1st Edition

New Critical Writings in Political Sociology Volume Two: Conventional and Contentious Politics

Edited By Kate Nash, Alan Scott Copyright 2009

    The articles collected together in this volume are concerned with why and how people get involved in politics, whether through formal mechanisms such as voting, through some of the more informal means and settings of social movement networks and political protest, or through engagement in public debate. But just as important is the question of why people do not get involved in politics. What social conditions, ideas and values facilitate or discourage political activity? How is it that some people are systematically disempowered in democratic societies in comparison with others? What social forms offer the most promise for extending and deepening democracy? This volume brings togther the most seminal papers, which together form a record of how political sociologists since the 1970s have framed questions about the range and limits of democratic political engagement and developed concepts and methodologies in order to research the answers to those questions.

    Contents: Introduction; Part I Class Elections and Parties: Class voting in capitalist democracies since World War II: dealignment, realignment or trendless fluctuation?, Jeff Manza, Michael Hout and Clem Brooks; Representing difference: why should it matter if women get elected?, Anne Phillips. Part II Civil Society and Political Participation: Renewing democracy through associations, Paul Hirst; Social capital: its origins and applications in modern sociology, Alejandro Portes. Part III Social Movements: Political opportunity structures and political protest: anti-nuclear movements in 4 democracies, Herbert P. Kitschelt; Framing processes and social movements: an overview and assessment, Robert D. Benford and David A. Snow; The symbolic challenge of contemporary movements, Alberto Melucci; To map contentious politics, Doug McAdam; Sidney Tarrow and Charles Tilly. Part IV Changing Citizenship: Outline of a theory of citizenship, Bryan S. Turner; The return of assimilation? Changing perspectives on immigration and its sequels in France, Germany and the United States, Rogers Brubaker; Dilemmas in engendering citizenship, Ruth Lister; Is European citizenship possible?, Etienne Balibar. Part V Ideology and Hegemony: Ideology and ideological state apparatuses: notes towards an investigation, L. Althusser; Culture, the media and the 'ideological effect', Stuart Hall; Welcome to the desert of the real!, Slavoj Zizek. Part VI Political Culture and Cultural Politics: Deep play: notes on the Balinese cockfight, Clifford Geertz; Civil religion in America, Robert N. Bellah; Restoring history and politics to '3rd world traditions', Uma Nayaran. Part VII Making Things Public and the Public Sphere: The public sphere: an encyclopedia article, Jürgen Habermas; Rethinking the public sphere: a contribution to the critique of actually existing democracy, Nancy Fraser; From realpolitik to dingpolitik or how to make things public, Bruno Latour; The deconstruction of politics, Zygmunt Bauman; Name index.

    Biography

    Kate Nash is Reader in Sociology, Goldsmiths College, University of London, UK, Alan Scott is Professor of Sociology, University of Innsbruck, Austria and Anna Marie Smith is Professor of Government at Cornell University, USA.

    '...a valuable project' Social Movement Studies