Introduction to Sociology

Deborah Carr is professor of sociology at Boston University. Her research interests include aging and the life course, psychosocial influences on health over the life course, and end-of-life issues. She teaches courses on research methods, medical sociology, aging and the life course, social psychology, social demography, sociology of the family, death and dying, and gender. Professor Carr is currently the editor in chief of Journal of Gerontology: Social Sciences and also serves as chair of the Board of Overseers of the General Social Survey and co-investigator on the Midlife Development in the United States and Wisconsin Longitudinal Study. She also writes a monthly blog, "Bouncing Back," for Psychology Today

Anthony Giddens, the former director of the London School of Economics and a current member of the House of Lords, is a world-renowned social theorist who has written over forty books. He has written on just about every major topic in sociology, but is best known for his work on modernization theory and globalization.


Mitchell Duneier is an award-winning urban ethnographer at Princeton University and the City University of New York Graduate Center. He is most famous for his book Sidewalk, which won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. Duneier's research focuses on the urban poor and other groups at the margins of society. His latest book, Ghetto: The Invention of a Place, the History of an Idea, traces the changing meaning of the ghetto and was named one of the best books of 2016 by the New York Times

Richard P. Appelbaum, Distinguished Research Professor and former MacArthur Chair, Global and International Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara, has won several awards for his teaching and works mainly on globalization and labor issues. Appelbaum is the coauthor of Behind the Label and coeditor of Critical Globalization Studies and Achieving Workers' Rights in the Global Economy