Social Life

Dr Matthias Benzer is a Lecturer of Sociology at the University of Sheffield. He previously held the Peacock Fellowship at the Centre for Analysis of Risk and Regulation, London School of Economics (2010-2012), and a Lectureship in Sociology at the University of Manchester (2008-2010). Matthias obtained a PhD in Sociology from the London School of Economics in 2008 with a thesis in Sociological Theory. I joined the University of Sheffield in January 2004 as a Lecturer in Medical Sociology. I conducted my undergraduate and postgraduate degrees at Liverpool, Lancaster and Southampton. After completing my PhD in 2000 at the university of Southampton I held a lectureship from 2000-2003 in Sociology at the University of Kent before moving to the University of Sheffield. 2018 marks my promotion to Professorship. My research interests are as follows: sociology of health and illness, gender, social theory, race and ethnicity.

Benzer and Reed grab their favourite things from their favourite theorists and assemble those closely examined nuggets into their own kaleidoscopic-fragmentary theory of contemporary society. Avoiding the fetish of comprehensiveness that ruins most textbooks, they have produced a tool that students will actually find useful for studying.

• Anthony Giddens: Living with Radical ModernityPierre Bourdieu: Capital and Forms of Social SufferingBruno Latour: Rethinking Modern Social LifeDonna Haraway: New Modes of SocialityZygmunt Bauman: Liquid Social LifeJean-François Lyotard: Living in PostmodernityMichel Foucault: Power over LifeJean Baudrillard: Terror, Death, ExchangeEmerging Sociological Themes and ConcernsConclusion