His entry begins:My focus as a sociologist is on how individuals shape and are shaped by their social environment. In Loneliness: Human Nature and the Need for Social Connection, John Cacioppo (a psychologist) and William Patrick (a science writer) discuss research on the importance of the most basic element of the social environment: other people. Not content to simply highlight the importance of social ties for individual functioning, the authors link the need for social connections to our evolutionary past and to our physiological functioning and show that individual variation in sociability can shape the environment people experience. Although I have already finished Loneliness, it continues to inform my understanding of more recent books like...[read on]Among the early praise for Homelessness, Housing, and Mental Illness:
“Russell Schutt’s book combines sociological theory with survey and ethnographic data, analysis of social policy, and concern with the well-being of persons with serious mental illness. It is a model of humane scholarship that should appeal to sociologists and psychologists as well as students in social work and public policy. ”
—Allan V. Horwitz, Rutgers University
Learn more about Homelessness, Housing and Mental Illness at the Harvard University Press website.Russell K. Schutt is Professor and Chair of Sociology at the University of Massachusetts and Lecturer on Sociology in the Department of Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School. His books include: Investigating the Social World: The Process and Practice of Research; Organization in a Changing Environment; and Responding to the Homeless: Policy and Practice.
The Page 99 Test: Homelessness, Housing, and Mental Illness.
Writers Read: Russell K. Schutt.
--Marshal Zeringue
Posts
