The Cambridge Dictionary of Sociology » (New Edition)

Bryan S. Turner is Professor of Sociology in the Asia Research Institute at the National University of Singapore where he leads the research team for the Religion and Globalisation cluster. Prior to this he was Professor of Sociology in the Faculty of Social and Political Sciences at the University of Cambridge. Professor Turner is the author of The New Medical Sociology (2004) and Society and Culture: Principles of Scarcity and Solidarity (with Chris Rojek, 2001) and is the founding editor of the Journal of Classical Sociology (with John O'Neill) , Body & Society (with Mike Featherstone) and Citizenship Studies. He is currently writing a three volume study on the sociology of religion for Cambridge University Press.

An essential, scholarly guide to the field of sociology, with contributions from leading international academics.

Ellen D. Gilbert - Library Journal

Hope must spring eternal among scholarly publishers when no less than three dictionaries of sociology show up in the space of a year. Don't they know that any red-blooded undergraduate student, when confronted with an unfamiliar word or phrase, will 1) ask his or her roommate or 2) check Google? A nudge from a savvy professor or librarian will hopefully send young scholars in the direction of real reference tools. This dictionary, prepared by an international roster of contributors and edited by Turner (sociology, National Univ. of Singapore), offers more than 600 unusually substantial, thoughtful A-to-Z entries each ranging from a paragraph to several pages long on old and new sociological concepts, theories, theorists, debates, and more. Most entries incorporate references for further reading, and all contain good cross-referencing. For sheer simplicity and brief, straightforward entries that will serve as good starting points for sociological research, Steve Bruce and Steven Yearly's The SAGE Dictionary of Sociology(2006) is a fine choice. John Scott and Gordon Marshall's The Oxford Dictionary of Sociology(2005. 3d ed.) has briefer entries than its Cambridge counterpart but shares a similarly long list of international contributors as well as a list of useful web sites.

Contributors; Acknowledgements; Introduction; How to use this Dictionary; Dictionary.