Classical and Contemporary Social Theory - Böcker

This book explores the shift in sociology away from the shared aspiration of the classical transition, of transcending partiality through the construction of a "science of society", in the face of challenges to the notion of objectivity. With the ...

Läs mer »

The permanent struggle for optimisation can be seen as one of the most significant cultural principles of contemporary Western societies: the demand for improved performance and efficiency as well as the pursuit of self-improvement are con-sidered...

Läs mer »

This book is a groundbreaking attempt to rethink the landscapes of the social world and historical practice by theorising 'social haunting': the ways in which the social forms, figures, phantasms and ghosts of the past become present to us time an...

Läs mer »

This book explores the thought of - and is dedicated to - David Frisby, one of the leading sociologists of the late twentieth and early twenty-?rst centuries. Presenting original examinations of his unique social theory and underlining his interdi...

Läs mer »

This book explores the nature of modern culture as a culture of anxiety, analyzing the modes in which such anxiety presents itself. Drawing on sociological and philosophical concepts of modernity, the author builds on the work of Marx, Nietzsche, ...

Läs mer »

This book addresses the 'perennial' question of the meaning of life from the point of view of a novel interpretation of Aristotle's teleology. Beginning with the premise that at the core of modernity and modern moral imagination are the entropy of...

Läs mer »

This book outlines a new conception of political aesthetics based on the notion of order as an aesthetic category pertaining to human perception. Engaging with the thought of a range of figures, including Veblen, Honneth, Foucault, Popper, and Mac...

Läs mer »

This book explores the emergence and encouragement of the new narcissus in our society and the ways in which this is portrayed in reality television. Through studies of well-known reality shows, including Toddlers and Tiaras, Hoarders, Sister Wive...

Läs mer »

This book examines the meaning of Brexit, the election of Trump and the rising tide of populist revolt on the right amidst the collapse of the left. Exploring the reaction against the establishment or 'the system', the author contends that we are ...

Läs mer »

Love and depression are key elements in the cultural script of emotions or affectual life within contemporary Western society, and the two have become intertwined to such an extent that it is informative to talk about depressive love. Indeed, the ...

Läs mer »

This book presents an interpretive, macro-historical, and sociological account of martyrdom. Moving away from the notion of martyrdom as an object of individual behavior and seeing it instead as a significant cultural work performed by communities...

Läs mer »

In recent years, an increasing number of separation walls have been built around the world. Walls built in urban areas are particularly striking in that they have exacted a heavy toll in terms of human suffering. As territorialising devices, walls...

Läs mer »

Through comparative historical research, this book offers a novel theory explaining the emergence of boredom in modernity. Presenting a Durkheimian topology of cross-cultural boredom, it grounds the sociological cause of boredom in anomie and the ...

Läs mer »

This book argues that of today's 'core' social scientific disciplines, it is sociology that has inherited the capacious ambitions of the Scottish Enlightenment. Departing from the practice of classifying thinkers of the Scottish Enlightenment usin...

Läs mer »

This book explores the nature of modern culture as a culture of anxiety, analyzing the modes in which such anxiety presents itself. Drawing on sociological and philosophical concepts of modernity, the author builds on the work of Marx, Nietzsche, ...

Läs mer »

This book examines the meaning and implications of the sociological maxim, 'make the familiar strange'. Addressing the methodological questions of why and how sociologists should make the familiar strange, what it means to 'make the familiar stran...

Läs mer »

Well-being studies is an exciting and relatively new multi-disciplinary field, with data being gathered from different domains in order to improve social policies. In its reliance on a truncated account of well-being based implicitly on neoclassic...

Läs mer »

Through comparative historical research, this book offers a novel theory explaining the emergence of boredom in modernity. Presenting a Durkheimian topology of cross-cultural boredom, it grounds the sociological cause of boredom in anomie and the ...

Läs mer »

This book offers a new account of Freud's work by reading him as the social theorist and philosopher he always aspired to be, and not as the medical scientist he publicly claimed to be. In doing so, the author demonstrates that's Freud's social, m...

Läs mer »

This book explores the contemporary relevance of Charles H. Cooley's thought, bringing together scholars from the US, Europe and Australia to reflect on Cooley's theory and legacy. Offering an up-to-date analysis of Cooley's reception in the histo...

Läs mer »

Bringing together leading interpreters of Zygmunt Bauman's sociology, this volume thinks with and beyond Bauman's work in order to show its continued relevance as a theory in its own right, as an object of criticism and as a stepping stone towards...

Läs mer »

Some studies estimate that each year, around a quarter of the population of Western countries will suffer from at least one mental disorder. Should this be interpreted as evidence for the progress of psychiatry, a discipline that is now able to id...

Läs mer »

This book illuminates an important dimension of the work of Max Weber. Weber's theory of meaning and modernity is articulated through an understanding of his account of the way in which the pursuit of meaning in the modern world has been shaped by...

Läs mer »

This book offers a new perspective on sociological studies of the consumer society, introducing neglected normative questions relating to the good life and human flourishing - subjects more commonly discussed in fields of moral, political, and soc...

Läs mer »

Drawing on the thought of Durkheim, this volume focuses on societal changes at the symbolic level to develop a new conceptualisation of the emergence of postsecular societies. Neo-Durkheimian categories are applied to the case of Turkey, which in ...

Läs mer »

The Poetics of Crime provides an invitation to reconsider and reimagine how criminological knowledge may be creatively and poetically constructed, obtained, corroborated and applied. Departing from the conventional understanding of criminology as ...

Läs mer »

Events in the world today appear to be increasingly uncontrollable and unknowable. Climate change, refugee crises, and global pandemics seem to demonstrate the limits of human reason, science, and technology. In light of this, the terms "tragedy" ...

Läs mer »

Events in the world today appear to be increasingly uncontrollable and unknowable. Climate change, refugee crises, and global pandemics seem to demonstrate the limits of human reason, science, and technology. In light of this, the terms "tragedy" ...

Läs mer »

Addressing the neglect of the work of Talcott Parsons, the complexity of whose thought and the opacity of whose writing style can prove daunting, this book provides a comprehensible account of the major theoretical accomplishments in his work and ...

Läs mer »

Zygmunt Bauman's Modernity and the Holocaust is a decisive text of intellectual reflection after Auschwitz, in which Bauman rejected the idea that the Holocaust represented the polar opposite of modernity and saw it instead as its dark potentialit...

Läs mer »