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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.
Offering over 1000 titles with the majority full-text. This database covers core disciplines across the social sciences including sociology, social work, anthropology, politics and features journals from over 50 countries.
Covering the international literature of sociology and social work this collection provides full-text coverage of many core titles indexed in Sociological Abstracts and Social Services Abstracts. Includes hundreds of full text scholarly journals and over 500 recent full-text doctoral dissertations on sociology.
This unique and innovative book explores the sociology of environmental morality. John Hannigan presents a unique framework by which we can understand the ongoing moralisation of environmental issues, re-interpreting the development of environmental sociology as a transition from moral learning to moral outrage. Responding to the challenges raised by Michael Bell (2020), Justin Farrell (2015), and Paul Stock (2020) to develop a 'sociology of environmental morality', Hannigan investigates how our understanding of environmental conflicts, issues and movements may be enriched by unearthing their underlying moral foundations. Chapters assess the cultural construction of moral narratives and the theory of moral economies, pairing this with case studies on gardens and gardening, the deep ocean, palm oil plantations, and lithium mining in the Andean highlands. Ultimately, the book argues for a revitalised environmental sociology constructed upon three central pillars: rigorous scientific grounding, deep moral commitment, and a theoretical orientation that integrates nature and society. Rethinking Environmental Sociology is a key resource for students and academics working in environmental sociology, environmental history, political ecology and development studies. Hannigan's proposed framework is also of interest to policymakers and practitioners specialising in climate change and development.
This forward-thinking Handbook explores two major research strands in the fast-developing field of culture and network analysis: the underlying social networks of culture and the cultural bases of social networks. Adopting a multidisciplinary approach, editors Nick Crossley and Paul Widdop bring together world-leading academics working on the culture-networks interface. The Handbook of Culture and Social Networks outlines theoretical foundations, applies network theory to varying acts and forms of culture, and brings into focus the question of social and relational meaning itself. Presenting empirical data, simulated network studies and first-person experiences, chapter authors develop nuanced social network analyses to help us understand the ways in which we experience and exist in society.
This book explores G.D.H Cole's significant yet often overlooked role in the history of British Sociology from 1920-1960. Eager to achieve a sense of scientific legitimacy following its institutionalisation in the early 1900s, British sociology had no space for a scholar like Cole, who saw sociology as an innately normative and political project which, in his case, was dedicated to the development of socialism. Conceptualising Cole's relationship to sociology as one of semi-alienation - suggesting an openness to the principles of the discipline yet disagreement with the form it takes in the current day - Dawson shows how Cole made a number of important sociological contributions which were grounded in an early form of structuration theory, including the production of one of Britain's first sociology textbooks and an early monograph on the sociology of class. Drawing on archival research Dawson reintegrates Cole into the history of British Sociology, and in so doing offers valuable insight into sociology's history and its contemporary form, emphasising a normative, critical and public form of the discipline.
Recent debates regarding abortion law in the US, China, and many EU countries, the rise of far-right politics, and conservatist and extremist movements indicate elevated threats for women rights and the LGBTQ community in a global context. At the same time, '#Metoo' movements were structured through online platform monopolies. In Future Feminisms, female academics from around the globe critically discuss the contemporary postfeminist media culture and bring different stories together to provide opportunities to imagine a connected feminist future. Future Feminisms is an interdisciplinary exploration of the contemporary experiences of women within three different contexts - the private, public, and online spheres. Chapters explore women's experiences of insecurity, instability and change, migration, and diaspora as experienced in both physical and digital communication environments.
Why does hope appear in certain epochs and places, only at other times to disappear from people's lives and from society as a whole? This book addresses hope from a sociological perspective, offering a theoretical framework and a set of concepts to consider a range of questions. With attention to who the historical bearers of hope are, and which social groups are most inclined towards hope and why. It also considers the objects and goals towards which their hope is directed and the conditions under which hope is easier. An enquiry into the relationship between hope and social, cultural, economic and political conditions, this volume redirects the sociological gaze towards the discovery of social experiences in which hope resurrects and contributes to the imagination of a new social world.
Racism is not a uniquely transatlantic phenomenon but, because it is most often understood within Euro-American paradigms, its salience in other contexts is often less visible. The chapters in this volume analyze the process by which fundamentally invisible differences have been made visible, and various groups and communities have been marked, essentialized, and substantialized under a range of social, political, and cultural conditions. Focusing on the space between the visible and invisible, they evaluate the dynamics by which invisible differences are rendered visible, and by which visible differences render other differences invisible. In doing so, they promote a decentering of Western-centered frameworks and elucidate continuities with and discontinuities from past era of racial antagonism and conflict. They look at case studies ranging from Japan, India, and Southeast Asia, to Iceland, the United States, and intra-“white” racism in Europe.
Love and Sexuality in Social Theory considers the role that love and sexuality play in private and public life. Presenting an understanding of love as the social basis of altruism, as an important factor in modern conceptions of subjectivity and that which shapes intimacy and contemporary social life, this book will appeal to scholars of sociology with interests in social theory and the sociology of emotions.
Concepts like freedom, equality and justice have many uses - and even more misuses. In seeking to manage an increasingly complex world, it is more important than ever to think carefully about the meaning of such concepts which are central to policy debates and integral to implementing effective social policy around the world. This concise and readable book is a guide to those essential social policy concepts. In addition to freedom, equality and justice, the book covers concepts like social risks and rights that are critical for understanding welfare states, and examines social policies through the lenses of power, recognition and investment. It also reflects on the role of social policy in addressing the biggest challenges that humanity faces in the twenty-first century, including the megatrends of inequality and climate change.
The key concern of this collection is to highlight matters related to knowledge and the influence social realism has on the formation of curricula, pedagogy, identity, and equity in educational contexts. Presenting new perspectives on the place of various types and forms of knowledge in contemporary education, this book explores two central questions, 'what type of knowledge is most important to include in a curriculum?' and 'what is meant by disciplinary knowledge?'. The chapters use empirical examples to illustrate how the issues play out on a global stage, interweaving the social justice concern of equitable access to disciplinary knowledge throughout. In particular, the authors address the emerging theorisation of issues related to the decolonisation of curricula, the recontextualisation of 'non-traditional' knowledge into the curriculum, and to teacher education.
Social structure is arguably the central concept of sociology, and in recent years a much wider public has taken up with fresh vigor the sociological idea that persistent inequalities are rooted in social structures. Yet there seem to be as many definitions of the term as there are sociologists, and we often struggle to articulate accessible yet precise accounts of structures that can guide empirical research and other kinds of action. Jonathan Eastwood offers a set of pragmatic strategies for thinking about social structures, emphasizing ways in which we can approach them as complex lacings of relationships, representations, and rules. He then teases out a variety of implications of these strategies for qualitative and quantitative research, the analysis of social problems, and the implementation of social policies.
