The Forest and the Trees: Sociology as Life, Practice and Promise

ALLAN G. JOHNSON, The Forest and the Trees: Sociology as Life, Practice and Promise. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1997, US$18.95 paper.

Does your approach to teaching introductory sociology rely on the tradition of Peter Berger's Invitation to Sociology and C. Wright Mill's Sociological Imagination? If so, you will find Allan Johnson's new book very useful. If you are passionate in your belief in the promise of sociology to challenge how people think about social life and how they participate in it, you will find The Forest and the Trees an inspiring resource for your students.

Among the great challenges of teaching introductory sociology is to inspire the many and varied students who arrive in our classes not really certain about the nature of sociology. If you cannot inspire the students, then you cannot teach introductory sociology effectively. Johnson's book will aid in the effort to inspire, since he identifies the core idea that serves as a starting point for opening the gateway to the many sociological questions we raise. What is this core idea? For Johnson, as for many of us teaching introductory courses, sociology revolves around one central point: "We are always participating in something larger than ourselves, and if we want to understand social life and what happens to people in it, we have to understand what it is we are participating in and how we participate in it" ( 13).

Johnson acknowledges that the idea that we are always participating in something larger than ourselves may be a fairly simple notion, but like many ideas that seem simple at first glance, this core notion takes us places that...