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Common knowledge is necessary for coordination, for making arbitrary but complementary choices like driving on the right, using paper currency, and coalescing behind a political leader or movement. It’s also necessary for social coordination: everything from rendezvousing at a time and place to speaking the same language to forming enduring relationships of friendship, romance, or authority. Humans have a sixth sense for common knowledge, and we...

Delve into the question of why evidence-based educational policymaking has become a global phenomenon by looking at the way data is used to shape what teachers and students do in the classroom. See how governing bodies can bureaucratize the ways data is collected, presented, and interpreted—or manipulated..

The U.S. and other countries may not be able to replicate Finland’s educational system, but they can level the playing field by making adjustments that contribute to equality in policies, curricula, and pedagogy. Focus on gender-based equity, looking at areas where real progress is being made as well as institutionalized gender inequalities masked by egalitarian values..

Dating back to Sputnik in the 1950s, education culture has been driven by anxiety. Learn about the history of “crisis” in U.S. education before investigating how America’s educational system compares with schools and students in other countries. Focus on TIMSS in particular, which tracks mathematics and science achievement in about 70 countries..

The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalismis a seminal exploration of the relationship between religious beliefs and economic behavior within the framework of Western society. Max Weber examines how Protestant, particularly Calvinist, values contributed to the development of modern capitalism by fostering a spirit of disciplined labor, frugality, and rational organization. Through his analysis, Weber critiques the assumption that capitalism...

David Stark is the Arthur Lehman Professor of Sociology and International Affairs at Columbia University, where he chairs the Department of Sociology and directs the Center on Organizational Innovation. He is the coauthor of Postsocialist Pathways. What counts? In work, as in other areas of life, it is not always clear what standards we are being judged by or how our worth is being determined. This can be disorienting and disconcerting. Because...

The most popularly read, adapted, anthologized, and incorporated primer on sociology ever written for modern readers   Acclaimed scholar and sociologist Peter L. Berger lays the groundwork for a clear understanding of sociology in his straightforward introduction to the field, much loved by students, professors, and general readers. Berger aligns sociology in the humanist tradition-revealing its relationship to the humanities and philosophy-and establishes...

"It is of the very definition of any "classic" work that it not only introduce a new depth and direction of thought, but that its original insights endure. Such is the case with Herbert Marcuse's Reason and Revolution. When this study first appeared in 1940, it was acclaimed for its profound and undistorted reading of Hegel's social and political theory. As its many editions bear witness, especially this one hundredth anniversary edition commemorating...

"Imagine an airport filled with strangers waiting in peace. Fill that airport with chimpanzees instead of humans, however, and panic is certain, carnage likely. How do we humans coexist harmoniously with people we don't know? Anthropologists puzzling over such questions have long turned to chimpanzees for answers. In [this book], biologist Mark W. Moffett goes somewhere surprising: to the ant. In an ant socieity, every individiual is a stranger:...

This second volume of Niklas Luhmann's two-part final work was first published in German in 1997. The culmination of his thirty-year theoretical project to reconceptualize sociology, it offers a comprehensive description of modern society. Beginning with an account of the fluidity of meaning and the accordingly high improbability of successful communication, Luhmann analyzes a range of communicative media, including language, writing, the printing...