What is Political Sociology?

What is Sociology?

by Elisabeth S. Clemens

With an entire discipline devoted to political science, what is distinctive about political sociology? This concise book explains what a sociological perspective brings to our understanding of the emergence, reproduction, and transformation of different forms of political order. Crucially, political sociology expands the field of view to the politics that happen in other social settings – in the family, at work, in civic associations – as well as the ways in which social attributes such as class, religion, age, race, and gender shape patterns of political participation and the distribution of political power.

Political sociology grapples with these issues across an enormous range of historical and geographic settings, from intimate to geo-political scales. It requires an analytic toolkit that includes concepts of power, identities and inequalities, social closure, civil society, and modes of political action. Using these central concepts, this updated edition of What is Political Sociology? discusses the major forms of political order, processes of regime formation and revolution, the social bases for political participation, policy formation as well as feedbacks, social movements and social change, and the possibilities for new forms of digital and transnational politics. In sum, the book offers an insightful introduction to this core perspective on social life.

Genres: Sociology, Politics, Nonfiction

224 pages, Hardcover

First published August 22, 2016

Reviews

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[Alireza · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5 stars.

What Is Political Sociology? is the kind of book I think more people should read, even if only in summary form. It gives a clear and useful overview of how politics is not separate from society, but deeply built into the way people think, organize, participate, resist, and create change.

What I appreciated most was how broad the book’s lens is. It looks at questions that matter far beyond political science as a discipline: why some people vote and others do not, how power operates in everyday life, how social movements form, how mobilization happens, and why revolutions emerge. It makes politics feel less like something that only happens in institutions and more like something embedded in social relationships, group identity, inequality, conflict, and collective action.

The book was especially valuable as an overview. It helped me think about politics not just as elections or government, but as a larger social force that shapes behavior and possibility. That made it feel important, especially in a time when so many people talk about politics without really understanding how political participation, disengagement, and change actually happen.

Not every chapter interested me equally. There were sections I connected with less, mostly because the specific topic did not pull me in as much. But that did not take away from the overall value of the book. As an introduction to political sociology and the role of politics in society, I found it clear, important, and worth reading.

Overall, this is a strong and useful book. It gives language and structure to questions most people should probably think about more seriously.

[Maxim · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was my first reading about Political Sociology. I would say it is a good introductory text that provides information on the basic theories, names, and concepts, and allows a critical view of social life.

[Meaghan · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read through a few chapters for a comprehensive exam. Accessible writing and a great review of pertinent literature, but not my bread and butter.