David R. Dickens – författare

This edited volume highlights the work of ten forgotten and neglected social theorists in the hope of reinvigorating interest in their work and their potential contributions to the analysis of contemporary social issues. Each chapter includes a brief biographical sketch, an overview of the selected theorist’s work and significance, and the relevance of their work to one or more contemporary social issues. While other similar texts tend to focus primarily on intellectual biography, our emphasis here is on the scholar’s theories and their application to contemporary social issues. We provide a contextualization of each scholar’s work, using present-day social issues or problems. Many of these individuals played a significant role in the development of sociology. Our hope is to provide a resource that will help re-integrate these marginalized social theorists, rescuing them from obscurity and elevating their status.

Electronic Dance Music: From Deviant Subculture to Culture Industry explores the subculture’s emergence as a deviant subculture. This text analyzes how industry professionals, fans, and public officials helped usher in a new age of EDM, arguing that while the defining features of the subculture made it attractive, they also laid the foundations for outsiders to commodify the movement as a culture industry. Conner and Dickens explore the concept of “commodified resistance” as the mechanism by which the movement's politically dissident features were removed and its place as a multi-billion-dollar industry made possible. Ultimately, this text advocates the continued utility of the culture industry thesis through an empirical analysis of the EDM subculture.Check out an interview with the author on the New Books Network podcast here: https://newbooksnetwork.com/electronic-dance-music

Electronic Dance Music: From Deviant Subculture to Culture Industry explores the subculture’s emergence as a deviant subculture. This text analyzes how industry professionals, fans, and public officials helped usher in a new age of EDM, arguing that while the defining features of the subculture made it attractive, they also laid the foundations for outsiders to commodify the movement as a culture industry. Conner and Dickens explore the concept of “commodified resistance” as the mechanism by which the movement's politically dissident features were removed and its place as a multi-billion-dollar industry made possible. Ultimately, this text advocates the continued utility of the culture industry thesis through an empirical analysis of the EDM subculture.Check out an interview with the author on the New Books Network podcast here: https://newbooksnetwork.com/electronic-dance-music

Neglected Social Theorists of Color: Deconstructing the Margins provides a novel contribution to the ongoing debates concerning the canon in contemporary sociological theory. In particular, the editors argue that many scholars whose work may hold significant potential for contributions to contemporary debates in social theory go unrecognized. Still others, while not completely ignored, have fallen victim to a cultural and political climate not receptive to their work. Feminist scholars have been in the forefront of these debates, arguing that many insightful social theorists have been marginalized because of their gender. More recently, studies of individual theorists of color have appeared, but these have been limited to African American scholars such as W.E.B. Du Bois. In the present text, the editors extend this approach to include a broad diversity of theorists of color, including those of African American, Afro-Caribbean, Latinx, Asian, Asian American, and Native American backgrounds. In addition, the editors also include the work of authors who come from academic fields outside of sociology and others who are journalists, activists, or independent writers. The work has a unique format, where the authors of each chapter provide a theoretical analysis of their subject and a discussion of the contemporary significance of their work, lending to a rich discussion of underappreciated sociological scholars.

Neglected Social Theorists of Color: Deconstructing the Margins provides a novel contribution to the ongoing debates concerning the canon in contemporary sociological theory. In particular, the editors argue that many scholars whose work may hold significant potential for contributions to contemporary debates in social theory go unrecognized. Still others, while not completely ignored, have fallen victim to a cultural and political climate not receptive to their work. Feminist scholars have been in the forefront of these debates, arguing that many insightful social theorists have been marginalized because of their gender. More recently, studies of individual theorists of color have appeared, but these have been limited to African American scholars such as W.E.B. Du Bois. In the present text, the editors extend this approach to include a broad diversity of theorists of color, including those of African American, Afro-Caribbean, Latinx, Asian, Asian American, and Native American backgrounds. In addition, the editors also include the work of authors who come from academic fields outside of sociology and others who are journalists, activists, or independent writers. The work has a unique format, where the authors of each chapter provide a theoretical analysis of their subject and a discussion of the contemporary significance of their work, lending to a rich discussion of underappreciated sociological scholars.