Handbooks of Sociology and Social Research – serie

During the past three decades, feminist scholars have successfully demonstrated the ubiq­ uity and omnirelevance of gender as a sociocultural construction in virtually all human collectivities, past and present. Intrapsychic, interactional, and collective social processes are gendered, as are micro, meso, and macro social structures. Gender shapes, and is shaped, in all arenas of social life, from the most mundane practices of everyday life to those of the most powerful corporate actors. Contemporary understandings of gender emanate from a large community of primarily feminist scholars that spans the gamut of learned disciplines and also includes non-academic activist thinkers. However, while in­ corporating some cross-disciplinary material, this volume focuses specifically on socio­ logical theories and research concerning gender, which are discussed across the full array of social processes, structures, and institutions. As editor, I have explicitly tried to shape the contributions to this volume along several lines that reflect my long-standing views about sociology in general, and gender sociology in particular. First, I asked authors to include cross-national and historical material as much as possible. This request reflects my belief that understanding and evaluating the here-and-now and working realistically for a better future can only be accomplished from a comparative perspective. Too often, American sociology has been both tempero- and ethnocentric. Second, I have asked authors to be sensitive to within-gender differences along class, racial/ethnic, sexual preference, and age cohort lines.

The aim of the Handbook of Sociology of Education is to present the most theoretically grounded and empirically rigorous sociological analyses of schools to date. The authors are distinguished researchers in the field. Their contributions to the Handbook offer major theoretical perspec­ tives on the schooling process and describe significant empirical studies of schools and their effects on individuals and society. The research presented in the Handbook is built on three fundamental tenets of sociol­ ogy. First, the authors adopt the perspective that schools are a central institution in society. An understanding of the function of schooling in social life is enhanced by viewing schools as interrelated with other societal institutions. The study of how the context of schooling influ­ ences education processes is critical to an understanding of school outcomes. Rather than being determined solely by ascribed and achieved characteristics, an individual's cognitive and social development are influenced heavily by the structures and networks in which the individual is embedded. Communities, families, schools, and social groups are critical ele­ ments in the educative process. By viewing the school as a societal institution and highlighting the interaction between context and individual behavior, the Handbook chapters provide a broader and deeper understanding of the determinants of learning in contemporary society. The second sociological insight that guides the research in the Handbook is that the school is a social system.

This wide-ranging handbook presents in-depth discussions on the array of subspecialties that comprise the field of sociological theory. Prominent theorists working in a variety of traditions discuss methodologies and strategies; the cultural turn in sociological theorizing; interaction processes; theorizing from the systemic and macro level; new directions in evolutionary theorizing; power, conflict, and change; and theorizing from assumptions of rationality.

There are a number of reasons why this book is important. First, there is no one source that summarizes what we know about the prevention of substance abuse from the research field, so the book serves as a repository of accumulated knowledge on prevention theory, intervention design, and development and prevention research methodology. Second, as an evolving field, prevention science has only begun to assert itself in both the arenas of practice and policy. The formation of the Society for Prevention Research in 1991 was the first recognition that a science of prevention existed and required a separate forum to present the rapidly growing content of the field for dis­ cussion and review. Finally, there is a need to establish a baseline, a reference point against which progress in the field of prevention science can be assessed. This book serves all of these purposes. The idea for this book grew from the observation in the early 1990s that after decades of attempts to develop effectiveinterventions to prevent drug use among children and adolescents in the United States that we were finally having success, particularly in addressing the initiation of use. These successes are the result of research that has provided a better understanding of the factors and processes associated with the onset of substance use.

This comprehensive handbook provides an overview of key theoretical perspectives, concepts, and methodological approaches that, while applied to diverse phenomena, are united in their general approach to the study of lives across age phases. In surveying the wide terrain of life course studies with dual emphases on theory and empirical research, this important reference work presents probative concepts and methods and identifies promising avenues for future research.Included are sections on history and cross-national variability, normative structuring, movement through the life course, transitions in the life course, turning points, connections between life phases, methodology, and the future of the life course. A major reference work and a seminal text, it is essential reading for social scientists studying phases within the life course, social psychologists in sociology and psychology, demographers and academics in the field of the life course as well as students in thesedisciplines.

Completion of this Handbook would not have been possible without the generous and dedicated assistance of numerous people. Several years ago Howard Kaplan, Editor of the Kluwer/Plenum Handbooks of Sociology and Social Research, asked Dudley Poston to edit a Handbook of Population. Poston then asked his long-time collaborator and fellow demographer, Michael Micklin, to join him as co-editor. Poston and Micklin next assembled a list of chapter topics and possible authors. We endeavored to shape the contributions to the Handbook in two ways: We wished to parallel in many ways the outline of The Study of Population, edited by Philip M. Hauser and Otis Dudley Duncan, and published in 1959. The Hauser and Duncan volume was the key comp- dium and inventory of the state of demography; one had not been published since. In shaping this Handbook we also took into account the increased scope of demography, its development in other social science areas, and its application outside the academy. In the subsequent development of this Handbook, we worked closely with Teresa Kraus, our editor at Springer, and also received advice from Howard Kaplan. Poston and Micklin read and edited each of the Handbook chapters and then sent them back to the authors for their revisions. We appreciate their timely responses to our requests for revisions. All the chapters were then copy edited at Texas A&M University by Amanda K. Baumle, who then discussed and reviewed the final changes and edits with Poston.

Handbook for Religion and Social Institutions is written for sociologists who study a variety of sub-disciplines and are interested in recent studies and theoretical approaches that relate religious variables to their particular area of interest. The handbook focuses on several major themes:- Social Institutions such as Politics, Economics, Education, Health and Social Welfare- Family and the Life Cycle- Inequality- Social Control- Culture- Religion as a Social Institution and in a Global PerspectiveThis handbook will be of interest to social scientists including sociologists, anthropologists, political scientists, and other researchers whose study brings them in contact with the study of religion and its impact on social institutions.

For almost thirty years, sociologists have increasingly theorized about and conducted research on human emotions. Surprisingly, it was not until the 1970s that the sociology of emotions emerged as a coherent field of inquiry. What makes this late date surprising is that it is now obvious that human behavior, interaction, and organization are driven by emotions. It was an immense oversight for emotions to be de-emphasized in sociological theorizing and research for most of its 175 year history. Since the 1970s, however, the study of emotions has accelerated and is now at the forefront of sociological analysis. This book is designed to bring the reader up to date on the theory and research traditions that have proliferated in the analysis of human emotions. Key figures who have carried the sociology of emotions to its current level of prominence review their own work and the work of others who have made contributions to a particular approach to the study of emotions. The outcome is a comprehensive book that serves as a primer on the cutting edge of sociological work in what is obviously a key dynamic in human affairs. The first section of the book addresses the range of emotions and how they can be classified, the neurological underpinnings of emotions, and the effect of gender on emotions. The second section reviews the prominent sociological theories of emotions, including theories emphasizing power and status, rituals, identity and self, psychoanalytic dynamics, exchange, expectation states, and evolution.While there is little integration among these theories, this state of affairs will not last forever. The third section addresses theory and research on specific emotions such as love, jealousy and envy, empathy, sympathy, anger, grief, and the moral emotions. While this list does not exhaust the range of human feeling, they are central emotions that drive human behavior, interaction, and social organization. The last section explores howthe study of emotions has added new insight into other subfields within sociology such as the study of the workplace, health, and social movements. These chapters illustrate how the sociology of emotions can provide new research and theory for the large numbers of specialties within sociology.Although no book can completely cover a field, even a relatively new one like the sociology of emotions, this Handbook of the Sociology of Emotions comes close to being comprehensive. The reader will come away with a greater appreciation for how far the sociology of emotions has developed and prospered over the last thirty years.

Never before has there been so extensive a collection of what has been thought, said, and written about the sociology of the military. This accessible handbook is the first of its kind to delve into the sociological approach to the study of the military. This book is compiled of documents coming from various researchers at universities around the world as well as military officers devoted to the sector of study. Covered in this volume is a historical excursus of studies prior to contemporary research, interpretive models and theoretical approaches developed specifically for this topic, civic-military relations including issues surrounding democratic control of the armed forces, military culture, professional training, conditions and problems of minorities in the armed forces, an examination of the structural change within the military over the years including new duties and functions following the Cold War.This book is ideal for scholars of the subject as well as those coming to the sociology of the military for the first time.

This comprehensive handbook provides an overview of key theoretical perspectives, concepts, and methodological approaches that, while applied to diverse phenomena, are united in their general approach to the study of lives across age phases. In surveying the wide terrain of life course studies with dual emphases on theory and empirical research, this important reference work presents probative concepts and methods and identifies promising avenues for future research.Included are sections on history and cross-national variability, normative structuring, movement through the life course, transitions in the life course, turning points, connections between life phases, methodology, and the future of the life course. A major reference work and a seminal text, it is essential reading for social scientists studying phases within the life course, social psychologists in sociology and psychology, demographers and academics in the field of the life course as well as students in thesedisciplines.

This wide-ranging handbook presents in-depth discussions on the array of subspecialties that comprise the field of sociological theory. Prominent theorists working in a variety of traditions discuss methodologies and strategies; the cultural turn in sociological theorizing; interaction processes; theorizing from the systemic and macro level; new directions in evolutionary theorizing; power, conflict, and change; and theorizing from assumptions of rationality.

There are a number of reasons why this book is important. First, there is no one source that summarizes what we know about the prevention of substance abuse from the research field, so the book serves as a repository of accumulated knowledge on prevention theory, intervention design, and development and prevention research methodology. Second, as an evolving field, prevention science has only begun to assert itself in both the arenas of practice and policy. The formation of the Society for Prevention Research in 1991 was the first recognition that a science of prevention existed and required a separate forum to present the rapidly growing content of the field for dis­ cussion and review. Finally, there is a need to establish a baseline, a reference point against which progress in the field of prevention science can be assessed. This book serves all of these purposes. The idea for this book grew from the observation in the early 1990s that after decades of attempts to develop effectiveinterventions to prevent drug use among children and adolescents in the United States that we were finally having success, particularly in addressing the initiation of use. These successes are the result of research that has provided a better understanding of the factors and processes associated with the onset of substance use.

Social Psychology is an important interdisciplinary field within Sociology. Psychology, focusing on processes that occur inside the individual and Sociology, focusing on social collectives and social institutions, come together in social psychology to explore the interface between the two fields. Social Psychology is the study of how both intra-individual factors and social interaction influence and are influenced by individual behavior. The core concerns of social psychology include:- the impact of one individual on another- the impact of a group on its individual members- the impact of individuals on the groups in which they participate- the impact of one group on anotherThis successor to Social Psychology: Social Perspectives and Sociological Perspectives in Social Psychology expands on previous handbooks in social psychology by including recent developments in theory and research and Substantial Coverage of major theoretical perspectives.A major reference work and a seminal text, it is essential reading for sociologists and psychologists involved with the study of social psychology and those studying this field of research.

The aim of the Handbook of Sociology of Education is to present the most theoretically grounded and empirically rigorous sociological analyses of schools to date. The authors are distinguished researchers in the field. Their contributions to the Handbook offer major theoretical perspec­ tives on the schooling process and describe significant empirical studies of schools and their effects on individuals and society. The research presented in the Handbook is built on three fundamental tenets of sociol­ ogy. First, the authors adopt the perspective that schools are a central institution in society. An understanding of the function of schooling in social life is enhanced by viewing schools as interrelated with other societal institutions. The study of how the context of schooling influ­ ences education processes is critical to an understanding of school outcomes. Rather than being determined solely by ascribed and achieved characteristics, an individual's cognitive and social development are influenced heavily by the structures and networks in which the individual is embedded. Communities, families, schools, and social groups are critical ele­ ments in the educative process. By viewing the school as a societal institution and highlighting the interaction between context and individual behavior, the Handbook chapters provide a broader and deeper understanding of the determinants of learning in contemporary society. The second sociological insight that guides the research in the Handbook is that the school is a social system.

Creating a Frame for Understanding Local Organizations RAM CNAAN, CARL MILOFSKY, AND ALBERT HUNTER In this book, scholars from anumber of disciplines present work focused on communities, with particular attention to community organizations. A few scholars have emphasized the imp- tance of the need to map this intellectual territory (Calhoun, 1992). In some ways community study seems to be well trodden ground; there has been influential work on social capital, for example (Coleman, 1987,1988; Putnam, 1995; Foley and Edwards, 1997; Edwards and Foley, 1998). Yet the rich diversity of communities and community organizations has rarely been studied from a perspective that is both conceptual and descriptive. The growing sense that - studied local organizations constitute a massive yet little understood portion of the nonprofit cosmos has led Smith (1997a,b) to call them the "darkmatter of the nonprofit universe. " An - terdisciplinary attempt to make community a unit ofstudy has not been previously undertaken, and thus we feel that this Handbook makes a unique contribution to scholarly understanding ofboth communities and nonprofit organizations that operate at the community level. A community is a group of people connected by the physical or virtual location (to some extent we can speak of "places" on the World Wide Web, e. g. ) in which they dwell or congregate, organizations they form, and cultural values and symbols they share. Communities are affected, and in a sense defined by, forces that affect community members and their space.

Political sociology is the interdisciplinary study of power and the intersection of personality, society and politics. The field also examines how the political process is affected by major social trends as well as exploring how social policies are altered by various social forces.Political sociologists increasingly use a wide variety of relatively new quantitative and qualitative methodologies and incorporate theories and research from other social science cognate disciplines. The contributors focus on the current controversies and disagreements surrounding the use of different methodologies for the study of politics and society, and discussions of specific applications found in the widely scattered literature where substantive research in the field is published. This approach will solidly place the handbook in a market niche that is not occupied by the current volumes while also covering many of the same theoretical and historical developments that the other volumes cover.The purpose of this handbook is to summarize state-of-the-art theory, research, and methods used in the study of politics and society. This area of research encompasses a wide variety of perspectives and methods that span social science disciplines. The handbook is designed to reflect that diversity in content, method and focus. In addition, it will cover developments in the developed and underdeveloped worlds.

Recent disasters, such as the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami, bomb explosions in London, Hurricane Katrina, the Pakistan Earthquake, floods in Central America, and landslides in Indonesia, among many others, have resulted in an extensive loss of life, social disruption, significant economic impacts to local and national economies, and have made headline news in countries throughout the world. Thus the Handbook of Disaster Research is a timely and much needed contribution to the field of disasters. The editors of this Handbook have brought together a comprehensive and interdisciplinary volume with a diverse and international group of contributors. The Handbook is based on the principle that disasters are social constructions and focuses on social science disaster research. Attention is given to conceptual issues dealing with the concept "disaster" and to methodological issues relating to research on disasters, including Geographic Information Systems as a useful research tool andits implications for future research; how disaster research is increasingly being used in the emergency management curriculum; and how research is useful in dealing with emergency operations. The Handbook also includes a number of essays focusing on various types of vulnerabilities. In addition, there are discussions on community processes that are evoked by disasters, including warnings, search and rescue, coordination, and organizational adaptation, as well as, dealing with death and injury, and recovery, and the role of the media in disasters; special attention is given to emergency systems in several nation states. The Handbook also includes contributions focusing on the relationship between disaster and development, the popular culture of disasters, new dimensions of disaster research, as well as projections of disasters into the future. Disasters allow the opportunity for social scientists to study human behavior in which adaptation, resilience and innovation are often more clearly revealed than in “normal” and stable times. The Handbook of Disaster Research provides an interdisciplinary and international approach to disasters with theoretical, methodological, and practical applications.

For almost thirty years, sociologists have increasingly theorized about and conducted research on human emotions. Surprisingly, it was not until the 1970s that the sociology of emotions emerged as a coherent field of inquiry. What makes this late date surprising is that it is now obvious that human behavior, interaction, and organization are driven by emotions. It was an immense oversight for emotions to be de-emphasized in sociological theorizing and research for most of its 175 year history. Since the 1970s, however, the study of emotions has accelerated and is now at the forefront of sociological analysis. This book is designed to bring the reader up to date on the theory and research traditions that have proliferated in the analysis of human emotions. Key figures who have carried the sociology of emotions to its current level of prominence review their own work and the work of others who have made contributions to a particular approach to the study of emotions. The outcome is a comprehensive book that serves as a primer on the cutting edge of sociological work in what is obviously a key dynamic in human affairs. The first section of the book addresses the range of emotions and how they can be classified, the neurological underpinnings of emotions, and the effect of gender on emotions. The second section reviews the prominent sociological theories of emotions, including theories emphasizing power and status, rituals, identity and self, psychoanalytic dynamics, exchange, expectation states, and evolution.While there is little integration among these theories, this state of affairs will not last forever. The third section addresses theory and research on specific emotions such as love, jealousy and envy, empathy, sympathy, anger, grief, and the moral emotions. While this list does not exhaust the range of human feeling, they are central emotions that drive human behavior, interaction, and social organization. The last section explores how the study of emotions has added new insight into other subfields within sociology such as the study of the workplace, health, and social movements. These chapters illustrate how the sociology of emotions can provide new research and theory for the large numbers of specialties within sociology.Although no book can completely cover a field, even a relatively new one like the sociology of emotions, this Handbook of the Sociology of Emotions comes close to being comprehensive. The reader will come away with a greater appreciation for how far the sociology of emotions has developed and prospered over the last thirty years.

Creating a Frame for Understanding Local Organizations RAM CNAAN, CARL MILOFSKY, AND ALBERT HUNTER In this book, scholars from anumber of disciplines present work focused on communities, with particular attention to community organizations. A few scholars have emphasized the imp- tance of the need to map this intellectual territory (Calhoun, 1992). In some ways community study seems to be well trodden ground; there has been influential work on social capital, for example (Coleman, 1987,1988; Putnam, 1995; Foley and Edwards, 1997; Edwards and Foley, 1998). Yet the rich diversity of communities and community organizations has rarely been studied from a perspective that is both conceptual and descriptive. The growing sense that - studied local organizations constitute a massive yet little understood portion of the nonprofit cosmos has led Smith (1997a,b) to call them the "darkmatter of the nonprofit universe. " An - terdisciplinary attempt to make community a unit ofstudy has not been previously undertaken, and thus we feel that this Handbook makes a unique contribution to scholarly understanding ofboth communities and nonprofit organizations that operate at the community level. A community is a group of people connected by the physical or virtual location (to some extent we can speak of "places" on the World Wide Web, e. g. ) in which they dwell or congregate, organizations they form, and cultural values and symbols they share. Communities are affected, and in a sense defined by, forces that affect community members and their space.

The study of racial and ethnic relations has become one of the most studied aspects in sociology and sociological research. In both North America and Europe, many “traditional” cultures are feeling threatened by immigrants from Latin America, Africa and Asia.Sociology is at the hub of the human sciences concerned with racial and ethnic relations. Since this discipline is made of multiple paradigms and methodological orientations it has been able to make relevant contributions to disciplines ranging from individual psychology, social psychology, and psychiatry, to economics, anthropology, linguistics, cultural studies, health care delivery and education.

Human beings necessarily understand their social worlds in moral terms, orienting their lives, relationships, and activities around socially-produced notions of right and wrong. Morality is sociologically understood as more than simply helping or harming others; it encompasses any way that individuals form understandings of what behaviors are better than others, what goals are most laudable, and what "proper" people believe, feel, and do. Morality involves the explicit and implicit sets of rules and shared understandings that keep human social groups intact. Morality includes both the "shoulds" and "should nots" of human activity, its proactive and inhibitive elements.At one time, sociologists were centrally concerned with morality, issues like social cohesion, values, the goals and norms that structure society, and the ways individuals get socialized to reproduce those concerns. In the last half-century, however, explicit interest in these topics has waned, and modern sociology has become uninterested in these matters and morality has become marginalized within the discipline. But a resurgence in the topic is happening in related disciplines – psychology, neurology, philosophy, and anthropology - and in the wider national discourse. Sociology has much to offer, but is not fully engaged in this conversation. Many scholars work on areas that would fall under the umbrella of a sociology of morality but do not self-identify in such a manner, nor orient their efforts toward conceptualizing what we know, and should know, along these dimensions.The Handbook of the Sociology of Morality fills a niche within sociology making explicit the shared concerns of scholars across the disciplines as they relate to an often-overlooked dimension of human social life. It is unique in social science as it would be the first systematic compilation of the wider social structural, cultural, cross-national, organizational, and interactional dimension of human moral (understood broadly) thought, feeling, and behavior.

Human beings necessarily understand their social worlds in moral terms, orienting their lives, relationships, and activities around socially-produced notions of right and wrong. Morality is sociologically understood as more than simply helping or harming others; it encompasses any way that individuals form understandings of what behaviors are better than others, what goals are most laudable, and what "proper" people believe, feel, and do. Morality involves the explicit and implicit sets of rules and shared understandings that keep human social groups intact. Morality includes both the "shoulds" and "should nots" of human activity, its proactive and inhibitive elements.At one time, sociologists were centrally concerned with morality, issues like social cohesion, values, the goals and norms that structure society, and the ways individuals get socialized to reproduce those concerns. In the last half-century, however, explicit interest in these topics has waned, and modern sociology has become uninterested in these matters and morality has become marginalized within the discipline. But a resurgence in the topic is happening in related disciplines – psychology, neurology, philosophy, and anthropology - and in the wider national discourse. Sociology has much to offer, but is not fully engaged in this conversation. Many scholars work on areas that would fall under the umbrella of a sociology of morality but do not self-identify in such a manner, nor orient their efforts toward conceptualizing what we know, and should know, along these dimensions.The Handbook of the Sociology of Morality fills a niche within sociology making explicit the shared concerns of scholars across the disciplines as they relate to an often-overlooked dimension of human social life. It is unique in social science as it would be the first systematic compilation of the wider social structural, cultural, cross-national, organizational, and interactional dimension of human moral (understood broadly) thought, feeling, and behavior.

The Handbook of the Sociology of Health, Illness & Healing advances the understanding of medical sociology by identifying the most important contemporary challenges to the field and suggesting directions for future inquiry. The editors provide a blueprint for guiding research and teaching agendas for the first quarter of the 21st century. In a series of essays, this volume offers a systematic view of the critical questions that face our understanding of the role of social forces in health, illness and healing. It also provides an overall theoretical framework and asks medical sociologists to consider the implications of taking on new directions and approaches. Such issues may include the importance of multiple levels of influences, the utility of dynamic, life course approaches, the role of culture, the impact of social networks, the importance of fundamental causes approaches, and the influences of state structures and policy making.

The Handbook of the Sociology of Health, Illness & Healing advances the understanding of medical sociology by identifying the most important contemporary challenges to the field and suggesting directions for future inquiry. The editors provide a blueprint for guiding research and teaching agendas for the first quarter of the 21st century. In a series of essays, this volume offers a systematic view of the critical questions that face our understanding of the role of social forces in health, illness and healing. It also provides an overall theoretical framework and asks medical sociologists to consider the implications of taking on new directions and approaches. Such issues may include the importance of multiple levels of influences, the utility of dynamic, life course approaches, the role of culture, the impact of social networks, the importance of fundamental causes approaches, and the influences of state structures and policy making.

The Handbook of Sociology of Aging is the most comprehensive, engaging, and up-to-date treatment of developments within the field over the past 30 years. The volume represents an indispensable source of the freshest and highest standard scholarship for scholars, policy makers, and aging professionals alike. The Handbook of Sociology of Aging contains 45 far-reaching chapters, authored by nearly 80 of the most renowned experts, on the most pressing topics related to aging today. With its recurring attention to the social forces that shape human aging, and the social consequences and policy implications of it, the contents will be of interest to everyone who cares about what aging means for individuals, families, and societies. The chapters of the Handbook of Sociology of Aging illustrate the field’s extraordinary breadth and depth, which has never before been represented in a single volume. Its contributions address topics that range from foundational matters, such as classic and contemporary theories and methods, to topics of longstanding and emergent interest, such as social diversity and inequalities, social relationships, social institutions, economies and governments, social vulnerabilities, public health, and care arrangements. The volume closes with a set of personal essays by senior scholars who share their experiences and hopes for the field, and an essay by the editors that provides a roadmap for the decade ahead. The Handbook of Sociology of Aging showcases the very best that sociology has to offer the study of human aging.

Political sociology is the interdisciplinary study of power and the intersection of personality, society and politics. The field also examines how the political process is affected by major social trends as well as exploring how social policies are altered by various social forces.Political sociologists increasingly use a wide variety of relatively new quantitative and qualitative methodologies and incorporate theories and research from other social science cognate disciplines. The contributors focus on the current controversies and disagreements surrounding the use of different methodologies for the study of politics and society, and discussions of specific applications found in the widely scattered literature where substantive research in the field is published. This approach will solidly place the handbook in a market niche that is not occupied by the current volumes while also covering many of the same theoretical and historical developments that the other volumes cover.The purpose of this handbook is to summarize state-of-the-art theory, research, and methods used in the study of politics and society. This area of research encompasses a wide variety of perspectives and methods that span social science disciplines. The handbook is designed to reflect that diversity in content, method and focus. In addition, it will cover developments in the developed and underdeveloped worlds.

The Handbook of Sociology of Aging is the most comprehensive, engaging, and up-to-date treatment of developments within the field over the past 30 years. The volume represents an indispensable source of the freshest and highest standard scholarship for scholars, policy makers, and aging professionals alike. The Handbook of Sociology of Aging contains 45 far-reaching chapters, authored by nearly 80 of the most renowned experts, on the most pressing topics related to aging today. With its recurring attention to the social forces that shape human aging, and the social consequences and policy implications of it, the contents will be of interest to everyone who cares about what aging means for individuals, families, and societies. The chapters of the Handbook of Sociology of Aging illustrate the field’s extraordinary breadth and depth, which has never before been represented in a single volume. Its contributions address topics that range from foundational matters, such as classic and contemporary theories and methods, to topics of longstanding and emergent interest, such as social diversity and inequalities, social relationships, social institutions, economies and governments, social vulnerabilities, public health, and care arrangements. The volume closes with a set of personal essays by senior scholars who share their experiences and hopes for the field, and an essay by the editors that provides a roadmap for the decade ahead. The Handbook of Sociology of Aging showcases the very best that sociology has to offer the study of human aging.

For almost thirty years, sociologists have increasingly theorized about and conducted research on human emotions. Surprisingly, it was not until the 1970s that the sociology of emotions emerged as a coherent field of inquiry. What makes this late date surprising is that it is now obvious that human behavior, interaction, and organization are driven by emotions. It was an immense oversight for emotions to be de-emphasized in sociological theorizing and research for most of its 175 year history. Since the 1970s, however, the study of emotions has accelerated and is now at the forefront of sociological analysis. This book is designed to bring the reader up to date on the theory and research traditions that have proliferated in the analysis of human emotions. Key figures who have carried the sociology of emotions to its current level of prominence review their own work and the work of others who have made contributions to a particular approach to the study of emotions. The outcome is a comprehensive book that serves as a primer on the cutting edge of sociological work in what is obviously a key dynamic in human affairs. The first section of the book addresses the range of emotions and how they can be classified, the neurological underpinnings of emotions, and the effect of gender on emotions. The second section reviews the prominent sociological theories of emotions, including theories emphasizing power and status, rituals, identity and self, psychoanalytic dynamics, exchange, expectation states, and evolution.While there is little integration among these theories, this state of affairs will not last forever. The third section addresses theory and research on specific emotions such as love, jealousy and envy, empathy, sympathy, anger, grief, and the moral emotions. While this list does not exhaust the range of human feeling, they are central emotions that drive human behavior, interaction, and social organization. The last section explores howthe study of emotions has added new insight into other subfields within sociology such as the study of the workplace, health, and social movements. These chapters illustrate how the sociology of emotions can provide new research and theory for the large numbers of specialties within sociology.Although no book can completely cover a field, even a relatively new one like the sociology of emotions, this Handbook of the Sociology of Emotions comes close to being comprehensive. The reader will come away with a greater appreciation for how far the sociology of emotions has developed and prospered over the last thirty years.