Sociology

College of Liberal Arts and Sciences

Sociology for "Scientific" Eyes
Introduction: Bibliography

A. General

Murray Melbin, 1987. Night as Frontier: Colonizing the World After Dark. New York: Free Press.

B. Methods

Ender, M. et al. 1998. The sociologist as rubbernecker: photographing the aftermath

of the red river valley flood of 1997. North Dakota Quarterly, 65 (4): 276-285.

Methods, Sociological Perspectives: Mender et al. clarify the difference between the journalistic and sociological perspective when studying an example of a social phenomenon, and they address why sociologists study what they do.

Heise,David R. 2000. “Thinking Sociologically With Mathematics”. Sociological Theory,

18: 498-504.

Kosko,Bart. 1993. Fuzzy Thinking: The New Science of Fuzzy Logic, Hyperion, New York.

Good example of why the dichotomy of “hard” and “soft” sciences is not really appropriate. See also the website http://www.azer.com/aiweb/categories/magazine/24_folder/24_articles/24_fuzzywhat.html

Ross, Andrew (ed.)1997. Science Wars. Duke University Press.

Addresses the controversy of science as “socially constructed” vs. science as “value-free truth.”

C. Theoretical Perspectives

1. General

Dunlap, Riley E. et. al. (ed).2002. Sociological Theory and the Environment: Classical Foundations,

Contemporary Insights. New York: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.

2. Functionalist/ social systems

Marvin Harris. 1978. Cows,Pigs, Wars and Witches: The Riddles of Culture. New York: Random House.

3. Symbolic Interactionism

Fara, P. 2003. Face values: how portraits win friends and influence people. Science, 299

(5608): 831-832. Online http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/summary/299/5608/831.

The author explores how renown scientists such as Newton used portraits to construct their image and define the characteristics and behaviors of categories of scientists.