This unique and innovative text provides undergraduate students with tools to think sociologically through the lens of everyday life. Normative social organization and taken for granted beliefs and actions are exposed as key mechanisms of power and social inequality in western societies today. By "unpacking the centre" students are encouraged to turn their social worlds inside out and explore alternatives to the dominant social order.

The text is divided into three parts. In Part One students learn how to use theory and methodology, which are blended seamlessly throughout the text. It shows how to position Michel Foucault as a companion to theorists such as Karl Marx and Stuart Hall, while signaling the importance of non-western and Indigenous knowledges, experiences, and rights. In Part Two, students explore – and challenge – normativity; the normal body, heterosexuality, whiteness, the two-gender system, aging, and the under-side of citizenship. In Part Three, shorter chapters critique everyday practices such as thinking scientifically, practicing self-help, going shopping, managing money, buying coffee, being a tourist, and marginalizing Indigeneity. Each chapter includes intriguing exercises, study questions, and key terms that link to the volume’s comprehensive glossary. Instructors are provided PowerPoint slides, test banks, and multimodal supplementary resources that make the book adaptable to blended and online learning environments.

Essay-style lectures are also available to accompany the textbook.

Deborah R. Brock is Professor of Sociology at York University. She has written extensively on the topic of sexual labour and her writing links academic research to popular struggles for social justice. She is the author of Making Work, Making Trouble: The Social Regulation of Sexual Labour (UTP, 2009), and co-editor of Power and Everyday Practices (Nelson, 2011).

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Aryn Martin is an associate professor in the Department of Sociology at York University.

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Rebecca Raby is an associate professor in the Department of Child and Youth Studies at Brock University.

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Mark P. Thomas is Associate Professor of Sociology at York University. He is the author of Regulating Flexibility: The Political Economy of Employment Standards (McGill-Queen's, 2009).

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