Review of Giddens' "Essentials of Sociology" chapters one through three

Sociology Chapter Review

This report covers the first three chapters of the "Essentials of Sociology" text by Giddens. The first chapter covers general sociological theory and methods. The second chapter covers culture and society. The third chapter covers socialization, life course and aging. A summary and analysis of each chapter will be given.

As noted in the introduction, the first chapter is a high-level view of the prominent theory and methods associated with sociology. The chapter sort of rips through the different theories and methods quite quickly and perhaps exposes the typecasting and ideal-type nature of sociology. This is perhaps not a rip on this book and particular and probably more on the field of sociology in general. However, many to most situations are entire too complex and complicated to boil down into sociological theories and assigning to such theories that have a lot of different moving parts is perhaps a foolish endeavor unless one keeps in mind that sociological theory, as much as it may apply to a culture, a person or a situation, is never the whole story and it should never be construed as such (Giddens, 2011).

Also, when looking at the textbook listing on Amazon, one of the reviewers notes that the book is perhaps a little too high-level to be an introductory book. While more advanced students might not feel that way, the author of this response would tend to agree with that line of thought. The complexity and advanced nature of this book should probably be dialed back a bit as it is a simple fact that most college freshmen, a huge part of the people that would be taking a class with this book as its textbook, would probably be in over their head with this material. That being said, the descriptions and summaries in this first chapter are actually quite good for someone with the acuity and prior knowledge to perceive it and it would be a great chapter for a second- or third-level sociological course (Giddens, 2011).

Chapter Two

Chapter two is a bit of continuation of the first in that the progression through the material is fairly abrupt and scattering and is perhaps not best for a book that is clearly meant to be introductory in nature. This would be something that could be pulled off at a higher-end college but community colleges and online colleges, where the students are typically not nearly as strong, should probably not be using a book of this caliber (Giddens, 2011).

Even so, the interweaving of what culture is and how it defines and shapes the overall society of a city, state or nation leaps off the page and is a very good read for an adept student. Again, the ideals and ideas in this chapter, just like the first chapter, are a little too simplistic but the concepts are common-sense and very proper nonetheless. Perhaps left unstated is the idea that this text is useful to define a large part of what makes society and life happen as it does but there are several other variables that are hard to quantify and illuminate to the degree required to get full understanding. After all, sometimes one just has to live through something to truly wrap their head around it (Giddens, 2011).

Also missing from this chapter is the fact that some people are clearly fixated and focused on culture while others treat it very casually or nonchalantly if they even acknowledge it at all. At least, that is a perception of the author of this response. Yet another thing not mentioned is that a lot of the cultural trends and perspectives in society today are seemingly devoid of logic and proper thought patterns. This is not hubris or the idea that the author of this response is any "better" than that of Giddens. However, sociology texts and summaries seem to leave out the idea that some actions, thought patterns and mindsets that are cultural and/or societal in nature make little to no logical or basic sense in the grand scheme of things. However, perhaps a covering of that dynamic would be too prone to bias and what not for a textbook like this (Giddens, 2011).

Conclusion

All in all, the text being reviewed in part in this report is quite good but it's scaled a little higher than it should be given the likely audience that the book would or should have. This is not to say the book is bad because that is certainly not the case. However, between the lack of proper modern context as well as how this book is a tad too advanced, it should probably be scaled down a bit with a better explanation of the topics involved and how they can be easily applied to society through the use of examples and more focus on explanation rather than just skipping to the next topic (Giddens, 2011).