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Understanding Humans
How Social Science Can Help Solve Our Problems
- David Edmonds - BBC World, UK
September 2023 | 144 pages | SAGE Publications Ltd
Compiling the best episodes of SAGE's 'Social Science Bites' podcast since its beginning in 2012, this pocket-sized volume is sure to inspire and provoke. With a foreword by David Edmonds, host of the podcast, this book will show you how social science can help to solve problems in today's society. It is structured into sections on identity, learning, human behaviour, social change, and the unexpected, with each chapter offering the perspective of one of the most dynamic thinkers in the social sciences.
Taking a multidisciplinary approach, Edmonds' selection of interviews includes topics such as racial inequality, moral psychology, the pandemic, and the prison system. Interviewees include Sam Friedman, Professor of Sociology at LSE, Gurminder K. Bhambra, Professor of Postcolonial and Decolonial Studies at the University of Sussex, and Jennifer Richeson, Professor of Psychology at Yale University. This book will show you the range of voices in the social sciences today, and how this diversity is what is needed to grapple with the complexity of the issues we face.
Taking a multidisciplinary approach, Edmonds' selection of interviews includes topics such as racial inequality, moral psychology, the pandemic, and the prison system. Interviewees include Sam Friedman, Professor of Sociology at LSE, Gurminder K. Bhambra, Professor of Postcolonial and Decolonial Studies at the University of Sussex, and Jennifer Richeson, Professor of Psychology at Yale University. This book will show you the range of voices in the social sciences today, and how this diversity is what is needed to grapple with the complexity of the issues we face.
PART 1: IDENTITY
Chapter 1: Sam Friedman on Class
Chapter 2: Janet Carsten on the Kinship of Anthropology
PART 2: HOW WE THINK AND LEARN
Chapter 3: Daniel Kahneman on Bias
Chapter 4: Mahzarin Banaji on Implicit Bias
Chapter 5: Gurminder K. Bhambra on Postcolonial Social Science
Chapter 6: Jonathan Haidt on Moral Psychology
Chapter 7: Jo Boaler on Fear of Mathematics
Chapter 8: Saskia Sassen on Before Method
PART 3: HUMAN BEHAVIOUR
Chapter 9: Stephen Reicher on Crowd Psychology
Chapter 10: Robert Shiller on Behavioral Economics
Chapter 11: David Halpern on Nudging
Chapter 12: Valerie Curtis on the Sources of Disgust
PART 4: MAKING SOCIAL CHANGE
Chapter 13: Jennifer Richeson on Perceptions of Racial Inequality
Chapter 14: Erica Chenoweth on Nonviolent Resistance
Chapter 15: Alison Liebling on Successful Prisons
Chapter 16: Lawrence Sherman on Experimental Criminology
PART 5: EXPLAINING THE PRESENT AND THE UNEXPECTED
Chapter 17: Hetan Shah on Social Science and the Pandemic
Chapter 18: Bruce Hood on the Supernatural
The eclectic chapters in ‘Understanding Humans: How Social Science Can Solve Our Problems’ illuminate the profound role of social sciences in exploring and addressing social issues. This book serves as a valuable resource for a broad audience, being accessible and engaging for readers without prior knowledge or expertise in the fields drawn upon by the researchers. It provides readers with a compelling overview of exceptional research studies on how we think and act as individuals, and the social, economic, educational and political structures that we operate within.
LSE Review of Books