Recent Book Publications

 

The faculty and graduate students in Sociology at the University of Toronto publish their research in many of the top journals of the discipline. In addition to journal articles, many of our faculty publish their research in books. Some of our recent book publications include:

Society, History and the Global Condition: Essays in Honor of Irving Zeitlin

Zaheer Baber and Joseph Bryant (editors)
Lexington Books
 
This Festschrift for Irving M. Zeitlin honors a scholar whose work has influenced and continues to influence sociology, particularly classical sociological theory, sociology of religion, and historical sociology. The essays presented here address a wide range of topics that include classical sociological theory, globalization, bureaucracy, genocide, resistance, ethnic diversity, the intifada, anti-Semitism, democracy, geopolitical theory, war literature, science, and national culture. The contributions span a wide range of geographical areas that include Korea, China, India, Poland, Spain, Germany, the ex-Soviet Union, Canada, and the United States. The contributions to this volume also serve to highlight the contemporary relevance of the classical sociological tradition in making sense of the global human condition. more

Darwinian Sociocultural Evolution: Solutions to Dilemmas in Cultural and Social Theory

Marion Blute
Cambridge University Press

Social scientists can learn a lot from evolutionary biology - from systematics and principles of evolutionary ecology to theories of social interaction including competition, conflict and cooperation, as well as niche construction, complexity, eco-evo-devo, and the role of the individual in evolutionary processes. Darwinian sociocultural evolutionary theory applies the logic of Darwinism to social-learning based cultural and social change. With a multidisciplinary approach for graduate biologists, philosophers, sociologists, anthropologists, social psychologists, archaeologists, linguists, economists, political scientists and science and technology specialists, the author presents this model of evolution drawing on a number of sophisticated aspects of biological evolutionary theory. The approach brings together a broad and inclusive theoretical framework for understanding the social sciences which addresses many of the dilemmas at their forefront - the relationship between history and necessity, conflict and cooperation, the ideal and the material and the problems of agency, subjectivity and the nature of social structure. more

Juden in Deutschland - Deutschland in Juden; Neue Perspectives
Y. Michal Bodemann
Wallenstein

The range of Jewish lifestyles in Germany revealed change and richness of today's Jewish community Jews in Germany are now at a turning point: The Holocaust survivors die, and with them the authentic memory. Today it is the children of Russian-speaking immigrants who came to Germany and many here with great enthusiasm created a new diasporic culture.The environment of Jewish life in Germany has changed. By the immigration of many Turks and other Muslims, Jews are not the only minority.Well-known authors paint a different picture of the German-Jewish reality in the 21st Century. Religious and Secular to speak, representatives of Germany's prewar Jewish, non-Jewish German and observers from Israel, Israel's critics and loyalists. Against this background, it becomes clear what is perceived by the public barely: that the Jewish community has long been no more monolithic, homogeneous, not politically, culturally and religiously.


Staatsbürgerschaft, Migration und Minderheiten.  Inklusion und Ausgrenzungsstrategien im Vergleich Wiesbaden

Y. Michal Bodemann and Gokce Yurdakul
VS Verlag

This book deals with the relations between migrants and ethnic minorities and the challenges they pose to the nation-state. It draws comparisons across North America and Europe with a particular focus on Germany.  It examines various forms of inclusion within the national state, discussing issues of assimilation, integration and multiculturalism.  Of particular importance is its examination of the inter-ethnic relations between Jews and Turks and their specific connections to the German nation state and the German identity. It contributes to debates about identity, memory and gender. more (in German)

Sociology as a Life or Death Issue

Robert Brym
Nelson

In five beautifully written essays, Brym analyzes the social causes of death. In doing so he reveals the powerful social forces that help to determine who lives and who dies, and demonstrates the promise of a well-informed sociological understanding of our world. Examining American hip-hop culture, the motivations of Palestinian suicide bombers, and the plight of victims of hurricanes in the Caribbean region and the coast of the Gulf of Mexico, this collection of linked essays takes readers into worlds that figure prominently in today’s popular culture and headline news stories. The book will be an eye-opener, an inspiration, and a guide for students of sociology and for anyone with an inquiring mind and hopes for a better world for future generations. More

The Jews in Canada

Robert Brym, William Shaffir and Morton Weinfeld
Oxford University Press

Ethnic groups in Canada may be successful, persecuted, cohesive, or endangered; only Canada's Jews appear to embody all of these characteristics simultaneously. Canadian Jewry is enduringly fascinating, worth knowing about because the community is an archetype of multiculturalism as it confronts the difficulties and advantages of ethnicity in the modern world. By examining the achievements of the community, and the challenge of its attempt to survive the exigencies of modern life, The Jews in Canada clarifies not only the evolution of Canada's Jewish community but also the evolution of ethnicity in Canadian society. More


Social Capital: An International Research Program

Bonnie Erickson and Nan Lin
Oxford University Press

For two decades, a significant number of scholars have subscribed to a common definition of social capital (resources embedded in social networks), employed a standard measurement (the position generator methodology), and conducted original research. Their sustained efforts have demonstrated the power of the concept of social capital in diverse arenas of research and varied cultural and societal settings. Their work has contributed to the substantiation, development, and expansion of social capital as a key scientific concept and theory. This book presents an introduction to some of the most recent work in the area. The volume editors have brought together scholars in North America, Europe, and East Asia to offer original and accessible reports of their own research studies. Covering both methodological and substantive issues, they demonstrate the continued importance of social capital as a guiding concept and theory in social sciences today. more

The Changing Canadian Population

Barry Edmonston and Eric Fong (eds)
McGill-Queens University Press

Current social and economic changes in Canada raise many questions. Will Canada's education system be able to maintain its competitiveness when faced with increasing globalization? Will the growing numbers of immigrants and their children be successfully integrated? How will Canada's social institutions respond to a rapidly aging population? The Changing Canadian Population assembles answers from many of Canada's most distinguished scholars, who reassess the current state of society and Canada's preparedness for the challenges of the future. Analysing the authoritative information of recent census data, contributors present a comprehensive overview of crucial issues, including employment, family arrangements, internal migration, population distribution, urbanization, language, ethnicity, and religion. An invaluable reference for understanding the direction of Canadian society, The Changing Canadian Population synthesizes the monumental information contained in the census in accessible and clarifying chapters. more

Chinese Ethnic Business: Global and Local Perspectives

Eric Fong and Chiu Luk (eds)
Routledge

Providing a crucial understanding of how globalization impacts on the development of Chinese businesses, this book analyzes the unprecedented changes in Chinese ethnic business due to the process of globalization, specifically economic globalization, in the key receiving countries of the US, Australia and Canada. Focusing on the main themes of economic globalization and Chinese community development, transnational linkages, local urban structures, homogenization and place attachment, the team of internationally known contributors place the subject of Chinese ethnic business in the bigger picture of ethnic businesses and globalization. more


Family Patterns, Gender Relations

Bonnie Fox
Oxford University Press

In this thoroughly revised and highly anticipated updated edition of Family Patterns, Gender Relations, editor Bonnie Fox explores the complex dynamics and patterns of family life. Building on a wide range of material from Canada, the US, and the UK, this third edition presents engaging new readings on cutting-edge topics. Some of these topics include same-sex marriage and parenting, finances and child-birth, and the "immigrant family". Fox's introductory commentary for each reading has been revised to reflect the current state of the discipline and to establish a present-day context for the material. The result is a succinct and analytical volume that highlights all of the social factors involved in studying the institution of the family. Engaging and relevant, Family Patterns, Gender Relations will spark students' interest and encourage in-depth discussion. more

When Couples Become Parents: The Creation of Gender in the Transition to Parenthood

Bonnie Fox
University of Toronto Press

When couples make the journey through their first year of parenthood they confront the challenges of their new responsibilities with varying degrees of support and a range of personal resources. When Couples Become Parents examines the ways in which divisions based on gender both evolve and are challenged by heterosexual couples from late pregnancy through early parenthood. Following the experiences of forty heterosexual couples in various socio-economic positions, Bonnie Fox traces the intricate interplay of social and material resources in the negotiations that occur between partners, the resulting divisions of paid and unpaid work in their families, and the dynamics in their relationships. Exploring the diverse reactions of these women and men, When Couples Become Parents provides significant insights into the early stages of parenthood, the limitations of nuclear families, and the gender inequalities that often develop with parenthood. more

Policing Compassion: Begging, Law and Power in Public Spaces

Joe Hermer
Hart Publishing

The encounter between those begging and those passing-by in public spaces has become one of the most controversial issues in the politics and policing of urban life. In this book, criminologist Joe Hermer examines how begging regulation - underpinned by the social character of charity, contract, money and work - plays a central role in organising how we feel responsible for one another in late capitalist society. Based in the historical insight that modern begging law has had at its core a concern with the compassionate impulses of the public, Hermer develops the concept of the gift encounter to understand begging as a profound social phenomenon that is intricately tied to the exercise of political power. Drawing on a range of eclectic empirical sources, the author examines how criminal begging is governed through specialised police operations and diverted giving programs, as well as the way in which official and legitimate begging such as charity collections, Big Issue selling, and busking are ordered as vital aspects of the gift encounter landscape which the public negotiates. The author explores how the control of begging and squeegee work is central to a current preoccupation with policing disorder, and reviews the current constitutional state of anti-begging laws in Britain, Canada, and the United States. more

Life Histories of the Dobe !Kung

Nancy Howell
University of California Press

Life Histories of the Dobe !Kung re-examines an important anthropological data set for the Dobe !Kung, the well-known “Bushmen” of the Kalahari Desert, collected by Nancy Howell and colleagues. Using life history analysis, Howell reinterprets this rich material to address the question of how these hunter-gatherers maintain their notably good health from childhood through old age in the Kalahari’s harsh environment. She divides the population into life history stages that correlate with estimated chronological ages and demonstrates how and why they survive, even thrive, on a modest allotment of calories. She describes how surplus food is produced and distributed, and she considers both the motives for the generous sharing she has observed among the Dobe !Kung and some evolutionary implications of that behavior. more

Foodies: Democracy and Distinction in the Gourmet Foodscape

Josee Johnston and Shyon Baumann
Routledge

This important new and highly readable cultural analysis tells two stories about food. The first depicts good food as democratic. Foodies frequent ‘hole in the wall’ ethnic eateries, appreciate the pie found in working-class truck-stops, and reject the snobbery of fancy French restaurants with formal table-service. The second story describes how food operates as a source of status and distinction for economic and cultural elites, indirectly maintaining and reproducing social inequality. While the first storyline insists that anybody can be a foodie, the second story asks foodies to look in the mirror and think about their relative social and economic privilege. By simultaneously considering both of these stories, and studying how they operate in tension, a delicious sociology of food becomes available, perfect for teaching a broad range of cultural sociology courses. more

Degrees of Inequality: Culture, Class and Gender in American Higher Education

Ann Mullen
Johns Hopkins University Press

Degrees of Inequality reveals the powerful patterns of social inequality in American higher education by analyzing how the social background of students shapes nearly every facet of the college experience.Even as the most prestigious institutions claim to open their doors to students from diverse backgrounds, class disparities remain. Just two miles apart stand two institutions that represent the stark class contrast in American higher education. Yale, an elite Ivy League university, boasts accomplished alumni, including national and world leaders in business and politics. Southern Connecticut State University graduates mostly commuter students seeking credential degrees in fields with good job prospects. Ann L. Mullen interviewed students from both universities and found that their college choices and experiences were strongly linked to social background and gender. Yale students, most having generations of family members with college degrees, are encouraged to approach their college years as an opportunity for intellectual and personal enrichment. Southern students, however, perceive a college degree as a path to a better career, and many work full- or part-time jobs to help fund their education. Moving interviews with 100 students at the two institutions highlight how American higher education reinforces the same inequities it has been aiming to transcend. more

Multiculturalism and Social Cohesion: Potentials and Challenges of Diversity

Jeffrey Reitz, Raymond Breton, Karen Dion and Kenneth Dion
Springer

Does multiculturalism ‘work’? Does multiculturalism policy create social cohesion, or undermine it? Multiculturalism was introduced in Canada in the 1970s and widely adopted internationally, but more recently has been hotly debated, amid new concerns about social, cultural, and political impacts of immigration. Advocates praise multiculturalism for its emphasis on special recognition for cultural minorities as facilitating their social integration, while opponents charge that multiculturalism threatens social cohesion by encouraging social isolation.Multiculturalism is thus rooted in a theory of human behaviour, and this book examines the empirical validity of some of its basic propositions, focusing on Canada as the country for which the most enthusiastic claims for multiculturalism have been made. The analysis draws on the massive national Ethnic Diversity Survey of over 41,000 Canadians in 2002, the most extensive survey yet conducted on this question. The analysis provides a new and more nuanced understanding of the complex relation between multiculturalism and social cohesion, challenging uncritically optimistic or pessimistic views. Ethnic community ties facilitate some aspects of social integration, while discouraging others. For racial minorities, relations within and outside minority communities are greatly complicated by more frequent experiences of discrimination and inequality, slowing processes of social integration. Implications for multicultural policies emphasize that race relations present important challenges across Quebec and the rest of Canada, including for the new religious minorities, and that ethnic community development requires more explicit support for social integration. more

Hong Kong movers and stayers: narratives of family migration

Janet Salaff
University of Illinois Press

Half a million Hong Kong residents fled their homeland during the thirteen years before Hong Kong was returned to China in 1997--and nearly half of those returned within several years of leaving. Filled with detailed, first-hand stories of nine Hong Kong families over nearly two decades, Hong Kong Movers and Stayers is an exhaustive and intimate look at the forces behind Hong Kong families' successful and failed efforts at migration and settlement.This multi-faceted study was begun in 1991, when migration was attributed primarily to the political anxieties of the time and the notion that Hong Kong residents were seeking a better life in the West. Defining migration as a process, not a single act of leaving, Hong Kong Movers and Stayers provides an antidote to ethnocentric and simplistic theories by uncovering migration stories as they relate to social structures and social capital. With an approach that melds survey analysis, personal biography, and sociology, Hong Kong Movers and Stayers provides a depth of understanding by comparing multiple families and gives voice to the interplay of diverse family roles, gender, and age as motivating factors in migration. more

Advances in the Conceptualization of the Stress Process: Essays in Honor of Leonard I. Pearlin

Scott Schieman, Blair Wheaton, Carol Aneshensel and Bill Avison (eds)
Springer

The stress process paradigm has been one of the most dominant conceptual models of health and illness over the past three decades. The contributions to this volume chart a new course for the stress process, extending the paradigm conceptually, methodologically, and substantively. Written in honor of Leonard I. Pearlin, the leading proponent of the stress process, the contributions to this volume provide a new direction for stress process research.Featuring contributions from leading researchers, and an afterword by Leonard I. Pearlin, this comprehensive volume covers three major sections: conceptual and methodological extensions of the stress process; the roles of family and work in the stress process, throughout the life course; psychosocial factors that impact health outcomes. This volume will be an invaluable resource for researchers in sociology, social psychology and public health, all seeking to understand the pervasive role of stress on social disparities in health and illness. more

Skeletons in the Closet: A Sociological Analysis of Family Conflicts

Aysan Sev'er
Wilfrid Laurier University Press

Family conflict has traditionally been studied by researchers who are at a safe intellectual distance from the families under their study. In Skeletons in the Closet, and in line with feminist research methodologies, the hierarchical distance between researcher and subject is broken down. All of the contributors to this volume are academics, and all are closely related to the families they write about. Skeletons in the Closet consists of ten essays about unresolved or unresolvable family conflicts. The contributors start from the assumption that families—whether legal-marriage families, common-law marriage families, single-parent families, multiple-generation families, same-sex partnerships, or adoptive families—are cradles of intense emotion. That intensity, they argue, may translate into conflict, competition, domination, abuse, exploitation, or even hate. This book explores those areas most likely to grip family members in unresolved interpersonal strife, as well as the strategies people use to solve the issues and the shame and isolation that conflict brings in societies that normatively expect family life to be one of joy, mutual sharing, and caring. more

Teenage Troubles: Youth and Deviance in Canada in 2000 3rd edition

Julian Tanner
Oxford University Press

Teenage Troubles: Youth and Deviance in Canada 3rd edition is a comprehensive analysis of youth and deviance in Canada that questions much of the conventional thinking about youthful misbehaviour. Chapter 1 discusses the social construction of youth problems and the sources and nature of popular images of deviant youth. This discussion is contrasted by Chapter 2, which presents the reality of youth deviance, as measured by both official and unofficial accounts, and provides a largely descriptive account of patterns of adolescent deviance and victimization in Canada. more


Betting their Lives: The Close Relations of Problem Gamblers

Lorne Tepperman
Oxford University Press

There are now more ways than ever to gamble-casinos, corner stores, the internet-and as a result, there are also ever more "problem gamblers," individuals who gamble compulsively to their own detriment. While gambling is promoted as fun and glamorous, the reality is usually very different. Studies suggest that some 1 in 50 adults, or roughly 480,000 Canadians, have a gambling problem. So it is time to take a new and careful look at how gambling affects the lives of all these people. Problem gambling has traditionally been seen as an individual issue: it's your problem, you deal with it. But this new book, the only study of its kind, takes an innovative sociological approach, considering problem gambling as a public health issue (it has social causes and significant health outcomes). Betting Their Lives is based on first-hand interviews that take us right into the lives of a selection of problem gamblers; we see how gambling is influenced by, and in turn influences, relationships with intimate partners - husbands, wives, children. Based on important new research by outstanding Canadian sociologist Lorne Tepperman, this book looks into the personal relationships of problem gamblers, and comes out with some surprising results. It provides a superb discussion of expert opinion on the subject, includes first-hand narratives of those who have suffered from gambling addictions, and brings essential new explanatory concepts to the issue. more

Close Relations: An Introduction to the Sociology of Families, 4^th edition

Lorne Tepperman and Susan McDaniel
Pearson Educational Publishing

Close Relations stresses family process over structure, diversity over uniformity, and reality over myth.  This Canadian text explores the new kinds of family relations and forms created by shifting patterns and demands of work in post-modern societies. Close Relations is unique in its focus on applications and theory: what works for families, for us as individuals, and for society. more


Deviance, Crime and Control: Beyond the Straight and Narrow, 2^nd edition

Lorne Tepperman
Oxford University Press

Deviance, Crime, and Control: Beyond the Straight and Narrow, second edition, assumes that deviance is normal behaviour and conformity is socially constructed. The 'discovery' of deviant behaviour indicates society's degree of cohesion, tolerance, and control over individuals. The benchmarks for what constitutes 'deviance' are in a constant state of change. This book studies contemporary notions and forms of deviance and control against the backdrop of history. In addition, the author takes a multi-paradigm approach and discusses deviance and conformity from functionalist, conflict, social constructionist/symbolic interactionist, feminist, and postmodern perspectives. Using health and well-being as a measure of tight social control, this text focuses on the outcomes of deviance. Emphasizing the need to find new solutions to social problems, Deviance, Crime, and Control provides students with a fresh perspective. more

The Dostoevsky Effect

Lorne Tepperman, Patrizia Albanese, Sasha Stark and Nadine Zahlin
Oxford University Press

When writing his novella The Gambler in 1866, Fyodor Dostoevsky remained true to the old adage "write what you know." Critically acclaimed for its insight into the mind of a gambling addict, the book offers a fascinating glimpse into Dostoevsky's personal struggle with gambling. The manuscript, in fact, was written to pay off a debt he owed to his publisher. A decade of Dostoevsky's adult life was consumed by gambling, yet the reason behind his startling dependency has remained largely unknown. In comparing Dostoevsky's life with the experience of modern-day gamblers, documented through in-depth interviews and written biographical accounts, a team of leading sociologists have uncovered the Dostoevsky Effect. This model proposes that social factors-especially childhood trauma and a poor ability to deal with adult stress-are often the cause of gambling addiction rather than, as some have argued, an inherited predisposition to wager. The Dostoevsky Effect offers new insight into Dostoevsky's life and work, and using contemporary field research draws surprising connections to today's gamblers, blurring the often elusive line between fact and fiction.

The Sense of Sociability

Lorne Tepperman
Oxford University Press

Are human beings a species in constant need of firm, aggressive government to save us from ourselves? Or are we fundamentally sociable beings, woven together in a complex array of networks, interdependent and willing to work together? The Sense of Sociability is a modern, highly readable, and often idiosyncratic look at human sociability by one of Canada's top sociologists. Lorne Tepperman explores why we have difficulty getting along, and why in spite of these difficulties we still manage for the most part to live together. Without interference from poor government and other malign influences, he argues, people can work out a great deal of their lives themselves. Tepperman, one of Canada's foremost sociologists, sees it as his job to look at our "unwashed" history to reveal how ordinary people doing ordinary things is the process that makes human history. more

Sociology: A Canadian Perspective

Lorne Tepperman, Patrizia Albanese  (eds)
Oxford University Press

In this contributed text, students are introduced to the fascinating world of sociology through an impressive collection of writings. Editors Lorne Tepperman and Patrizia Albanese have assembled an array of experts to explain key concepts of sociology in ways that students will understand and enjoy. The subjects covered-including socialization, gender, education, deviance, politics, and the environment-are relevant, relatable, and combine the essentials of sociology with additional coverage of issues not typically featured in other texts. Sociology: A Canadian Perspective explores Canadian society and its place in the world. The core text is aimed very specifically at full-year introductory sociology courses, instructors who want a higher-level text to challenge and engage their students, and instructors who prefer the flexibility in choice (in terms of content and ancillary material) that a big book brings. All aspects of the text have been thoroughly revised and updated for this second edition including new chapters on theory, mass media, and sexuality, as well as new references, inserts, learning materials, and photos. As an added feature, the text now comes packaged with engaging video clips from the CBC on DVD. These mini-documentaries relate to topics in the text and are guaranteed to stimulate classroom discussion. more