This highly original and compelling book offers an introduction to the art and science of social inquiry, including the theoretical and methodological frameworks that support that inquiry. The new edition offers coverage of post-modernism and Indigenous ways of knowing, as well as a discussion of the research process and how to communicate arguments effectively. The result is a book that blends the best of earlier editions with updates that provide a strong foundation in critical thinking, rooted in the social sciences but relevant across disciplines.

Alan Sears is Professor of Sociology at Ryerson University, Toronto. He is the author of Retooling the Mind Factory: Education in a Lean State (UTP, 2003) and co-author with James Cairns of The Democratic Imagination (UTP, 2012).

Alan Sears' profile page

James Cairns lives with his family in Paris, Ontario, on territory that the Haldimand Treaty of 1784 recognizes as belonging to the Six Nations of the Grand River in perpetuity. He is a professor in the Department of Indigenous Studies, Law and Social Justice at Wilfrid Laurier University, where his courses and research focus on political theory and social movements. James is a staff writer at the Hamilton Review of Books, and the community relations director for the Paris-based Riverside Reading Series. James has published three books with the University of Toronto Press, most recently, The Myth of the Age of Entitlement: Millennials, Austerity, and Hope (2017), as well as numerous essays in periodicals such as Canadian Notes & Queries, the Montreal Review of Books, Briarpatch, TOPIA, Rethinking Marxism, and the Journal of Canadian Studies. James’ essay “My Struggle and My Struggle,” originally published in CNQ, appeared in Biblioasis’ Best Canadian Essays, 2025 anthology.

James Cairns' profile page