A critical introduction to sociology : modernity, colonialism, nation-building, and post-modernity

Abstract

This book approaches sociology from a critical, transhistorical, and transnational perspective. It introduces sociology as public discourse to shed light on the multiple factors and forces that have shaped human societies from the premodern to the postmodern world. While offering a history of the development of sociology and its theoretical approaches to various issues, this books introduces these ideas and frameworks in light of the pedagogical hope that the central audience of sociology as public philosophy must shift from academics to the critically conscious public whose vernacular of the everyday life or the lifeworld is informed by critiques of the structures of power and their consequences on marginalized peoples across of the world. Although the authors adopt a multi-perspectival and intersectional approach in investigating social issues and phenomena, they place a premium on the critical perspectives with a focus on the intersections of local, regional, and global factors and relations. The book introduces the reader to different sociological perspectives that view social reality as contested, contextual, ever-changing, and value-laden, while at the same time universal and global. This book will offer the reader a lucid lesson in the global sociological imagination by enabling the reader to develop a keen awareness of the fact that individual actions, seemingly inconsequential, do have ramifications for others, rippling far beyond their immediate social, economic, political, and cultural positions in local, regional, national, and global contexts.