ABSTRACT
Very often students come to sociology with a hope of making the world a better place: they are passionate or aggrieved about some cause. They see injustice or social problems that they want to help remedy. Maybe they have read a media report on the plights of refugees or of children dying in poverty; an unemployed father has told them of the appalling conditions of work for many people; a feminist mother has taken them on a march to protest the violence, the abuse and powerlessness of many women across the world; they have seen a film about the brutalization, dehumanization and injustice of much social life; they despair at perpetual war; are angry with world homophobia and racism; they are passionate about environmental catastrophe. They are troubled about the world and ask what is to be done? They want to understand what is going on, why is our world turning out so badly? And they turn to sociology for help. And at its best, it is indeed sociology’s mission to bring knowledge,
wisdom and an acute, engaged critical imagination about the plights of humanity.
