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RR 2011/261 The Concise Encyclopedia of Sociology Edited by George Ritzer and J. Michael Ryan Wiley-Blackwell MaLden, MA, and Oxford 2011 ISBN 978 1 4051 8353 6 (hbck); ISBN 978 1 4051 8352 9 (pbck); ISBN 978 1 4443 9264 7 (e-book) liii + 726 pp.£85/$129.95 (hbck); £24.99/$49.95 (pbck)
Keywords Encyclopedias, Sociology
Review DOI 10.1108/09504121111155996
Back in 1971 when I started setting up a polytechnic social science library, sociology was the up-and-coming academic subject, growing faster in student numbers than any other discipline. Since then however, sociology has been absorbed into the academic mainstream. There are still single-subject sociology degree courses, but there are far more general social science programmes incorporating some sociological strands. Academic activity in all sorts of disciplines, from linguistics to biology, involves much more awareness of social factors than would have been the case 50 years or so ago.
To cater for this broader academic demand there are a whole range of encyclopaedic resources available. Pride of place, to my mind, goes to the 26 volumes of the International Encyclopedia of the Social and Behavioral Sciences (Smelser and Bates, 2001). We have also recommended the nine-volume International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences (Darity, 2008) (RR 2008/298), while suggesting that libraries should hang on to its previous incarnations if they have room for them, as these contain far more meaty articles by world-renowned experts - I remember writing an essay on monetary theory as an undergraduate and vaguely noticing the initials JMK at the end of the encyclopaedia article I was plagiarising....