In the age of Trump, our society is defined by fear. Indeed, three out of four Americans say they feel more fearful today than they did only a couple decades ago. But are we living in exceptionally perilous times? In his bestselling book The Culture of Fear, sociologist Barry Glassner demonstrates that it is our perception of danger that has increased, not the actual level of risk. Glassner exposes the people and organizations that manipulate our perceptions and profit from our fears: politicians who win elections by heightening concerns about crime and drug use even as rates for both are declining; advocacy groups that raise money by exaggerating the prevalence of particular diseases; TV shows that create a new scare every week to garner ratings. Glassner spells out the prices we pay for social panics: the huge sums of money that go to waste on unnecessary programs and products as well as time and energy spent worrying about our fears. All the while, we are distracted from the true threats, from climate change to worsening inequality. In this updated edition of a modern classic, Glassner examines the current panics over vaccination and "political correctness" and reveals why Donald Trump's fearmongering is so dangerously effective.

For many Americans, eating is a religion. We worship at the temples of celebrity chefs. We raise our children to believe that certain foods are good and others are bad. We believe that if we eat the right foods, we will live longer, and if we eat in the right places, we will raise our social status. Yet what we believe to be true about food is, in fact, quite contradictory.

Part expose, part social commentary, The Gospel of Food is a rallying cry to abandon the fads and fallacies in favor of calmer, more pleasurable eating. By interviewing chefs, food chemists, nutritionists, and restaurant critics about the way we eat, sociologist Barry Glassner helps us recognize the myths, half-truths, and guilt trips they promulgate, and liberates us for greater joy at the table.

What motivates a lifelong scholarly pursuit, and how do one's studies inform life outside the academy? Sociologists, who live in families but also study families, who go to work but also study work, who participate in communities but also try to understand communities, have an especially intimate relation to their research. Growing up poor, struggling as a woman in a male-dominated profession, participating in protests against the Vietnam War; facts of life influence research agendas, individual understandings of the world, and ultimately the shape of the discipline as a whole.^NL Barry Glassner and Rosanna Hertz asked twenty-two of America's most prominent sociologists to reflect upon how their personal lives influenced their research, and vice versa, how their research has influenced their lives. In this volume, the authors reveal with candor and discernment how world events, political commitments and unanticipated constraints influenced the course of their careers. They disclose how race, class, and gender proved to be pivotal elements in the course of their individual lives, and in how they carry out their research. Faced with academic institutions that did not hire or promote persons of their gender, race, sexual orientation, or physical disability, they invented new routes to success within their fields. Faced with disappointments in political organizations to which they were devoted, they found ways to integrate their disillusionment into their research agendas. While some of the contributors radically changed their political commitments, and others saw more stability, none stood still.^NL An intimate look at biography and craft, these snapshots provide a fascinating glimpse of the sociological life for colleagues, other academics, and aspiring young sociologists. The collection demonstrates how inequalities and injustices can be made into motors for scholarly research, which in turn have the power to change individual life courses and entire societies.

How can a person draw on her or his sociological knowledge in everyday life? This insightful new volume collects essays from some of the most renowned sociologists working today. They examine the ways that sociological understanding helps them with their daily experiences. Each contributor works in the qualitative tradition, and the essays cast light on how their observations of everyday life can affect research agendas and vice versa. These essays reflect the desire to understand experiences in a broader context rather than as random and isolated events and how the qualitative approach can achieve that end. Within this collection, editors Barry Glassner and Rosanna Hertz have brought together some of the most distinguished luminaries in the discipline. Many have chosen topics about which they haven't written before, and the essays place the authors sometimes in the roles of insiders, sometimes in the roles of outsiders-occasionally both. Organized around the notion of place-public places, family spaces, interior spaces, and workplaces-the essays touch on the major subdisciplines within sociology. Personal, engaging, and always thought-provoking, Qualitative Sociology as Everyday Life will be of great interest to sociologists and their students, and to qualitative researchers across disciplines.

How can a person draw on her or his sociological knowledge in everyday life? This insightful new volume collects essays from some of the most renowned sociologists working today. They examine the ways that sociological understanding helps them with their daily experiences. Each contributor works in the qualitative tradition, and the essays cast light on how their observations of everyday life can affect research agendas and vice versa. These essays reflect the desire to understand experiences in a broader context rather than as random and isolated events and how the qualitative approach can achieve that end. Within this collection, editors Barry Glassner and Rosanna Hertz have brought together some of the most distinguished luminaries in the discipline. Many have chosen topics about which they haven?t written before, and the essays place the authors sometimes in the roles of insiders, sometimes in the roles of outsiders?occasionally both. Organized around the notion of place?public places, family spaces, interior spaces, and workplaces?the essays touch on the major subdisciplines within sociology. Personal, engaging, and always thought-provoking, Qualitative Sociology as Everyday Life will be of great interest to sociologists and their students, and to qualitative researchers across disciplines.

The authors consider the nature of explanatory models in the social sciences in order to suggest ways in which conceptual systems differ. They suggest that, in many cases, theorists, researchers and clinicians can utilize insights from rival models in building their own models, without sacrificing the integrity of their own work.