Essentials of Sociology: A

Down-To-Earth Approach 13th Edition

(eBook PDF)
Visit to download the full and correct content document:
https://ebooksecure.com/download/essentials-of-sociology-a-down-to-earth-approach
-13th-edition-ebook-pdf/
 Contents vii

Roles 108 Bureaucracies 143

Groups 108 The Characteristics of Bureaucracies 144
Social Institutions 109 Goal Displacement and the Perpetuation
Comparing Functionalist and Conflict Perspectives 109 of Bureaucracies 146
THE FUNCTIONALIST PERSPECTIVE 109 • THE CONFLICT Dysfunctions of Bureaucracies 147
PERSPECTIVE 111 • IN SUM 111 RED TAPE: A RULE IS A RULE 147 • ALIENATION OF
WORKERS 147 • RESISTING ALIENATION 148
Changes in Social Structure 111
What Holds Society Together? 111 Working for the Corporation 148
MECHANICAL AND ORGANIC SOLIDARITY 111 • Self-Fulfilling Stereotypes in the “Hidden”
GEMEINSCHAFT AND GESELLSCHAFT 112 • HOW Corporate Culture 148
RELEVANT ARE THESE CONCEPTS TODAY? 112 • SELF-FULFILLING STEREOTYPES AND PROMOTIONS 148
IN SUM 113
Diversity in the Workplace 149
The Microsociological Perspective: Social Interaction Technology and the Maximum-Security Society 150
in Everyday Life 114
Group Dynamics 151
Symbolic Interaction 114
Effects of Group Size on Stability and Intimacy 151
Stereotypes in Everyday Life 114
Effects of Group Size on Attitudes and Behavior 152
Personal Space 118 LABORATORY FINDINGS AND THE REAL
Eye Contact 119 WORLD 153
Smiling 119 Leadership 155
Body Language 119 WHO BECOMES A LEADER? 155 • TYPES OF
APPLIED BODY LANGUAGE 119 LEADERS 155 • LEADERSHIP STYLES 155 •
LEADERSHIP STYLES IN CHANGING SITUATIONS 156
Dramaturgy: The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life 119
The Power of Peer Pressure: The Asch Experiment 157
Stages 120
The Power of Authority: The Milgram Experiment 158
Role Performance, Conflict, and Strain 120
Global Consequences of Group Dynamics:
Sign-Vehicles 121
Groupthink 159
Teamwork 123 PREVENTING GROUPTHINK 160
Becoming the Roles We Play 123
Summary and Review 160
APPLYING IMPRESSION MANAGEMENT 123
Thinking Critically about Chapter 5 161
Ethnomethodology: Uncovering Background
Assumptions 124
IN SUM 125
6 Deviance and Social Control 162
The Social Construction of Reality 125
What is Deviance? 164
Gynecological Examinations 126
IN SUM 127
A Neutral Term 164
STIGMA 164
The Need for Both Macrosociology and Microsociology 127
Deviance Is Relative 164
Summary and Review 131
How Norms Make Social Life Possible 166
Thinking Critically about Chapter 4 132
Sanctions 166
IN SUM 166

5 Social Groups and Formal Competing Explanations of Deviance: Sociobiology,

Psychology, and Sociology 167
Organizations 133
Biosocial Explanations 167
Groups within Society 135 Psychological Explanations 167
Primary Groups 135 Sociological Explanations 168
PRODUCING A MIRROR WITHIN 137
The Symbolic Interactionist Perspective 168
Secondary Groups 137
Differential Association Theory 168
VOLUNTARY ASSOCIATIONS 137 • THE INNER
THE THEORY 168 • FAMILIES 168 • FRIENDS,
CIRCLE 137 • THE IRON LAW OF OLIGARCHY 138
NEIGHBORHOODS, AND SUBCULTURES 168 •
In-Groups and Out-Groups 138 DIFFERENTIAL ASSOCIATION IN THE CYBER AGE 169 •
SHAPING PERCEPTION AND MORALITY 138 PRISON OR FREEDOM? 169
Reference Groups 139 Control Theory 170
EVALUATING OURSELVES 139 • EXPOSURE TO CONTRADICTORY THE THEORY 170
STANDARDS IN A SOCIALLY DIVERSE SOCIETY 140 Labeling Theory 172
Social Networks 140 REJECTING LABELS: HOW PEOPLE NEUTRALIZE
THE SMALL WORLD PHENOMENON 142 • IS THE DEVIANCE 172 • EMBRACING LABELS: THE EXAMPLE OF
SMALL WORLD PHENOMENON AN ACADEMIC OUTLAW BIKERS 173 • LABELS CAN BE POWERFUL 173 •
MYTH? 142 • BUILDING UNINTENTIONAL BARRIERS 142 HOW DO LABELS WORK? 174 • IN SUM 174
viii Contents

The Functionalist Perspective 175 Lenski’s Synthesis 209

Can Deviance Really Be Functional for Society? 175 IN SUM 209
Strain Theory: How Mainstream Values Produce How Do Elites Maintain Stratification? 210
Deviance 175 Soft Control versus Force 210
FOUR DEVIANT PATHS 176 • IN SUM 176 CONTROLLING PEOPLE’S IDEAS 210 • CONTROLLING
Illegitimate Opportunity Structures: Social INFORMATION 211 • STIFLING CRITICISM 211 • BIG
Class and Crime 176 BROTHER TECHNOLOGY 211 • IN SUM 211
STREET CRIME 176 • WHITE-COLLAR CRIME 178 • Comparative Social Stratification 212
GENDER AND CRIME 179 • IN SUM 180 Social Stratification in Great Britain 212
The Conflict Perspective 180 Social Stratification in the Former Soviet Union 212
Class, Crime, and the Criminal Justice System 180 Global Stratification: Three Worlds 213
The Criminal Justice System as an Instrument The Most Industrialized Nations 214
of Oppression 180
The Industrializing Nations 217
IN SUM 181
The Least Industrialized Nations 218
Reactions to Deviance 181
Modifying the Model 218
Street Crime and Prisons 182
How Did the World’s Nations Become Stratified? 221
The Decline of Violent Crime 185
Colonialism 221
Recidivism 185
World System Theory 222
The Death Penalty and Bias 186
Culture of Poverty 223
GEOGRAPHY 187 • SOCIAL CLASS 188 • GENDER 188 •
RACE–ETHNICITY 188 Evaluating the Theories 223
The Trouble with Official Statistics 190 Maintaining Global Stratification 224
The Medicalization of Deviance: Mental Illness 191 Neocolonialism 224
NEITHER MENTAL NOR ILLNESS? 191 • THE HOMELESS RELEVANCE TODAY 224
MENTALLY ILL 192 Multinational Corporations 224
The Need for a More Humane Approach 193 BUYING POLITICAL STABILITY 225 • UNANTICIPATED
CONSEQUENCES 225
Summary and Review 193
Thinking Critically about Chapter 6 194 Technology and Global Domination 225
Strains in the Global System: Uneasy Realignments 226
7 Global Stratification 195 Summary and Review 226
Thinking Critically about Chapter 7 227
Systems of Social Stratification 197
Slavery
CAUSES OF SLAVERY 198 • CONDITIONS OF
198
8 Social Class in the United States 228
SLAVERY 199 • BONDED LABOR IN THE NEW What Is Social Class? 230
WORLD 199 • SLAVERY IN THE NEW WORLD 199 •
Property 230
SLAVERY TODAY 200
DISTINGUISHING BETWEEN WEALTH AND INCOME 230 •
Caste 200 DISTRIBUTION OF PROPERTY 231 • DISTRIBUTION OF
INDIA’S RELIGIOUS CASTES 200 • SOUTH AFRICA 201 • INCOME 231
A U.S. RACIAL CASTE SYSTEM 202
Power 234
Estate 203 THE DEMOCRATIC FACADE 234 • THE POWER ELITE 234
WOMEN IN THE ESTATE SYSTEM 203
Prestige 235
Class 204 OCCUPATIONS AND PRESTIGE 235 • DISPLAYING
Global Stratification and the Status of Females 204 PRESTIGE 235
The Global Superclass 204 Status Inconsistency 236
What Determines Social Class? 205 Sociological Models of Social Class 238
Karl Marx: The Means of Production 205 Updating Marx 238
Max Weber: Property, Power, and Prestige 206 Updating Weber 239
IN SUM 206 THE CAPITALIST CLASS 240 • THE UPPER-MIDDLE
Why Is Social Stratification Universal? 206 CLASS 240 • THE LOWER-MIDDLE CLASS 241 •
THE WORKING CLASS 241 • THE WORKING POOR 241 •
The Functionalist View: Motivating Qualified THE UNDERCLASS 242
People 207
Consequences of Social Class 242
DAVIS AND MOORE’S EXPLANATION 207 • TUMIN’S
CRITIQUE OF DAVIS AND MOORE 207 • IN SUM 208 Physical Health 243
The Conflict Perspective: Class Conflict Mental Health 243
and Scarce Resources 208 Family Life 244
MOSCA’S ARGUMENT 208 • MARX’S ARGUMENT 209 • CHOICE OF HUSBAND OR WIFE 244 • DIVORCE 244 •
CURRENT APPLICATIONS OF CONFLICT THEORY 209 CHILD REARING 244
 Contents ix

Education 244 Global Patterns of Intergroup Relations 281

Religion 245 Genocide 281
Politics 245 IN SUM 282
Crime and Criminal Justice 246 Population Transfer 282
Social Mobility 246 Internal Colonialism 282
Three Types of Social Mobility 246 Segregation 282
Women in Studies of Social Mobility 248 Assimilation 283
The Pain of Social Mobility: Two Distinct Worlds 249 Multiculturalism (Pluralism) 283
Poverty 251 Racial–Ethnic Relations in the United States 283
Drawing the Poverty Line 251 European Americans 284
Who Are the Poor? 253 IN SUM 285

BREAKING A MYTH 253 • THE GEOGRAPHY OF Latinos (Hispanics) 286

POVERTY 253 • EDUCATION 254 • FAMILY STRUCTURE: UMBRELLA TERM 286 • COUNTRIES OF ORIGIN 286 •
THE FEMINIZATION OF POVERTY 254 • RACE– UNAUTHORIZED IMMIGRANTS 287 • RESIDENCE 288
ETHNICITY 254 • AGE AND POVERTY 255 • SPANISH 288 • ECONOMIC WELL-BEING 289 •
Children of Poverty 255 POLITICS 290

The Dynamics of Poverty versus the Culture of Poverty 257 African Americans 290
RISING EXPECTATIONS AND CIVIL STRIFE 291 •
Why Are People Poor? 257
CONTINUED GAINS 291 • CURRENT LOSSES 292 •
Deferred Gratification 257 RACE OR SOCIAL CLASS? A SOCIOLOGICAL DEBATE 292
Where Is Horatio Alger? The Social Functions • RACISM AS AN EVERYDAY BURDEN 293
of a Myth 259 Asian Americans 293
Peering into the Future: Will We Live in a Three-Tier A BACKGROUND OF DISCRIMINATION 293 •
Society? 260 DIVERSITY 294 • REASONS FOR FINANCIAL
SUCCESS 294 • POLITICS 294
Summary and Review 261
Native Americans 295
Thinking Critically about Chapter 8 262
DIVERSITY OF GROUPS 295 • FROM TREATIES TO
GENOCIDE AND POPULATION TRANSFER 295 • THE
INVISIBLE MINORITY AND SELF-DETERMINATION 296 •

9 Race and Ethnicity 263 THE CASINOS 296 • DETERMINING IDENTITY AND GOALS 297
Looking toward the Future 297
Laying the Sociological Foundation 265
The Immigration Controversy 297
Race: Reality and Myth 265
The Affirmative Action Controversy 299
THE REALITY OF HUMAN VARIETY 265 • THE MYTH OF
A BRIEF HISTORY 299 • SUPREME COURT
PURE RACES 265 • THE MYTH OF A FIXED NUMBER OF
RULINGS 299 • THE BAMBOO CURTAIN 299 •
RACES 266 • THE MYTH OF RACIAL SUPERIORITY 267 •
THE POTENTIAL SOLUTION 299
THE MYTH CONTINUES 268
Less Racism 300
Ethnic Groups 269
Toward a True Multicultural Society 300
Minority Groups and Dominant Groups 269
NOT SIZE, BUT DOMINANCE AND DISCRIMINATION 269 • Summary and Review 300
EMERGENCE OF MINORITY GROUPS 269 Thinking Critically about Chapter 9 302
Ethnic Work: Constructing Our Racial–Ethnic Identity 270
Prejudice and Discrimination 270 10 Gender and Age 303
Learning Prejudice 270
Inequalities of Gender 305
DISTINGUISHING BETWEEN PREJUDICE AND
DISCRIMINATION 272 • LEARNING PREJUDICE FROM Issues of Sex and Gender 305
ASSOCIATING WITH OTHERS 272 • THE FAR-REACHING The Sociological Significance of Gender 305
NATURE OF PREJUDICE 273 • INTERNALIZING DOMINANT
Gender Differences in Behavior: Biology or Culture? 307
NORMS 275
The Dominant Position in Sociology 307
Individual and Institutional Discrimination 275
Opening the Door to Biology 307
HOME MORTGAGES 275 • HEALTH CARE 276
A MEDICAL ACCIDENT 307 • THE VIETNAM VETERANS
Theories of Prejudice 276 STUDY 308 • MORE RESEARCH ON HUMANS 308 •
Psychological Perspectives 277 IN SUM 309
FRUSTRATION AND SCAPEGOATS 277 • THE Gender Inequality in Global Perspective 312
AUTHORITARIAN PERSONALITY 277 How Did Females Become a Minority Group? 312
Sociological Perspectives 278 GLOBAL VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN 313 • IN SUM 315
FUNCTIONALISM 278 • CONFLICT THEORY 278 •
Gender Inequality in the United States 315
SYMBOLIC INTERACTIONISM 279 • HOW LABELS
CREATE PREJUDICE 279 • LABELS AND SELF-FULFILLING Fighting Back: The Rise of Feminism 315
STEREOTYPES 279 Gender Inequality in Health Care 318
x Contents

Gender Inequality in Education 319 Charismatic Authority 349

THE PAST 319 • A FUNDAMENTAL CHANGE 320 • THE THREAT POSED BY CHARISMATIC LEADERS 349
GENDER TRACKING 321 The Transfer of Authority 350
Gender Inequality in the Workplace 322 Types of Government 350
The Pay Gap 322 Monarchies: The Rise of the State 350
HISTORICAL BACKGROUND 322 • GEOGRAPHICAL
Democracies: Citizenship as a Revolutionary Idea 351
FACTORS 322 • THE “TESTOSTERONE BONUS” 322 •
REASONS FOR THE GENDER PAY GAP 324 • THE CEO Dictatorships and Oligarchies: The Seizure of Power 353
POWER GAP—AND THE NEW FEMALE PREMIUM 325 The U.S. Political System 353
Is the Glass Ceiling Cracking? 326 Political Parties and Elections 353
Sexual Harassment—and Worse 326 Polling and Predictions 354
LABELS AND PERCEPTION 327 • NOT JUST A “MAN SLICES FROM THE CENTER 355 • THIRD PARTIES 355
THING” 327 • SEXUAL ORIENTATION 327
Voting Patterns 355
Gender and Violence 327 SOCIAL INTEGRATION 356 • ALIENATION 357 •
Violence against Women 327 APATHY 357 • THE GENDER AND RACIAL–ETHNIC GAPS
FORCIBLE RAPE 327 • DATE (ACQUAINTANCE) IN VOTING 357
RAPE 328 • MURDER 328 • VIOLENCE IN THE Lobbyists and Special-Interest Groups 358
HOME 329 • FEMINISM AND GENDERED LOBBYING BY SPECIAL-INTEREST GROUPS 358 •
VIOLENCE 329 • SOLUTIONS 329 THE MONEY 358
The Changing Face of Politics 329 Who Rules the United States? 359
Glimpsing the Future—with Hope 330 The Functionalist Perspective: Pluralism 359
Inequalities of Aging 330 IN SUM 359

Aging in Global Perspective 331 The Conflict Perspective: The Power Elite 360
Extremes of Attitudes and Practices 331 IN SUM 360

IN SUM 331 Which View Is Right? 360

Industrialization and the Graying of the Globe 332 War and Terrorism: Implementing Political
THE LIFE SPAN 332 Objectives 361
The Graying of America 333 Why Countries Go to War 361
The Symbolic Interactionist Perspective 335 THE FLESH AND BLOOD OF WAR 362

Shifting Meanings of Growing Old 335 Terrorism 362

The Influence of the Mass Media 336 The Economy: Work in the Global Village 363
IN SUM 336 The Transformation of Economic Systems 364
The Functionalist Perspective 337 Preindustrial Societies: The Birth of Inequality 364
Disengagement Theory 337 Industrial Societies: The Birth of the Machine 365
EVALUATION OF THE THEORY 337 Postindustrial Societies: The Birth of the
Activity Theory 337 Information Age 365
EVALUATION OF THE THEORY 338 Biotech Societies: The Merger of Biology and
Continuity Theory 338 Economics 366
EVALUATION OF THE THEORY 338 • World Economic Systems 367
IN SUM: THE FUNCTIONALIST PERSECTIVE 338 Capitalism 367
The Conflict Perspective 339 WHAT CAPITALISM IS 367 • WHAT STATE
CAPITALISM IS 367
Fighting for Resources: Social Security Legislation 339
Socialism 368
“Old People Are Sucking Us Dry”: Intergenerational
WHAT SOCIALISM IS 368 • SOCIALISM IN
Competition and Conflict 339
PRACTICE 369 • DEMOCRATIC SOCIALISM 369
IN SUM: THE CONFICT PERSPECTIVE 340
Ideologies of Capitalism and Socialism 369
Looking toward the Future 342
Criticisms of Capitalism and Socialism 369
New Views: Creative Aging 342
The Convergence of Capitalism and Socialism 370
Summary and Review 342 CHANGES IN SOCIALISM: CONVERGENCE 370 • CHANGES IN
Thinking Critically about Chapter 10 344 CAPITALISM: CONVERGENCE 372
The Globalization of Capitalism 372
11 Politics and the Economy 345 A New Global Structure and its Effects on
Politics: Establishing and Exercising Leadership 347 Workers 372
Power, Authority, and Violence 347 Stagnant Paychecks 375
Authority and Legitimate Violence 347 The New Economic System and the Old Divisions
Traditional Authority 348 of Wealth 375
Rational–Legal Authority 349 The Global Superclass 377
 Contents xi

What Lies Ahead? A New World Order? 377 Cohabitation 404

Unity and Disunity 378 COHABITATION AND MARRIAGE: THE ESSENTIAL
DIFFERENCE 404 • DOES COHABITATION MAKE
Inevitable Changes 378
MARRIAGE STRONGER? 405
Summary and Review 378
The “Sandwich Generation” and Elder Care 405
Thinking Critically about Chapter 11 380
Divorce and Remarriage 405
12 Marriage and Family 381 Ways of Measuring Divorce 405
Divorce and Mixed Racial–Ethnic Marriages 407
Marriage and Family in Global Perspective 383
Symbolic Interactionism and the Misuse of Statistics 407
What Is a Family? 383
Children of Divorce 408
What Is Marriage? 384 NEGATIVE EFFECTS 408 • WHAT HELPS CHILDREN ADJUST
Common Cultural Themes 384 TO DIVORCE? 408 • PERPETUATING DIVORCE 409
MATE SELECTION 384 • DESCENT 386 • Grandchildren of Divorce: Ripples to the Future 409
INHERITANCE 386 • AUTHORITY 386
Fathers’ Contact with Children after Divorce 409
Marriage and Family in Theoretical Perspective 386 The Ex-Spouses 409
The Functionalist Perspective: Functions and Remarriage: “I Do” Again and Again 410
Dysfunctions 386
Two Sides of Family Life 410
WHY THE FAMILY IS UNIVERSAL 387 • FUNCTIONS OF
THE INCEST TABOO 387 • ISOLATION AND EMOTIONAL The Dark Side of Family Life: Battering, Child Abuse,
OVERLOAD 387 Marital Rape, and Incest 410
The Conflict Perspective: Struggles between SPOUSE BATTERING 410 • CHILD ABUSE 410 •
Husbands and Wives 387 MARITAL AND INTIMACY RAPE 411 • INCEST 411

INEVITABLE CONFLICT 387 • CHANGING POWER The Bright Side of Family Life: Successful Marriages 411
RELATIONS 387 SUCCESSFUL MARRIAGES 412
The Symbolic Interactionist Perspective: Gender, The Future of Marriage and Family 412
Housework, and Child Care 388 Summary and Review 413
CHANGES IN TRADITIONAL GENDER ORIENTATIONS 388 •
Thinking Critically about Chapter 12 414
PAID WORK AND HOUSEWORK 388 • MORE CHILD
CARE 389 • TOTAL HOURS 389 • A GENDER DIVISION

13
OF LABOR 389
The Family Life Cycle 389
Education and Religion 415
Love and Courtship in Global Perspective 389 Education: Transferring Knowledge and Skills 417
Marriage 391 Education in Global Perspective 417
THE SOCIAL CHANNELS OF LOVE AND MARRIAGE 391 Education and Industrialization 418
Childbirth 392 INDUSTRIALIZATION AND MANDATORY EDUCATION 418 •
IDEAL FAMILY SIZE 392 • MARITAL SATISFACTION THE EXPANSION OF EDUCATION 418
AFTER CHILDBIRTH 394 Education in the Most Industrialized Nations:
Child Rearing 394 Japan 419
MARRIED COUPLES AND SINGLE MOTHERS 394 • Education in the Industrializing Nations: Russia 421
SINGLE FATHERS 394 • DAY CARE 394 • NANNIES 395 Education in the Least Industrialized Nations: Egypt 421
• SOCIAL CLASS 395 • HELICOPTER PARENTING 396 •
THE RIGHT WAY TO REAR CHILDREN 396 The Functionalist Perspective: Providing Social Benefits 422
Family transitions 397 Teaching Knowledge and Skills 422
TRANSITIONAL ADULTHOOD 397 • WIDOWHOOD 397 Cultural Transmission of Values 422
Diversity in U.S. Families 398 Social Integration 423
INTEGRATING IMMIGRANTS 423 • STABILIZING SOCIETY:
African American Families 398
MAINTAINING THE STATUS QUO 423 • INTEGRATING PEOPLE
Latino Families 399 WITH DISABILITIES 423
Asian American Families 400 Gatekeeping (Social Placement) 423
Native American Families 400 Replacing Family Functions 424
IN SUM 400 IN SUM 424
One-Parent Families 401 The Conflict Perspective: Perpetuating Social Inequality 424
Couples without Children 401 The Hidden Curriculum: Reproducing the Social
Blended Families 402 Class Structure 424
Gay and Lesbian Families 402 Tilting the Tests: Discrimination by IQ 425
CHILDREN REARED BY GAY AND LESBIAN Stacking the Deck: Unequal Funding 425
COUPLES 403
The Bottom Line: Family Background 426
Trends in U.S. Families 403 REPRODUCING THE SOCIAL CLASS STRUCTURE 426 •
The Changing Timetable of Family Life: Marriage REPRODUCING THE RACIAL–ETHNIC STRUCTURE 426 •
and Childbirth 403 IN SUM 426
xii Contents

The Symbolic Interactionist Perspective: Teacher The Anti-Malthusians 455

Expectations 426 Who Is Correct? 456
The Rist Research 426 Why Are People Starving? 457
How Do Teacher Expectations Work? 427 Population Growth 460
Self-Expectations 428 Why the Least Industrialized Nations Have
Problems in U.S. Education—and Their Solutions 429 So Many Children 460
Mediocrity 429 Consequences of Rapid Population Growth 461
THE RISING TIDE OF MEDIOCRITY 429 • THE SATs 430 • Population Pyramids as a Tool for Understanding 462
GRADE INFLATION, SOCIAL PROMOTION, AND FUNCTIONAL The Three Demographic Variables 463
ILLITERACY 430
FERTILITY 463 • MORTALITY 463 • MIGRATION 463
Overcoming Mediocrity 431
Problems in Forecasting Population Growth 465
RAISING STANDARDS FOR TEACHERS 431 • A WARNING
ABOUT HIGHER STANDARDS 431 Cities and City Life 468
Cheating 431 The Development of Cities and Urbanization 471
THE SOLUTION TO CHEATING 432 The Development of Cities 471
Violence 432 Urbanization 472
The Need for Educational Reform 433 THE APPEAL OF CITIES 472 • FORCED URBANIZATION 472 •
METROPOLISES 472 • MEGALOPOLISES 473 •
Religion: Establishing Meaning 434 MEGACITIES 473 • MEGAREGIONS 473
What Is Religion? Durkheim’s Research 434 U.S. Urban Patterns 473
The Functionalist Perspective 434 Uneven Urbanization 474
Functions of Religion 434 Shifting Resources and Power because of Urban
MEANING AND PURPOSE 435 • EMOTIONAL Migration 474
COMFORT 435 • SOCIAL SOLIDARITY 435 •
Edge Cities 474
GUIDELINES FOR EVERYDAY LIFE 435 • SOCIAL
CONTROL 435 • SOCIAL CHANGE 436 Gentrification 475
Dysfunctions of Religion 436 Changes in Suburbanization 477
RELIGION AS JUSTIFICATION FOR PERSECUTION, WAR, Models of Urban Growth 477
AND TERRORISM 436 The Concentric Zone Model 477
The Symbolic Interactionist Perspective 436 The Sector Model 478
Religious Symbols 436 The Multiple-Nuclei Model 478
Beliefs 437 The Peripheral Model 479
Religious Experience 437 Critique of the Models 479
Rituals 437 City Life 480
The Conflict Perspective 440 Alienation in the City 480
Opium of the People 440 Community in the City 481
Legitimating Social Inequalities 440 SLUM OR LOW-RENT AREA? 481
Religion and the Spirit of Capitalism 440 Who Lives in the City? 481
Types of Religious Groups 442 THE COSMOPOLITES 481 • THE SINGLES 481 • THE
ETHNIC VILLAGERS 482 • THE DEPRIVED 482 • THE
Cult 442
TRAPPED 482 • CRITIQUE 482 • IN SUM 482
Sect 444
The Norm of Noninvolvement and the Diffusion
Church 444 of Responsibility 482
Ecclesia 444 Urban Problems and Social Policy 483
Religion in the United States 445 Suburbanization 483
Characteristics of Members 445 CITY VERSUS SUBURB 483 • SUBURBAN FLIGHT 484 •
SOCIAL CLASS 445 • RACE–ETHNICITY 445 TOMORROW’S SUBURB 484
Characteristics of Religious Groups 446 Disinvestment and Deindustrialization 484
DIVERSITY 446 • PLURALISM AND FREEDOM 446 • The Potential of Urban Revitalization 485
TOLERATION 447 • THE ELECTRONIC CHURCH 447 PUBLIC SOCIOLOGY 485
The Future of Religion 447 Summary and Review 486
Summary and Review 449 Thinking Critically about Chapter 14 487
Thinking Critically about Chapter 13 450

14 Population and Urbanization 451 15 Social Change and the Environment 488
Population in Global Perspective 453 How Social Change Transforms Social Life 490
A Planet with No Space for Enjoying Life? 453 The Four Social Revolutions 490
The New Malthusians 453 From Gemeinschaft to Gesellschaft 490
 Contents xiii

The Industrial Revolution and Capitalism 491 The New Technology: The Microchip and Social Life 502
Social Movements 492 COMPUTERS IN EDUCATION 502 • COMPUTERS IN
BUSINESS AND FINANCE 502 • COMPUTERS IN
Conflict, Power, and Global Politics 492
INTERNATIONAL CONFLICT 503
A BRIEF HISTORY OF GEOPOLITICS 492 • G7 PLUS 492 •
DIVIDING UP THE WORLD 492 • FOUR THREATS TO THIS Cyberspace and Social Inequality 505
COALITION OF POWERS 493 • THE GROWING RELEVANCE IN SUM 505
OF AFRICA 494 The Growth Machine versus the Earth 506
Theories and Processes of Social Change 494 The Globalization of Capitalism and the Race
Evolution from Lower to Higher 495 for Economic Growth 506
Natural Cycles 495 A SUSTAINABLE ENVIRONMENT 506
Conflict over Power and Resources 495 Environmental Problems and Industrialization 507
Ogburn’s Theory 496 TOXIC WASTES 507 • FOSSIL FUELS AND CLIMATE
CHANGE 508 • THE ENERGY SHORTAGE AND INTERNAL
INVENTION 496 • DISCOVERY 497 • DIFFUSION 497 •
COMBUSTION ENGINES 509 • THE RAIN FORESTS 510
CULTURAL LAG 497 • EVALUATION OF OGBURN’S
THEORY 497 The Environmental Movement 511
How Technology Is Changing Our Lives 498 Environmental Sociology 512
Extending Human Abilities 498 Technology and the Environment: The Goal
The Sociological Significance of Technology: How of Harmony 513
Technology Changes Social Life 499 Summary and Review 514
CHANGES IN PRODUCTION 499 • CHANGES IN Thinking Critically about Chapter 15 515
WORKER–OWNER RELATIONS 499 • CHANGES
IN IDEOLOGY 499 • CHANGES IN CONSPICUOUS
Epilogue: Why Major in Sociology? 516
CONSUMPTION 500 • CHANGES IN FAMILY
RELATIONSHIPS 500 Glossary G-1
When Old Technology Was New: The Impact References R-1
of the Automobile 500
DISPLACEMENT OF EXISTING TECHNOLOGY 500 •
Name Index N-1
EFFECTS ON CITIES 501 • CHANGES IN ARCHITEC- Subject Index S-1
TURE 501 • CHANGED COURTSHIP CUSTOMS AND SEXUAL
NORMS 501 • EFFECTS ON WOMEN’S ROLES 501 •
Credits C-1
IN SUM 502
Special Features
Down-to-Earth Sociology Cultural Diversity in the
W. E. B. Du Bois: The Souls of Black Folk 10 United States
Enjoying a Sociology Quiz: Testing Your Common Sense 21
Unanticipated Public Sociology: Studying Job
Testing Your Common Sense: Answers to the Sociology Discrimination 13
Quiz 23
Miami—Continuing Controversy over
Loading the Dice: How Not to Do Research 26 Language 49
Gang Leader for a Day: Adventures of a Rogue Race and Language: Searching for Self-Labels 50
Sociologist 28
Immigrants and Their Children: Caught between
Heredity or Environment? The Case of Jack and Oskar, Two Worlds 89
Identical Twins 70
The Amish: Gemeinschaft Community in a Gesellschaft
Gossip and Ridicule to Enforce Adolescent Norms 91 Society 113
Boot Camp as a Total Institution 93 Social Class and the Upward Social Mobility of African
College Football as Social Structure 105 Americans 250
Beauty May Be Only Skin Deep, But Its Effects Go On Tiger Woods: Mapping the Changing Ethnic
Forever: Stereotypes in Everyday Life 117 Terrain 265
The McDonaldization of Society 145 The Illegal Travel Guide 287
Shaming: Making a Comeback? 170 Glimpsing the Future: The Shifting U.S. Racial–Ethnic
Islands in the Street: Urban Gangs in the United States 177 Mix 298
The Killer Next Door: Serial Murderers in Our Midst 187 Human Heads and Animal Blood: Testing the
Rape: Blaming the Victim and Protecting the Caste Limits of Tolerance 442
System 202
Inequality? What Inequality? 213
How the Super-Rich Live 233
The Big Win: Life after the Lottery 237
Cultural Diversity around
What Do You Know about Poverty? A Reality Check 252 the World
Poverty: A Personal Journey 258
Why the Dead Need Money 42
Can a Plane Ride Change Your Race? 267
You Are What You Eat? An Exploration in Cultural
College Dorms and Contact Theory 272
Relativity 43
The Racist Mind 274
When Women Become Men: The Sworn Virgins 83
The Man in the Zoo 280
Human Sexuality in Cross-Cultural Perspectives 165
Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack: Exploring Cultural
Female Circumcision (Genital Cutting) 314
Privilege 286
A Fierce Competitor: The Chinese Capitalists 371
Surgical Sexism: Cold-Hearted Surgeons and Their
Women Victims 318 Arranged Marriage in India: Probing Beneath the
Surface 390
Affirmative Action for Men? 320
Killing Little Girls: An Ancient and Thriving
Who Are the Suicide Terrorists? Testing Your Stereotypes 362
Practice 466
Community Colleges: Facing Old and New
Why City Slums Are Better Than the Country:
Challenges 418
Urbanization in the Least Industrialized
BioFoods: What’s in Your Future? Threats to Scientific
Nations 479
Research 458
The Rain Forests: Lost Tribes, Lost Knowledge 510
Reclaiming Harlem: A Twist in the Invasion–Succession
Cycle 475

xiv
 Special Features xv

Thinking Critically about Enjoy Your Security State (SS) 150

How Could the Polls Be So Wrong? 354
Social Life Online Dating: Risks and Rewards 385
What Color Eyes? How Tall? Designer Babies
Are We Prisoners of Our Genes? 61
on the Way 393
“Nothing Tastes as Good as Thin Feels”: Body Images
Changing Religious Practices in the Digital Age 448
and the Mass Media 122
Weaponizing Space: The Coming Star Wars 504
If Hitler Asked You to Execute a Stranger, Would You?
The Milgram Experiment 158
The Saints and the Roughnecks: Labeling in Everyday
Life 174 Applying Sociology
Sexting: Getting on the Phone Isn’t What It Used to Be 182
What Should We Do About Repeat Offenders? “Three
to Your Life
Strikes” Laws 184 The Sociological Perspective and Your Life
Vigilantes: When the State Breaks Down 189 Course 98
Open Season: Children as Prey 217 Getting Promoted at Work: Making Impression
When Globalization Comes Home: Maquiladoras South of Management Work for You 124
the Border 222 The New World of Work: How to Keep a Paycheck
The Nation’s Shame: Children in Poverty 256 Coming in the New Global Marketplace 141
The Coming Three-Tier Society and the Militarization Do Your Social Networks Perpetuate Social
of the Police 260 Inequality? 143
New Masculinities and Femininities Are on Their Way 309 “How Does Social Control Theory Apply
The Cultural Lens: Shaping Our Perceptions to You?” 171
of the Elderly 336 How Do You Use Techniques of Neutralization to
School Shootings: Exploding a Myth 432 Protect Your Self-Concept? 172
Cyberwar and Cyber Defense 503 “The American Dream”: Social Mobility Today 247
Climate Controversy, the Island Nations, and You 509 How to Get a Higher Salary 324
Eco-sabotage 511 Breaking through the Glass Ceiling 326
Your Work and Your Future in the Global
Village 366
Sociology and Technology: Finding Quality Day Care 395
The Shifting Landscape What Kind of Parent Will You Be? 396
“What are Your Chances of Getting Divorced?
Lara Croft, Tomb Raider: Changing Images of Women in The Misuse of Statistics” 407
the Mass Media 86 You Want to Get Through College? Let’s Apply
Virtual Reality and Diversity Training 149 Sociology 428
This page intentionally left blank
Guide to Social Maps
FIGURE 6.1 How Safe Is Your State? Violent Crime in the United States 179
FIGURE 6.5 Executions in the United States 188
FIGURE 7.4 Global Stratification: Income of the World’s Nations 215
FIGURE 8.11 Patterns of Poverty 253
FIGURE 9.6 The Distribution of Dominant and Minority Groups 285
FIGURE 10.6 Women in the Workforce 323
FIGURE 10.10 The Graying of the Globe 332
FIGURE 10.15 As Florida Goes, So Goes the Nation 335
FIGURE 11.1 Which Political Party Dominates? 354
FIGURE 12.14 The “Where” of U.S. Divorce 406
FIGURE 14.12 The World’s 10 Largest Megacities 473
FIGURE 14.13 How Urban Is Your State? The Rural–Urban Makeup
of the United States 474
FIGURE 15.2 The Worst Hazardous Waste Sites 507

xvii
To the Student ... from the Author
W
ELCOME TO SOCIOLOGY! I’ve loved soci-
ology since I was in my teens, and I hope you
enjoy it, too. Sociology is fascinating because it is
about human behavior, and many of us find that it holds the
key to understanding social life.
If you like to watch people and try to figure out why they
do what they do, you will like sociology. Sociology pries open
the doors of society so you can see what goes on behind them.
Essentials of Sociology: A Down-to-Earth Approach stresses how
profoundly our society and the groups to which we belong
influence us. Social class, for example, sets us on a particular
path in life. For some, the path leads to more education, more
interesting jobs, higher income, and better health, but for oth-
ers it leads to dropping out of school, dead-end jobs, poverty,
and even a higher risk of illness and disease. These paths are
so significant that they affect our chances of making it to our
first birthday, as well as of getting in trouble with the police.
They even influence our satisfaction in marriage, the number
of children we will have—and whether or not we will read
this book in the first place.
When I took my first course in sociology, I was
“hooked.” Seeing how marvelously my life had been
affected by these larger social influences opened my eyes
to a new world, one that has been fascinating to explore.
I hope that you will have this experience, too.
From how people become homeless to how they become
presidents, from why people commit suicide to why women
are discriminated against in every society around the world—
all are part of sociology. This breadth, in fact, is what makes
sociology so intriguing. We can place the sociological lens on
broad features of society, such as social class, gender, and race–
ethnicity, and then immediately turn our focus on the smaller,
more intimate level. If we look at two people interacting—
whether quarreling or kissing—we see how these broad
features of society are being played out in their lives.
xviii
We aren’t born with instincts. Nor do we come into
this world with preconceived notions of what life should
be like. At birth, we have no concepts of race–ethnicity,
gender, age, or social class. We have no idea, for example,
that people “ought” to act in certain ways because they are
male or female. Yet we all learn such things as we grow
up in our society. Uncovering the “hows” and the “whys”
of this process is also part of what makes sociology so
fascinating.
One of sociology’s many pleasures is that as we study
life in groups (which can be taken as a definition of sociol-
ogy), whether those groups are in some far-off part of the
world or in some nearby corner of our own society, we gain
new insights into who we are and how we got that way. As
we see how their customs affect them, the effects of our own
society on us become more visible.
This book, then, can be part of an intellectual adven-
ture, for it can lead you to a new way of looking at your
social world—and in the process, help you to better under-
stand both society and yourself.
I wish you the very best in college—and in your career
afterward. It is my sincere desire that Essentials of Sociology:
A Down-to-Earth Approach will contribute to that success.
James M. Henslin
Department of Sociology
Southern Illinois University, Edwardsville
P.S. I enjoy communicating with students, so feel free to
comment on your experiences with this text. You can write
me at henslin@aol.com
To the Instructor ... from the Author
R
EMEMBER WHEN YOU FIRST GOT “HOOKED”
on sociology, how the windows of perception
opened as you began to see life-in-society through
the sociological perspective? For most of us, this was an
eye-opening experience. This text is designed to open those
windows onto social life, so students can see clearly the vital
effects of group membership on their lives. Although few
students will get into what Peter Berger calls “the passion
of sociology,” we at least can provide them the opportunity.
To study sociology is to embark on a fascinating process
of discovery. We can compare sociology to a huge jigsaw
puzzle. Only gradually do we see how the smaller pieces fit
together. As we begin to see the interconnections, our per-
spective changes as we shift our eyes from the many small,
disjointed pieces to the whole that is being formed. Of all
the endeavors we could have entered, we chose sociology
because of the ways in which it joins the “pieces” of society
together and the challenges it poses to “ordinary” think-
ing. It is our privilege to share with students this process of
awareness and discovery called the sociological perspective.
As instructors of sociology, we have set ambitious goals
for ourselves: to teach both social structure and social interac-
tion and to introduce students to the sociological literature—
both the classic theorists and contemporary research. As we
accomplish this, we would also like to enliven the classroom,
encourage critical thinking, and stimulate our students’ so-
ciological imagination. Although formidable, these goals are
attainable. This book is designed to help you reach them.
Based on many years of frontline (classroom) experience, its
subtitle, A Down-to-Earth Approach, was not proposed lightly.
My goal is to share the fascination of sociology with students
and in doing so to make your teaching more rewarding.
Over the years, I have found the introductory course es-
pecially enjoyable. It is singularly satisfying to see students’
faces light up as they begin to see how separate pieces of
their world fit together. It is a pleasure to watch them gain
insight into how their social experiences give shape to even
their innermost desires. This is precisely what this text is de-
signed to do—to stimulate your students’ sociological imag-
ination so they can better perceive how the “pieces” of so-
ciety fit together—and what this means for their own lives.
Filled with examples from around the world as well as
from our own society, this text helps to make today’s multi-
cultural, global society come alive for students. From learn-
ing how the international elite carve up global markets to
studying the intimacy of friendship and marriage, students
can see how sociology is the key to explaining contempo-
rary life—and their own place in it.
In short, this text is designed to make your teaching
easier. There simply is no justification for students to have
to wade through cumbersome approaches to sociology. I am
firmly convinced that the introduction to sociology should
be enjoyable and that the introductory textbook can be an
essential tool in sharing the discovery of sociology with
students.
What’s New in This 13th
Edition?
Because sociology is about social life and we live in a
changing global society, this new edition of Essentials of
Sociology: A Down-to-Earth Approach reflects the national
and global changes that engulf us, as well as presents new
sociological research. An indication of the thoroughness of
the preparation that went into this 13th edition is the text’s
hundreds of new citations. This edition also has more than
435 instructional photos. I have either selected or taken
each of the photos. By tying the photos and their captions
directly into the text, they become part of the students’
learning experience.
I am especially pleased with Applying Sociology
to Your Life, a new feature introduced in this edition.
Although Essentials of Sociology: A Down-to-Earth Approach
is well-known for how it shows students the relevance of
sociology to their lives, this emphasis has been amplified in
this 13th edition. This new feature focuses explicitly on how
sociology applies to the student’s life. It is one thing to say
to students that sociological research on bureaucracy is rel-
evant because they might work in a bureaucracy, but quite
another to show students how they can use impression
management to get ahead in a bureaucracy. It is also one
thing to review with students the average salaries according
to college major, but quite another to show students how
they can use sociology to increase their own salaries. We can
point out what sociologists have found when they studied
the glass ceiling, but sociology is much more relevant for
our students if we can show them how they can use sociol-
ogy to break through the glass ceiling. These three examples
are part of the fourteen items that make up this new feature,
Applying Sociology to Your Life.
And updates? As with previous editions, you can ex-
pect that they run throughout this new edition. The updates
are too numerous to mention, but to give you an indication
of how extensively this edition is revised, following is a list
of the new topics, boxed features, tables, and figures.
xix
xx To the Instructor … from the Author
Chapter 1
Figure 1.1 Suicide of Americans ages 18 to 24
Figure 1.6 Western Marriage: Husband–Wife Relationship
Chapter 2
Sociology and Technology: The Shifting Landscape:
The End of Human Culture? Artificial Intelligence and
Super-Smart Computers
Topic: In the 1600s, killing cats was part of festive celebrations
Chapter 3
Topic: Ekman’s conclusions on the universality of the ex-
pression of human emotions is challenged by research
among the Trobianders of Papua New Guinea.
Topic: Negative effects of nurseries depend on the age at
which children are placed in day care
Chapter 4
Applying Sociology to Your Life: Getting Promoted: Making
Impression Management Work for You
Topic: Transgender as a master status
Topic: Students learn more from attractive teachers
Chapter 5
Applying Sociology to Your Life: The New World of Work:
How to Keep a Paycheck Coming in the New Global
Marketplace
Applying Sociology to Your Life: Do Your Social Networks
Perpetuate Social Inequality?
Sociology and Technology: The Shifting Landscape: Virtual
Reality and Diversity Training
Topic: Investigation of JonBenet Ramsey as an example of
groupthink
Topic: The experience and perspective of white males are
being added to diversity training
Chapter 6
Applying Sociology to Your Life: How Does Social Control
Theory Apply to You?
Applying Sociology to Your Life: How Do You Use Tech-
niques of Neutralization to Protect Your Self Concept?
Topic: In murder trials, if the victim is white and the ac-
cused is black, juries are more likely to impose the death
penalty than if the accused is white and the victim is
black
Chapter 7
Topic: Face-recognition software can turn the police’s body
cameras into surveillance machines, able to identify
everyone an officer passes on the sidewalk
Chapter 8
Figure 8.7 Physical Health, by Income: People Who Have
Difficulty with Everyday Physical Activities
Figure 8.8 Mental Health, by Income: Feelings of Sadness,
Hopelessness, or Worthlessness
Figure 8.10 An Overview of Poverty in the United States
Figure 8.13 Poverty and Family Structure
Figure 8.14 Poverty and Race-Ethnicity
Figure 8.15 Poverty and Age
Topic: The 20 richest Americans have more wealth than the
bottom half of the U.S. population combined
Topic: Before they turn 65, about 60 percent of the U.S. pop-
ulation will experience a year of poverty
Topic: The Jardin in Las Vegas sells a $10,000 cocktail and a
weekend Valentine package for $100,000
Chapter 9
Table 9.3 Race–Ethnicity and Income Extremes
Topic: Arizona has agreed that the police will not stop peo-
ple solely to determine if they are in the country illegally.
Topic: Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada became the first
Latina senator.
Topic: Native Americans operate their own embassy in
Washington, D.C.
Topic: The bamboo curtain: Asian Americans claiming they
are discriminated against in college admissions
Chapter 10
Figure 10.7 Master’s degree was added to this figure
Applying Sociology to Your Life: How to Get a Higher Salary
Applying Sociology to Your Life: Breaking through the
Glass Ceiling
Topic: The effects of testosterone differ with the situation:
Women given testosterone in a competitive situation be-
came suspicious and less trusting, but given testosterone
in a situation where they were being trusted, they be-
came more responsible and generous.
Topic: Many minority women feel that the feminist move-
ment represents “white” experiences. Their attempt to
change emphases has led to a clash of perspectives.
Topic: Among the CEOs of the largest U.S. companies, a
reverse pay gap has emerged, with women outearning
men by several million dollars a year.

Topic: The rate of sexual assault on boys and men is about
one-tenth that of girls and women.
Topic: In Japan, more adult diapers are sold than baby diapers
Topic: The Social Security dependency ratio has dropped to
3.6 (current workers to one beneficiary)
Chapter 11
Sociology and Technology: The Shifting Landscape: How
Could the Polls Get It So Wrong?
Topic: From President Obama to President Trump used as
an example of the transition of authority in a rational–
legal structure even when a newly elected leader repre-
sents ideas extremely different from the predecessor
Topic: Kim Jong-un of North Korea had his vice premier for
education shot for slouching during a meeting of parliament
Chapter 12
Figure 12.5 The Remarkable Change in Two- and Four-
Children Families
Figure 12:16 Today’s Newlyweds: Their Marital History
Applying Sociology to Your Life: What Are Your Chances
of Getting Divorced? The Misuse of Statistics
Applying Sociology to Your Life: What Kind of Parent Will
You Be?
Applying Sociology to Your Life: Finding Quality Daycare
Cultural Diversity around the World: Arranged Marriage
in India: Probing beneath the Surface
Topic: One-third of Americans who marry met online.
Topic: The latest research on children reared by same-sex
parents
Topic: For the first time since 1880, the percentage of young
adults who live with their parents is larger than those who
live with a spouse or partner in a separate household.
Topic: “Adultolescence” is also known as “waithood.”
Topic: The average age of those who are cohabiting is 39.
Topic: Helicoptering, parents’ hovering over their children
to be certain they make the right decisions and have the
right experiences, increasingly common in the upper-
middle class
Topic: Implications for human evolution of CRISPR (Clus-
tered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats)
Chapter 13
Applying Sociology to Your Life: You Want to Get Through
College? Let’s Apply Sociology
To the Instructor … from the Author xxi
Sociology and Technology: The Shifting Landscape:
Changing Religious Practices in the Digital Age
Topic: To increase graduation rates, community colleges are
developing guided pathways.
Topic: A major change is occurring in Japan’s higher
education—a shift to job training in its lower tier
universities and more research in its top tier.
Topic: University salaries in Russia are so low that tens of
thousands of academics have left Russia.
Topic: Tucson, Arizona, runs a “Teenage Parent High School,”
where pregnant girls and those who have already given
birth learn parenting skills as well as traditional subjects
Topic: High school teachers give twenty times more A’s
than C’s.
Topic: Roman Catholics use Confessor Go to locate priests
to hear confessions, and WhatsApp to discuss moral
dilemmas with priests.
Chapter 14
Topic: The United States has 40 million immigrants.
Topic: The world now has thirty-one megacities.
Topic: Japan’s population is shrinking by a million people
a year.
Topic: Update on Monsanto subverting GMO research.
Topic: Tomorrow’s suburb: Attempts of suburbs to trans-
form themselves into cities.
Chapter 15
Topic: The United States has withdrawn from G7’s Paris
Accord on climate change.
Topic: Global warming threatens the Earth’s coral reefs,
which hold chemicals to cure diseases. Venom from the
cone snail, fifty times more potent than morphine, is be-
ing used as a painkiller.
Topic: In coming distance learning classes, the simultane-
ous translation of speech will allow students from differ-
ent cultures to talk and to understand one another.
Topic: In coming distance learning classes, artificial intelli-
gence will enable students to go on virtual field trips in
other cultures that immerse them in different realities.
Topic: The Pentagon operates a Cyber Command with
nine “National Mission Teams” of sixty military person-
nel each
Topic: An Italian company sells “off-the-shelf” programs
that allow someone to insert malicious code in comput-
ers and mobile devices
xxii To the Instructor … from the Author
The Organization of This Text
The text is laid out in five parts. Part I focuses on the socio-
logical perspective, which is introduced in the first chapter.
We then look at how culture influences us (Chapter 2), ex-
amine socialization (Chapter 3), and compare macrosociol-
ogy and microsociology (Chapter 4).
Part II, which focuses on groups and social control,
adds to the students’ understanding of how far-reaching
society’s influence is—how group membership penetrates
even our thinking, attitudes, and orientations to life. We first
examine the different types of groups that have such pro-
found influences on us and then look at the fascinating area
of group dynamics (Chapter 5). After this, we focus on how
groups “keep us in line” and sanction those who violate
their norms (Chapter 6).
In Part III, we turn our focus on social inequality, exam-
ining how it pervades society and how it has an impact on
our own lives. Because social stratification is so significant, I
have written two chapters on this topic. The first (Chapter 7),
with its global focus, presents an overview of the principles
of stratification. The second (Chapter 8), with its emphasis
on social class, focuses on stratification in the United States.
After establishing this broader context of social stratifica-
tion, we examine inequalities of race-ethnicity (Chapter 9)
and then those of gender and age (Chapter 10).
Part IV helps students to become more aware of how
social institutions encompass their lives. We first look at
politics and the economy, our overarching social institu-
tions (Chapter 11). After examining marriage and family
(Chapter 12), we then turn our focus on education and re-
ligion (Chapter 13). One of the emphases in this part of the
book is how our social institutions are changing and how
their changes, in turn, have an impact on our own lives.
With its focus on broad social change, Part V provides
an appropriate conclusion for the book. Here we examine
why our world is changing so rapidly, as well as catch a
glimpse of what is yet to come. We first analyze trends in
population and urbanization, those sweeping forces that
affect our lives so significantly but that ordinarily remain
below our level of awareness (Chapter 14). We conclude the
book with an analysis of technology, social movements, and
the environment (Chapter 15), which takes us to the “cut-
ting edge” of the vital changes that engulf us all.
Themes and Features
Six central themes run throughout this text: down-to-earth
sociology, applying sociology to your students’ life, glo-
balization, cultural diversity, critical thinking about social
life, and the new technology. The theme of how sociology
applies to the lives of your students is new to this edition.
For each of these themes, except globalization, which is in-
corporated throughout the text, I have written a series of
boxed features. These boxed features are one of my favorite
components of the book. They are especially useful for in-
troducing the controversial topics that make sociology such
a lively activity.
Let’s look at these six themes.
Down-to-Earth Sociology
As many years of teaching have shown me, all too often
textbooks are written to appeal to the adopters of texts
rather than to the students who will learn from them. In
writing this book, my central concern has been to present
sociology in a way that not only facilitates understanding
but also shares its excitement. During the course of writing
other texts, I often have been told that my explanations and
writing style are “down-to-earth,” or accessible and invit-
ing to students—so much so that I chose this phrase as the
book’s subtitle.
This Down-to-Earth Sociology theme explores sociologi-
cal processes that underlie everyday life. The topics that
we review in this feature are highly diverse. Here are some
of them:
• how a sociologist became a gang leader—for a day
(Chapter 1)
• the experiences of W. E. B. Du Bois in studying U.S. race
relations (Chapter 1)
• how gossip and ridicule enforce adolescent norms
(Chapter 3)
• how football can help us understand social structure
(Chapter 4)
• beauty and success (Chapter 4)
• serial killers (Chapter 6)
• sexting (Chapter 6)
• the lifestyles of the super-rich (Chapter 8)
• the American dream and social mobility (Chapter 8)
• college dorms and contact theory (Chapter 9)
• women navigating male-dominated corporations
(Chapter 10)
• the coming Star Wars (Chapter 15)
This first theme is actually a hallmark of the text, as my
goal is to make sociology “down to earth.” To help students
grasp the fascination of sociology, I continuously stress so-
ciology’s relevance to their lives. To reinforce this theme, I
avoid unnecessary jargon and use concise explanations and
clear and simple (but not reductive) language. I also use
student-relevant examples to illustrate key concepts, and I
base several of the chapters’ opening vignettes on my own
experiences in exploring social life. That this goal of shar-
ing sociology’s fascination is being reached is evident from
the many comments I receive from instructors and students
alike that the text helps make sociology “come alive.”

Applying Sociology to Your Life
As mentioned, this second theme is being introduced in
this edition. There were a lot of challenges to overcome in
producing this feature, and I am eager to find out how it
works in your classroom. Please share the results with me.
Here is a partial list of the topics included in Applying
Sociology to Your Life:
• making impression management work for you: getting
promoted (Chapter 4)
• keeping a paycheck coming in the new global market-
place (Chapter 5)
• how techniques of neutralization protect your self con-
cept (Chapter 6)
• how to get a higher salary by applying sociology
(Chapter 10)
• applying sociology to break through the glass ceiling
(Chapter 10)
• applying sociology to parenting (Chapter 12)
• applying divorce statistics to your marriage (Chapter 12)
• finding quality daycare (Chapter 12)
• applying sociology to get through college (Chapter 13)
I hope you have as much pleasure using this new fea-
ture in your classroom as I had in developing it.
Globalization
In the third theme, globalization, we explore the impact
of global issues on our lives and on the lives of people
around the world. All of us are feeling the effects of an
increasingly powerful and encompassing global economy,
one that intertwines the fates of nations. The globalization
of capitalism influences the kinds of skills and knowledge
we need, the types of work available to us—and whether
work is available at all. Globalization also underlies the
costs of the goods and services we consume and whether
our country is at war or peace—or in some uncharted
middle ground between the two, some sort of perpetual
war against unseen, sinister, and ever-threatening en-
emies lurking throughout the world. In addition to the
strong emphasis on global issues that runs throughout this
text, I have written a separate chapter on global stratifica-
tion (Chapter 7). I also feature global issues in the chap-
ters on social institutions and the final chapters on social
change: population, urbanization, social movements, and
the environment.
What occurs in Russia, Germany, and China, as well as
in much smaller nations such as Afghanistan and Iraq, has
far-reaching consequences on our own lives. Consequently,
in addition to the global focus that runs throughout the text,
the next theme, cultural diversity, also has a strong global
emphasis.
To the Instructor … from the Author xxiii
Cultural Diversity around the World
and in the United States
The fourth theme, cultural diversity, has two primary em-
phases. The first is cultural diversity around the world.
Gaining an understanding of how social life is “done” in
other parts of the world often challenges our taken-for-
granted assumptions about social life. At times, when we
learn about other cultures, we gain an appreciation for the
life of other peoples; at other times, we may be shocked or
even disgusted at some aspect of another group’s way of
life (such as female circumcision) and come away with a re-
newed appreciation of our own customs.
To highlight this first subtheme, I have written a series
called Cultural Diversity around the World. Among the topics
with this subtheme are
• food customs that shock people from different cultures
(Chapter 2)
• why the dead need money (Chapter 2)
• where virgins become men (Chapter 3)
• human sexuality in Mexico and Kenya (Chapter 6)
• female circumcision (Chapter 10)
• probing beneath the surface to understand arranged
marriage in India (Chapter 12)
• female infanticide in China and India (Chapter 14)
• the destruction of the rain forests and indigenous peo-
ples of Brazil (Chapter 15)
In the second subtheme, Cultural Diversity in the United
States, we examine groups that make up the fascinating
array of people who form the U.S. population. In this sub-
theme, we review such topics as
• the controversy over the use of Spanish or English
(Chapter 2)
• how the Amish resist social change (Chapter 4)
• how our social networks produce social inequality
(Chapter 5)
• the upward social mobility of African Americans
(Chapter 8)
• the author’s travels with a Mexican who transports un-
documented workers to the U.S. border (Chapter 9)
• human heads, animal sacrifices, and religious freedom
(Chapter 13)
• our shifting racial–ethnic mix (Chapter 14)
Seeing that there are so many ways of “doing” social life
can remove some of our cultural smugness, making us more
aware of how arbitrary our own customs are—and how our
taken-for-granted ways of thinking are rooted in culture.
The stimulating contexts of these contrasts can help students
develop their sociological imagination. They encourage
xxiv To the Instructor … from the Author
students to see connections among key sociological concepts
such as culture, socialization, norms, race–ethnicity, gender,
and social class. As your students’ sociological imagination
grows, they can attain a new perspective on their experiences
in their own corners of life—and a better understanding of
the social structure of U.S. society.
Critical Thinking
In our fifth theme, critical thinking, we focus on controver-
sial social issues, inviting students to examine various sides
of those issues. In these sections, titled Thinking Critically
about Social Life, I present objective, fair portrayals of posi-
tions and do not take a side—although occasionally I do
play the “devil’s advocate” in the questions that close each
of the topics. Like the boxed features, these sections can
enliven your classroom with a vibrant exchange of ideas.
Among the social issues we tackle are
• our tendency to conform to evil authority, as uncovered
by the Milgram experiments (Chapter 5)
• how labeling keeps some people down and helps others
move up (Chapter 6)
• how vigilantes fill in when the state breaks down
(Chapter 6)
• the three-strikes-and-you’re-out laws (Chapter 6)
• bounties paid to kill homeless children in Brazil
(Chapter 7)
• children in poverty (Chapter 8)
• emerging masculinities and femininities (Chapter 10)
• cyberwar and cyber defense (Chapter 15)
These Thinking Critically about Social Life sections are
based on controversial social issues that either affect the stu-
dent’s own life or focus on topics that have intrinsic inter-
est for students. Because of their controversial nature, these
sections stimulate both critical thinking and lively class
discussions. These sections also provide provocative topics
for in-class debates and small discussion groups, effective
ways to enliven a class and present sociological ideas. In the
Instructor’s Manual, I describe the nuts and bolts of using
small groups in the classroom, a highly effective way of en-
gaging students in sociological topics.
Sociology and Technology: The Shifting
Landscape
In the sixth theme, sociology and technology, we explore
an aspect of social life that has come to be central in our
lives. We welcome our technological tools, for they help
us to be more efficient at performing our daily tasks, from
making a living to communicating with others—whether
those people are nearby or on the other side of the globe.
The significance of technology extends far beyond the
tools and the ease and efficiency they bring to our lives.
We can more accurately envision our new technology as
a social revolution that will leave few aspects of our lives
untouched. Its effects are so profound that it even changes
the ways we view life.
Sociology and technology is introduced in Chapter 2,
where technology is defined and presented as a major as-
pect of culture. The impact of technology is then discussed
throughout the text. Examples include how technology
is related to cultural change (Chapter 2), diversity train-
ing (Chapter 5), the maintenance of global stratification
(Chapter 7), and social class (Chapter 8). We also look at
the impact of technology on dating (Chapter 12), family
life (Chapter 12), religion (Chapter 13), and war (Chapter
15). The final chapter (Chapter 15) on social change and
the environment concludes the book with a focus on the
effects of technology.
To highlight this theme, I have written a series called
Sociology and Technology: The Shifting Landscape. In this
feature, we explore how technology affects our lives as it
changes society. Among the topics we examine are how
technology
• artificial intelligence and super-smart computers may
bring the end of human culture (Chapter 2)
• affects our body images (Chapter 4)
• through virtual reality can be applied to diversity train-
ing (Chapter 5)
• is allowing the creation of an overwhelming security
state (Chapter 5)
• could allow us to get the presidential polls so wrong
(Chapter 11)
• is changing the way people find mates (Chapter 12)
• is leading to a future where we order babies with spe-
cific characteristics (Chapter 12)
• is having an impact on religion (Chapter 13)
Visual Presentations of Sociology
SHOWING CHANGES OVER TIME In presenting so-
cial data, many of the figures and tables show how data
change over time. This feature allows students to see
trends in social life and to make predictions on how these
trends might continue—and even affect their own lives.
Examples include
• Figure 1.5 U.S. Marriage, U.S. Divorce
• Figure 3.2 Transitional Adulthood: A New Stage in the Life
Course
• Figure 6.2 How Much Is Enough? The Explosion in the
Number of Prisoners
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
hands, and seemed ready to attend their Sovereign, if need be, to
the cannon’s mouth, as their ancestors had done before them. The
white busts and the little tables in the background covered with
copies of the Tatler and syphons of soda water seemed to approve;
seemed to indicate the flowing corn and the manor houses of
England; and to return the frail hum of the motor wheels as the walls
of a whispering gallery return a single voice expanded and made
sonorous by the might of a whole cathedral. Shawled Moll Pratt with
her flowers on the pavement wished the dear boy well (it was the
Prince of Wales for certain) and would have tossed the price of a pot
of beer—a bunch of roses—into St. James’s Street out of sheer light-
heartedness and contempt of poverty had she not seen the
constable’s eye upon her, discouraging an old Irishwoman’s loyalty.
The sentries at St. James’s saluted; Queen Alexandra’s policeman
approved.
A small crowd meanwhile had gathered at the gates of Buckingham
Palace. Listlessly, yet confidently, poor people all of them, they
waited; looked at the Palace itself with the flag flying; at Victoria,
billowing on her mound, admired her shelves of running water, her
geraniums; singled out from the motor cars in the Mall first this one,
then that; bestowed emotion, vainly, upon commoners out for a
drive; recalled their tribute to keep it unspent while this car passed
and that; and all the time let rumour accumulate in their veins and
thrill the nerves in their thighs at the thought of Royalty looking at
them; the Queen bowing; the Prince saluting; at the thought of the
heavenly life divinely bestowed upon Kings; of the equerries and
deep curtsies; of the Queen’s old doll’s house; of Princess Mary
married to an Englishman, and the Prince—ah! the Prince! who took
wonderfully, they said, after old King Edward, but was ever so much
slimmer. The Prince lived at St. James’s; but he might come along in
the morning to visit his mother.
So Sarah Bletchley said with her baby in her arms, tipping her foot
up and down as though she were by her own fender in Pimlico, but
keeping her eyes on the Mall, while Emily Coates ranged over the
Palace windows and thought of the housemaids, the innumerable
housemaids, the bedrooms, the innumerable bedrooms. Joined by
an elderly gentleman with an Aberdeen terrier, by men without
occupation, the crowd increased. Little Mr. Bowley, who had rooms
in the Albany and was sealed with wax over the deeper sources of
life but could be unsealed suddenly, inappropriately, sentimentally, by
this sort of thing—poor women waiting to see the Queen go past—
poor women, nice little children, orphans, widows, the War—tut-tut—
actually had tears in his eyes. A breeze flaunting ever so warmly
down the Mall through the thin trees, past the bronze heroes, lifted
some flag flying in the British breast of Mr. Bowley and he raised his
hat as the car turned into the Mall and held it high as the car
approached; and let the poor mothers of Pimlico press close to him,
and stood very upright. The car came on.
Suddenly Mrs. Coates looked up into the sky. The sound of an
aeroplane bored ominously into the ears of the crowd. There it was
coming over the trees, letting out white smoke from behind, which
curled and twisted, actually writing something! making letters in the
sky! Every one looked up.
Dropping dead down the aeroplane soared straight up, curved in a
loop, raced, sank, rose, and whatever it did, wherever it went, out
fluttered behind it a thick ruffled bar of white smoke which curled and
wreathed upon the sky in letters. But what letters? A C was it? an E,
then an L? Only for a moment did they lie still; then they moved and
melted and were rubbed out up in the sky, and the aeroplane shot
further away and again, in a fresh space of sky, began writing a K,
an E, a Y perhaps?
“Glaxo,” said Mrs. Coates in a strained, awestricken voice, gazing
straight up, and her baby, lying stiff and white in her arms, gazed
straight up.
“Kreemo,” murmured Mrs. Bletchley, like a sleep-walker. With his hat
held out perfectly still in his hand, Mr. Bowley gazed straight up. All
down the Mall people were standing and looking up into the sky. As
they looked the whole world became perfectly silent, and a flight of
gulls crossed the sky, first one gull leading, then another, and in this
extraordinary silence and peace, in this pallor, in this purity, bells
struck eleven times, the sound fading up there among the gulls.
The aeroplane turned and raced and swooped exactly where it liked,
swiftly, freely, like a skater—
“That’s an E,” said Mrs. Bletchley— or a dancer—
“It’s toffee,” murmured Mr. Bowley— (and the car went in at the gates
and nobody looked at it), and shutting off the smoke, away and away
it rushed, and the smoke faded and assembled itself round the broad
white shapes of the clouds.
It had gone; it was behind the clouds. There was no sound. The
clouds to which the letters E, G, or L had attached themselves
moved freely, as if destined to cross from West to East on a mission
of the greatest importance which would never be revealed, and yet
certainly so it was—a mission of the greatest importance. Then
suddenly, as a train comes out of a tunnel, the aeroplane rushed out
of the clouds again, the sound boring into the ears of all people in
the Mall, in the Green Park, in Piccadilly, in Regent Street, in
Regent’s Park, and the bar of smoke curved behind and it dropped
down, and it soared up and wrote one letter after another—but what
word was it writing?
Lucrezia Warren Smith, sitting by her husband’s side on a seat in
Regent’s Park in the Broad Walk, looked up.
“Look, look, Septimus!” she cried. For Dr. Holmes had told her to
make her husband (who had nothing whatever seriously the matter
with him but was a little out of sorts) take an interest in things outside
himself.
So, thought Septimus, looking up, they are signalling to me. Not
indeed in actual words; that is, he could not read the language yet;
but it was plain enough, this beauty, this exquisite beauty, and tears
filled his eyes as he looked at the smoke words languishing and
melting in the sky and bestowing upon him in their inexhaustible
charity and laughing goodness one shape after another of
unimaginable beauty and signalling their intention to provide him, for
nothing, for ever, for looking merely, with beauty, more beauty! Tears
ran down his cheeks.
It was toffee; they were advertising toffee, a nursemaid told Rezia.
Together they began to spell t ... o ... f....
“K ... R ...” said the nursemaid, and Septimus heard her say “Kay
Arr” close to his ear, deeply, softly, like a mellow organ, but with a
roughness in her voice like a grasshopper’s, which rasped his spine
deliciously and sent running up into his brain waves of sound which,
concussing, broke. A marvellous discovery indeed—that the human
voice in certain atmospheric conditions (for one must be scientific,
above all scientific) can quicken trees into life! Happily Rezia put her
hand with a tremendous weight on his knee so that he was weighted
down, transfixed, or the excitement of the elm trees rising and falling,
rising and falling with all their leaves alight and the colour thinning
and thickening from blue to the green of a hollow wave, like plumes
on horses’ heads, feathers on ladies’, so proudly they rose and fell,
so superbly, would have sent him mad. But he would not go mad. He
would shut his eyes; he would see no more.
But they beckoned; leaves were alive; trees were alive. And the
leaves being connected by millions of fibres with his own body, there
on the seat, fanned it up and down; when the branch stretched he,
too, made that statement. The sparrows fluttering, rising, and falling
in jagged fountains were part of the pattern; the white and blue,
barred with black branches. Sounds made harmonies with
premeditation; the spaces between them were as significant as the
sounds. A child cried. Rightly far away a horn sounded. All taken
together meant the birth of a new religion—
“Septimus!” said Rezia. He started violently. People must notice.
“I am going to walk to the fountain and back,” she said.
For she could stand it no longer. Dr. Holmes might say there was
nothing the matter. Far rather would she that he were dead! She
could not sit beside him when he stared so and did not see her and
made everything terrible; sky and tree, children playing, dragging
carts, blowing whistles, falling down; all were terrible. And he would
not kill himself; and she could tell no one. “Septimus has been
working too hard”—that was all she could say to her own mother. To
love makes one solitary, she thought. She could tell nobody, not
even Septimus now, and looking back, she saw him sitting in his
shabby overcoat alone, on the seat, hunched up, staring. And it was
cowardly for a man to say he would kill himself, but Septimus had
fought; he was brave; he was not Septimus now. She put on her lace
collar. She put on her new hat and he never noticed; and he was
happy without her. Nothing could make her happy without him!
Nothing! He was selfish. So men are. For he was not ill. Dr. Holmes
said there was nothing the matter with him. She spread her hand
before her. Look! Her wedding ring slipped—she had grown so thin.
It was she who suffered—but she had nobody to tell.
Far was Italy and the white houses and the room where her sisters
sat making hats, and the streets crowded every evening with people
walking, laughing out loud, not half alive like people here, huddled up
in Bath chairs, looking at a few ugly flowers stuck in pots!
“For you should see the Milan gardens,” she said aloud. But to
whom?
There was nobody. Her words faded. So a rocket fades. Its sparks,
having grazed their way into the night, surrender to it, dark
descends, pours over the outlines of houses and towers; bleak
hillsides soften and fall in. But though they are gone, the night is full
of them; robbed of colour, blank of windows, they exist more
ponderously, give out what the frank daylight fails to transmit—the
trouble and suspense of things conglomerated there in the darkness;
huddled together in the darkness; reft of the relief which dawn brings
when, washing the walls white and grey, spotting each window-pane,
lifting the mist from the fields, showing the red-brown cows
peacefully grazing, all is once more decked out to the eye; exists
again. I am alone; I am alone! she cried, by the fountain in Regent’s
Park (staring at the Indian and his cross), as perhaps at midnight,
when all boundaries are lost, the country reverts to its ancient shape,
as the Romans saw it, lying cloudy, when they landed, and the hills
had no names and rivers wound they knew not where—such was
her darkness; when suddenly, as if a shelf were shot forth and she
stood on it, she said how she was his wife, married years ago in
Milan, his wife, and would never, never tell that he was mad! Turning,
the shelf fell; down, down she dropped. For he was gone, she
thought—gone, as he threatened, to kill himself—to throw himself
under a cart! But no; there he was; still sitting alone on the seat, in
his shabby overcoat, his legs crossed, staring, talking aloud.
Men must not cut down trees. There is a God. (He noted such
revelations on the backs of envelopes.) Change the world. No one
kills from hatred. Make it known (he wrote it down). He waited. He
listened. A sparrow perched on the railing opposite chirped
Septimus, Septimus, four or five times over and went on, drawing its
notes out, to sing freshly and piercingly in Greek words how there is
no crime and, joined by another sparrow, they sang in voices
prolonged and piercing in Greek words, from trees in the meadow of
life beyond a river where the dead walk, how there is no death.
There was his hand; there the dead. White things were assembling
behind the railings opposite. But he dared not look. Evans was
behind the railings!
“What are you saying?” said Rezia suddenly, sitting down by him.
Interrupted again! She was always interrupting.
Away from people—they must get away from people, he said
(jumping up), right away over there, where there were chairs
beneath a tree and the long slope of the park dipped like a length of
green stuff with a ceiling cloth of blue and pink smoke high above,
and there was a rampart of far irregular houses hazed in smoke, the
traffic hummed in a circle, and on the right, dun-coloured animals
stretched long necks over the Zoo palings, barking, howling. There
they sat down under a tree.
“Look,” she implored him, pointing at a little troop of boys carrying
cricket stumps, and one shuffled, spun round on his heel and
shuffled, as if he were acting a clown at the music hall.
“Look,” she implored him, for Dr. Holmes had told her to make him
notice real things, go to a music hall, play cricket—that was the very
game, Dr. Holmes said, a nice out-of-door game, the very game for
her husband.
“Look,” she repeated.
Look the unseen bade him, the voice which now communicated with
him who was the greatest of mankind, Septimus, lately taken from
life to death, the Lord who had come to renew society, who lay like a
coverlet, a snow blanket smitten only by the sun, for ever unwasted,
suffering for ever, the scapegoat, the eternal sufferer, but he did not
want it, he moaned, putting from him with a wave of his hand that
eternal suffering, that eternal loneliness.
“Look,” she repeated, for he must not talk aloud to himself out of
doors.
“Oh look,” she implored him. But what was there to look at? A few
sheep. That was all.
The way to Regent’s Park Tube station—could they tell her the way
to Regent’s Park Tube station—Maisie Johnson wanted to know.
She was only up from Edinburgh two days ago.
“Not this way—over there!” Rezia exclaimed, waving her aside, lest
she should see Septimus.
Both seemed queer, Maisie Johnson thought. Everything seemed
very queer. In London for the first time, come to take up a post at her
uncle’s in Leadenhall Street, and now walking through Regent’s Park
in the morning, this couple on the chairs gave her quite a turn; the
young woman seeming foreign, the man looking queer; so that
should she be very old she would still remember and make it jangle
again among her memories how she had walked through Regent’s
Park on a fine summer’s morning fifty years ago. For she was only
nineteen and had got her way at last, to come to London; and now
how queer it was, this couple she had asked the way of, and the girl
started and jerked her hand, and the man—he seemed awfully odd;
quarrelling, perhaps; parting for ever, perhaps; something was up,
she knew; and now all these people (for she returned to the Broad
Walk), the stone basins, the prim flowers, the old men and women,
invalids most of them in Bath chairs—all seemed, after Edinburgh,
so queer. And Maisie Johnson, as she joined that gently trudging,
vaguely gazing, breeze-kissed company—squirrels perching and
preening, sparrow fountains fluttering for crumbs, dogs busy with the
railings, busy with each other, while the soft warm air washed over
them and lent to the fixed unsurprised gaze with which they received
life something whimsical and mollified—Maisie Johnson positively
felt she must cry Oh! (for that young man on the seat had given her
quite a turn. Something was up, she knew.)
Horror! horror! she wanted to cry. (She had left her people; they had
warned her what would happen.)
Why hadn’t she stayed at home? she cried, twisting the knob of the
iron railing.
That girl, thought Mrs. Dempster (who saved crusts for the squirrels
and often ate her lunch in Regent’s Park), don’t know a thing yet;
and really it seemed to her better to be a little stout, a little slack, a
little moderate in one’s expectations. Percy drank. Well, better to
have a son, thought Mrs. Dempster. She had had a hard time of it,
and couldn’t help smiling at a girl like that. You’ll get married, for
you’re pretty enough, thought Mrs. Dempster. Get married, she
thought, and then you’ll know. Oh, the cooks, and so on. Every man
has his ways. But whether I’d have chosen quite like that if I could
have known, thought Mrs. Dempster, and could not help wishing to
whisper a word to Maisie Johnson; to feel on the creased pouch of
her worn old face the kiss of pity. For it’s been a hard life, thought
Mrs. Dempster. What hadn’t she given to it? Roses; figure; her feet
too. (She drew the knobbed lumps beneath her skirt.)
Roses, she thought sardonically. All trash, m’dear. For really, what
with eating, drinking, and mating, the bad days and good, life had
been no mere matter of roses, and what was more, let me tell you,
Carrie Dempster had no wish to change her lot with any woman’s in
Kentish Town! But, she implored, pity. Pity, for the loss of roses. Pity
she asked of Maisie Johnson, standing by the hyacinth beds.
Ah, but that aeroplane! Hadn’t Mrs. Dempster always longed to see
foreign parts? She had a nephew, a missionary. It soared and shot.
She always went on the sea at Margate, not out o’ sight of land, but
she had no patience with women who were afraid of water. It swept
and fell. Her stomach was in her mouth. Up again. There’s a fine
young feller aboard of it, Mrs. Dempster wagered, and away and
away it went, fast and fading, away and away the aeroplane shot;
soaring over Greenwich and all the masts; over the little island of
grey churches, St. Paul’s and the rest till, on either side of London,
fields spread out and dark brown woods where adventurous
thrushes hopping boldly, glancing quickly, snatched the snail and
tapped him on a stone, once, twice, thrice.
Away and away the aeroplane shot, till it was nothing but a bright
spark; an aspiration; a concentration; a symbol (so it seemed to Mr.
Bentley, vigorously rolling his strip of turf at Greenwich) of man’s
soul; of his determination, thought Mr. Bentley, sweeping round the
cedar tree, to get outside his body, beyond his house, by means of
thought, Einstein, speculation, mathematics, the Mendelian theory—
away the aeroplane shot.
Then, while a seedy-looking nondescript man carrying a leather bag
stood on the steps of St. Paul’s Cathedral, and hesitated, for within
was what balm, how great a welcome, how many tombs with
banners waving over them, tokens of victories not over armies, but
over, he thought, that plaguy spirit of truth seeking which leaves me
at present without a situation, and more than that, the cathedral
offers company, he thought, invites you to membership of a society;
great men belong to it; martyrs have died for it; why not enter in, he
thought, put this leather bag stuffed with pamphlets before an altar, a
cross, the symbol of something which has soared beyond seeking
and questing and knocking of words together and has become all
spirit, disembodied, ghostly—why not enter in? he thought and while
he hesitated out flew the aeroplane over Ludgate Circus.
It was strange; it was still. Not a sound was to be heard above the
traffic. Unguided it seemed; sped of its own free will. And now,
curving up and up, straight up, like something mounting in ecstasy, in
pure delight, out from behind poured white smoke looping, writing a
T, an O, an F.

“What are they looking at?” said Clarissa Dalloway to the maid who
opened her door.
The hall of the house was cool as a vault. Mrs. Dalloway raised her
hand to her eyes, and, as the maid shut the door to, and she heard
the swish of Lucy’s skirts, she felt like a nun who has left the world
and feels fold round her the familiar veils and the response to old
devotions. The cook whistled in the kitchen. She heard the click of
the typewriter. It was her life, and, bending her head over the hall
table, she bowed beneath the influence, felt blessed and purified,
saying to herself, as she took the pad with the telephone message
on it, how moments like this are buds on the tree of life, flowers of
darkness they are, she thought (as if some lovely rose had
blossomed for her eyes only); not for a moment did she believe in
God; but all the more, she thought, taking up the pad, must one
repay in daily life to servants, yes, to dogs and canaries, above all to
Richard her husband, who was the foundation of it—of the gay
sounds, of the green lights, of the cook even whistling, for Mrs.
Walker was Irish and whistled all day long—one must pay back from
this secret deposit of exquisite moments, she thought, lifting the pad,
while Lucy stood by her, trying to explain how.
“Mr. Dalloway, ma’am”—
Clarissa read on the telephone pad, “Lady Bruton wishes to know if
Mr. Dalloway will lunch with her to-day.”
“Mr. Dalloway, ma’am, told me to tell you he would be lunching out.”
“Dear!” said Clarissa, and Lucy shared as she meant her to her
disappointment (but not the pang); felt the concord between them;
took the hint; thought how the gentry love; gilded her own future with
calm; and, taking Mrs. Dalloway’s parasol, handled it like a sacred
weapon which a Goddess, having acquitted herself honourably in the
field of battle, sheds, and placed it in the umbrella stand.
“Fear no more,” said Clarissa. Fear no more the heat o’ the sun; for
the shock of Lady Bruton asking Richard to lunch without her made
the moment in which she had stood shiver, as a plant on the river-
bed feels the shock of a passing oar and shivers: so she rocked: so
she shivered.
Millicent Bruton, whose lunch parties were said to be extraordinarily
amusing, had not asked her. No vulgar jealousy could separate her
from Richard. But she feared time itself, and read on Lady Bruton’s
face, as if it had been a dial cut in impassive stone, the dwindling of
life; how year by year her share was sliced; how little the margin that
remained was capable any longer of stretching, of absorbing, as in
the youthful years, the colours, salts, tones of existence, so that she
filled the room she entered, and felt often as she stood hesitating
one moment on the threshold of her drawing-room, an exquisite
suspense, such as might stay a diver before plunging while the sea
darkens and brightens beneath him, and the waves which threaten
to break, but only gently split their surface, roll and conceal and
encrust as they just turn over the weeds with pearl.
She put the pad on the hall table. She began to go slowly upstairs,
with her hand on the bannisters, as if she had left a party, where now
this friend now that had flashed back her face, her voice; had shut
the door and gone out and stood alone, a single figure against the
appalling night, or rather, to be accurate, against the stare of this
matter-of-fact June morning; soft with the glow of rose petals for
some, she knew, and felt it, as she paused by the open staircase
window which let in blinds flapping, dogs barking, let in, she thought,
feeling herself suddenly shrivelled, aged, breastless, the grinding,
blowing, flowering of the day, out of doors, out of the window, out of
her body and brain which now failed, since Lady Bruton, whose
lunch parties were said to be extraordinarily amusing, had not asked
her.
Like a nun withdrawing, or a child exploring a tower, she went
upstairs, paused at the window, came to the bathroom. There was
the green linoleum and a tap dripping. There was an emptiness
about the heart of life; an attic room. Women must put off their rich
apparel. At midday they must disrobe. She pierced the pincushion
and laid her feathered yellow hat on the bed. The sheets were clean,
tight stretched in a broad white band from side to side. Narrower and
narrower would her bed be. The candle was half burnt down and she
had read deep in Baron Marbot’s Memoirs. She had read late at
night of the retreat from Moscow. For the House sat so long that
Richard insisted, after her illness, that she must sleep undisturbed.
And really she preferred to read of the retreat from Moscow. He
knew it. So the room was an attic; the bed narrow; and lying there
reading, for she slept badly, she could not dispel a virginity
preserved through childbirth which clung to her like a sheet. Lovely
in girlhood, suddenly there came a moment—for example on the
river beneath the woods at Clieveden—when, through some
contraction of this cold spirit, she had failed him. And then at
Constantinople, and again and again. She could see what she
lacked. It was not beauty; it was not mind. It was something central
which permeated; something warm which broke up surfaces and
rippled the cold contact of man and woman, or of women together.
For that she could dimly perceive. She resented it, had a scruple
picked up Heaven knows where, or, as she felt, sent by Nature (who
is invariably wise); yet she could not resist sometimes yielding to the
charm of a woman, not a girl, of a woman confessing, as to her they
often did, some scrape, some folly. And whether it was pity, or their
beauty, or that she was older, or some accident—like a faint scent, or
a violin next door (so strange is the power of sounds at certain
moments), she did undoubtedly then feel what men felt. Only for a
moment; but it was enough. It was a sudden revelation, a tinge like a
blush which one tried to check and then, as it spread, one yielded to
its expansion, and rushed to the farthest verge and there quivered
and felt the world come closer, swollen with some astonishing
significance, some pressure of rapture, which split its thin skin and
gushed and poured with an extraordinary alleviation over the cracks
and sores! Then, for that moment, she had seen an illumination; a
match burning in a crocus; an inner meaning almost expressed. But
the close withdrew; the hard softened. It was over—the moment.
Against such moments (with women too) there contrasted (as she
laid her hat down) the bed and Baron Marbot and the candle half-
burnt. Lying awake, the floor creaked; the lit house was suddenly
darkened, and if she raised her head she could just hear the click of
the handle released as gently as possible by Richard, who slipped
upstairs in his socks and then, as often as not, dropped his hot-water
bottle and swore! How she laughed!
But this question of love (she thought, putting her coat away), this
falling in love with women. Take Sally Seton; her relation in the old
days with Sally Seton. Had not that, after all, been love?
She sat on the floor—that was her first impression of Sally—she sat
on the floor with her arms round her knees, smoking a cigarette.
Where could it have been? The Mannings? The Kinloch-Jones’s? At
some party (where, she could not be certain), for she had a distinct
recollection of saying to the man she was with, “Who is that?” And
he had told her, and said that Sally’s parents did not get on (how that
shocked her—that one’s parents should quarrel!). But all that
evening she could not take her eyes off Sally. It was an extraordinary
beauty of the kind she most admired, dark, large-eyed, with that
quality which, since she hadn’t got it herself, she always envied—a
sort of abandonment, as if she could say anything, do anything; a
quality much commoner in foreigners than in Englishwomen. Sally
always said she had French blood in her veins, an ancestor had
been with Marie Antoinette, had his head cut off, left a ruby ring.
Perhaps that summer she came to stay at Bourton, walking in quite
unexpectedly without a penny in her pocket, one night after dinner,
and upsetting poor Aunt Helena to such an extent that she never
forgave her. There had been some quarrel at home. She literally
hadn’t a penny that night when she came to them—had pawned a
brooch to come down. She had rushed off in a passion. They sat up
till all hours of the night talking. Sally it was who made her feel, for
the first time, how sheltered the life at Bourton was. She knew
nothing about sex—nothing about social problems. She had once
seen an old man who had dropped dead in a field—she had seen
cows just after their calves were born. But Aunt Helena never liked
discussion of anything (when Sally gave her William Morris, it had to
be wrapped in brown paper). There they sat, hour after hour, talking
in her bedroom at the top of the house, talking about life, how they
were to reform the world. They meant to found a society to abolish
private property, and actually had a letter written, though not sent
out. The ideas were Sally’s, of course—but very soon she was just
as excited—read Plato in bed before breakfast; read Morris; read
Shelley by the hour.
Sally’s power was amazing, her gift, her personality. There was her
way with flowers, for instance. At Bourton they always had stiff little
vases all the way down the table. Sally went out, picked hollyhocks,
dahlias—all sorts of flowers that had never been seen together—cut
their heads off, and made them swim on the top of water in bowls.
The effect was extraordinary—coming in to dinner in the sunset. (Of
course Aunt Helena thought it wicked to treat flowers like that.) Then
she forgot her sponge, and ran along the passage naked. That grim
old housemaid, Ellen Atkins, went about grumbling—“Suppose any
of the gentlemen had seen?” Indeed she did shock people. She was
untidy, Papa said.
The strange thing, on looking back, was the purity, the integrity, of
her feeling for Sally. It was not like one’s feeling for a man. It was
completely disinterested, and besides, it had a quality which could
only exist between women, between women just grown up. It was
protective, on her side; sprang from a sense of being in league
together, a presentiment of something that was bound to part them
(they spoke of marriage always as a catastrophe), which led to this
chivalry, this protective feeling which was much more on her side
than Sally’s. For in those days she was completely reckless; did the
most idiotic things out of bravado; bicycled round the parapet on the
terrace; smoked cigars. Absurd, she was—very absurd. But the
charm was overpowering, to her at least, so that she could
remember standing in her bedroom at the top of the house holding
the hot-water can in her hands and saying aloud, “She is beneath
this roof.... She is beneath this roof!”
No, the words meant absolutely nothing to her now. She could not
even get an echo of her old emotion. But she could remember going
cold with excitement, and doing her hair in a kind of ecstasy (now the
old feeling began to come back to her, as she took out her hairpins,
laid them on the dressing-table, began to do her hair), with the rooks
flaunting up and down in the pink evening light, and dressing, and
going downstairs, and feeling as she crossed the hall “if it were now
to die ’twere now to be most happy.” That was her feeling—Othello’s
feeling, and she felt it, she was convinced, as strongly as
Shakespeare meant Othello to feel it, all because she was coming
down to dinner in a white frock to meet Sally Seton!
She was wearing pink gauze—was that possible? She seemed,
anyhow, all light, glowing, like some bird or air ball that has flown in,
attached itself for a moment to a bramble. But nothing is so strange
when one is in love (and what was this except being in love?) as the
complete indifference of other people. Aunt Helena just wandered off
after dinner; Papa read the paper. Peter Walsh might have been
there, and old Miss Cummings; Joseph Breitkopf certainly was, for
he came every summer, poor old man, for weeks and weeks, and
pretended to read German with her, but really played the piano and
sang Brahms without any voice.
All this was only a background for Sally. She stood by the fireplace
talking, in that beautiful voice which made everything she said sound
like a caress, to Papa, who had begun to be attracted rather against
his will (he never got over lending her one of his books and finding it
soaked on the terrace), when suddenly she said, “What a shame to
sit indoors!” and they all went out on to the terrace and walked up
and down. Peter Walsh and Joseph Breitkopf went on about Wagner.
She and Sally fell a little behind. Then came the most exquisite
moment of her whole life passing a stone urn with flowers in it. Sally
stopped; picked a flower; kissed her on the lips. The whole world
might have turned upside down! The others disappeared; there she
was alone with Sally. And she felt that she had been given a present,
wrapped up, and told just to keep it, not to look at it—a diamond,
something infinitely precious, wrapped up, which, as they walked (up
and down, up and down), she uncovered, or the radiance burnt
through, the revelation, the religious feeling!—when old Joseph and
Peter faced them:
“Star-gazing?” said Peter.
It was like running one’s face against a granite wall in the darkness!
It was shocking; it was horrible!
Not for herself. She felt only how Sally was being mauled already,
maltreated; she felt his hostility; his jealousy; his determination to
break into their companionship. All this she saw as one sees a
landscape in a flash of lightning—and Sally (never had she admired
her so much!) gallantly taking her way unvanquished. She laughed.
She made old Joseph tell her the names of the stars, which he liked
doing very seriously. She stood there: she listened. She heard the
names of the stars.
“Oh this horror!” she said to herself, as if she had known all along
that something would interrupt, would embitter her moment of
happiness.
Yet, after all, how much she owed to him later. Always when she
thought of him she thought of their quarrels for some reason—
because she wanted his good opinion so much, perhaps. She owed
him words: “sentimental,” “civilised”; they started up every day of her
life as if he guarded her. A book was sentimental; an attitude to life
sentimental. “Sentimental,” perhaps she was to be thinking of the
past. What would he think, she wondered, when he came back?
That she had grown older? Would he say that, or would she see him
thinking when he came back, that she had grown older? It was true.
Since her illness she had turned almost white.
Laying her brooch on the table, she had a sudden spasm, as if, while
she mused, the icy claws had had the chance to fix in her. She was
not old yet. She had just broken into her fifty-second year. Months
and months of it were still untouched. June, July, August! Each still
remained almost whole, and, as if to catch the falling drop, Clarissa
(crossing to the dressing-table) plunged into the very heart of the
moment, transfixed it, there—the moment of this June morning on
which was the pressure of all the other mornings, seeing the glass,
the dressing-table, and all the bottles afresh, collecting the whole of
her at one point (as she looked into the glass), seeing the delicate
pink face of the woman who was that very night to give a party; of
Clarissa Dalloway; of herself.
How many million times she had seen her face, and always with the
same imperceptible contraction! She pursed her lips when she
looked in the glass. It was to give her face point. That was her self—
pointed; dartlike; definite. That was her self when some effort, some
call on her to be her self, drew the parts together, she alone knew
how different, how incompatible and composed so for the world only
into one centre, one diamond, one woman who sat in her drawing-
room and made a meeting-point, a radiancy no doubt in some dull
lives, a refuge for the lonely to come to, perhaps; she had helped
young people, who were grateful to her; had tried to be the same
always, never showing a sign of all the other sides of her—faults,
jealousies, vanities, suspicions, like this of Lady Bruton not asking
her to lunch; which, she thought (combing her hair finally), is utterly
base! Now, where was her dress?
Her evening dresses hung in the cupboard. Clarissa, plunging her
hand into the softness, gently detached the green dress and carried
it to the window. She had torn it. Some one had trod on the skirt. She
had felt it give at the Embassy party at the top among the folds. By
artificial light the green shone, but lost its colour now in the sun. She
would mend it. Her maids had too much to do. She would wear it to-
night. She would take her silks, her scissors, her—what was it?—her
thimble, of course, down into the drawing-room, for she must also
write, and see that things generally were more or less in order.
Strange, she thought, pausing on the landing, and assembling that
diamond shape, that single person, strange how a mistress knows
the very moment, the very temper of her house! Faint sounds rose in
spirals up the well of the stairs; the swish of a mop; tapping;
knocking; a loudness when the front door opened; a voice repeating
a message in the basement; the chink of silver on a tray; clean silver
for the party. All was for the party.
(And Lucy, coming into the drawing-room with her tray held out, put
the giant candlesticks on the mantelpiece, the silver casket in the
middle, turned the crystal dolphin towards the clock. They would
come; they would stand; they would talk in the mincing tones which
she could imitate, ladies and gentlemen. Of all, her mistress was
loveliest—mistress of silver, of linen, of china, for the sun, the silver,
doors off their hinges, Rumpelmayer’s men, gave her a sense, as
she laid the paper-knife on the inlaid table, of something achieved.
Behold! Behold! she said, speaking to her old friends in the baker’s
shop, where she had first seen service at Caterham, prying into the
glass. She was Lady Angela, attending Princess Mary, when in came
Mrs. Dalloway.)
“Oh Lucy,” she said, “the silver does look nice!”
“And how,” she said, turning the crystal dolphin to stand straight,
“how did you enjoy the play last night?” “Oh, they had to go before
the end!” she said. “They had to be back at ten!” she said. “So they
don’t know what happened,” she said. “That does seem hard luck,”
she said (for her servants stayed later, if they asked her). “That does
seem rather a shame,” she said, taking the old bald-looking cushion
in the middle of the sofa and putting it in Lucy’s arms, and giving her
a little push, and crying:
“Take it away! Give it to Mrs. Walker with my compliments! Take it
away!” she cried.
And Lucy stopped at the drawing-room door, holding the cushion,
and said, very shyly, turning a little pink, Couldn’t she help to mend
that dress?
But, said Mrs. Dalloway, she had enough on her hands already, quite
enough of her own to do without that.
“But, thank you, Lucy, oh, thank you,” said Mrs. Dalloway, and thank
you, thank you, she went on saying (sitting down on the sofa with her
dress over her knees, her scissors, her silks), thank you, thank you,
she went on saying in gratitude to her servants generally for helping
her to be like this, to be what she wanted, gentle, generous-hearted.
Her servants liked her. And then this dress of hers—where was the
tear? and now her needle to be threaded. This was a favourite dress,
one of Sally Parker’s, the last almost she ever made, alas, for Sally
had now retired, living at Ealing, and if ever I have a moment,
thought Clarissa (but never would she have a moment any more), I
shall go and see her at Ealing. For she was a character, thought
Clarissa, a real artist. She thought of little out-of-the-way things; yet
her dresses were never queer. You could wear them at Hatfield; at
Buckingham Palace. She had worn them at Hatfield; at Buckingham
Palace.
Quiet descended on her, calm, content, as her needle, drawing the
silk smoothly to its gentle pause, collected the green folds together
and attached them, very lightly, to the belt. So on a summer’s day
waves collect, overbalance, and fall; collect and fall; and the whole
world seems to be saying “that is all” more and more ponderously,
until even the heart in the body which lies in the sun on the beach
says too, That is all. Fear no more, says the heart. Fear no more,
says the heart, committing its burden to some sea, which sighs
collectively for all sorrows, and renews, begins, collects, lets fall. And
the body alone listens to the passing bee; the wave breaking; the
dog barking, far away barking and barking.
“Heavens, the front-door bell!” exclaimed Clarissa, staying her
needle. Roused, she listened.
“Mrs. Dalloway will see me,” said the elderly man in the hall. “Oh
yes, she will see me,” he repeated, putting Lucy aside very
benevolently, and running upstairs ever so quickly. “Yes, yes, yes,”
he muttered as he ran upstairs. “She will see me. After five years in
India, Clarissa will see me.”
“Who can—what can,” asked Mrs. Dalloway (thinking it was
outrageous to be interrupted at eleven o’clock on the morning of the
day she was giving a party), hearing a step on the stairs. She heard
a hand upon the door. She made to hide her dress, like a virgin
protecting chastity, respecting privacy. Now the brass knob slipped.
Now the door opened, and in came—for a single second she could
not remember what he was called! so surprised she was to see him,
so glad, so shy, so utterly taken aback to have Peter Walsh come to
her unexpectedly in the morning! (She had not read his letter.)
“And how are you?” said Peter Walsh, positively trembling; taking
both her hands; kissing both her hands. She’s grown older, he
thought, sitting down. I shan’t tell her anything about it, he thought,
for she’s grown older. She’s looking at me, he thought, a sudden
embarrassment coming over him, though he had kissed her hands.
Putting his hand into his pocket, he took out a large pocket-knife and
half opened the blade.
Exactly the same, thought Clarissa; the same queer look; the same
check suit; a little out of the straight his face is, a little thinner, dryer,
perhaps, but he looks awfully well, and just the same.
“How heavenly it is to see you again!” she exclaimed. He had his
knife out. That’s so like him, she thought.
He had only reached town last night, he said; would have to go down
into the country at once; and how was everything, how was
everybody—Richard? Elizabeth?
“And what’s all this?” he said, tilting his penknife towards her green
dress.
He’s very well dressed, thought Clarissa; yet he always criticises me.
Here she is mending her dress; mending her dress as usual, he
thought; here she’s been sitting all the time I’ve been in India;
mending her dress; playing about; going to parties; running to the
House and back and all that, he thought, growing more and more
irritated, more and more agitated, for there’s nothing in the world so
bad for some women as marriage, he thought; and politics; and
having a Conservative husband, like the admirable Richard. So it is,
so it is, he thought, shutting his knife with a snap.
“Richard’s very well. Richard’s at a Committee,” said Clarissa.
And she opened her scissors, and said, did he mind her just finishing
what she was doing to her dress, for they had a party that night?
“Which I shan’t ask you to,” she said. “My dear Peter!” she said.
But it was delicious to hear her say that—my dear Peter! Indeed, it
was all so delicious—the silver, the chairs; all so delicious!
Why wouldn’t she ask him to her party? he asked.
Now of course, thought Clarissa, he’s enchanting! perfectly
enchanting! Now I remember how impossible it was ever to make up
my mind—and why did I make up my mind—not to marry him? she
wondered, that awful summer?
“But it’s so extraordinary that you should have come this morning!”
she cried, putting her hands, one on top of another, down on her