George Ritzer 
The Wiley-Blackwell Companion to Sociology [EPUB ebook] 

Notes on Contributors viii
Introduction 1
George Ritzer
Part I Introduction 7
1 Philosophy and Sociology 9
Stephen Turner
2 A Selective History of Sociology 25
Alan Sica
3 Quantitative Methods 55
Russell K. Schutt
4 Qualitative Methods 73
Mitchell Duneier
5 Classical Sociological Theory 82
Alan Sica
6 Contemporary Sociological Theory 98
George Ritzer and William Yagatich
Part II Basic Topics in Sociology 119
7 Action, Interaction, and Groups 121
Kimberly B. Rogers and Lynn Smith-Lovin
8 Groups and Institutions, Structures and Processes 139
Murray Webster, Jr. and Jane Sell
9 The Sociology of Organizations 164
Stewart R. Clegg
10 Cultural Analysis 182
John Tomlinson
11 The Changing Life Course 197
Angela M. O’Rand
12 Deviance: A Sociology of Unconventionalities 212
Nachman Ben-Yehuda
13 Criminology 229
Charles F. Wellford
14 Critical Sexualities Studies 243
Ken Plummer
15 Feeling Class: Affect and Culture in the Making of Class Relations 269
Beverley Skeggs
16 Racial and Ethnic Issues: Critical Race Approaches in the United States 287
Brittany Chevon Slatton and Joe R. Feagin
17 Genders and Sexualities in Global Context: An Intersectional Assessment of Contemporary Scholarship 304
Nancy A. Naples and Barbara Gurr
18 Changing Families: Fluidity, Partnership, and Family Structure 333
Graham Allan and Emma Head
19 Sociology of Education 348
Maureen T. Hallinan and Ge Liu
20 Sociology of Religion 367
Christian Smith and Robert D. Woodberry
21 Current Directions in Medical Sociology 385
William C. Cockerham
22 Media and Communications 402
John Durham Peters and Jefferson D. Pooley
23 Work and Employment 418
Steven P. Vallas
24 The Sociology of Consumption 444
P. J. Rey and George Ritzer
25 Population 470
Suzanne M. Bianchi and Vanessa Wight
26 Urbanization 488
Kevin Fox Gotham
27 Environmental Sociology 504
Richard York and Riley E. Dunlap
28 Social Movements 522
Remy Cross and David A. Snow
29 Globalization 545
Paul Dean and George Ritzer
Part III Cutting Edge Issues in Sociology 565
30 After Neoliberalism: Whither Capitalism? 567
Robert J. Antonio
31 Organized Coercion and Political Authority: Armed Conflict in a World of States 588
Meyer Kestnbaum
32 Science and Technology: Now and in the Future 609
Mark Erickson and Frank Webster
33 The Internet, Web 2.0, and Beyond 626
Nathan Jurgenson and George Ritzer
Index 649

George Ritzer is Distinguished University Professor at the University of Maryland. He was awarded the 2000 Distinguished Contributions to Teaching Award by the American Sociological Association and he has authored many refereed articles and more than 25 books, including monographs, reference works, and textbooks. He has been a major contributor to the literature on sociology as an author and editor, especially The Blackwell Encyclopedia of Sociology (11 vols., 2007; 2nd ed. forthcoming); Introduction to Sociology (3rd ed, 2016), The Wiley-Blackwell Encyclopedia of Globalization (5 vols., 2012), Globalization: A Basic Text (2nd edition, ? 2015 with Paul Dean), The Mc Donaldization of Society (8th editions, last in 2015), Expressing America: A Critique of the Global Credit Card Society (1995) and The Globalization of Nothing (2nd edition 2007). In the last decade his work has focused on the issue of prosumption.