This challenging and inspiring textbook sets out to excite students with an account of what sociology can achieve to help them understand their own lives and the social conditions of our own time.

Offering a major challenge to established textbooks and pointing to inspiring new ways of approaching sociology, this book presents a notable shift in introductory sociology. Too often the subject is taught as a dry and detached system of thought and practice. Passion is regarded as something to avoid or to treat with inherent suspicion. By asking questions about sociology and its relation to passion, the authors seek to revitalize the subject.

The book introduces and develops a number of themes such as: identity, knowledge, magic, desire, power and everyday life. It argues that students should analyze these themes through practices including: reading, writing, speaking, storytelling and organizing. The authors aim to introduce students to sociology by a controlled engagement with practical sociological ideas and ways of seeing. In this way they hope that readers will participate in the creative possibilities of sociology.