Description: A core interest of social science is the study of stratification--inequalities in income, power, and prestige
Brief description:
John Mirowsky is professor in both the department of sociology and Population Research Center at the University of Texas at Austin.
Review Quotes:
-Mirowsky and Ross employ a sociological perspective in their analysis of individuals' social distress... This volume provides an excellent counterbalance to the many journal articles and books that emphasize psychoanalytic, general psychological, and biological explanations of distress. For community college students, upper-division undergraduates, and graduate students.-
--A. G. Halberstadt, Choice
-Sociologists Mirowsky and Ross challenge traditional understandings of distress (psychiatric and psychological) in this integration of their own research with a review of the literature on the social causes of distress. . . . [T]he book will be remembered more charitably over time, for it dares to sojourn into worlds where few have dared to tread. It charts a course that others will want to follow.-
--Luther B. Otto, Contemporary Sociology
-Social Causes of Psychological Distress seeks to describe and explain the social patterning of psychological well-being and distress. It is not simply a review of the sociological literature on mental health, however, but a keenly and intentionally partisan book. The authors, John Mirowsky and Catherin E. Ross, not only reject genetic, biochemical, and life-changing explanations of the social patterns of distress but also advocate a particular conceptual and methodological approach to the study of psychopathology, one that favors symptom scales over diagnoses and community surveys over experimental designs.-
--Ann Stueve and Bruce Link, American Journal of Sociology