Power and Everyday Practices, Second Edition - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1487588224 ISBN 13: 9781487588229

Publisher: University of Toronto Press, 2019

Synopsis

This unique and innovative text provides undergraduate students with tools to think sociologically through the lens of everyday life. Normative social organization and taken-for-granted beliefs and actions are exposed as key mechanisms of power and social inequality in Western societies today. By "unpacking the centre" students are encouraged to turn their social worlds inside out and explore alternatives to the dominant social order.

The second edition is divided into three parts. Part one teaches students how to use theory and methodology, which are blended seamlessly throughout the text. It shows how to position Michel Foucault and Karl Marx as companions to theorists such as Stuart Hall, while signalling the importance of non-Western and Indigenous knowledges, experiences, and rights. In part two, students explore—and challenge—normativity in relation to the body, gender and sexuality, race and ethnicity, class, aging, and citizenship. In part three, chapters critique everyday practices such as thinking scientifically, practising self-help, going shopping, managing money, buying coffee, talking about Indigeneity, and travelling as a tourist.

Each chapter includes thought-provoking exercises, study questions, and key terms that link to the volume’s comprehensive glossary. Instructors are provided PowerPoint slides, a test bank, and a list of online resources that make the book adaptable to online and blended learning environments.

About this title

About the Author

Deborah Brock is an associate professor in the Department of Sociology at York University.
Aryn Martin is an associate professor in the Department of Sociology at York University.
Rebecca Raby is a professor in the Department of Child and Youth Studies at Brock University.
Mark P. Thomas is an associate professor in the Department of Sociology at York University.

Review

"The second edition of Power and Everyday Practices is a crucial addition to writing on everyday life and social power in the best tradition of C. Wright Mills’s The Sociological Imagination. It provides crucial tools for developing critical thinking skills and for reversing the gaze so that we centre our critical analysis not on the oppressed as social problems but instead on the social organization of power in the centre, including normality, whiteness, settler colonialism, heterosexuality, and more. This book covers diverse terrains of struggle and is a crucial text not only for students in the classroom but also for activists in their communities."

(Gary Kinsman, author of The Regulation of Desire, co-author of The Canadian War on Queers, and professor emeritus, Department of Sociology, Laurentian University)

"This book makes evident the value of the sociological imagination in a world that is both banal and tumultuous. Power and Everyday Practices is an exceptionally coherent, engaging collection that invites students to take up key conceptual tools for making sense of and intervening in the power relations that shape their identities and their experiences. It offers a sociology that is not just about but for everyday life."

(Mary Louise Adams, Department of Sociology, Queen’s University)

Edition details

• Publisher: University of Toronto Press
• Publication date: 2019
• ISBN 10: 1487588224
• ISBN 13: 9781487588229
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Edition number: 2
• Number of pages: 464
• Editor: Brock Deborah, Martin Aryn, Raby Rebecca, Thomas Mark