Essentials of Sociology. George Ritzer
thankful for his work on religion and education.
At SAGE Publications, I am especially grateful for Senior Vice President Michele Sordi’s confidence in, and support for, the project. She agreed from the beginning to do and spend whatever was necessary to make this a first-class introductory sociology text. As you can see from the finished project, she was true to her word. Michele also worked closely with me in an editorial capacity on the first edition to help get the project through some of its most difficult periods. Michele was a positive force and upbeat presence throughout the writing of this book, and I am deeply grateful for who she is and what she has done. Late in the process, Brenda Carter took over Michele’s role and performed it with the same level of expertise, good humor, and good sense (plus she got me prime seats to a game in New York involving my beloved Yankees). Jeff Lasser came on board at SAGE as sociology publisher during production of the first edition, in which he played a key role, and he has played a much more important role in the ensuing editions. Jeff has proven to be not only easy to work with but a sage (pun intended) adviser on many aspects of the book and its publication. Unfortunately, he is a Boston Red Sox fan, but nobody is perfect.
I also need to thank content development editor Anna Villarruel, and Tiara Beatty, editorial assistant, who held steady oversight over all of the small details needed to get this book into production. Thanks also to Veronica Stapleton Hooper, who amiably and capably managed the production of this book, as well as to Renee Willers, who capably handled the copyediting.
Publisher’s Acknowledgments
SAGE wishes to acknowledge the valuable contributions of the following reviewers:
Genevieve Minter, University of Nevada, Las Vegas
Catherine L. Moran, University of New Hampshire
Michael O’Connor, Upper Iowa University
Lori Park-Smith, Ridgewater College
Marga Ryersbach, Queensborough Community College
About the Author
George Ritzer is Distinguished University Professor Emeritus at the University of Maryland. Among his awards are Honorary Doctorate from La Trobe University, Melbourne, Australia; Honorary Patron, University Philosophical Society, Trinity College, Dublin; American Sociological Association’s Distinguished Contribution to Teaching Award; and being named the 2013 Eastern Sociological Society’s Robin Williams Lecturer. He has chaired four sections of the American Sociological Association: Theoretical Sociology, Organizations and Occupations, Global and Transnational Sociology, and the History of Sociology. In the application of social theory to the social world, his books include The McDonaldization of Society (9th ed., 2019; 10th ed., forthcoming), Enchanting a Disenchanted World (3rd ed., 2010), and The Globalization of Nothing (2nd ed., 2007). He is the author of Globalization: A Basic Text (Blackwell, 2010; 2nd ed., 2015, with Paul Dean). He edited the Wiley-Blackwell Companion to Sociology (2012) and The Blackwell Companion to Globalization (2008) and co-edited (with Jeff Stepnisky) the Wiley-Blackwell Companions to Classical and Contemporary Major Social Theorists (2012) and the Handbook of Social Theory (2001). He was founding editor of the Journal of Consumer Culture. He also edited the eleven-volume Encyclopedia of Sociology (2007; 2nd ed., forthcoming, with Chris Rojek), the two-volume Encyclopedia of Social Theory (2005), and the five-volume Encyclopedia of Globalization (2012). He co-edited a special double issue (2012) of the American Behavioral Scientist on prosumption and edited a symposium on prosumer capitalism in Sociological Quarterly (2015). His books have been translated into more than 20 languages, with more than a dozen translations of The McDonaldization of Society alone.
1 An Introduction to Sociology in the Global Age
AP Photo/Christophe Ena
Learning Objectives
1.1 Identify major social changes since the 1880s studied by sociologists.
1.2 Explain why sociologists today focus on globalization, consumption, and the digital world.
1.3 Describe how sociologists understand continuity and change, particularly in the context of the sociological imagination and the social construction of reality.
1.4 Differentiate between sociology’s two possible purposes, science and social reform.
1.5 Evaluate how sociology relates to other social sciences and how sociological knowledge differs from common sense.
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A Sociology of Revolutions and Counterrevolutions
In December 2010, street demonstrations, labor strikes, and other acts of civil resistance swept through the small North African nation of Tunisia. The demonstrators met strong resistance from the Tunisian government. Nevertheless, their protests eventually resulted in the overthrow of autocratic president Ben Ali after 23 years in power.
The trigger for the Tunisian protests was the self-immolation of Mohamed Bouazizi, a 26-year-old street vendor who claimed he had been harassed and humiliated by authorities. Bouazizi died in a burn and trauma center 18 days after setting himself on fire.
The Tunisian revolution was at the root of the “Arab Spring”—the wave of social unrest and social revolution that Tunisia’s uprising inspired throughout the Middle East. Such events are not only important in themselves; so too are the counterreactions to them by other individuals as well as by larger organizations. Those responses have since undermined the revolutions that occurred during the Arab Spring. In some cases, such as in Egypt, counterreaction by the military led to a return to the kind of autocratic government that was a cause of the protests in the first place. In the Persian Gulf states (Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, and Bahrain), monarchs have suppressed dissidents and thwarted efforts aimed at greater democratization. In the aftermath of the 2011 overthrow of dictator Muammar Qaddafi, Libya (and Yemen) have descended into civil wars, vicious fights for power, and, at least at the moment, large-scale anarchy. In Libya, but more important in Syria and Iraq, a radical Islamic group—the Islamic State (IS, also known as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant [ISIL], the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria [ISIS], or Da’ish, from an acronym for a name of the group in Arabic)—swept through large portions of those countries and succeeded, at least for a time, in dismembering them in its effort to form an independent state that spanned much of the Middle East. That new state was envisioned to be a caliphate, dominated by a leader—a caliph—devoted to a strict interpretation of Islam. The success of IS led, in turn, to other counterreactions, both locally (especially by the Kurds and Iranians) and globally (with the United States helping the Iraqi government and Russia aiding the Syrian government), designed to limit IS’s gains, if not to defeat it. Today, IS has been defeated on most fronts and lost much of the territory it once controlled, but it remains a significant threat as a terrorist group.
By drawing on modern sociology’s 200-year history while looking to the future, sociologists today can find the tools and resources to gain a better understanding of where we have been, where we are, and, perhaps most important, where we are