Roger A. Salerno – författare

Important ideas that helped shape 20th-century thought—ideas which continue to hold great significance for anyone interested in the social world—are made accessible in this illuminating volume. Readers will be motivated to delve into the deeper pool of knowledge available on major social theorists and their groundbreaking ideas.A mixture of biographical and historical ideas, this book was written to introduce social theory to a broad audience. It looks at the intersection between the theorist as a social actor and as a reflection of his or her time. The volume's breadth makes it a useful tool for those interested in sociology and its many luminaries.

Important ideas that helped shape 20th-century thought—ideas which continue to hold great significance for anyone interested in the social world—are made accessible in this illuminating volume. Readers will be motivated to delve into the deeper pool of knowledge available on major social theorists and their groundbreaking ideas.A mixture of biographical and historical ideas, this book was written to introduce social theory to a broad audience. It looks at the intersection between the theorist as a social actor and as a reflection of his or her time. The volume's breadth makes it a useful tool for those interested in sociology and its many luminaries.

Important ideas that helped shape 20th-century thought—ideas which continue to hold great significance for anyone interested in the social world—are made accessible in this illuminating volume. Readers will be motivated to delve into the deeper pool of knowledge available on major social theorists and their groundbreaking ideas.A mixture of biographical and historical ideas, this book was written to introduce social theory to a broad audience. It looks at the intersection between the theorist as a social actor and as a reflection of his or her time. The volume's breadth makes it a useful tool for those interested in sociology and its many luminaries.

This work provides a review of Wirth's life based on available biographical sources including unpublished materials. It focuses on Wirth's social, political, and professional evolution, and depicts his personal development through his scholarship, his social activism, and his commitment to reform. The biography concludes with an assessment of Wirth's intellectual impact on urban sociology and reviews of recent critiques of his works.

Between 1915 and 1935 the University of Chicago was the center for the production of innovative sociological research that unearthed the marginalized existence of unconventional Americans. Referred to as the Chicago school monographs by social historians, these works brought acclaim to the country's premiere graduate program in sociology. Working at the shadowy margins of the city, these Chicago school scholars dramatically examined the lives of delinquents, prostitutes, gangsters, and homeless men. Their work harmonized with narratives of proletarian and pulp fiction and the serialized newspaper accounts of urban vice and deviance. This book offers a survey of some of these key monographs such as The Unadjusted Girl, The Hobo, The Jack-Roller and The Taxi Dance Hall.

Examines the relationship of modern life, including modern capitalism, to feelings and phenomena of abandonment.Using social theory and cultural analysis, Roger A. Salerno explores the relationship of abandonment to the construction of contemporary capitalistic cultures. Beginning with an array of narratives on the emergence of capitalism in the West and its undermining of traditional social institutions and structures, he provides an overview of both the definition of and reactions to abandonment, analyzing its historical, social, and psychological dimensions. The author contends that abandonment anxiety and feelings of estrangement not only have deep psychological roots, but also important social causes and cultural manifestations such as a quest for security or a hunger for commodities. Salerno surveys important contributions of writers, artists, philosophers, and social scientists and how their work expresses this sense of modern abandonment. He also examines how and why this phenomenon has become a central motif in renderings of community, the environment, and the process of globalization and presents a richer understanding of our modern social condition.

Developed by progressive social scientists in the early 20th century, the juvenile justice system in the U.S. consisted of courts and corrections aimed at reforming disorderly youth. Poor immigrant boys, roaming the streets unsupervised, were its usual subjects.Psychologists and sociologists equated maleness with innate insensitivity, lack of self-control and violent tendencies. In the belief that proper discipline would save the troubled boys from "feminization" and help control their destructive impulses, a rigid masculine authority--challenged by women activists--began to be imposed by a reactionary patriarchal system.This study of delinquency in 1920s Chicago examines the lives of boys, many of whom spent their early years incarcerated, who survived by embracing criminal personas. Predatory masculinity emerges as a source of personal struggle, and as the basis for an array of contemporary social problems, including mass violence and suicide.

This book studies a grouping of films set in New York City between 1965 and 1995, reflecting a town besieged by rampant criminality, social distress and physical decay. "Fear City" is a term the NYPD used to label New York as a frightening environment, incapable of securing the safety of its residents. This book not only deals with the social problems evident in New York during this period, but also provides a study of how independent filmmakers were able to capture unsettling urban imagery, capitalizing on feelings of paranoia and dread. The author explores how the tone of these films reflects upon the anti-urbanism that led to the War on Crime, the mass exodus of working-class people from the city and mass incarceration of young Black men.