Sociology is the intellectual discipline that seeks to provide answers to those questions by the deployment of argument and evidence. In doing so it will often question basic assumptions that we all make about our social world and therefore has the capacity to upset settled or conventional opinions. This book is an invitation to engage in this endeavour. * concise, accessible introduction to a key discipline in the social sciences; * written by an experienced author who is widely respected for his broad and deep understanding of the subject and his ability to write in a clear and compelling way; * provides argument and evidence about key sociological questions which will be of help to students approaching the subject for the first time; * this is the third book in the Polity Short Introductions series (following Bob Connell's Gender and Stephanise Lawson's International Relations).