Society: The Basics, Canadian Edition, 7th edition

John J. Macionis (pronounced “ma-SHOWnis”) has been in the classroom teaching sociology for more than forty years. Born and raised in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, John earned a bachelor's degree from Cornell University, majoring in sociology, and then completed a doctorate in sociology from the University of Pennsylvania.

His publications are wide-ranging, focusing on community life in the United States, interpersonal intimacy in families, effective teaching, humour, new information technology, and the importance of global education. In addition to authoring this best-seller, Macionis has also written Sociology, the most popular full-length text in the field, now in its seventeenth edition. He collaborates on international editions of the titles Sociology, Canadian Edition; Society: The Basics, Canadian Edition; and Sociology: A Global Introduction. Sociology is also available for high school students and in various foreign-language editions. All the Macionis titles are available as low-cost Revel editions that offer an interactive learning experience.

John stands alone in the field for taking personal responsibility for writing all electronic content, just as he authors all the supplemental material. John proudly resists the trend toward “outsourcing” such material to non-sociologists.

In addition, Macionis edited the best-selling anthology Seeing Ourselves: Classic, Contemporary, and Cross-Cultural Readings in Sociology, which is also available in a Canadian edition. Macionis and Vincent Parrillo have written the leading urban studies title Cities and Urban Life, available in a seventh edition. Macionis is also the author of Social Problems, now in its seventh edition and the leading title in this field. The latest on all the Macionis titles, as well as teaching materials and dozens of internet links of interest to students and faculty in sociology, are found at the author's personal website: www.macionis.com. Follow John on his Facebook author page: John J. Macionis, www.facebook.com/MacionisJohn/. Additional information and instructor resources are found at the Pearson site: www.pearsonhighered.com.

John Macionis recently retired from full-time teaching at Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio, where he was Professor and Distinguished Scholar of Sociology. During that time, he chaired the Sociology Department, directed the college's multidisciplinary program in humane studies, presided over the campus senate and the college's faculty, and taught sociology to thousands of students.

In 2002, the American Sociological Association presented Macionis with the Award for Distinguished Contributions to Teaching, citing his innovative use of global material as well as the introduction of new teaching technology in his titles.

Professor Macionis has been active in academic programs in other countries, having travelled to some 50 nations. He writes, “I am an ambitious traveler, eager to learn and, through the texts, to share much of what I discover with students, many of whom know little about the rest of the world. For me, traveling and writing are all dimensions of teaching. First and foremost, I am a teacher—a passion for teaching animates everything I do.”

At Kenyon, Macionis taught a number of courses, but his favourite classes have been Introduction to Sociology and Social Problems. He continues to enjoy extensive contact with students across the United States and around the world.

John lives near New York City, and in his free time, he enjoys tennis, swimming, hiking, and playing oldies rock-and-roll. He is an environmental activist in the Lake George region of New York's Adirondack Mountains, where he works with a number of organizations, including the Lake George Land Conservancy, where he serves as president of the board of trustees.

Professor Macionis welcomes (and responds to) comments and suggestions about this book from faculty and students. Contact him at his Facebook page or email macionis@kenyon.edu.

Mikael Jansson is a scientist at the Canadian Institute for Substance Use Research (CISUR) and an adjunct assistant professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of Victoria. He was born in Sweden, and after living in Sweden, Canada, Mexico, and Finland, decided to study migration at the University of Western Ontario, where he received a doctorate in social demography from the Department of Sociology.

Mikael is involved in several longitudinal research projects on changes in lives and health over the life course. His research is focused on youth (including street-involved youth) and personal service workers such as food and beverage servers, hair stylists, and sex workers. He just completed a five-year research project about people working in the sex industry. This cross-Canada study had several subprojects, and Mikael focused on the families of sex workers with the goal of understanding how partners support each other when at least one partner is working in the sex industry. He conducted in-person interviews with 30 couples across Canada for this project and has supervised or conducted in person interviews with close to 500 sex workers across Canada and the United States over the last two decades.

He has published 10 books (including the one you are reading now) and almost 100 refereed articles, book chapters, and reports and has made more than a hundred invited presentations in Canada and many other countries. If you are interested, you can access many of his articles by searching for him on Google Scholar. In addition to his research projects, he is busy reviewing articles, books, and grant proposals by Canadian and international publishers and funders.

He is an avid (but slow) bicyclist and rides more than 10,000 kilometres each year. Since the start of the COVID-19 epidemic, he has ridden all of these kilometres in Canada, but before 2020 he rode many kilometres in other countries because he brought a bicycle with him whenever he travelled. His most recent trip was from São Paulo, Brazil, to Santiago, Chile. He has ridden his bicycle more than 1000 kilometres on every continent except Antarctica.

You can reach Mikael at mjansson@uvic.ca. He welcomes enquires from students interested in working with him in Victoria on his research projects.

Cecilia Benoit is of Mi'kmaq and French ancestry from Newfoundland. She is a scientist at the Canadian Institute for Substance Use Research and professor emerita in the Department of Sociology at the University of Victoria. Cecilia holds numerous honours and awards, most recently the Killam Prize for the Social Sciences and the senior researcher CIHR Trailblazer Award in Population and Public Health Research. She has received fellowships from the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation, the Royal Society of Canada, and the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences.

Her research examines the multiple dimensions of health inequities embedded in laws, policies, programs, and research agendas and searches for evidence-based solutions. In addition to research focused on the historically suppressed occupation of midwifery and the organization of maternity care in Canada and internationally, she has been involved in a variety of projects that employ mixed methodologies to investigate the social determinants of health inequities of marginalized groups, including Indigenous women in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside; young people confronting health stigmas linked to obesity and asthma; street-involved youth in transition to adulthood; pregnant women and their families dealing with poverty, substance use, and other challenges; and people involved in the sex industry.

The courses Professor Benoit has taught include Introductory Sociology, Sociology of Health across the Life Course, Population Health, Health Equity & Health Care, and Sociology of Sex Work. She has mentored 40 graduate students, many of whom now hold leadership roles in the public and non-profit sectors or work as policy analysts for national organizations.

Professor Benoit is the author/co-author/co-editor of a number of scholarly works, including Midwives in Passage (1991), Women, Work and Social Rights (2000), Professional Identities in Transition (1999), Birth by Design (2001), Reconceiving Midwifery (2004), Ethical Issues in Community-Based Research with Children and Youth (2006), Valuing Care Work (2011), The Experience of Emerging Adulthood among Street-Involved Youth (2019), and Understanding Exploitation in Consensual Sex Work to Inform Occupational Health & Safety Regulation (2021). She has also published over 170 peer-reviewed articles, book chapters, and government reports. Her articles have appeared in leading journals in sociology and the health sciences, including Social Science & Medicine, Sociology of Health & Illness, Social Forces, Qualitative Health Research, Work, Employment & Society, International Journal for Equity in Health, Canadian Journal of Public Health, Journal of Sex Research, Archives of Sexual Behavior, and Culture, Health & Sexuality. Much of her work involves co-authorship with students and/or community partners.

You can find out more about Professor Benoit's research by checking out her websites: www.uvic.ca/research/centres/cisur/about/scientists/profiles/benoit-cecilia.php and www.understandingsexwork.ca, or contact her at cbenoit@uvic.ca. The Benoit-Jansson family (or should that be the Jansson-Benoit family?) live in a small house close to the University of Victoria. Together with their daughter, Annika, her partner, Hjalmer, and their children, Huumiis and Cinkwa, they enjoy the lakes and forests on Vancouver Island, spending their leisure time fly-fishing in the spring, swimming in the summer, and gathering wild mushrooms in the fall (these being the only three seasons in Victoria).

Jakub Burkowicz (pronounced “Ya-koob Bur-ko-vitch”) was born in Poland. His family briefly resided in what was once West Germany before immigrating to Canada in 1989. He has called Metro Vancouver home since the early '90s. Immigration has made him curious about how societies work, and he has devoted himself to the task of understanding and changing the social world.

Jakub's teaching and research interests are social movements, sociological theory, and race and ethnicity. His past research examined the history of the racialization of Slavic immigrants in Canada. He has also written on the subject of strategy and tactics in anti-racist, anti-fascist, and anarchist movements and served as a guest editor of a special topic issue of Affinities: A Journal of Radical Theory, Culture, and Action. His future work in this area aims to analyze how anarchist theorization of the state has shifted from the view that the state is an external, coercive apparatus of repression to the view that it is a coercive series of intricate social relationships.

He is thrilled to call Douglas College, where he has been working as a regular faculty member since 2017, his home. Jakub teaches Introduction to Sociology, Social Issues, Social Movements, Race and Ethnicity, and Sociological Theory. You can learn more about Jakub's teaching and research by contacting him at burkowiczj@douglascollege.ca.

When not engaging in sociology, Jakub spends his free time with his family, which includes his wife, Taslim, and his sons, Anjay, Alek, and Augustyn. They live in Surrey, B.C., where they (some family members more than others, of course) share an interest in hiking, chess, Dungeons and Dragons, participating in social movements, swing dancing, and listening to heavy metal.