Understanding Social Change – serie

Our world is an increasingly unstable place, but current changes offer new opportunities as well as new challenges. This key volume provides an accessible exploration of identity as a contemporary concern in everyday life and as a key concept in social science. Drawing on work from a range of disciplines and focusing on the key social divisions of gender, class and nation, it shows how these challenges and opportunities work out in practice.What is really happening when people either individually or in groups identify with particular definitions of themselves or strike out to take up new identities? Do gender, class and ethnicity offer some stability and even certainty about who we are, or are they to be seen as limitations on our freedom to choose our own identities? Are we in the end bound by the social constraints and inequalities with which we started out?This key text is essential reading for all students starting out in the social sciences and for anyone with an interest in the dilemmas of identity-making in contemporary society.

Our world is an increasingly unstable place, but current changes offer new opportunities as well as new challenges. This key volume provides an accessible exploration of identity as a contemporary concern in everyday life and as a key concept in social science. Drawing on work from a range of disciplines and focusing on the key social divisions of gender, class and nation, it shows how these challenges and opportunities work out in practice.What is really happening when people either individually or in groups identify with particular definitions of themselves or strike out to take up new identities? Do gender, class and ethnicity offer some stability and even certainty about who we are, or are they to be seen as limitations on our freedom to choose our own identities? Are we in the end bound by the social constraints and inequalities with which we started out?This key text is essential reading for all students starting out in the social sciences and for anyone with an interest in the dilemmas of identity-making in contemporary society.

The age in which people in the West have treated society and nature as essentially separate matters is at an end. Environmental change and degradation impinge on all our lives, and even our genes are increasingly seen by employers and insurers as commodities.The Natural and the Social draws on insights from across the social sciences to examine the changing character of these interrelations between society and nature. Individual chapters look in depth at genes, environments and human development, medical practices and health, and the management of environmental risk. Throughout students are encouraged to draw on their own experiences to understand the theoretical and practical problems of living in this new natural-and-social world.This exciting and original text will be essential reading for anyone who wants to understand more clearly the role and limitations of technological and scientific progress in contemporary society.

The age in which people in the West have treated society and nature as essentially separate matters is at an end. Environmental change and degradation impinge on all our lives, and even our genes are increasingly seen by employers and insurers as commodities.The Natural and the Social draws on insights from across the social sciences to examine the changing character of these interrelations between society and nature. Individual chapters look in depth at genes, environments and human development, medical practices and health, and the management of environmental risk. Throughout students are encouraged to draw on their own experiences to understand the theoretical and practical problems of living in this new natural-and-social world.This exciting and original text will be essential reading for anyone who wants to understand more clearly the role and limitations of technological and scientific progress in contemporary society.

Taking as its focus three familiar and profoundly influential social institutions, the family, work and welfare, this accessible and exciting text looks at their role in maintaining social order and promoting social change in Britain from the 1950's to the beginning of the twenty first century. It shows how everyday life within these institutions is marked by the exercise of power and resistance and it charts the ways in which wider social change has affected these processes.Ordering Lives: Family, Work and Welfare engages with some of the most pressing issues affecting our society in a lively yet academically rigorous manner. At the same time, it offers students of the social sciences a crucial first introduction to the way that theory is used in social science explanations of social relations and institutional arrangements.This is a key introductory text for all students beginning study in sociology, social policy or general social sciences. Does it any longer make sense to talk about a "welfare state" in today's UK?

Today's news media is full of references to 'globalization' - a buzz word that is quickly becoming ubiquitous. But what exactly is globalization? What are its main driving forces? Does it truly embrace all aspects of our lives, from economics to cultural developments? A Globalizing World? examines these and other key questions in a highly accessible fashion, offering a clear and intelligent guide to the big ideas and debates of our time. In doing so, it does not take one particular stance for or against globalizaton; rather, it examines the arguments and evidence about its nature, form and impact. After introducing the main theoretical positions of those who have studied the subject, key chapters look at the changing form of modern communication and cultural industries, trade patterns and financial flows of the world economy, and whether or not the 'new political world order' is qualitatively different from the old state system. This is essential reading for all students of politics, economics and international relations.

Today's news media is full of references to 'globalization' - a buzz word that is quickly becoming ubiquitous. But what exactly is globalization? What are its main driving forces? Does it truly embrace all aspects of our lives, from economics to cultural developments? A Globalizing World? examines these and other key questions in a highly accessible fashion, offering a clear and intelligent guide to the big ideas and debates of our time. In doing so, it does not take one particular stance for or against globalizaton; rather, it examines the arguments and evidence about its nature, form and impact. After introducing the main theoretical positions of those who have studied the subject, key chapters look at the changing form of modern communication and cultural industries, trade patterns and financial flows of the world economy, and whether or not the 'new political world order' is qualitatively different from the old state system. This is essential reading for all students of politics, economics and international relations.

Knowledge and the Social Sciences takes as its point of departure the claims that all forms of knowledge, the social sciences included, must be seen and understood in their social context. It argues that the social sciences both describe and transform their object of study, though rarely in ways that social scientists intend, and introduces students to the key epistemological and philosophical terms and issues essential for further study in the social sciences.In a radical and yet lucid and practical introduction to ways of thinking and knowing in the social sciences this text investigates:* the origins and consequences of different types of knowledge in substantive areas of social change: medical practice, religious beliefs, and the environment* whether there is a decline in public trust of expert knowledge systems* whether we are entering a knowledge society, a fragmented post-modern society, or a risk society.