Authors

Associate Professor Dan Woodman is TR Ashworth Associate Professor of Sociology in the School of Social and Political Sciences. Dan’s primary research area is the sociology of youth, young adulthood, and generations and he uses this focus to also contribute to the sociology of work, and to sociological theory. His writing conceptualizing generational change and the new social conditions impacting on young adults is internationally recognized. Dan is the current President of The Australian Sociological Association (TASA) and was the founding convener of the Sociology of Youth Thematic Group within the Association.

Dan’s Staff Profile

Steven Threadgold is Associate Professor of Sociology at University of Newcastle. His research focuses on youth and class, with particular interests in unequal and alternate work and career trajectories; underground and independent creative scenes; and cultural formations of taste. Steve is the co-director of the Newcastle Youth Studies Network, an Associate Editor of Journal of Youth Studies, and on the Editorial Boards of The Sociological Review and Journal of Applied Youth Studies. His latest book is Bourdieu and Affect: Towards a Theory of Affective Affinities (Bristol University Press).  Youth, Class and Everyday Struggles (Routledge) won the 2020 Raewyn Connell Prize for best first book in Australian sociology. Steve’s current research projects are on online cultural taste communities called ‘Dank Distinction and Homologies of Snark’; the ARC funded ‘Young Hospitality Workers and Value Creation in the Service Economy’ investigating the immaterial forms of labour young people perform to create value in the night-time economy; and the FEDUA funded research program ‘Regional youth in precarious times: Work, wellbeing and debt’. Contact at steven.threadgold@newcastle.edu.au

Steve’s Staff profile

Steve’s Website

Steve’s Linktree

Acknowledgments

Dan: Thank you to all my students in the introductory sociology subject Understanding Society at the University of Melbourne, since I first taught the subject in 2012. Thank you also to my co-lecturers and tutors over the years, particularly Barbara Barbosa Neves, Megan Sharp, Mitchell Taylor, Nick Pendergrast, Nick de Weydenthal, Julia Cook, Danielle Nockolds, Isabel Jackson, Lachlan Ross and Amy Vanderharst. Thank you to Corinne for your support over the many years it has taken to write this book, including in its final stages during a pandemic and lockdown. And to my co author Steve, who has been patient with me over the half decade we have been working on this project. This book is for my children, who are coincidentally four and seven. Watching you grow has been a privilege, even if it has slowed down my writing a little.
For Pearl and Louis

Steve: Thanks to all the students I have met in SOCA1010 since starting to tutor in it in 2005 at the University of Newcastle. They have been the motivation for writing this book. It has also been a pleasure to work with all the dedicated and enthusiastic tutors and lecturers in the course over the years, especially Megan Sharp, Matthew Bunn, Georgina Ramsay, Barrie Shannon, Jonathan Curtis, Jai Cooper, Adriana Haro, Mitchell Taylor, Vanessa Bowden, Joel McGregor, Nafi Ghafournia, Kearin Sims, Kathleen Butler, Penny Jane Burke, Pam Nilan, Terry Leahy, John Germov, Julia Cook, Julia Coffey, Emma Kirby, Stephen Smith and Mitchell Hobbs.

Dan and Steve: We would both like to thank Mitchell Taylor for his exceptional research assistance on the book, especially all his work finding much of the support material and compiling the glossary. Thanks also to Milo Kei for compiling the index. Thanks to Ashley Barnwell, Barbara Barbosa Neves, Megan Sharp and Julia Coffey, who provided feedback on early drafts of some chapters, and the anonymous readers of the manuscript selected by the publisher. Your feedback improved the book immensely. Thank you also to Natalie Aguilera, our commissioning editor at SAGE, for her belief in the different approach to introducing sociology that we have taken in this book and to our production editor Katherine Haw for seeing the project through to completion.