Studying Society Today
Chapter 1  Key Themes

The chapter also introduces some key themes prominent in sociology today, which underpin and inform the structure, rationale and substance of the rest of the book and which are explored more fully in subsequent chapters.

• The reader is introduced to the problems of living in a modern society. We establish that sociology, from its very beginnings, was both a product of, and centrally concerned with, understanding the social, economic, political and intellectual changes brought about by the transition to modernity. Part of this modernist project was to produce a 'rational' account of social formations and processes. The development of modernity is dealt with more fully in Chapter 2 'Living in Modernity'. An example of the impact of the idea of modernity on an area of social life will be found in Chapter 11 'Work and Non-work'.
  
• The chapter also introduces, through a consideration of tourism, the idea that globalisation is an important social process that has had a profound impact on societies, nation-states and our everyday lives and identities. The context of a global politics, economy and culture is explored in detail in Chapter 3 'Globalisation and Identity'. Its impact in a specific area of social life is examined, for example, in Chapter 12 'Mass Media'.
  
• The result of increasing uncertainty in globalising societies is that sociologists have become involved in re-evaluating the ways in which they have traditionally analysed and explained societies, social arrangements and social processes. They are engaged in debates about whether we have now gone beyond modernity into postmodernity. This theme is explored throughout the substantive chapters of the text - for example, in Chapter 9 'Family Life'. It is also dealt with theoretically in Chapter 19 'Modernity, Postmodernity and Social Theory'.