ABSTRACT
At the beginning of this book we warned that sociology is a discipline which thrives on controversy. By now this, at least, should be apparent. Hopefully it is also clear why, when sociologists are asked to solve some manifest social problem, they seem to be congenitally incapable of giving a straight answer to an apparently simple question. Instead they tend to challenge the assumptions which lie behind the question. This is not due merely to perverseness or evasiveness (though doubtless each may play its part on particular occasions) but to the requirement of sociology to penetrate behind the taken-for-granted, common-sense assumptions which are built into our perceptions of contemporary society.
