Fully revised and updated, the fourth edition of Social Sciences: The Big Issues explores key debates about how we live our personal, domestic and emotional lives at a time of enormous, previously unimaginable change and disruption, including a pandemic that locked down households and economies.
Since the third edition, everyone’s life has changed. The pandemic – at least temporarily – stopped social life as we knew it and virtually forced governments to close down their economies. This is where this edition of The Big Issues starts. Staying at home posed a radical departure from routine life, but reactions to Covid-19 have exposed the endurance of particular social relations – especially inequalities – which characterize societies worldwide.
A few of the new big issues covered in this edition include:
- Changing selves and personal lives in light of racism and sexual and identity politics in a pandemic
- Changing patterns of consumption in relation to market production and what it means for climate change
- Changing intersections of citizenship, migration and globalization in the context of the virus crossing borders, and both the opportunities and sources of inequality involved
- Changing ideas about power, politics and populism in the aftermath of Brexit
Building on the strong foundation of this well-loved text, this fully revised fourth edition explores how big issues and social forces intersect to create both change and evidence of continuity, especially of social inequalities. It provides a clear, accessible introduction to the ideas and approaches of the social sciences across a range of disciplines, including sociology, psychology and politics.
1. Introduction
2. Identity matters
3. Political action, citizenship and social order
4. Markets: buying and selling
5. Mobilities and inequalities: place and race
6. A globalized planet: opportunities and inequalities
7. Conclusion
Biography
Kath Woodward, FAcSS, FLSW, is Emeritus Professor of Sociology at the Open University, Milton Keynes, UK. Her research is in social inequalities, embodied selves and body practices, and critical feminist theory, especially as evidenced in the field of sport, in particular boxing, football and the Olympics. Recent publications include Birth and Death: Experience, Ethics, Politics with Sophie Woodward (2020), Psychosocial Studies: An Introduction (2014), The Politics of In/Visibility (2015), Planet Sport (2012) and Sporting Times (2012). She has taught at all levels and chaired a number of sociology and social sciences courses at postgraduate and undergraduate levels, including the very popular OU level 1 ‘Introducing Social Sciences’ modules, having contributed to the most recent version presented in 2020.
