Sociology, Social Work, and Social Welfare
VISION: The Sociology, Social Work, and Social Welfare Division supports a vision of a just society.
MISSION: Our division fosters the interdisciplinary connection between sociology and social work - praxis. We promote theory-informed, applied scholarship on social institutions, and processes. Our mission is to aid understanding, and also to speed remedy of inequality, exclusion, and oppression through research-based policy and practice interventions.
Division mission statement updated in August 2024 by Erica Jablonski, University of New Hampshire, Sociology and Social Welfare Division Chair, 2024-2026 and Miriam J. Landsman, The University of Iowa, Sociology and Social Welfare Division Chair, 2024-2026; reviewed in November 2023 by William D. Cabin, New York University Silver School of Social Work, Sociology and Social Welfare Division Chair, 2022-2024 and Tracy L. Peressini, Renison University College at the University of Waterloo, Sociology and Social Welfare Divison Co-Chair, 2023-2025. Division mission statement reviewed in November 2022 by William D. Cabin, New York University Silver School of Social Work, Sociology and Social Welfare Division Chair, 2022-2024 and Greer Ayanna Hamilton, Boston University, Sociology and Social Welfare Division Co-Chair, 2021-2023. No edits were made. Division mission statement edited in January 2020 by Ethan J. Evans, California State University, Sociology and Social Welfare Division Chair, 2019-2021.
Some Readings:
Alinsky, Saul (1969). Rules for Radicals. Vintage Press.
Arendt, H. (1958). The Human Condition. University of Chicago Press.
Avakian, Bob. (2016). The New Communism: The science, the strategy, the leadership for an actual revolution, and a radically new society on the road to real emancipation. Insight Press.
Becker, Howard S. (1976). Sociological Work: Method and Substance. Transaction Publishers.
Bellah, R.N., Madsen, R., Sullivan, W.M., Swindler, A. and S. M. Tipton (1992). The Good Society. Random House.
Berger, P.L. and T. Luckmann (1967). The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge. Anchor Press.
Blau, P. and O.D. Duncan. (1978). The American Occupational Structure. Free Press.
Blumer, H. (1986). Symbolic Interactionism: Perspective and Method. University of California Press.
Bourdieu, P. (1977). Outline of a Theory of Practice. Cambridge University Press.
Coleman, James S. (1998). Foundations of Social Theory. Harvard University Press.
Corning, P. (2011). The Fair Society: And the pursuit of social justice. University of Chicago Press.
Dahrendorf, R. (1979). Life Chances. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Dolgoff, R. (2008). Understanding Social Welfare: A Search for Social Justice. Allyn & Bacon Publishers.
Dum, Christopher P. (2017). Exiled in America: Life on the Margins in a Residential Hotel. Columbia University Press
Durkheim, E. (1982). Rules of Sociological Method. Free Press.
Garfinkle, H. (1991). Studies in Ethnomethodology. Polity Press
Giddens, Anthony (1986). The Constitution of Society: Outline of the Theory of Structuration. University of California Press.
Habermas, J. (1985). The Theory of communicative Action, Volume 1: Reason and the Rationalization of Society. Beacon Press.
Hills, J., Le Grand, J. andD. Piachaud. (2002). Understanding Social Exclusion. Oxford University Press.
Kocka, Jürgen. (2016). Capitalism: A Short History. (English translation). Princeton University Press.
Kuhn, Thomas S. (1996). The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. University of Chicago Press.
Lin, Nan (2002). Social Capital: A Theory of Social Structure and Action (Structural Analysis in the Social Sciences). Cambridge University Press.
Marcuse, H. (1991). One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Industrial Society. Beacon Press.
Mazelis, Joan Maya. (2017). Surviving Poverty: Creating Sustainable Ties among the Poor. NYU Press.
Merton, Robert K. (1968). Social Theory and Social Structure. Free Press.
Mills. C. Wright (2000). The Sociological Imagination. Oxford University Press.
Parsons, T. (1967). The Structure of Social Action. Free Press.
Piven, F.F. and R.A. Cloward (1979). Poor People’s Movements: Why they succeed, how they fail. Random House.
Popple, Philip R. (2018). Social Work Practice and Social Welfare Policy in the United States: A History. Oxford University Press.
Schram, Sanford (2002). Praxis for the Poor: Piven and Cloward and the Future of Social Science in Social Welfare. NYU Press.
Wacquant, L. (2008). Urban Outcasts: A Comparative Sociology of Advanced Marginality. Polity Press.
Watkins-Hayes, C. (2009). The New Welfare Bureaucrats: Entanglements of Race, Class and Policy Reform. University of Chicago Press.
Weber, Max. (2011). Methodology of Social Sciences. Transaction Publishers.
