This series establishes the importance of innovative contemporary, comparative and historical work on the relations between social, cultural and economic change. It publishes empirically-based research that is theoretically informed, that critically examines the ways in which social, cultural and economic change is framed and made visible, and that is attentive to perspectives that tend to be ignored or side-lined by grand theorising or epochal accounts of social change. The series addresses the diverse manifestations of contemporary capitalism, and considers the various ways in which the `social', `the cultural' and `the economic' are apprehended as tangible sites of value and practice. It is explicitly comparative, publishing books that work across disciplinary perspectives, cross-culturally, or across different historical periods.
We are particularly focused on publishing books in the following areas that fit with the broad remit of the series:
The series is actively engaged in the analysis of the different theoretical traditions that have contributed to critiques of the `cultural turn'. We are particularly interested in perspectives that engage with Bourdieu, Foucauldian approaches to knowledge and cultural practices, Actor-network approaches, and with those that are associated with issues arising from Deleuze's work around complexity, affect or topology. The series is equally concerned to explore the new agendas emerging from current critiques of the cultural turn: those associated with the descriptive turn for example. Our commitment to interdisciplinarity thus aims at enriching theoretical and methodological discussion, building awareness of the common ground has emerged in the past decade, and thinking through what is at stake in those approaches that resist integration to a common analytical model.
By Joe Deville
February 18, 2015
Consumer credit borrowing – using credit cards, store cards and personal loans – is an important and routine part of many of our lives. But what happens when these everyday forms of borrowing go ‘bad’, when people start to default on their loans and when they cannot, or will not, repay? It is this ...
Edited
By Victoria Goddard, Susana Narotzky
January 23, 2015
Throughout history and in every geographical location, the rise and fall of industry, which impact the fate of large populations, are tied to the development and cultural entanglement of particular models that are articulated with political power. Models are understood as knowledge devices – ...
Edited
By Philippe Coulangeon, Julien Duval
November 12, 2014
This edited collection explores the genesis of Bourdieu's classical book Distinction and its international career in contemporary Social Sciences. It includes contributions from contemporary sociologists from diverse countries who question the theoretical legacy of this book in various fields and ...
Edited
By Marie Gillespie, Alban Webb
November 10, 2014
Diasporas and Diplomacy analyzes the exercise of British ‘soft power’ through the BBC’s foreign language services, and the diplomatic role played by their diasporic broadcasters. The book offers the first historical and comparative analysis of the ‘corporate cosmopolitanism’ that has characterized ...
Edited
By Tim Winter
November 10, 2014
In 2010 Shanghai hosted the largest, most spectacular and most expensive expo ever. Attracting a staggering 73 million visitors, and costing around US$45 billion dollars, Shanghai Expo broke the records in the history of world's fairs and universal expositions. With more than half of the world’s ...
By Beatriz Jaguaribe
October 09, 2014
"Through artistic imaginaries, media productions, social practices and spatial mappings, this book offers an insightful and original contribution to the understanding of Rio de Janeiro, one of the highly contested urban terrains in the world. Offering a rich diversity of examples extracted from ...
Edited
By Andrew Barry, Georgina Born
September 11, 2014
The idea that research should become more interdisciplinary has become commonplace. According to influential commentators, the unprecedented complexity of problems such as climate change or the social implications of biomedicine demand interdisciplinary efforts integrating both the social and ...
By Tony Bennett
November 07, 2013
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 ...
Edited
By Celia Lury, Nina Wakeford
July 30, 2013
Social and cultural research has changed dramatically in the last few years in response to changing conceptions of the empirical, an intensification of interest in interdisciplinary work, and the growing need to communicate with diverse users and audiences. Methods texts, however, have not kept ...
Edited
By Alan Tomlinson, Christopher Young, Richard Holt
May 31, 2013
In the modern era, sport has been an important agent, and symptom, of the political, cultural and commercial pressures for convergence and globalization. In this fascinating, inter-disciplinary study, leading international scholars explore the making of modern sport in Europe, illuminating sport ...
Edited
By Tony Bennett, Patrick Joyce
November 20, 2010
This edited collection is a major contribution to the current development of a ‘material turn’ in the social sciences and humanities. It does so by exploring new understandings of how power is made up and exercised by examining the role of material infrastructures in the organization of state...
By David Hesmondhalgh, Sarah Baker
April 14, 2011
What is it like to work in the media? Are media jobs more ‘creative’ than those in other sectors? To answer these questions, this book explores the creative industries, using a combination of original research and a synthesis of existing studies. Through its close analysis of key issues - such as ...