This is a smart and compelling book. Difficult ideas are presented in anaccessible manner with plenty of supporting illustrations...Students willenjoy the resea... » 

This is a smart and compelling book. Difficult ideas are presented in anaccessible manner with plenty of supporting illustrations...Students willenjoy the research material and other supporting material. A definite winnerProfessor Jay Gubrium University of MissouriThis book gets to the heart of what the social sciences really know about theelusive and contradictory object of research human reality.Drawing on a wide range of international examples and scenarios Social Theoryand Human Reality examines key sociological concepts that we use to understandhuman behaviour such as norms rules and meanings language and discourseritual and personality and identity construction.Alasuutari clearly and convincingly demonstrates The constant interplay between routines and reflexivity that grounds socialorder how the body and our bodily experiences mediate our social reality that language plays a multifaceted role as it describes reflects andconstructs human realityBuilding on the work started by Berger and Luckmann in The Social Constructionof Reality this book is a lucid and contemporary analysis of the premisesshared across the social sciences and of the kaleidoscope of human reality.This important book will be welcomed by students and scholars alike in thefields of Cultural Studies Sociology and Anthropology. «