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Diana Kendall, Jane Lothian Murray and Rick Linden, Sociology in Our Times. Third Canadian Edition. Toronto: Thomson-Nelson, 2004, 738 pp.
A main question that invariably comes up when reviewing an introductory textbook is what is the basic purpose of the textbook? What is it that the textbook is supposed to teach about the subject? Several approaches can be said to have informed introductory textbooks. One is to inform the student of what is done in the field, what kind of different theories are offered and by whom, what kind of research is being done. Another, is an approach that tries to give the student a systematic understanding of the phenomenon studied, a knowledge that maintains an internal logic among all the propositions offered about the phenomenon discussed and brings empirical research as a way of substantiating these propositions. In other words, it gives a theory of the phenomenon in question. Still another approach is to give the students a knowledge and understanding of the basic concepts that the scholars in the field use and seem to agree upon. There is of course always the approach that tries to do a bit of each.
To complicate matters, sociology, by its very nature, has projected two intellectual orientations that cut across the above-mentioned approaches, an analytical orientation that places a premium on explanation of the social phenomena, and an advocacy orientation that attempts to provide justification for one or another course of social action.
Sociology in Our Times is an omnibus book. It presents a cross-section of the above-mentioned approaches. It selectively reviews much of the current research in the field. It does not give a systematic theory of society, but it provides the familiar framework for analysis and discussion that begins with a discussion of culture, socialization, groups, organizations, crime and deviance and then goes into social differentiation and inequality, social institutions and ends with social change. In the section on social differentiation, it deals with stratification and...