Social Sciences

Although this open education resource (OER) is written with the needs and abilities of first-year undergraduate criminology students in mind, it is designed to be flexible. As a whole, the OER is amply broad to serve as the main textbook for an introductory course, yet each chapter is deep enough to be useful as a supplement for subject-area courses; authors use plain and accessible language as much as possible, but introduce more advanced, technical concepts where appropriate; the text gives due attention to the historical “canon” of mainstream criminological thought, but it also challenges many of these ideas by exploring alternative, critical, and marginalized perspectives. After all, criminology is more than just the study of crime and criminal law; it is an examination of the ways human societies construct, contest, and defend ideas about right and wrong, the meaning of justice, the purpose and power of laws, and the practical methods of responding to broken rules and of mending relationships. 

Introduction to Sociology 3e aligns to the topics and objectives of many introductory sociology courses. It is arranged in a manner that provides foundational sociological theories and contexts, then progresses through various aspects of human and societal interactions. The new edition is focused on driving meaningful and memorable learning experiences related to critical thinking about society and culture. The text includes comprehensive coverage of core concepts, discussions and data relevant to a diverse audience, and features that draw learners into the discipline in powerful and personal ways. Overall, Introduction to Sociology 3e aims to center the course and discipline as crucial elements for understanding relationships, society, and civic engagement; the authors seek to lay the foundation for students to apply what they learn throughout their lives and careers. 

American Government 3e aligns with the topics and objectives of many government courses. Faculty involved in the project have endeavored to make government workings, issues, debates, and impacts meaningful and memorable to students while maintaining the conceptual coverage and rigor inherent in the subject.  

Designed to meet the scope and sequence of your course, OpenStax Introduction to Anthropology is a four-field text integrating diverse voices, engaging field activities, and meaningful themes like Indigenous experiences and social inequality to engage students and enrich learning. The text showcases the historical context of the discipline, with a strong focus on anthropology as a living and evolving field.  There is significant discussion of recent efforts to make the field more diverse—in its practitioners, in the questions it asks, and in the applications of anthropological research to address contemporary challenges. 

Designed to meet the scope and sequence of your course, OpenStax Introduction to Political Science provides a strong foundation in global political systems, exploring how and why political realities unfold. Rich with examples of individual and national social action, this text emphasizes students’ role in the political sphere and equips them to be active and informed participants in civil society. Learn more about what this free, openly-licensed textbook has to offer you and your students. 

America has evolved into an ownership society. Home-buying decisions, resource allocation, debt exposure, and financial planning for the future are now left to individuals, many of whom may lack the financial understanding to evaluate and make sound decisions. Economics, with its insistence on quantifying ideas and putting specific quantitative values on all manner of phenomena, can help sort through the questions. Economics for Life: Real-World Financial Literacy is designed to help soon-to-be college graduates start their "real lives" with a better understanding of how to analyze the financial decisions that they will soon have to make. Written in an easy-to-read, conversational style, this textbook will help students learn how to make decisions on saving and investing for retirement, buying a car, buying a home, as well as how to safely navigate the use of debit and credit cards. 

This book is intended for a two-semester course in Economics taught out of the social sciences or business school. Principles of Economics aims to teach considerable range and depth of Economic concepts through an approachable style and methodology. The authors take a three-pronged approach to every chapter: The concept is covered with a “Heads Up” to ward off confusion, a real-world application for that concept, and a “You Try It” section to make sure students are staying on top of the concept. 

covers the scope and sequence of most introductory economics courses. The third edition takes a balanced approach to the theory and application of economics concepts. The text uses conversational language and ample illustrations to explore economic theories, and provides a wide array of examples using both fictional and real-world scenarios.  

Mayer, Warner, Siedel and Lieberman's Advanced Business Law and the Legal Environment is an up-to-date textbook with coverage of legal and regulatory issues that are more technical than the topics in the authors' Foundations of Business Law and the Legal Environment. 

The Federal Rules of Bankruptcy Procedure appear in the Appendix to Title 11 of the United State Code. This publication was made with data provided by the United States government on the Office of Law Revision Counsel Bulk US Code. This title is current through July 31, 2014. 

Criminal Law uses a two-step process to augment learning, called the applied approach. First, after building a strong foundation from scratch, Criminal Law introduces you to crimes and defenses that have been broken down into separate components. It is so much easier to memorize and comprehend the subject matter when it is simplified this way. 

This Intellectual Property Supplement from eLangdell Press contains the text of federal laws and regulations in the area of copyright, trademarks and patents.  

This book offers a sociological understanding of today's social problems and of possible solutions to these problems. Readers of this book will find many examples of how social problems have been improved and of strategies that hold great potential for solving them today and in the future.

Criminal Law uses a two-step process to augment learning, called the applied approach. First, after building a strong foundation from scratch, Criminal Law introduces you to crimes and defenses that have been broken down into separate components. It is so much easier to memorize and comprehend the subject matter when it is simplified this way. 

The book examines commonalities and differences in the operation of various structures of power (gender, class, race/ethnicity, generation) and their interactions within the institutional domains of intra-national and especially inter-national migration that produce context-specific forms of social injustice.

Claims about the transformations enabled by modern science and medicine have been accompanied by an unsettling question in recent years: might the knowledge being produced undermine -- rather than further -- human and animal well being?

This book is dedicated to contribute to the still underdeveloped but growing literature connecting the history of cities worldwide and their relation to global processes. The authors do so from various disciplinary backgrounds and by referring to different times and places.

By weaving fictional narratives and problem solving into everyday life, alternate reality games (ARGs) may be able to fill gaps left by traditional studies in the behavioral and social sciences. This book examines the potential strengths of ARG-based social science research, the challenges that remain to be overcome, and potential starting points for testing these possibilities.

This book is designed to introduce doctoral and graduate students to the process of scientific research in the social sciences, business, education, public health, and related disciplines. It is a one-stop, comprehensive, and compact source for foundational concepts in behavioral research, and can serve as a stand-alone text or as a supplement to research readings in any course on research methods.

Internet-based surveys, although still in their infancy, are becoming increasingly popular because they are believed to be faster, better, cheaper, and easier to conduct than surveys using more-traditional telephone or mail methods. Based on evidence in the literature and real-life case studies, this book examines the validity of those claims. The authors discuss the advantages and disadvantages of using e-mail and the Web to conduct research surveys.

Can computer science solve our social problems? With Discourses on Social Software Jan Van Eijck and Rineke Verbrugge suggest it can, offering the reader a fascinating introduction to the innovative field of social software. Compiling a series of discussions involving a logician, a computer scientist, a philosopher, and a number of researchers from various other academic fields, this collection details the many ways in which the seemingly abstract disciplines of logic and computer science can be used to analyze and solve contemporary social problems.

This book is for students in the behavioral sciences who need to understand genetics, but who have little or no training in biology. The text provides the basic biology which is essential for an understanding of genetics and then provides a solid overview of the principles of genetics. The author reviews a selected sample of the research that is most relevant to the social and behavioral sciences.

Since its publication in 1988, this has been one of the leading methodology textbooks in South African tertiary education. It provides an introduction to the fundamental concept of social science research, and complements books on specific research methods and techniques.

The Research Methods Knowledge Base is a comprehensive web-based textbook that addresses all of the topics in a typical introductory undergraduate or graduate course in social research methods. It covers the entire research process including: formulating research questions; sampling (probability and nonprobability); measurement (surveys, scaling, qualitative, unobtrusive); research design (experimental and quasi-experimental); data analysis; and, writing the research paper.

This book aims to assist social scientists to analyze their problems using fuzzy models. The basic and essential fuzzy matrix theory is given. The book does not promise to give the complete properties of basic fuzzy theory or basic fuzzy matrices. Instead, the authors have only tried to give those essential basically needed to develop the fuzzy model.

This on-line textbook introduces many of the basics of formal approaches to the analysis of social networks. Our goal in preparing this book is to provide a very basic introduction to the core ideas of social network analysis, and how these ideas are implemented in the methodologies that many social network analysts use.

This textbook provides a first course in data analysis for students majoring in the social and behavioral sciences. The book is intended to be comprehensible to students who are not planning to go on to postgraduate study. Even the active researcher may find the book a useful resource.

This text is a general introduction to the topic of structural analysis. It is an introduction because it presumes no previous acquaintance with causal analysis. It is general because it covers all the standard, as well as a few nonstandard, statistical procedures. Since the topic is structural analysis, and not statistics, very little discussion is given to the actual mechanics of estimation. 

The purpose of this monograph is to provide a microeconometric analysis of portfolio behavior and earnings by commercial and mutual savings banks. The results are shown to be of value in constructing an aggregate model for the analysis of systems of commercial and mutual savings banks. 

Can the market fully manage the money and banking sector? Jesús Huerta de Soto, professor of economics at the Universidad Rey Juan Carlos, Madrid, has made history with this mammoth and exciting treatise that it has and can again, without inflation, without business cycles, and without the economic instability that has characterized the age of government control. 

Undergraduate business law textbook written by Melissa Randall and Community College of Denver Students in collaboration with lawyers and business professionals for use in required 200 level business law courses in the United States. This book is an introductory survey of the legal topics required in undergraduate business law classes. 

Welcome to trademark law. This introductory chapter has three purposes. First, it outlines some basics of trademark law at a very high level of generality. Second, it outlines some traditional arguments for the protection of trademark rights. Finally, it introduces some issues that complicate the development and application of trademark law.  

This book is an introduction to intellectual property law, the set of private legal rights that allows individuals and corporations to control intangible creations and marks—from logos to novels to drug formulae—and the exceptions and limitations that define those rights. It focuses on the three graphmain forms of US federal intellectual property—trademark, copyright and patent—but many of the ideas discussed here apply far beyond those legal areas and far beyond the law of the United States. 

Anthropology is the study of all humans in all times in all places. But it is so much more than that. “Anthropology requires strength, valor, and courage,” Nancy Scheper-Hughes noted. “Pierre Bourdieu called anthropology a combat sport, an extreme sport as well as a tough and rigorous discipline. 

Textbook designed to provide an introduction to the fields of Women’s Studies and Gender Studies for students taking introductory courses. The textbook touches on a variety of subjects including gender theories, feminisms, intersectionality, equity, and activism. Chapters contain questions to consider and list of suggested readings by theorists and activists 

Content included in Sexuality, the Self, and Society is aligned with the typical scope for an introductory, interdisciplinary Human Sexuality Textbook. It is written to be a complete text for a semester length course but could be used, in part, reorganized, or edited in true OER fashion.  

Business Law, Ethics, and Sustainability is a textbook for undergraduate law courses. It covers business law topics such as contracts, business organizations, employment law, and torts, as well as a general survey of American law. Additional topics include Constitutional law, civil rights, environmental law, criminal law, and litigation. 

Law 101: Fundamentals of Law, New York and Federal Law is an attempt to provide basic legal concepts of the law to undergraduates in easily understood plain English. 

Our goal is to provide students with a textbook that is up to date and comprehensive in its coverage of legal and regulatory issues—and organized to permit instructors to tailor the materials to their particular approach.

International journalism is crucial to our understanding of the world beyond our own borders. This book is designed to explain key theories and concepts that allow us to understand the general practice of journalism around the world, and to illustrate some of the challenges that arise from practicing journalism in those contexts.

The book is supported by discussion of relevant theory and research in cultural sociology. Beyond Race: Cultural Influences on Human Social Life has stressed learner-centered teaching with the instructor taking on the role of a facilitator of learning. 

This Open Education resource, “Cases on Social Issues: For Class Discussion – 2nd Edition”, includes valuable cases for student use on issues of discrimination, diversity, equity, inclusion and general social issues in the workplace. 

As so often is the case, the idea for this book came from a twisting path. Not long after we began collaborating and presenting together at conferences, we were invited to draft a chapter on critical race theory (CRT) in academic libraries. An invited chapter is, of course, very flattering, so we proceeded without much thought to who the publisher would be. a

This open course introduces students to the scholarly communications system — with particular emphasis on the scholarly journal publishing mechanism — wherein new information is created, evaluated, disseminated, and preserved. 

In this volume, Erika Allen Wolters and Brent Steel have brought together the experts who can explain the evolution of public lands policies and politics in all their complexities. 

This textbook was created to provide an introduction to research methods for BSW and MSW students, with particular emphasis on research and practice relevant to students at the University of Texas at Arlington.  

There are a few major themes that come up over and over again during the course of classical sociological theory’s development. All three classical theorists were writing at a time when sociology was a new and emerging discipline. 

This resource is intended as an easy-to-use guide for anyone who needs some quick and simple advice on quantitative aspects of research in social sciences, covering subjects such as education, sociology, business, nursing. 

Media, Society, Culture, and You is an approachable introductory Mass Communication text that covers major mass communication terms and concepts including "digital culture." It discusses various media platforms and how they are evolving as Information and Communication Technologies change. 

There is a dearth of OER textbooks in Criminology and Criminal Justice, which made creating this textbook all the more exciting. At times we faced challenges about what or how much to cover, but our primary goal was to make sure this book was as in-depth as the two textbooks we were currently using for our CCJ 230 introduction course. 

Introduction to Criminal Investigation, Processes, Practices, and Thinking is a teaching text designed to assist the student in developing their own structured mental map of processes, practices, and thinking to conduct criminal investigations. 

In this volume, contributors from across law and internet and media studies examine the state of human rights in today's platform society. The contributors consider the 'datafication' of society, including the economic model of data extraction and the conceptualization of privacy. They examine online advertising, content moderation, corporate storytelling around human rights, and other platform practices. 

Powerful and incisive, the book examines hot-button issues such as racial and religious bias, sexual harassment, gender discrimination, and equality for LGBT individuals, highlighting comparisons that will further discussions on social equality and fundamental human rights across borders. 

How a flexible and creative approach to intellectual property can help an organization accomplish goals ranging from building market share to expanding an industry. Palfrey offers a short briefing on intellectual property strategy for corporate managers and nonprofit administrators. 

The objective of this book is to outline how a radically democratic politics can be reinvigorated in theory and practice through the use of the internet. The author argues that politics in its proper sense can be distinguished from anti-politics by analyzing the configuration of public space, subjectivity, participation, and conflict. Each of these terrains can be configured in a more or less political manner, though the contemporary status quo heavily skews them towards anti-political configuration. 

This guidebook is designed as a contribution to future nation-building efforts. It is organized around the components that make up any nation-building mission: planning, military and police contingents, civil administrators, humanitarian and relief efforts, governance, economic stabilization, democratization, and infrastructure development. 

The author draws on his experience as the UK's Judge at the European Court of Justice to provide an examination of the central role played by the European Court in bringing the European Single Market into being. The text discusses how the Single Market affects people and adapts to change. 

Determining and satisfying the needs of customers through products that have value and accessibility and whose features are clearly communicated is the general purpose of any business. This text introduces students to the marketing strategies and tools that practitioners use to market their products. 

Introduction to Sociology was written by teams of sociology professors and writers and peer-reviewed by college instructors nationwide. The online text meets standard scope and sequence requirements and incorporates current events such as the Occupy Wall Street movement. 

Studies relating to two systems, highway traffic and railroad transportation, are offered. The book is addressed to analysts in various professions, including economists, traffic and railroad engineers, management scientists, operations researchers, etc.