About this Book
Rothschild’s Introduction to Sociology was adapted by Dr. Teal Rothschild from the OpenStax College textbook, Introduction to Sociology 2e, which is licensed under a CC-BY license. The original textbook for OpenStax can be found here: https://openstax.org/details/books/introduction-sociology-2e
My name is Teal Rothschild and I am a Professor of Sociology in the Anthropology+Sociology Department at Roger Williams University. I have taught sociology for over twenty years, nineteen of which have been at Roger. I love teaching and am constantly rethinking how best to deliver and emphasize material in sociology. Online Education Resources (OER) has allowed me to modify a very good textbook to fit the needs of our particular class. I am grateful for the foundation of the original OER Open Stax Introduction to Sociology textbook. I think this modified textbook will make our class even more dynamic.
This is a living document that will be updated organically as new, appropriate content surfaces. There have been several modifications to this book. Modifications from the original textbook include substantial changes in Chapters 1, 2 and 9. In Chapter 1, the background on philosophers and theorists that contributed to the earlier development of social sciences has been omitted. There is also an addition of more detail on the concept of sociological imagination, the role of individuals, groups, and institutions in sociology, and the purposes of the theoretical frames. Chapter 2 changes include adding Content Analysis and Comparative Historical Analysis as substantial methods in sociology and deleting all material relevant to Experimentalism in sociology. There are also some minimal changes in Chapters 4 and 5 in terms of limiting the amount of psychological background in each chapter. In Chapter 9, the sections outlining the history of particular racial and ethnic groups in the United States have been removed. Information on the present United States racial classification system and the contributions on W.E.B. DuBois is this research area have been added. Moments of repetition throughout all of the chapters were omitted for the sake of clarity. I have changed the order of the chapters and removed three original chapters outright. The chapters from the original which I removed are the following: Chapter 7: Deviance, Crime, and Social Control, Chapter 13: Aging and Elderly, and Chapter 19: Health and Medicine.
I have taken out the Quizzes and added relevant videos, included a few interactive Multiple Choice questions at the end of each chapter using H5P, the glossary at the end of each chapter has been replaced with a collective one at the end of the text, and more in-depth discussion on theoretical frames in each aspect of studying sociology has been added. Additionally, I will continue to make changes and add reminders to the text if as a class it is clear we need to ‘speed up’ or ‘revisit’ previous material.
