In addition to the content available on the SAGE edge site, the coursepacks include the following:
Pedagogically robust assessment tools that foster review, practice, and critical thinking and offer a better, more complete way to measure student engagement, including the following:Diagnostic chapter pretests and posttests that identify opportunities for student improvement, track student progress, and ensure mastery of key learning objectivesAssignable premium video and SAGE Stats data activities that bring concepts to life, increasing student engagement and appealing to different learning styles; the activities feed to your gradebookIntegrated links to the e-book version that make it easy to access the mobile-friendly version of the text, which can be read anywhere, anytime
Student Study Site
An open-access student study site, available at edge.sagepub.com/ballantine7e, provides a variety of additional resources to build students’ understanding of the book content and extend their learning beyond the classroom. Students will have access to the following features for each chapter:
E–flash cards and web quizzes. These mobile-friendly resources reinforce understanding of key terms and concepts outlined in the chapters.
SAGE journal articles. Exclusive full-text journal articles have been carefully selected for each chapter. Each article supports and expands on the concepts presented in the chapter.
Video, audio, and web links. These carefully selected web-based resources feature relevant articles, interviews, lectures, personal stories, inquiries, and other content for use in independent or classroom-based explorations of key topics.
MCAT guide. This guide summarizes the content in each chapter, highlighting the relevant topics tested on the MCAT (Medical College Admission Test). Each chapter entry also contains links to resources that allow students to understand and explore specific topic areas in more detail.
And much more!
What Is New in the Seventh Edition?
In this major revision we have updated all data, added many new studies, and added new emphases in sociology, such as environmental sociology. The following list provides a summary of key changes:
Thoroughly revised Chapter 15, bringing Urban Sociology and Population under the umbrella of Environmental Sociology and adding a new section on climate change.
Included new Sociologists in Action features, such as Richard M. Carpiano’s “Connecting Personal Health to Community Life” (Chapter 14).
Revised the Engaging Sociology features, with opportunities for data analysis by students.
Updated the Contributing to Our Social World: What Can We Do? features to provide new recommendations for how students can get involved.
Added new and updated figures and maps.
Added many new topics, including the influence of robots and artificial intelligence on workers, race relations in the Trump era, issues related to transgender identity and gender fluidity, sexual harassment in the workplace, declining marriage rates, the impact of tracking for students at all academic achievement levels, smoking as an example of health and inequality in the United States, gun violence and the student movement to control access to guns, and Facebook’s handling of Russian interference in the 2016 election.
The core elements of the book—with the unifying theme and the social world model at the beginning of every chapter—have not changed.
Finally, although we had been told that the writing was extraordinarily readable, we have tried to simplify sentence structure in places. In short, we have tried to respond to what we heard from all of you—both students and instructors (and yes, we do hear from students)—to keep this book engaging and accessible.
A Personal Note to the Instructor
What is truly distinctive about this book? This text tries to break the mold of the typical textbook synthesis, a cross between an encyclopedia and a dictionary. Our Social World is a unique course text that is a coherent essay on the sociological imagination—understood globally. We attempt to radically change the feel of the introductory book by emphasizing coherence, integrating themes, and current knowledge about learning and teaching (such as the sociological literacy framework), but we also present much traditional content. Instructors will not have to throw out the well-honed syllabus and begin from scratch, but they can refocus each unit, so it stresses understanding of micro-level personal troubles within the macro-level public issues framework. Indeed, in this book, we make clear that the public issues must be understood as global.
Here is a text that engages students. They say so! From class testing, we know that the writing style, structure of chapters and sections, Thinking Sociologically features, wealth of examples, and other instructional aids help students stay focused, think about the material, and apply it to their lives. It neither bores them nor insults their intelligence. It focuses on deep learning rather than memorization. It develops sociological skills of analysis rather than emphasizing memorization of vocabulary. Key concepts and terms are introduced but only in the service of a larger focus on the sociological imagination. The text is both personal and global. It speaks to sociology as a science as well as addresses public or applied aspects of sociology. It has a theme that provides integration of topics as it introduces the discipline. This text is an analytical essay, not a disconnected encyclopedia.
As one of our reviewers noted,
Unlike most textbooks I have read, the breadth and depth of coverage in this one is very impressive. It challenges the student with college-level reading. Too many textbooks seem to write on a high school level and give only passing treatment to most of the topics, writing in nugget-sized blocks. More than a single definition and a few sentences of support, the text forces the student deep into the topics covered and challenges them to see interconnections.
Normally, the global perspective angle within textbooks, which seemed to grow in popularity in the past two decades, was implemented by using brief and exotic examples to show differences between societies—a purely comparative approach rather than a globalization treatment. They gave, and still give to a large extent, a token nod to diversity. This textbook, however, forces students to take a broader look at similarities and differences in social institutions around the world and structures and processes operating in all cultures and societies.
So, our focus in this book is on deep learning, especially expansion of students’ ability to role-take or “perspective-take.” Deep learning goes beyond the content of concepts and terms and cultivates the habits of thinking that allow one to think critically. Being able to see things from the perspective of others is essential to doing sociology, but it is also indispensable to seeing weaknesses in theories or recognizing blind spots in a point of view. Using the sociological imagination is one dimension of role-taking because it requires a step back from the typical micro-level understanding of life’s events and fosters a new comprehension of how meso- and macro-level forces—even global ones—can shape the individual’s life. Enhancement of perspective-taking ability is at the core of this book because it is a prerequisite for deep learning in sociology, and it is the core competency needed to do sociology. One cannot do sociology unless one can see things from various positions on the social landscape.
This may sound daunting for some student audiences, but we have found that instructors at every kind of institution have had great success with the book because of the writing style and instructional tools used throughout. We have made some strategic decisions based on these principles of learning and teaching. We have focused much of the book on higher-order thinking skills rather than memorization and regurgitation. We want students to learn to think sociologically: to apply, analyze, synthesize, evaluate, and comprehend the interconnections