This series presents cutting-edge developments and debates within the field of sociology. It provides a broad range of case studies and the latest theoretical perspectives, while covering a variety of topics, theories and issues from around the world. It is not confined to any particular school of thought.
By Martin O'Brien
December 09, 2011
This book takes a measured look at the 'crisis of waste' in modern society and it does so historically, sociologically and critically. It tells stories about past and present ‘crises’ of waste and puts them in their appropriate social and industrial contexts. From Charles Dickens to Don ...
By Silvia Rief
September 25, 2012
This book explores contemporary club and dance cultures as a manifestation of aesthetic and prosthetic forms of life. Rief addresses the questions of how practices of clubbing help cultivate particular forms of reflexivity and modes of experience, and how these shape new devices for reconfiguring ...
By Richard Howson
September 18, 2012
In the past twenty years there has been a growing interest in the issues surrounding men and masculinity. Driven primarily by the second-wave feminist critique of the legitimacy or hegemony of masculine practice and culture, the hegemony of men in social spheres such as the family, law, and the ...
By Paul Johnson
September 18, 2012
Heterosexuality is a largely ‘silent’ set of practices and identities – it is assumed to be everywhere and yet often remains unnamed and unexplored. Despite recent changes in the theoretical understanding and representation of sexuality, heterosexuality continues to be socially normative. Forging ...
Edited
By Ulrike Schuerkens
September 05, 2012
Social inequality is a worldwide phenomenon. Globalization has exacerbated and alleviated inequality over the past twenty-five years. This volume offers analytical and comparative insights from current case studies of social inequality in more than ten countries within all the major regions of the ...
By Kristin Lawler
September 05, 2012
The image of surfing is everywhere in American popular culture – films, novels, television shows, magazines, newspaper articles, music, and especially advertisements. In this book, Kristin Lawler examines the surfer, one of the most significant and enduring archetypes in American popular culture, ...
By Eduardo de la Fuente
September 05, 2012
In the first decade of the twentieth-century, many composers rejected the principles of tonality and regular beat. This signaled a dramatic challenge to the rationalist and linear conceptions of music that had existed in the West since the Renaissance. The ‘break with tonality’, Neo-Classicism, ...
Edited
By Jeremy Leaman, Martha Wörsching
September 05, 2012
This book examines the everyday living conditions experienced and also shaped by young people in Europe. Contributors reflect on the current context of economic, social and political change affecting youth in the critical transition from dependence to independence. The volume provides the...
Edited
By Detlef Pollack, Daniel V.A. Olson
December 09, 2011
Does modernization lead to the decline of religion? This question lies at the centre of a key debate in the sociology of religion. During the past decade American scholars, using primarily American data, have dominated this debate and have made a strong case that the answer to this question is no. ...
Edited
By Birgit Pfau-Effinger, Lluis Flaquer, Per H. Jensen
July 27, 2012
Informal work – family care, voluntary work, and undeclared or unregulated work – is a critical form of labor in today’s economy, yet remains underanalyzed and examined. This volume develops a comprehensive conceptual framework of informal work and analyses systematically the relationship of formal...
By Arpad Szakolczai
July 27, 2012
This book offers a sociological analysis of the Renaissance, focusing on the concept of grace, and the unity that exists between its various meanings: theological, anthropological (gift-giving, Mauss; and sociability, Simmel), and aesthetical (beauty and gracefulness). Since the seminal work of Max...
By Jeremy F. Lane
July 11, 2012
In the last decade of his career, the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu became involved in a series of high-profile political interventions, defending the cause of striking students and workers, speaking out in the name of illegal immigrants, the homeless and the unemployed, challenging the ...