The Asymmetric Society (Contemporary Issues in the Middle East) - Softcover

This book is a series of five lectures given in 1981 at Syracuse University, each couples with a concluding 'dialogue' where the author poses questions and objections to his own essays and then answers them. Coleman sees the book as the extension of his 1973 volume, Power and the Structure of Society, and as the second step in the construction of sociological theory about an emerging 'social structure that is not as most of me colleagues would see it.'

James S. Coleman is an American sociologist who has focused much of his work on mathematical sociology. His areas of interest have been social conflict, collective decision making, and the sociology of education. He received his Ph.D. from Columbia University in 1955 and taught at Johns Hopkins University. Coleman is best known for heading a commission charged by the federal government with investigating the lack of educational opportunities for minorities in public schools. The document produced by the commission, Equity of Educational Opportunity (1966), is better known as the Coleman Report. It indicated that student achievement has more to do with family background and peer environment than with school resources. The Coleman Report became the basis for the institution of student busing to achieve racial integration in public schools.