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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.
A rich collection of web-based materials—including interactive versions of key texts, open spaces to write and reflect on readings, biographical sketches of authors, and dozens of supplementary sources—that transports social theory from its classic period to the vibrant and complex world of now.
At a time of growing wealth and income inequality in the United States during recent decades, Class and Inequality in the United States examines the nature and sources of social inequality based on class, race, and gender relations throughout the course of U.S. history. Addressing the class bases of social inequality during the turbulent 20th and early 21st centuries, Berch Berberoglu stresses the urgency of the study of class relations and their contradictory and unequal outcomes in American society today. Exploring the development of class-consciousness and class struggles of working people, Class and Inequality in the United States examines the realities behind conflicting class relations, the effects of racial and gender oppression, and the dynamics of social change through struggles between the contending class forces that have shaped the contours of contemporary American society and will continue to affect the course of its development in the coming decades.
The book casts a spotlight on Central and Eastern European societies, making their experiences visible and meaningful within the postcolonial discourse. The modernization theory overlooks important aspects of postsocialist transformation. Consequently, sociological knowledge has drifted apart from the social production of knowledge, and sociology has become alarmingly irrelevant to the people it studies. Therefore, the book departs from preconceived notions of "normal" and "modern" to foreground the importance of actual social experience. After all, Central and Eastern Europe is a valuable yet underestimated social laboratory. Thus, the contributors experiment with new theoretical and methodological approaches to bridge the gap between social research and real people.
Building upon the extensive and expansive tradition of research on social capital and inequality, this Handbook summarizes current social capital research and showcases cutting-edge applications. With a global range of diverse expert contributors, this Handbook explores quantitative and qualitative approaches to a broad array of substantive topics, including health, social media, disasters, crime, and employment. Chapters highlight the major theoretical and methodological advancements in the field, examining applications to affective and community-based outcomes and applications to instrumental and career-based outcomes
In Europe and North America, we see a trend of the white working class being tempted by right-wing political parties. Fascistic candidates and ideas seem to reap the fruits of social unrest everywhere. With her usual thought-provoking and unyielding analyses, Houria Bouteldja shows how the history of the left explains this problem and how we can overcome it. Drawing from Black radical and decolonial Marxism, she shows that privileging white constituencies, unions, and left parties laid the foundations for a racial contract that binds workers and people experiencing poverty to the state. However, there may still be a way out of this trap. Uniting 'rednecks' (the white working class) and 'savages' (the racially oppressed), will require a project of popular sovereignty, where national identity is reworked through revolutionary love.
This book focuses on the values and effects that are operational in data technologies as they sustain colonial and imperialist legacies while also highlighting strategies for resistance to autocratic regimes and pathways towards decolonizing efforts.
Systems and schemes for databases and automated data flow processing often contain implicitly Westernized, autocratic or even imperialist features, but can also be appropriated for resistance and revolt. Algorithms are not strictly mathematical but also embody cultural constructs. Values circulate in systems along with labels and quantities. This entails more critically reflective data practices whether in government, academia, industry or the civic sphere. The volume covers a critique of the data colonialism thesis which frames computer science as a colonizing science that uses data to classify and govern us, an alternate framing of metadata as ‘data near data’ to challenge seemingly neutral technical terms, and a case study of the use of social media platforms in the 2018 Sudanese uprising.
The Beveridge Report: Blueprint for the Welfare State aims to offer a definitive analysis of the famous document, so influential in the founding of the Welfare State and the National Health Service, which still resonates in current debates about 'getting back to Beveridge' and a 'Beveridge for the 21st Century'. It is based on extensive research into the papers of the Beveridge Committee, official Government archives and the papers of contemporary politicians and groups. Key features of the book include: The first systematic review and assessment of the work of the Beveridge Committee and the evidence submitted to it; Detailed analysis of the enthusiastic reception of the Report and the government's lukewarm attitude; A full survey of the detailed planning for welfare reform and Beveridge's role when excluded from it; An assessment of the influence of Beveridge upon the creation of the Welfare State by Attlee's Labour Government.
George Ritzer's seminal work of critical sociology, The McDonaldization of Society, continues to stand as one of the pillars of modern sociological thought. Building on the argument that the fast food restaurant has become the model for the rationalization process today, this book links theory to contemporary life in a globalized world and resonates with students in a way that few other books do.
How a new "woke" elite uses the language of social justice to gain more power and status--without helping the marginalized and disadvantaged. Musa al-Gharbi explores the rise of a new elite--the symbolic capitalists. In education, media, nonprofits, and beyond, members of this elite work primarily with words, ideas, images, and data, and are very likely to identify as allies of antiracist, feminist, LGBTQ, and other progressive causes. Their dominant ideology is "wokeness" and they actively benefit from and perpetuate the inequalities they decry. Indeed, their egalitarian credentials help them gain more power and status, often at the expense of the marginalized and disadvantaged. This book details how the language of social justice is increasingly used to justify this elite--and to portray the losers in the knowledge economy as deserving their lot because they think or say the "wrong" things about race, gender, and sexuality.
In this accessible guide for activists, scholar Lisa Mueller translates cutting-edge empirical research on effective protest to show how to make movements really matter We are in the middle of a historic swell of activism taking place throughout the world. From Occupy Wall Street and the Arab Spring, to pro-democracy uprisings in China, Black Lives Matter, the Women's March on Washington, and more recent pro-choice protests; folks everywhere are gathering to demand a more just world. Yet despite social engagement being at record highs, there is a divide between the activist community and the scientists who study it. In The New Science of Social Change, Mueller highlights what really works when it comes to group advocacy, to place proven tools in the hands of activists on the ground--in the U.S. and abroad.
