas of society so quickly precisely because of a pre-existing sensitivity that prepared modern societies for digital development. This highly original book lays the foundations for a theory of the digital society that will be of value to everyone interested in the growing presence of digital technologies in our lives.
This book explores the possibility of alienation amongst the British working-class and argues that the class is, in fact, alienated. Its point of departure is the right-communitarians, who outline how the working class has become alienated as a result of a loss of its political agency, the breakdown of its communities, and the undermining of its dignity. However, where these scholars tend to propose solutions from a right-communitarian perspective, this book adopts a more inclusive, left-wing, position to address working-class concerns.
Although sociology is present as a discipline or as a social practice in most countries in the world, its future as a not-only Western social science has hardly been addressed before. In this book, a team of interdisciplinary scholars have been working together to raise important issues at stake for the future of sociology. Is it universal? Can it be indigenous? How is it possible - and is it even desirable - to write its history differently so as to know better about its early world diffusion and gradual Westernization? Do we need to expand or change its canon? The postcolonial and decolonial critiques of the Eurocentrism of sociology are the basis for a reflection on how to continue to do sociology in a non-hegemonic way.
This book goes beyond the current hype of expectations generated by the news on artificial intelligence and machine learning by analyzing realistic expectations for society, its limitations, and possible future scenarios for the use of this technology in our current society. Artificial Intelligence is one of the top topics today and is inflating expectations beyond what the technology can do in the foreseeable future. This book merges the modeling of human reasoning with the power of AI technology allowing readers to make more informed decisions about their personal or financial decisions or just being more educated on current technologies. This book merges literature on the technology aspects, the sociological impacts, and philosophical aspects.
This book critically analyzes both the negative and positive impacts of the Coronavirus pandemic, focusing on changes in families, gender developments, and the evolution of social inequality structures. The Corona pandemic, with its unprecedented restrictions on contact, has meant that families have been challenged in their functioning in a very special way. International studies show that socioeconomic factors such as education, income, but also the geographic center of life of families and women in particular, had an important influence on the management of the pandemic. Despite all negative side effects of the Corona pandemic, there were nevertheless also innovative impulses, especially in the field of social work, particularly work with families. The book's 18 chapters, organized in six sections, highlight not only short-term changes but also longer-term developments that either require a corresponding concept of measures or action or can be evaluated as drivers of innovation in the pandemic. Authors from different countries describe changes and developments on these topics and make clear what profound effects the pandemic had on families, social inequality structures, and gender-specific situations.
