Surrounding all major cities in the United States are numerous smaller communities collectively known as suburbia. The most popular place of residence in America, the suburbs are peaceful and tranquil environments, where civility prevails and disturbances of the peace are uncommon. Drawing on research, observation, and hundreds of in-depth interviews conducted during a twelve-month study of an affluent New York City suburb, M.P. Baumgartner reveals that the apparent serenity of the suburb is caused by the avoidance of open conflict. She contends that although nonviolence, nonconfrontation, and tolerance produce a superficial social harmony, these behaviors arise from disintegrative tendencies in modern culture--transience, fragmentation, weak family and communal ties, isolation, and indifference--conditions customarily viewed as sources of disorder, antagonism, and violence. A kind of moral minimalism pervades the suburbs, a disorganized social order that, with the suburbs' rapid growth in America, promises to be the moral order of the future. A valuable contribution to the literature on social control, this study of conflict management should attract general readers and scholars alike.

This new edition of The Social Organization of Law uses the five-part organization of the First Edition--social stratification, social morphology, culture, organization, and other social control--in presenting a brand new set of readings. These readings represent the great variety of work done in the sociology of law, a field dedicated to the study of the influence of social factors on legal behavior pioneered by Donald Black. Some of the readings look at the operation of the justice systems others at various stages of the legal process. Only two had appeared in print when the First Edition of The Sociology of Law was published, and neither was included in it. This Second Edition, published 25 years after the First, thus testifies to the recently created wealth of ideas while introducing a new generation to the concepts that have already proved so fruitful.
Key Features
* Presents all new essays while retaining the organizational structure of the First Edition
* Illustrates new advances in jurisprudential, moral, and practical applications of legal sociology
* Covers the contemporary U.S. as well as other countries and historical periods
* Embraces a wide variety of research methods and strategies