Written by Richard Osborne,
Illustrated / designed by Borin Van Loon
What is sociology? Simply, it is the study of how
science functions, or
in some cases, does not function. Various competeing schools of
sociology
have attempted to fit observations of social phenomena into different
conceptual
systems.
Introducing Sociology
traces the origins of these systems from
Enlightenment
thought and the pioneering work of Auguste Comte to subsequent
developments
in Karl Marx, Herbert Spencer, Emile Durkheim and Max Weber. The rapid
expansion
of sociology in twentieth century America and Britain, the post World
War
II dominanace of Talcott parsons, the Chicago School and the rise of
structuralism
are oulined in a clear graphic form. The book also examines the array
of
concepts and methiods of research that have been applied to the study
of
society by the key analysts.
This was my first 'pure
collage' documentary comic book and it
involved
about double the amount of visual research usually devoted to an
'Introducing'
title. I have drawn on every strand of reference that lateral thinking
could
lead me. At this point I believed that, given the generic nature of
sociology
and the fact that it's all about people, I wouldn't be able to pull
this
approach with any other topic. That was, until Introducing
Mathematics.
It must be noted that this was 'pre-internet', so
I
was still reliant on the author, public libraries and my own resources
for
reference material.
The author Richard Osborne has his own website, see Links.
Reviews
From Book Introducing Sociology
by Richard Osborne and Borin Van Loon
Scans of pages 1-17 of the book. I'll
check the site and insert the
web
address! Interesting to see such a slab of our book on another site,
though.
_Introducing
Sociology_ by Richard Osborne and
heavily-illustrated
surrealistic-comic-book-style by Borin Van Loon
gives a beginner's
outline
to the science, study, discipline or whatever you want to call it, of
sociology.
Sociology attempts to figure out how society, especially how the
ever-increasingly
complex, modern Western societies are constructed, structured, operate,
interact, and what the role of class, race, gender and above all,
economics,
plays in them. This book goes through all the major theories and
thinkers,
but is overly-confused by smoke from the crack-pipes of Marxism and
radical
feminism. A central point is noted toward the end of the book: that of
the
transformation of the West in the 19th and 20th centuries from an
agricultural,
Christian and aristocratic base to industrialism, secularism,
pleasure-seeking
hedonism and sensualism. This is the root of the predicament that
Western
society is in today, but you won't hear a whole lot about it in the PC
New
Left and neoconservative academia. The author also dismisses in an
offensively
condescending manner sociobiology and the evoloutionary Darwinist
perspective--that
the determining factors of how different cultural groups, races and
genders
in society act are rooted in heredity rather than in social
conditioning.
This of course will lead to "racism and the holocaust." _Introducing
Sociology_ is a rather quirky yet serious overview of sociology, and
the
author at the end admits that he cannot come to any decisive conclusion
about the study of society in our ever-morphing postmodern world, where
individuals live in "hyperreality"; learning more from mass-media
and its contrived, false images than from the real world itself. I wish
I knew the reasoning behind the cover illustration, a half-human,
half-robot
woman in a bikini with a human embryo attached to her hip in a huge
test-tube,
reading a book upside down.
It's easy to get lost in the spew of "-isms" and sub-disciplines
that pervades the social sciences and humanities these days. This
illustrated
intro to sociology illustrates fairly clearly how we got there from a
few
simple questions (E.g., what is the nature of society?) The book
provides
a broad, historically structured overview that accounts for most of the
major thinkers, from Comte and Spencer to Adorno and Baudrillard.I've
read
most of the books in this series, and this is one of the best. It is
concise,
not condescending. And although it offers a wide range of theories and
thinkers,
it takes pains to distinguish between all of the information presented,
even offering some comparisons between different sociological
perspectives.
This covers methodology, Marxism, Functionalism, Symbolic
Interactionism,
Chicago School, Frankfurt School, Feminism, Media Studies, Culture, and
almost everything else. Of course, you only get a few paragraphs on
each,
but then that it what this book is designed to do...give a short
introduction
to each of the sub-areas as well as a general overview. The
illustrations
are of a fairly good quality, and while they don't really enhance a
reader's
understanding of the material, they help sustain interest in it.
Rating:
5 (http://traveltocaribbeanislands.com/1874166390.html)
Introducing Sociology