Shifting the Center: Understanding Contemporary Families / Edition 4

by Susan J Ferguson

Overview

Shifting the Center is an anthology that explores the issues and diversity of contemporary families by presenting a balanced coverage of racial and ethnic variation, and integrating a diversity of family arrangements and processes.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780073404233
Publisher:	McGraw-Hill Higher Education
Publication date:	05/21/2010
Edition description:	Older Edition
Pages:	768
Product dimensions:	9.00(w) x 6.40(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Susan J. Ferguson is a professor of sociology at Grinnell College, where she regularly teaches a seminar on the family. Ferguson also teaches Introduction to Sociology, and her critically acclaimed anthology, Mapping the Social Landscape: Readings in Sociology (SAGE Publications, Ninth Edition, 2021) is used in introductory sociology classes around the country. Ferguson also teaches a first-year seminar, courses on the sociology of health and illness and global health, and a seminar on intersectionality and identity. Ferguson has published research in the areas of medical sociology and on the family. Her co-edited book Breast Cancer: Society Shapes an Epidemic (Palgrave, 2000) is highly praised by medical practitioners and health activists alike. Ferguson also has an anthology on social inequality, Race, Gender, Sexuality, and Social Class: Dimensions of Inequality and Identity (SAGE Publications, Third Edition, 2020). In addition, Ferguson is the general editor of a series of research monographs on the family, Contemporary Family Perspectives (SAGE Publications). During fall 2016, Ferguson taught three courses on the inaugural Colorado State University Semester at Sea voyage, including the Sociology of Gender, Introduction to Sociology, and Global Studies. In 2018, Ferguson received the ASA Hans O. Mauksch Award for Contributions to Undergraduate Teaching, and in 2021, she received the ASA Distinguished Contributions to Teaching Award. Ferguson currently is working on several national projects related to the sociology curriculum.

Table of Contents

Preface
PART I. INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF FAMILIES
Diana Gittins, The Family in Question: What Is the Family?
Maxine Baca Zinn, Feminist Rethinking from Racial-Ethnic Families
Kath Weston, Exiles from Kinship
Arlene Skolnick, Embattled Paradise: The American Family in an Age of Uncertainty
PART II. HISTORICAL CHANGES AND FAMILY VARIATIONS
* Stephanie Coontz, Historical Perspectives on Family Diversity
Niara Sudarkasa, Interpreting the African Heritage in Afro- American Family Organization
Richard Griswold del Castillo, La Familia: Family Cohesion Among Mexican American Families in the Urban Southwest, 1848-1900.
* Evelyn Nakano Glenn, Split Household, Small Producer, and Dual Wage Earner: An Analysis of Chinese American Family Strategies
PART III. COURTSHIP, DATING, AND POWER
* Martin King Whyte, Choosing Mates—The American Way
* Alfredo Corchado, Men Are Gone, Off to U.S., But Courtship Continues
(and more...)

Editorial Reviews

Presents 48 articles on the family brought together to meet four pedagogical roles: to deconstruct the notion of a universal family over time and across culture; to reflect cutting-edge scholarship by well-known family scholars; to integrate race-ethnicity, social class, gender, and sexuality in the analysis; and to promote critical reading and thinking. Several family forms, including arranged marriages, cohabitation, heterosexual marriages, single parent households, stepfamilies, and gay and lesbian families are treated throughout the text in a conscious effort to demarginalize the "alternative" family. Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, Or.

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