Understanding Society through Popular Music

Written for Introductory Sociology and Sociology of Popular Music courses, this book uses popular music to illustrate fundamental social institutions, theories, sociological concepts, and processes. The authors use music, a social phenomenon of great interest, to draw students in and bring life to their study of social life.

Joseph A. Kotarba, Ph.D., is Professor of Sociology at Texas State University and a faculty member at the Institute for Translational Sciences at the University of Texas Medical Branch, Galveston. His major areas of scholarly interest are culture, science, health and illness, deviance, everyday life social theory, and qualitative methods.