Social Theory Books

New and Published Books

1. Sociology in Action (Routledge Revivals)

   A Critique of Selected Conceptions of the Social Role of the Sociologist

   By Christopher Bryant

   Series: Routledge Revivals

   This book, first published in 1976, discusses four classical paradigms for sociology – the positivism of Saint-Simon and Comte, Durkheim, Marx and Weber – and four contemporary developments or revisions of them – the sociologie active of Dumazedier and his colleagues in France, sociology in...

   Published April 4th 2013 by Routledge
2. Risk

   Second Edition

   By Deborah Lupton

   Series: Key Ideas

   Risk (second edition) is a fully revised and expanded update of a highly-cited, influential and well-known book. It reviews the three major approaches to risk in social and cultural theory, devoting a chapter to each one. These approaches were first identified and described by Deborah Lupton in the...

   Published April 2nd 2013 by Routledge
3. Sociological Impressionism (Routledge Revivals)

   A Reassessment of Georg Simmel's Social Theory

   By David Frisby

   Series: Routledge Revivals

   When Sociological Impressionism was first published in 1981, it was the first comprehensive study on Simmel’s social theory to appear in English since 1925. A pioneering work, it did much to bring about the rediscovery of Georg Simmel as one of the key sociologists of the twentieth century. David...

   Published March 31st 2013 by Routledge
4. The Alienated Mind (Routledge Revivals)

   The Sociology of Knowledge in Germany 1918-1933

   By David Frisby

   Series: Routledge Revivals

   This book, first published in 1983, with a second edition in 1992, investigates the emergence of the sociology of knowledge in Germany in the critical period from 1918 to 1933. These years witnessed the development of distinctive paradigms centred on the works of Max Scheler, Georg Lukács and Karl...

   Published March 31st 2013 by Routledge
5. Information Society Studies

   By Alistair S. Duff

   Series: Routledge Research in Information Technology and Society

   We are often told that we are "living in an information society" or that we are "information workers." But what exactly do these claims mean, and how might they be verified? In this important methodological study, Alistair S. Duff cuts through the rhetoric to get to the bottom of the "information...

   Published March 21st 2013 by Routledge
6. Social Activism in Southeast Asia

   Edited by Michele Ford

   Series: Routledge Contemporary Southeast Asia Series

   Social Activism in Southeast Asia brings together cutting-edge accounts of social movements concerned with civil and political rights, globalization, peace, the environment, migrant and factory labour, the rights of middle- and working-class women, and sexual identity in an overarching framework of...

   Published March 21st 2013 by Routledge
7. No Place Like Home

   Organizing Home-Based Labor in the Era of Structural Adjustment

   By David Staples

   Series: New Approaches in Sociology

   No Place Like Home examines the emergence of home-based women workers as paradigmatic figures of contemporary capitalism, neoliberal governmentality, and socio-political contestation. Far from an isolated or contingent situation, home-based work constitutes today an enormous arena of 'invisible'...

   Published March 21st 2013 by Routledge
8. The Future of Political Community

   Edited by Gideon Baker, Jens Bartelson

   Series: Routledge/ECPR Studies in European Political Science

   This book explores the alternative futures of political community and moves beyond the critique of what is wrong with existing, state-based forms of political community. It does so not with the defence of a particular normative model of political community in mind, but rather in the quest for new...

   Published March 21st 2013 by Routledge
9. The Politics of Knowledge

   Edited by Patrick Baert, Fernando Domínguez Rubio

   Social scientists often refer to contemporary advanced societies as ‘knowledge societies’, which indicates the extent to which ‘science’, ‘knowledge’ and ‘knowledge production’ have become fundamental phenomena in Western societies and central concerns for the social sciences. This book aims to...

   Published March 21st 2013 by Routledge
10. Making Culture, Changing Society

    By Tony Bennett

    Series: CRESC

    Making Culture, Changing Society proposes a challenging new account of the relations between culture and society focused on how particular forms of cultural knowledge and expertise work on, order and transform society. Examining these forms of culture’s action on the social as aspects of a...

    Published March 20th 2013 by Routledge