This best-selling text combines up-to-date information, historical background, social science concepts, research, and down-to-earth explanations in an accessible, journalistic style. Contemporary Society offers an overview of the social sciences by presenting a perspective on how the social science disciplines perceive the world around us. The text has been completely updated to reflect the shifts in contemporary society while retaining the centralized theme of change. The authors reinforce the idea that the transition from an industrial to a postindustrial order is fraught with difficulties, as was the transition from an agricultural to an industrial order. The increasing fragmentation of the social order, which leads people away from community and a common purpose to conflict and disunity, is also shown in this framework.