Some anecdotes very accurately and concisely describe social processes. "What is democracy?" someone once asked a Sociologist. And he answered: "It is a social system where power belongs to the people, and everything else belongs to the power." Instead of this witty answer, one could spend a long time explaining the sociological concept of minimalist democracy.

Volodymyr Paniotto presents selected anecdotes on various topics that sociologists study and shows us in his comments to the anecdotes what conclusions sociologists could draw from analyzing the situation described in the joke.

The main task of the book is to demonstrate that sociology is interesting and fun. The reader will be able not only to laugh but also to understand the specifics of the sociological approach to analyzing society.

The first version of this book was published in Ukrainian in January 2022. This version is abridged and modified for the English-speaking reader.

Autorentext

Volodymyr Paniotto, co-founder and president of the Kiev International Institute of Sociology (KIIS), is also professor at the National University of "Kyiv-Mohyla Academy" and the author of 12 academic books and about 300 articles. His previous books include Statistical Analysis of Sociological Data (KM Academy, 2004), Survey Methods (KM Academy, 2017), and Sociology in Anecdotes (Dukh i Litera, 2022).