Social Things

Book excerpt: Once again, Lemert has revised and updated Social Things, a best seller that is admired by teachers, students, and even their parents for its riveting brilliance. In this edition, he challenges readers to appreciate the surprising story of how globalization requires even the most reluctant to engage with its strange effects. In a new and original chapter, Global Things Queer the Social, Lemert unblushingly explains that globalization became a dominant force in everyday life at the very time when ordinary life was threatened by extraordinary human crises of poverty and disease. The new world order is queer in more ways than one. It forces us to rethink social taboos, including those on talk about sex and sexualities. As in its earlier editions, Social Things excites, disturbs, and instructs readers who wonder what globalization means to them and how their sociological competence can contend with the way it emboldens people to look at the world honestly.