Social theory

The dynamics of trust and distrust are central to understanding modern society, social relations, and development processes.

This book addresses the 'perennial' question of the meaning of life from the point of view of a novel interpretation of Aristotle's teleology.

Winner of the 2020 Stephen Crook Memorial Prize fromThe Australian Sociological Association, a biennial prize for the best authored book in Australian sociologyFrom concerns of dwindling care and kindness for others to an excessive concern with self and consumerism, plenty of evidence has been provided for the claim that morality is in decline in the West, yet little is known about how people make-sense of and experience their everyday moral lives.

Originally published in 1991, this volume discusses the urban working class, international migrants and the so-called lumpenproletariat.

This volume examines the reasons why some despair at the prospects for an ecological form of democracy, and challenges the recent 'deliberative turn' in environmental political thought.

The Nexus of Practices: connections, constellations, practitioners brings leading theorists of practice together to provide a fresh set of theoretical impulses for the surge of practice-focused studies currently sweeping across the social disciplines.

This book provides a comprehensive overview of the range of themes which make up the field of Historical Sociology.

This book provides an urgent framework and collective reflection on understanding ways to reconsider and recast architecture within ideas and politics of the commons and practices of commoning.

Now reissued with a new Preface by Robin Cohen and Daniele Joly this book was originally published in 1989 at a time when the reality of a single European Community had begun to materialize the comfortable belief that many European countries offered havens for those fleeing persecution.

This book examines alienation from both a sociological and psychoanalytic perspective, revisiting classic treatments of the topic (Marx, Simmel, Weber) and exploring its relevance to understanding post-modern consumer society.

Philosophers, anthropologists and biologists have long puzzled over the question of human nature.

This book examines both the productive and counterproductive dimensions of the increasing orientation towards digital figures.

Neoliberalism is commonly viewed as an economic doctrine that seeks to limit the scope of government.

In this book, the authors provide a much-needed general theory of interdisciplinarity and relate it to health/wellbeing research and professional practice.

In this dynamic book, Charles Lemert elaborates a vigorous, distinctive, and creative American tradition in social thought.

Argues that relations are real and generate real relational ''goods'' and ''evils'', affecting those involved and other people.

Fin de Siecle Socialism, originally published in 1988, demonstrates the lively potential for cultural criticism in intellectual history.

Alessandro Ferrara explains what he terms ''the democratic horizon'' and reviews the challenges under which democracies must operate.

This volume looks at Marxist thought in criminology, the work of Willem Bonger, Georg Rusche and Otto Kircheimer, and assesses the role of Marxist analysis in areas such as Critical Criminology and Left Realism.

In this fifth edition of the best-selling core introductory textbook, Pete Alcock and Lee Gregory provide a comprehensive and engaging introduction to social policy.

How Popular Culture Destroys Our Political Imagination: Capitalism and Its Alternatives in Film and Television explores the representations of capitalism, the state, and their alternatives in popular screen media texts.

Available in paperback for the first time, Welfare Policy from Below is the most comprehensive study available of social exclusion in contemporary Europe.

In mapping out the field of human rights for those studying and researching within both humanities and social science disciplines, the Handbook of Human Rights not only provides a solid foundation for the reader who wants to learn the basic parameters of the field, but also promotes new thinking and frameworks for the study of human rights in the twenty-first century.

Conceived as a response to the economic naivety and implicit metropolitan bias of many 1950s and 60s studies of 'the sociology of development' , this volume, first published in 1975, provides actual field studies and theoretical reviews to indicate the directions which a conceptually more adequate study of developing societies should take.

The Proactionary Imperative debates the concept of transforming human nature, including such thorny topics as humanity's privilege as a species, our capacity to 'play God', the idea that we might treat our genes as a capital investment, eugenics and what it might mean to be 'human' in the context of risky scientific and technological interventions.

This book outlines a compelling new agenda for feminist theories of identity and social relations.

This book looks at how the ideas of freedom, property, and order are expressed in modern social contract theories (SCTs).

First published in 1991 this text provides an incisive analysis of theories concerning the origins of economic inequality between nations.

Winner of the 2016 Book Award from the American Society of Criminology, Division of Critical Criminology.

This book asks whether there exists an essence exclusive to human beings despite their continuous enhancement - a nature that can serve to distinguish humans from artificially intelligent robots, now and in the foreseeable future.

Drawing on critical social and political thought, the book explores the implications, arguing that late modern wars wars, often referred to as 'liberal', may be interpreted as perpetuating forms of exclusion and domination that render war a tool of control now articulated in global terms.

Sports coaching is a social activity.

Hierarchy within the educational setting is a topic underrepresented in the existing literature, yet an area rich with unique social characteristics and particular challenges.

Between Habit and Thought in New TV Serial Drama: Serial Connections is a consideration of some of the key examples of serial television drama available via transnational streaming platforms in recent times.

In the context of debates surrounding the effects of new technologies on our mental faculties, particularly the attention span, this volume addresses the notion of a deterioration of attention, and the related ideas of cognitive overload, an inability to concentrate, and attention deficit disorder.

This ambitious two-volume handbook of social theory is both current and will stand the test of time.

Drawing on rich insights from cultural, post-structural and postcolonial studies, this book demands that we rethink Carnival and the carnivalesque as not just celebratory moments or even as critical subtext, but also as insightful performatives of social life anywhere, given the entangled times and spaces of these performances.

The Origins of Criminological Theory offers a new sort of theory textbook, both in content and concept.

This volume offers an unprecedented account of recent and future developments in the sociology of intellectuals.

Enough of Experts: Expert Authority in Crisis analyses the challenges and threats to expert authority in neoliberal political economies and societies.

In a world in which individuals will undergo multiple career changes, is it possible any longer to conceive of a job as a meaningful vocation?

Originally published in 1984, Contradictions of the Welfare State is the first collection of Claus Offe's essays to appear in a single volume in English.

Zygmunt Bauman is one of the most inspirational and controversial thinkers on the scene of contemporary sociology.

Aimed at political sciences students and teachers, Ferreras presents the new idea of ''economic bicameralism'' to redefine firms as political entities.

This book presents various paradigms and debates on the diverse issues concerning disability in India from a sociological perspective.

For sociologists, making, distributing, and using art and cultural products constitute social practices, yet, sociologists disagree on how to investigate these practices.

Fashionable new theories tend to reject universal reason in favour of pluralism and locality.

The image of surfing is everywhere in American popular culture - films, novels, television shows, magazines, newspaper articles, music, and especially advertisements.