The present ecological mutation has organized the whole political landscape for the last thirty years. This could explain the deadly cocktail of exploding inequalities, massive deregulation, and conversion of the dream of globalization into a nightm…
The Fashioned Body provides a wide-ranging and original overview of fashion and dress from an historical and sociological perspective. Where once fashion was seen as marginal, it has now entered into core economic discourse focused around ideas abou…
The pace of modern life is undoubtedly speeding up, yet this acceleration does not seem to have made us any happier or more content. If acceleration is the problem, then the solution, argues Hartmut Rosa in this major new work, lies in "resonance."…
Our everyday lives are increasingly intertwined with psychiatry and discussions of mental health. Yet the dominant medical discipline of psychiatry remains surrounded by controversy. Is mental distress really an illness like any other, treatable by…
This exciting new book presents the field of social demography, animating the study of population with a vibrant sociological imagination. Gregg Lee Carter provides multiple demonstrations of how taking a demographic perspective can give us a better…
The study of migration is and always has been an interdisciplinary field of study, vast and vibrant in nature. This short introduction to the field, written by leading historians of migration for student readers, offers an acute analysis of key issu…
The far right is back with a vengeance. After several decades at the political margins, far-right politics has again taken center stage. Three of the world's largest democracies - Brazil, India, and the United States - now have a radical right leade…
The second edition of Mildred Blaxter's successful and highly respected book offers a comprehensive and engaging introduction to the key debates surrounding the concept of health today. It discusses how health is defined, constructed, experienced an…
This is a brilliant study of the nature of love in modern society. Ulrich Beck and Elisabeth Beck-Gernsheim argue that the nature of love is changing fundamentally, creating opportunities for democracy or chaos in personal life.
This inspiring and stimulating book confronts contemporary challenges facing social workers. Many of the forms of human, social and environmental degradation addressed arise from social problems that have persisted over time, such as social work s o…
In Southern Theory Raewyn Connell presents the case for a new 'world social science' - one that is inclusive of many voices - by arguing for a more democratic global recognition of social theory from societies outside the dominant European and North…
Politicians invoke grand ideas: social justice, democracy, community, liberty, equality. But what do these ideas really mean? How can politicians across the political spectrum appeal to the same values? This fourth edition of Adam Swift's highly rea…
Offers a systematic reconstruction of the theoretical foundations and framework of critical social theory.
Here, for the first time in English, is volume one of Jurgen Habermasa s long--awaited magnum opus: The Theory of Communicative Action. This pathbreaking work is guided by three interrelated concerns: (1) to develop a concept of communicative ration…
With an entire discipline devoted to political science, what is distinctive about political sociology? This concise book explains what a sociological perspective brings to our understanding of the emergence, reproduction, and transformation of diffe…
In this exciting new book, Carol Smart proposes a new way of understanding families and relationships. It is born out of frustration with commentators who proclaim the supposed decline of commitment, and even the decline of the possibility of family…
For more than a decade, Carol Smart has been at the forefront of debates about the sociology of the family. Yet she has become frustrated by the fixation of many commentators with the supposed decline of commitment, and even the decline of the possi…
This book gives a comprehensive yet easily accessible introduction to risk and uncertainty as they have been analysed in sociology and related social sciences. The book draws extensively on the wide array of contemporary social theories of risk and…
This book provides a systematic, comprehensive introduction to the analysis of computer and video games. It introduces key concepts and approaches drawn from literary, film and media theory in an accessible and concrete manner; and it tests their us…
Computer games are one of the most exciting and rapidly evolving media of our time. Revenues from console and computer games have now overtaken those from Hollywood movies; and online gaming is one of the fastest-growing areas of the internet. Games…
In this exciting new book Angela McRobbie charts the euphoric moment of the new creative economy, as it rose to prominence in the UK during the Blair years, and considers it from the perspective of contemporary experience of economic austerity and u…
Written in a clear and accessible style, with lots of examples from Anglo-American media, Gender and the Media offers a critical introduction to the study of gender in the media, and an up-to-date assessment of the key issues and debates. Eschewing…
Mary Kaldor's New and Old Wars has fundamentally changed the way both scholars and policy-makers understand contemporary war and conflict. In the context of globalization, this path-breaking book has shown that what we think of as war - that is to s…
Disasters kill, maim, and generate increasingly large economic losses. But they do not wreak their damage equally across populations, and every disaster has social dimensions at its very core. This important book sheds light on the social conditions…
Designing Social Research is a uniquely comprehensive and student-friendly guide to the core knowledge and types of skills required for planning social research. The authors organize the book around four major steps in social research - focusing, fr…
In this important new book, Nancy Fraser and Rahel Jaeggi take a fresh look at the big questions surrounding the peculiar social form known as "capitalism," upending many of our commonly held assumptions about what capitalism is and how to subject i…
Democracies today are in the grip of a myth: the myth of the will of the people. Populist movements use the idea to challenge elected representatives. Politicians, content to invoke the will of the people, fail in their duty to make responsible and…
The third edition of Jill Steans popular and highly respected text offers a comprehensive and up to date introduction to gender in international relations today. Its nine chapters have been fully revised and expanded to cover key issues, development…
Twenty years ago Ulrich Beck published Risk Society , a book that called our attention to the dangers of environmental catastrophes and changed the way we think about contemporary societies. During the last two decades, the dangers highlighted by Be…
The Anthropocene has become central to understanding the intimate connections between human life and the natural environment, but it has fractured our sense of time and possibility. What implications does that fracturing have for how we should think…
How can we understand gender in the contemporary world? What psychological differences now exist between women and men? How are masculinities and femininities made? And what is the relationship between gender issues and globalizing concerns such as…
Old and New Terrorism provides the most comprehensive account of the evolution of terrorism in the modern world, and a concise and careful analysis of the forces that have driven its transformation. The book: charts the development of terrorist netw…
To analyse social and behavioral phenomena in our digitalized world, it's necessary to understand the main research opportunities and challenges specific to online and digital social research. This book presents an overview of the many techniques th…
This new edition of Alexander Miller s highly readable introduction to contemporary metaethics provides a critical overview of the main arguments and themes in twentieth- and twenty-first-century contemporary metaethics. Miller traces the developmen…
Human Rights is an introductory text that is both innovative and challenging. Its unique interdisciplinary approach invites students to think imaginatively and rigorously about one of the most important and influential political concepts of our time…
Networks of Outrage and Hope is an exploration of the new forms of social movements and protests that are erupting in the world today, from the Arab uprisings to the indignadas movement in Spain, from the Occupy Wall Street movement to the social pr…
Throughout the Western world, governments and financial elites responded to the financial crisis of 2008 by trying to restore the conditions of business as usual, but the economic, social and human damage inflicted by the crisis has given rise to a…
In recent times, US-Russia relations have deteriorated to what both sides acknowledge is an "all time low." Russian interference in the 2016 US presidential election and Putin's continued support for the Assad regime in Syria have placed enormous st…
Like fast food, fast science is quickly prepared, not particularly good and it clogs up the system. Efforts to tackle our most pressing issues, like global warming, have been stymied by conflict within the scientific community and mixed messages, sy…
The world almost conquered famine. Until the 1980s, this scourge killed ten million people every decade, but by early 2000s mass starvation had all but disappeared. Today, famines are resurgent, driven by war, blockade, hostility to humanitarian pri…
No other Marxist text has come close to achieving the fame and influence of The Communist Manifesto. Translated into over 100 languages, this clarion call to the workers of the world radically shaped the events of the twentieth century. But what rel…
Many on the Left see the European Union as a fundamentally benign project with the potential to underpin ever greater cooperation and progress. If it has drifted rightward, the answer is to fight for reform from within. In this iconoclastic polemic,…
Existentialism: An Introduction provides an accessible and scholarly introduction to the core ideas of the existentialist tradition. Kevin Aho draws on a wide range of existentialist thinkers in chapters centering on the key themes of freedom, being…
Beauty today is a paradox. The cult of beauty is ubiquitous but it has lost its transcendence and become little more than an aspect of consumerism, the aesthetic dimension of capitalism. The sublime and unsettling aspects of beauty have given way to…
This text presents an account of the dynamic relationship between society and science. That line separating society from science is regularly transgressed, and the closer interaction between the two signals the emergence of a new kind of science - c…
Dispossession describes the condition of those who have lost land, citizenship, property, and a broader belonging to the world. This thought-provoking book seeks to elaborate our understanding of dispossession outside of the conventional logic of po…
Why do powerful states like the U.S., U.K., China, and Russia repeatedly fail to meet their international legal obligations as defined by human rights instruments? How does global capitalism affect states ability to implement human rights, particula…
In this book, the founder of object-oriented ontology develops his view that aesthetics is the central discipline of philosophy. Whereas science must attempt to grasp an object in terms of its observable qualities, philosophy and art cannot proceed…
The changing nature of the family is a topic of intense public concern. It also has been the focus of research in sociology and related disciplines for many years. Family Connections is a major new introduction to the study of the family, written by…
It is impossible to understand capitalism without analyzing slavery, an institution that tied together three world regions: Europe, the Americas, and Africa. The exploitation of slave labor led to a form of proto-globalization in which violence was…
Social life is in a constant process of change, and sociology can never stand still. As a result, sociology today is a theoretically diverse enterprise, covering a huge range of subjects and drawing on a broad array of research methods. Central to t…
Our future depends very much on how we respond to three great challenges of the new century, all of which threaten to increase social inequality: first, how we adapt institutions to the new role of women - the 'incomplete revolution' of our time; se…
Our future depends very much on how we respond to three great challenges of the new century, all of which threaten to increase social inequality: first, how we adapt institutions to the new role of women; second, how we prepare our children for the…
