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Sociology

Welcome to the Sociology subject guide

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:

Subject Collections

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.

Latest titles added to the collection

Stuffed : a history of good food and hard times in Britain

Whose responsibility is it to make sure there is something to eat on every table? To make sure that children get milk and cereal, eggs and toast to keep hunger at bay? To feed key workers, whether they be NHS nurses, or soldiers fighting abroad? And do we all have the right to good food? This story of our changing customs and laws around our food, from prehistory to the present, reveals how every generation has fought to feed the family and the nation.

What Is Feminist Sociology?

What does it mean to say that there is a feminist sociology? And how might we engage the full potential of a "feminist sociological imagination"? These questions lie at the heart of Jo Reger's slim guide to a powerful tool, which has a long history in US sociology and yet remains as urgently needed as ever. Grounded in a need to change both society and the discipline, feminist sociology challenges the foundations of traditional social science and articulates new ways of creating knowledge, doing research, and understanding the role of researchers and the people they study.

Addressing Anti-Asian Racism with Social Work Advocacy and Action

This book fills a critical gap in scholarship from social workers in the effort to eradicate anti-Asian racism through exploration in the historical and current political context. Recent events have highlighted incidents of anti-Asian racism which has a long history tied to various marginalized identities in the U.S. This book examines the experiences and impacts of racism from the perspective of Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders, and delves into evidence-based micro, mezzo, and macro solutions. This book intends to serve as a timely and comprehensive resource for social work educators, researchers and practitioners committed to eliminating anti-Asian racism experienced by a population that will no longer accept the label of being "invisible."

Untangling Whiteness: Education, Resistance and Transformation

'Untangling Whiteness' directly interrogates the assumption that the teaching and learning about race and whiteness, particularly within the university context, can be condensed to one course, one workshop, or even a few trainings. It is a life-long process that may begin in one university classroom, but must continue as part of who we are as unfinished and undetermined beings. Through a deep and multi-faceted interrogation of racism and white supremacy, this book untangles critical theories of race, whiteness and resistance in an accessible and dialogical manner. It also situates whiteness in Aotearoa, New Zealand, demonstrating the importance of context and location when working to undermine and challenge it.

Max Weber At 100: legacies and prospects

This volume presents a collection of essays on the legacy and relevance of Max Weber. The authors comprise both experts who have contributed to the ongoing study of Weber's work and theorists who discern his enduring bond with key problems in the humanities and social sciences. The contributors cast a critical eye over Weber's oeuvre to ask what can still be learned from his work, and how his legacy might be contested or transformed.

Gender violence, social media, and online environments : when the virtual becomes real

Examining both problems and potential solutions, this book explores the impacts of, and potential resistance to, the intersections of gender violence, social media, and our complex lived environments across national boundaries. Throughout the volume, close attention is paid to the difficult issues highlighted when prior conceptions of basic foundations such as public space, individual rights, and professional responsibility are confronted by new examples that further trouble the boundaries of long-held frameworks of legal, social, professional understanding, and even our comprehension of the "real." Each chapter grapples with a difficult reality related to gender violence, underscores possible ways forward, and highlights limitations, resisting easy answers to complex and persistent questions about rights, personal integrity, and social responsibility.

The missing mother

This collection explores the concept of the Missing Mother from two inter-related standpoints: the mother as absent in society and the mother as absent in a woman’s selfhood. The first perspective considers why and how the mother/mothering is disregarded, discounted, or dismissed in art, literature, culture, policy, and law while the second perspective explores why and how a woman has marginalized, lost, forgotten, forfeited, or abandoned her individual maternal identity. Whether it is society that erases the maternal or a woman who forsakes it, the aim of this collection is to consider the why, how, what, who, and where of the mechanics of missing mother in both society and self.

Research Handbook on Hate and Hate Crimes in Society

This comprehensive Research Handbook places the study of hate and hate crimes into historic and cross-national contexts, examining the reasons behind, and the effects of, the reported increase in hate crimes in recent years. With findings from around the world, authors discuss both online and offline hate crimes in different cultural contexts. The Research Handbook assesses the complex relationship between hate crime and state actors, both in historic contexts and in contemporary society. Ultimately, it offers new insights into how to deal with the complexities of hate and understand its variability across both time and space.

Midgetism : the exploitation and discrimination of people with dwarfism

There exist problematic attitudes and beliefs about dwarfism that have rarely been challenged, but continue to construct people with dwarfism as an inferior group within society. This book introduces the critical term ‘midgetism’ to demonstrate that the socio-cultural discrimination people with dwarfism experience is influenced by both heightism and disablism. As a result, it unpacks and challenges the problematic social assumptions that reinforce midgetism within society, including the acceptability of ‘midget entertainment’ and ‘non-normate space’, to demonstrate how particular spaces can either aid in reinforcing or challenge midgetism.

Born to Rule: The Making and Remaking of the British Elite

This data-rich sociological study uses everything from census figures to Who's Who to analyze how, over 125 years, the British elite have used status, elite education, and powerful social networks to shape politics and cultural values. But what happens when elites begin to change--in what they look like, value, and how they position themselves?