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This book presents a comprehensive analysis of China’s imbalanced sex ratio at birth and marriage market, and the implications of these phenomena for population development and families. China’s persistently high sex ratio at birth (SRB) since the early 1980s has led to serious gender imbalance and male marriage squeeze. After examining the quality of existing data on SRB, the authors provide their estimates of the sex-selective abortion rate, describe the trends and geographical patterns in SRB, and disaggregate changes in SRB by birth order and province. Special attention is given to the number and proportion of missing girls between 1980 and 2010. Based on the quantitative analyses, the book projects the implications of the severe gender imbalance for China’s population development and the future dynamics of the marriage market, including trends in age at first marriage, the proportion of never-married, the age structure of surplus males, and the life cycle of bare branch families. The book will appeal to scholars and students of demography, sociology, and China studies, especially those interested in China’s population and contemporary society.

Everyday Silence and the Holocaust examines Irene Levin’s experiences of her family’s unspoken history of the Holocaust and the silence that surrounded their war experiences as non-topics. A central example of what C. Wright Mills considered the core of sociology – the intersection of biography and history – the book covers the process by which the author came to understand that notes found in her mother’s apartment following her death were not unimportant scribbles, but in fact contained elements of her mother’s biographical narrative, recording her parents’ escape from occupied Norway to unoccupied Sweden in late 1942. From the mid-1990s, when society began to open up about the atrocities committed against the Jews, so too did the author find that her mother and the wider Jewish population ceased to be silent about their war experiences and began to talk. Charting the process by which the author traced the family’s broader history, this book explores the use of silence, whether in the family or in society more widely, as a powerful analytic tool and examines how these silences can intertwine. This book provides insight into social processes often viewed through a macro-historical lens by way of analysis of the life of an ""ordinary"" Jewish woman as a survivor. An engaging, grounded study of the biographical method in sociology and the role played by silence, this book will appeal to readers with an interest in the Holocaust and World War II, as well as in social scientific research methods. It will be of use to both undergraduate and postgraduate scholars in the fields of history, social science, psychology, philosophy, and the history of ideas.

When people are prevented from meeting their needs, the impact is disabling, whether in the immigration system or in the wider population. Drawing on many years of research and activism, this book argues that insights from the disabled people’s movement, particularly the original Social Model of Disability, can be usefully extended to focus resistance on the disabling restrictions imposed on people subject to asylum and immigration controls. While acknowledging the pain and discomfort of many impairments and of forced displacement, the book focuses on injustices that can be changed. It does not catalogue the hostility of the ‘hostile environment’. Nor does it promote inclusive asylum restrictions. An unjust system is not transformed by including disabled people. Policies designed to deprive people of essential needs and to stoke hatred among the wider population are core elements of the rise of fascism. In this context, bringing together movements for disability and migrant justice could help build urgently needed solidarity and resistance with which to develop a society based on equity and common humanity. Quotations and images are used to convey the messages and priorities of disabled people seeking asylum, ensuring that the book is both engaging and grounded in the insights of lived experience. This book will interest people seeking to improve social justice, including scholars of disability, migration, sociology and politics.

The Routledge Handbook of Translation and Sociology is the first encyclopedic presentation of research into the social aspects of translation and interpreting. It consists of 35 chapters contributed by 40 experts in their respective fields of the sociology of translation. The Handbook traces the evolution of research into social aspects of translation and interpreting, explains the basics of the sociology of translation, offers an insight into studies of translation within sociology, and shows the place translation and interpreting occupies among social functional systems and its interactions with social forces and practices.With global coverage spanning all inhabited continents, the Handbook examines translational practices across diverse cultures and historical periods, from ancient origins to modern professional practices. Suitable for both undergraduate and postgraduate students of translation and interpreting, as well as researchers in the sociology of translation, the Handbook furnishes readers with a comprehensive understanding of the field. It offers a thorough exploration of the current state of the sociology of translation and suggests avenues for further research.

Social Theory and the Political Imaginary: Practice, Critique, and History is an innovative work of synthesis, critique and analysis. It presages a social theory perspective that recognizes the constitutive significance of the political imaginary in modernity. Social theory's current dilemmas are explored through a series of interlinked assessments of recent substantial strands, specifically, Luc Boltanski's pragmatism and the wider ‘practical turn,'the perspectives of multiple modernities and global modernity, the outlook of social and political imaginaries and critical social theory. The political imaginary's reconfigurations are evident in the tensions of global modernity, and original social theory interpretations are advanced of landmark instances of twenty-first-century social contestation: the Hong Kong protests conditioned by threats to civil freedoms and a lack of self-determination, the radical democratic practices of anti-austerity movements contesting capitalist globalization's injustices and the inverted cosmopolitanism of the 2005 French Riots challenging the oppression and inequalities experienced by immigrant communities and marginalized youth. These incisive applications of social theory and complementary conceptual innovations illuminate the vicissitudes of social struggles, political forms and theoretical perspectives. Similarly, reflection on the political imaginary is found to enable a necessary rethinking of the interrelationship of practice, critique and history.

For some time the conventional wisdom in the interdisciplinary field of Holocaust studies is that sociologists have neglected this subject matter, but this is not really the case. In fact, there has been substantial sociological work on the Holocaust, although this scholarship has often been ignored or neglected including in the discipline of sociology itself. Sociology and the Holocaust brings this scholarly tradition to light, and in doing so offers a comprehensive synthesis of the vast historical and social science literature on the before, during, and after of the Holocaust—a tour d'horizon from an explicitly sociological perspective. As such, the aim of the book is not simply to describe the chronology of events that culminated in the deaths of 6 million Jews but to draw upon sociology's “theoretical toolkit” to understand these events and the ongoing legacy of the Holocaust sociologically.

Based upon the interdependencies of human beings as we cooperate and conflict with each other, how we share information, and how culture evolves, this book proposes a sociology of humanity covering three hundred millennia. Grounded in empirical findings from archaeology, history, lab experiments, and field studies – supplemented for precision with computational network models of cultural evolution, cooperation, influence, cohesion, warfare, power, social balance, and inequality – this is the first attempt at encompassing sociology of humankind. Informed by the theory of cultural evolution, it extends the notion that cultural evolution connects humans of all times in a giant sociocultural network, thereby yielding coherence between a great many empirical findings. It will therefore appeal to scholars of sociology and anthropology with interests in historical sociology, cultural evolution, and social theory.

This best-selling textbook returns for an eighth edition with material on the most fundamental issues in sociology today. The authors continue their tradition of focusing on the big picture, with an emphasis on race, class, and gender in every chapter—building on the seventh edition's discussion of reproductive justice after the revocation of Roe v. Wade, social movements such as Black Lives Matter and #MeToo, a discussion of the COVID-19 pandemic and Donald Trump and Joe Biden.The text frames sociological debates around the major theoretical perspectives of sociology and focuses on capturing students'imaginations with cutting-edge research and real-world events. The hallmark of the book continues to be clear writing that helps students understand the intricacies of the discipline like no other textbook on the market.New to the eighth editionThinking outside the box (or inside it…)Selected chapters contain thematically linked boxed inserts aimed at bringing analytical and expositional focus to certain issues, as follows: Sociological Insights: These boxes focus on how sociology can help us better understand a variety of issues and how examples from everyday life can help us to understand sociological principles, illustrating how topics are carefully linked to that material. Global Sociology: One of the most pronounced social changes of the past century has been globalization—a transition from the dominance of nation-states and national economies to global interactions. These boxes examine how social change moves around the world. Sociological Surprises: One common criticism of sociologists is that we sometimes expend a great deal of effort to prove things that are obvious. On the contrary, the reality is that what we find often goes against what people commonly believe and even against what sociological researchers expect to find. These boxes focus on such unexpected findings, analyzing why the social reality turns out to be something different from what is expected. Understanding Race, Class, and Gender: These boxes give added emphasis to the book's focus on race, class, and gender inequality. In every issue that sociologists study, race, class, and gender play a key role—and these boxes provide students with clear and concrete examples of how this occurs. Student Life: These boxes, which discuss student life from a sociological viewpoint, show how sociology is relevant to students in their everyday lives, covering race relations to dating to paying for college, and draws out their sociological implications. Putting Sociology to Work: These boxes focus on application: How can sociology be used to solve a social problem or to make an important decision?

First published in 1932, Studies in Sociology consists of essays that fall into three groups, the first concerned with the scope and method of sociology and its relation to history and social philosophy; the second devoted to an analysis of the theory of evolution as applied to society, and to a number of problems in social psychology, such as the nature of social purpose, the place of instinct in social science, the relation between instinct and emotion, and the inheritance of mental characters; while the third group deals with the claims of Eugenics, and social classes and social mobility. This book will be of interest to students of sociology, history and philosophy.

Indian Modernity (first published in 1998) acquires a new meaning today. While it critiques a techno-militaristic model of modernization, it visualizes alternative possibilities to give a distinctively new definition to our modernity. It engages the reader in dreaming of a new path to modernity beyond its present contradictions and paradoxes with its lyrical style, philosophic insights, sensitivity to deep religiosity, life-affirming femininity and, most of all, sociological imagination.This book continues to hold relevance for social science students and researchers, teachers, and visionaries, despite the passage of time.This title is co-published with Aakar Books. Print editions not for sale in South Asia (India, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bangladesh, Pakistan and Bhutan)

This timely book presents a carefully curated selection of essays to celebrate the career of Nigel South, Emeritus Professor at the Department of Sociology and Criminology of the University of Essex, and one of the leading figures in his field.Through his long career, still ongoing and flourishing, Nigel has contributed knowledge in many areas of criminological scholarship and challenged the confines of the discipline, opening up new directions for thinking and debate. In this volume, Nigel's close colleagues and friends celebrate his exceptional career through essays that draw on, or have been inspired by, his earlier or most recent work. Spanning across the areas of policing, drugs, green, southern, and sensory criminology, these essays offer cutting-edge research and fresh conceptual insights honouring the work of an outstanding criminologist, colleague, friend, and human being.This volume will be of pivotal interest to students, scholars, and academics in the fields of sociology and criminology, as well as those with an interest in these areas more generally.

Questioning society and one's place in it is a common theme in both comedy and sociology. Understanding and subverting hierarchies and norms, exploring deviance and taboos, and relating lived experience to broader questions all hold a crucial place for them both.Introduction to Sociology Through Comedy teaches foundational sociological concepts using comedy, first considering the history of sociology before employing examples from comedians – including standalone comedy bits, sketches, characters, and scenes – to illustrate a specific theory, concept, or social phenomenon. The profession of comedy is then used as a case study for the application of sociological concepts, such as impression management, social stratification, racial segregation, deviance, and stigma, allowing readers to gain familiarity with the concepts while simultaneously practicing their application.This book explains why we laugh by applying theories of humor, which will bolster students'understanding of sociological principles by forcing them to question their own assumptions – helping them to put why they laugh into sociological terms.

In a hyper-individualistic age and in the face of the narrowly focused, policy-oriented research ubiquitous in the social sciences, this book revisits the humanistic world-view that is integral to Norbert Elias's pre-eminent figurational-process sociology, with the aim of increasing the fund of sociological knowledge that has the human condition as its horizon.Clarifying the contentious ‘post-philosophical'aspects in order to supplement standard histories of sociology with new insights, it offers incisive evaluations of some of the bewildered attempts by prominent sociologists to diagnose the malaise of contemporary globalised society. It also challenges the orthodox limitation of the empirical scope of sociology to ‘modernity'. With its ominous warnings of the destructive prevalence of ‘overcritique'in the discipline and lack of in-depth sociological psychology, Post-Philosophical Sociology will appeal to scholars of sociology, psychoanalysis, social philosophy, cultural theory and social and political theory with interests in developmental and dynamic thinking and the history of the discipline.

In this new volume, Gavin Walker attempts to open a conversation between sociology and Jungian psychology, both often overlooked by each other, through a series of wide-ranging essays.This book provides a Jungian counterpoint to the more accepted Freudian perspective in sociology by engaging with several key themes, including race, gender, urban sociology, religion and the environment. The chapters here consider methodological issues, such as how Jungian psychology might contribute to our understanding of human nature, and Jung's – and sociology's – complex and manylevelled relationship with anthropology. As a whole, this unique work provides an open-ended exploration of what sociology includes and excludes from its agenda, and asks how engagement with Jung might shift the centre of gravity of a heterogeneous discipline.Psyche, Science and Society will be of interest to academics and students working in the fields of analytical psychology and sociology, as well as psychoanalysis, anthropology, feminism, environmentalism, comparative religion and the history of science.

This book addresses the current crisis of democratic politics and its phase of ‘interregnum'– in which the past finds it hard to die and the future finds it difficult to be born – by proposing a radical redefinition of the concept of the Political.Drawing on the thoughts of Antonio Gramsci and Walter Benjamin among others, it explores the meaning of the lemma auctoritas – the opposition between authority and power – and offers a comparison of the Frankfurt School's radical critique of power with Georges Bataille's critique of political economy and consumerist productivism, demonstrating how the two ultimately converge. Based on an ontology of the present that is critical of ‘identity obsession'and advances instead a universalism of difference, the author proposes a new understanding of politics founded not on ‘vertical'domination but on a ‘horizontal'recomposition of subjectivities, allowing interaction and acting-in-common between different forms of life.This book will therefore appeal to scholars of social and political theory.

This third edition of Social Theory Re-Wired is a significantly revised edition of this leading text and its unique web learning interactive programs that'allow us to go farther into theory and to build student skills than ever before,'according to many teachers. Vital political and social updates are reflected both in the text and the online supplements.'System updates'to each section offer an expanded set of contemporary theory readings that focus on the impacts of information/digital technologies on each of the text's five big themes: 1) the Puzzles of Social Order, 2) the Social Consequences of Capitalism, 3) the Darkside of Modernity, 4) Subordinated/Alternative Knowledges, and 5) Self-Identity and Society. New to this edition: The'big ideas/questions'thematic structure of the text as well as the connections between classical and contemporary theorists continues to be popular with instructors. This feature is enhanced in the new edition An expanded'Podcast Companions'series now pairs at least one podcast to every reading in the book Many new updates to the exercise platform allow students to theorize and build theory on their own New readings excerpts include such important recent work as: Shoshana Zuboff's'The Age of Surveillance Capitalism,'Ruha Benjamin's'Race After Technology,'David Graeber's'Of Flying Cars and the Declining Rate of Profit,'Sherry Turkle's “Always-On/Always-on-You.”

This book explores and proposes original definitions of central terms in political sociology and social theory, including political culture, imaginary, ideology, and utopia, in a manner that renders the individual definitions consistent with one another as part of a single and general conceptual framework for understanding social action. Through a Weberian distinction between means, ends, and values, together with the thought of Alfred Schütz and phenomenological sociology more generally, it sheds light on the ways in which the book's key concepts make sense of social action, advancing the view that, rather than some promised land or aspiration, utopia is a project of broad and far-reaching collective action realized in its own enactment. As such, the book will appeal to scholars of social theory, political sociology, and political theory.

Scrupulously based in anthropology and history – and drawing on social theory and critical thought – this book revisits the disciplines, archives, and subjects of modernity. There are at least three interleaving emphases here. To begin with, the work rethinks institutionalized formations of anthropology and history – together with'archives'at large – as themselves intimating disciplines of modernity. Understood in the widest senses of the terms, these disciplines are constitutively contradictory. Moreover, the study interrupts familiar projections of modern subjects as molded a priori by a disenchanted calculus of interest and reason. It tracks instead the affective, embodied, and immanent attributes of our varied worlds as formative of subjects of modernity, sown into their substance and spirit. Finally, running through the book is a querying of entitlement and privilege that underlie social terrains and their scholarly apprehensions – articulating at once distinct elites, pervasive plutocracies, and modern'scholasticisms.'

This book provides a detailed and comprehensive introduction to the concepts and methods of the sociology of farming. The sociology of farming focuses on co-production: the ongoing interaction and mutual transformation of the natural and the social (of ‘human and living nature') which requires putting the farm labour process centre stage. While there are many books which discuss food and agriculture, this book is different: it delves into the methods and concepts used and presents a comprehensive conceptual framework and the associated methods for research to give students and researchers of agriculture and rural studies a solid set of tools for unravelling the complexities of farming and rural life. Importantly, these tools also empower us to design new ways forward. A wide array of case studies, as wide-ranging as Brazil, Peru, China, the Netherlands, Italy and Guinea Bissau, help readers to grasp the commonalities that underlie strongly diversified and divided rural worlds. The book lists over two hundred basic concepts and includes boxes that discuss the main methods of the sociology of farming. This textbook is essential reading for students and scholars of food and agriculture, agrarian studies, rural development, food and farming systems, peasant studies and environmental sociology.

This book is a dialectic and multi-perspective examination of classed traumas in late modernity. The primary anchoring question is whether and how class becomes a condition of possibility for coping with traumas. What does it mean to experience deindustrialization, crises, or domestic violence from a specific class position? Do the coping mechanisms differ along the lines of class, gender, race, age, or ethnicity?The text negotiates such questions, travelling back and forth from psychoanalysis to sociology and from the global to the local, while critically engaging with memories, narratives, and myths engraved into social and personal histories. Through a dialogic quest for what is silenced, and what is salient within oral, written, and visual testimonies, it foregrounds what the upper classes prefer to neglect: the traumatizing core of the new class divide. Rather than idealizing or vilifying the dominated, this study calls for an exploration of practices, narrations, and spaces whereby alienation and integration co-exist antagonistically, producing hybrid and fragmented, but also potentially transformative, subjectivities.This book will be of interest to scholars of humanities and social sciences, primarily for those studying social stratification and inequalities, sociology of emotions, identity theory, trauma and memory, political psychoanalysis, labour history, and ethnography.

A lively, accessible and comprehensive introduction to the diverse ways of thinking about social life, Sociology: The Basics has been translated into six languages. The volume is packed with thought-provoking summaries, questions, quotations and activities. It offers an absorbing narrative about what we mean by the social, and how we can think about it, weaving in discussions of the personal, the political and social change, along with concepts and vivid contemporary examples, and answering questions such as: What is the scope, history and purpose of sociology? How do we cultivate ways of understanding society and ‘the social'? What is the state of the world we live in today? How do we analyse suffering and inequalities? What are key methods and tools for researching and thinking about society? How has digitalism reshaped sociology and its method? How might sociology help us understand the changes brought about by Covid-19? Does sociology have values? What is the role of sociology in making a better world? In this thoroughly revised and updated Third edition the reader is encouraged to think critically about the structures, meanings, histories and cultures found in the rapidly changing world we live in. With tasks to stimulate the sociological mind and suggestions for further reading both within the text and on an accompanying website, this book is essential reading for all those studying sociology and those with an interest in how the modern world works.

This volume includes an unpublished manuscript and selected portions of five seminars by Harold Garfinkel – the founder of ethnomethodology – on the topic of practices in the natural sciences and mathematics. The volume provides a coherent and sustained account of his program for the study of ordinary and specialized social actions. Presenting broader theoretical and methodological initiatives, as well as discussions and summaries of exemplary studies of social phenomena within and beyond the sciences, this work dates to the period in the 1980s during which the field of Science and Technology Studies was taking shape, with ethnomethodological studies of scientific practice forming a major part of its development at the time. Aside from their historical importance, the manuscript and seminars present a distinctive perspective on the natural and social sciences that remains highly original and pertinent to research on science, social science, and everyday life today. Offering critical insights and proposals relating to developments in Ethnomethodology and Conversation Analysis, this volume will appeal to scholars of Sociology and Science and Technology Studies with interests in the work of Garfinkel.The Open Access version of this book, available at www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.

Few concepts are as central to sociology as institutions. Yet, like so many sociological concepts, institutions remain vaguely defined. This book expands a foundational definition of the institution, one which locates them as the basic building blocks of human societies—as structural and cultural machines for survival that make it possible to pass precious knowledge from one generation to the next, ensuring the survival of our species. The book extends this classic tradition by, first, applying advances in biological evolution, neuroscience, and primatology to explain the origins of human societies and, in particular, the first institutional sphere: kinship. The authors incorporate insights from natural sciences often marginalized in sociology, while highlighting the limitations of purely biogenetic, Darwinian explanations. Secondly, they build a vivid conceptual model of institutions and their central dynamics as the book charts the chronological evolution of kinship, polity, religion, law, and economy, discussing the biological evidence for the ubiquity of these institutions as evolutionary adaptations themselves.

Bringing together the work of scholars from across Europe, this book shows how Simmel's categories can be used to explore contemporary issues and further shed light on trends characteristic of global modernity. Thematically organised around the major societal challenges currently faced by developed countries – those of making societies that are inclusive, reflexive and creative, sustainable, and democratic societies – it examines diverse phenomena, such as living in an increasingly multicultural societies, the social exclusion of vulnerable ethnic groups, the increasing concern with cyberbullying, the need to fight climate change, the rise of political populism, and the recruitment of youths from western countries to Islamic religious fundamentalism. Drawing on Simmel's sociological theory and expounding new approaches to research inspired by his work, this volume emphasises the conceptual pillars of Simmelian thought, meanings, processes, and forms. As such, it will appeal to scholars of sociology and social theory with interests in the work of Simmel and its contemporary relevance.

The monograph The Paradigm of Social Interaction presents a paradigmatic synthesis in sociology. This is a reaction to the growing paradigmatic divisions in the discipline and an attempt at fostering the cumulative development of sociological knowledge. The suggested conceptual fusion includes micro-sociological interaction theories, recent theories of organizational interactions and the experience from the study on global trends. The intention is to support the building and explanatory application of middle-range theories in all action spheres and at all micro-, mezzo- and macro-social structural levels. The paradigmatic synthesis is developed around five analytical concepts of the determinants of social interactions: environmental, technological, economic, political and cultural complexes. Another conceptual framework fostering explanations consists of social actors, relations and processes as key parameters of the social interaction paradigm.The book also examines the COVID pandemic as a multidimensional crisis, applying the synthetic paradigm as a heuristic tool and knowledge-organizing framework. It is used in the studies on social innovations, societal transformations and global social trends as well. The book will be of interest to researchers, university teachers and doctoral and master's students in the fields of sociology, social theory, critical sociology, philosophy of social sciences, innovation and societal transformation studies.

The Emotions in the Classics of Sociology stands as an innovative sociological research that introduces the study of emotions through a detailed examination of the theories and concepts of the classical authors of discipline.Sociology plays a crucial role emphasizing how much emotional expressions affect social dynamics, thus focusing on the ways in which subjects show (or decide to show) a specific emotional behaviour based on the social and historical context in which they act. This book focuses the attention on the individual emotions that are theorized and studied as forms of communication between subjects as well as magnifying glasses to understand the processes of change in the communities. This volume, therefore, guides the readers through an in-depth overview of the main turning points in the social theory of the classical authors of sociology highlighting the constant interaction between emotional, social and cultural elements. Thus, demonstrating how the attention of the emotional way of acting of the single subject was already present in the classics of the discipline.The book is suitable for an audience of undergraduate, postgraduate students and researchers in sociology, sociology of emotions, sociology of culture, social theory and other related fields.

Starting Sociology can be daunting. This user-friendly introduction takes the reader on a quest towards a sociological understanding of the world we live in. Using contemporary examples, The Sociological Quest asks what is distinctive about the way Sociologists view society. Haydn Aarons and Evan Willis show that they are concerned with the relationships between the individual and society, and that a sociological analysis involves an approach which is historical, cultural, structural, and critical.This sixth edition has been thoroughly revised and updated and includes new material on identities, social change, social movements, populism, climate change, the COVID-19 pandemic, digital interaction, and social media. Also included in the sixth edition is an expanded chapter on empirical research in Sociology and the research process, as well as a new chapter on careers in Sociology.

Connecting Practices develops a distinctive method of conceptualising significant trends and global issues including environmental sustainability and inequalities in wealth and health, arguing that these are outcomes of the ways in which social practices interact and combine across space and time. Engaging with the question of how connections are made between practices and how past and present combinations make some futures more likely than others, this book brings practice theory to bear on large problems in society. Richly illustrated with examples from the spreading of germs to the history of shipping containers, this powerful analysis of how societies hang together and how they change will appeal to scholars and students of sociology and social theory.

This book is a collection of critical engagements with Andrew Sayer, one of the foremost postdisciplinary thinkers of our times, with responses from Sayer himself.Sayer's ground-breaking contributions to the fields of geography, political economy and social theory have reshaped the terms of engagement with issues and debates running from the methodology of social science through to the environment, and industrial development to the ethical dimensions of everyday life. Transatlantic scholars across a wide range of fields explore his work across four main areas: critical realism; moral economy; political economy; and relations between social theory, normativity and class.This is the first full-length critical assessment of Sayer's work. It will be of interest to readers in sociology, economics, political economy, social and political philosophy, ethics, social policy, geography and urban studies, from upper-undergraduate levels upwards.

This book explores the fertility and enigma of Erving Goffman's sociological reasoning and its capacity to shed fresh light on the fundamental features of human sociality. Thematically arranged, it brings together the work of leading scholars of Goffman's work to explore the concepts and themes that define Goffman's analytical preoccupations, examining the ways these ideas have shaped significant fields of study and situating Goffman's sociology in comparison to some eminent thinkers often linked with his name. Through a series of chapters informed by the same inventive and imaginative spirit characteristic of Goffman's sociology, the book presents fresh perspectives on his contribution to the field and reveals the value of his thought for a variety of disciplines now increasingly aware of the importance of Goffman's sociology to a range of social phenomena. A fresh perspective on the legacy of one of sociology's most important figures, The Routledge International Handbook of Goffman Studies will appeal to scholars across the social sciences with interests in interactionist and micro-sociological perspectives.

This book presents the core ideas of early sociologist Gabriel Tarde and suggests a new pathway for sociology based on his foundational work. Rejecting anthropocentrism, Tarde highlights the contrast between the natural and the artificial, uniquely emphasizing the positive significance of the artificial in an age in which people have come to distrust it profoundly. Recovering Tarde's theory today in the context of contemporary as well as classical scholarship and recognizing how it fits with such phenomena as quantum physics and digital media, this book develops the concept of the cosmological imagination as the context for a critical Tardian analysis of artifice that can bring together what we know about our contemporary future-oriented global societies.How we know the universe, our place in it, the place of other animals and objects in it, our global socialities, our human claims of power and privilege within it, are pointed questions Tarde asks as he wonders whether a future temporality conducive to constant artifice has become our normal human way of life. Considering our ambivalence about modern products and modernity in general, our thinking about the future, and our tendency to forget what nature used to signify in its presentation of problems beyond our control, such as illnesses and epidemics, Gabriel Tarde: The Future of the Artificial demonstrates the reasons for which we need to return to Tarde's work to rediscover its relevance for public debate as we seek to think through the new era and its societies in which culture and nature are no longer distinct. This book will appeal to scholars of social and political theory with interests in our digital age, new sociologies of materials and objects, neomonadology, and the thought of Gabriel Tarde.

Selling Immunity Self, Culture and Economy in Healthcare and Medicine provides a groundbreaking study of the ways in which immunity shapes life. Through its up-to-date discussion of immunity cultures, alongside detailed real-world examples, the book demonstrates how immunity is enmeshed in concepts of possessive individualism, self-defence and health consumerism. The book explores the rich metaphorical powers of immunity and the life narratives it inspires with reference to the talk of scientists, immunology texts and popular science magazines. The author provides a detailed overview of the ways in which digital media can shape the immune self with reference to cultural and social theories, providing insight into how immunitary knowledge and products are consumed and the benefits and drawbacks this has for healthcare. The book considers the significance of immunity for individuals navigating the threats to health that arise with pandemics and superbugs, with a keen look into how these ideas surface in everyday life across the globe. Finally, the book also discusses economic bases of healthcare technologies bent towards the protection and restoration of immunity. This book is essential reading for professionals within the fields of psychology, sociology, biomedical science, healthcare and other related disciplines. A broader audience will appreciate the book's attention on the ways immunity is understood to be a personal possession, an object of life craft, and the basis for healthcare consumerism.

From Society to System presents sociologist Michel Freitag's (1935-2009) distinctive, multifaceted and interdisciplinary work. Elaborated within the grand sociological tradition, his dialectical sociology redefines sociality as the realm of the symbolic to pinpoint its ontological frailty. Such a perspective expands the borders within sociology to rejoin classical philosophical preoccupations, revisiting social ontology as a radical critique of contemporary society where not only life and planet earth is at stake as a result of capitalism but reflexivity as well.This collection of essays touches on topics that have been of central concern for social theory since the end of the 20th century: the discussion about holism versus individualism and the dissolution of transcendental identity; the current state of the social sciences, both epistemologically and practically; the end-of-20th century debate over the nature of society along with its future in the context of globalisation. These essays show how Freitag's sociology is part of a larger unified framework that integrates ontology, epistemology, anthropology and philosophy into a coherent vision of the world – testifying to the distinctiveness of Freitag's social theory, standing next to other great social theorists such as Margaret Archer, Jürgen Habermas, Murray Bookchin and Ulrich Beck.

Black Feminist Sociology offers new writings by established and emerging scholars working in a Black feminist tradition. The book centers Black feminist sociology (BFS) within the sociology canon and widens is to feature Black feminist sociologists both outside the US and the academy. Inspired by a BFS lens, the essays are critical, personal, political and oriented toward social justice. Key themes include the origins of BFS, expositions of BFS orientations to research that extend disciplinary norms, and contradictions of the pleasures and costs of such an approach both academically and personally. Authors explore their own sociological legacy of intellectual development to raise critical questions of intellectual thought and self-reflexivity. The book highlights the dynamism of BFS so future generations of scholars can expand upon and beyond the book's key themes.

While examining the intersections and engagements between sociology and management education in historical and contemporary terms, this slim volume outlines the agenda of a promising prospective engagement between the two. It specifically foregrounds the Indian experience without being indifferent to the global context that has shaped the unprecedented rise of business schools. Employing a perspective from the Global South, it contextualises the dominance of the US model of management curriculum and disciplinary practices in relation to wider geopolitics of knowledge production. Parenthetically, it presents a critical assessment of Indian scholarly contributions to the field of management studies. This book should be of interest to management educators, administrators, and sociologists besides the students and researchers in the broad area of organisation studies.

The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/e/9781003036159, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.This book examines a variety of subjective spatial experiences and knowledge production practices in order to shed new light on the specifics of contemporary socio-spatial change, driven as it is by inter alia, digitalization, transnationalization, and migration. Considering the ways in which emerging spatial phenomena are conditioned by an increasing interconnectedness, this book asks how spaces are changing as a result of mediatization, increased mobility, globalization, and social dislocation. With attention to questions surrounding the negotiation and (visual) communication of space, it explores the arrangements, spatialities, and materialities that underpin the processes of spatial refiguration by which these changes come about. Bringing together the work of leading scholars from across diverse range disciplines to address questions of socio-spatial transformation, this volume will appeal to sociologists and geographers, as well as scholars and practitioners of urban planning and architecture.

This volume explores how researchers made innovative use of online technologies to innovate, define, and transform research methodologies in light of the varying impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, especially those related to the ability to conduct qualitative research. The onset of the COVID-19 pandemic resulted in a radical shift in the way that people all over the world were/have been able to live, work, study, and conduct their daily lives. Academics and other professionals who routinely engage in research were no exception. The sudden, continued, and uneven need for health mandates calling for physical distancing added a particular layer of complexity for those who used research methods that typically required face-to-face interactions. Continued technological developments associated with the Internet had already given rise to ongoing debates on innovative methodological thinking and practices. The COVID-19 pandemic has further accentuated how indispensable the internet has become for the private and public lives of those with access to it, including for their employment, education, leisure, and social interactions. For those fortunate enough to have access to them, communication software such as Zoom and Google Meet have also become indispensable digital resources for researchers seeking to continue conducting research during lockdowns and quarantines, and beyond. More than ever, researchers are finding it useful, even necessary, to equip themselves with online research tools in order to be able to continue conducting their fieldwork. Drawing on research and case studies from around the world, this volume serves as a guidebook for those interested in attuning their own research methods to a world still struggling to grapple with the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic.

This book investigates the life experiences of youth in South Africa, considering whether contemporary youth have benefitted from the socioeconomic reconstruction of post-apartheid society. Student protests against apartheid drove transformative change in South Africa, and the subsequent new constitution promised positive change for the nation’s youth across a range of sectors. Adopting a sociological perspective, this book uses primary and secondary data sources to illustrate the myriad ways post-apartheid socioeconomic developments have impacted the life experiences of the country’s youth across areas including health, education, family life, economic activity, technology, substance use, and politics. The book considers the historical legacy of colonialism, racism and immigration in shaping the context in which youth experiences in the country have evolved. The book argues that in 1976 South Africa’s youth became the conscience of the nation when they brought the apartheid regime to its knees during the Soweto uprising. What happens to them now will continue to define the nation’s future. This book will be of interest to researchers across the social sciences, most especially in the fields of Sociology, Demography, Development Studies, and Psychology.

Bringing together studies from across the Nordic region, this book examines the challenges brought by the COVID-19 pandemic, with a particular focus on vaccine hesitancy. Shedding light on the political tensions that emerged as a result of the pandemic and the debates that ensued both within and between the Nordic nations, it investigates the vociferous discussions surrounding the COVID-19 vaccines and their presumed negative side effects through the lens of trust; trust in and between the neighbouring countries, in healthcare systems, fellow citizens, and experts; in public authorities, politicians, researchers, journalists, and pharmaceutical companies. The first volume to explore vaccine hesitancy in the Scandinavian context, this ground-breaking volume offers fresh perspectives on vaccine scepticism not as a form of ignorance or lack of knowledge, but as a manifestation of a more fundamental lack of faith in modern government and science. As such, it will appeal to scholars of sociology, politics, anthropology, media studies, communication and cultural studies with interests in public health, popular and political discourse and questions of public trust. The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons [Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND)] 4.0 license.

Science communication aims at the successful sharing and explanation of sciencerelated topics to a wider audience. In order to enhance communication between science and society, a better understanding of citizens’ habits and perceptions is needed. Therefore, it is vital to understand how citizens acquire knowledge about science- related issues, how this knowledge affects their beliefs, opinions and perceptions, and what sources of information they choose to learn about science – and how they assess their reliability. This book addresses these questions, based on the analyses of public consultations data from Italy, Poland, Portugal, Slovakia and Spain, concerned with the science communication of issues including climate change, vaccines, complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) and genetically modified organisms (GMOs). Sharing experiences of how to engage citizens in public consultation, it provides insights into the mobilisation of interest in science and offers recommendations on how to improve science communication.

This edited collection investigates, from a sociological perspective, what it means to create an autonomous individual through a novel exploration of three central fields of sociology: education, mental health care, and parenting. By linking these three aspects through their contribution to the building of an autonomous child, the volume analyses the intersecting roles of parent, teacher, and caregiver as well as the transformations in identities of child, pupil, and patient to understand the construction and repair of autonomy. Using a comparison of various case studies across Scandinavian, English-speaking, and French-speaking countries, chapters explore why personal autonomy is so important in many societies and demonstrate the conceptual and practical challenges the idea brings. Ultimately, the book provides an innovative contribution to the fields of educational sociology and the philosophy of education, as well as parenting studies and the sociology of mental health by making the case for taking autonomy, and its paradoxes, seriously. This cross-disciplinary volume will be of interest to scholars, researchers, and postgraduate students working in sociology and the philosophy of education, parenting, mental health, and child development more broadly. Those with a focus on the study of individualistic societies will also find the volume of use.

This book uses sustainability to explore the interfaces between translation studies, the cultural history of knowledge, and Science and Technology studies (STS). The volume examines various material, cultural and epistemic translation practices where sustainability serves as a boundary object between natural and cultural inquiry. By turning to the intellectual traditions that influenced but were left behind by STS and actor-network theory (ANT), we aim to challenge and expand the Sociology of Translation developed in ANT. Concepts such as ‘inscription’ (Derrida), ‘actant’, ‘narrative’ (Greimas), and ‘world/worlding’ (Heidegger, Spivak) were reemployed – translated – in the canonical STS-texts. What networks of meaning were left behind in this reemployment? The book showcases a combination of cultural and knowledge historical perspectives on the construction of the Sociology of Translation and practical experiments across the registers of nature and culture is novel. There have been brilliant individual attempts to realign the Sociology of Translation with narratives and modes of enunciation, but none has related the Sociology of Translation to the networks and traditions which enabled it but to which it erased its relations and debts. This innovative work will appeal to scholars in translation studies, cultural studies, environmental humanities, medical humanities, and Science and Technology studies. The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons [Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND)] 4.0 license.

Originating in the late 19th century and becoming the subject of ongoing methodological debates in the social sciences, methodological individualism is a paradigm that focuses on understanding social phenomena through the actions and choices of individuals rather than through collective explanations. This book highlights its theoretical bases as defined and developed in the writings of its founders and early proponents in the context of the liveliest methodological battles in the social sciences. It addresses fundamental epistemological issues, including the distinction between explanation in the social sciences and natural sciences, the rational bases for understanding social actions, the relation of social wholes to their parts, and the connections between social concepts and the phenomenal world. Bringing together new English translations of foundational texts by Carl Menger, Joseph Schumpeter, Georg Simmel, and Max Weber, this book provides key insights into one of the essential methodological paradigms in the social sciences, corrects misconceptions, and advances a deeper understanding of methodological individualism as a robust and valuable approach to explaining social phenomena. It will therefore appeal to scholars and students of sociology and sociological theory with an interest in questions of social science methodology.

Ecological Democracy offers an original, thought-provoking, and engaging treatment of why and how democracy should be re-imagined in reaction to today’s ecological crisis. The book explains that one need to re-imagine both the view on nature and democratic ideals within the same framework in the Anthropocene, the present geological epoch of human-made instability in the Earth system and its planetary boundaries. This book proposes unique and challenging readings of green political theory and its development of ecological democracy in the last four decades. The book is the first to offer a systematic and detailed interpretation of the role of critical theory vis-à-vis green political theory through an update regarding current non-anthropocentric critical theorists and how they may contribute to the further development of ecological democracy. Ecological Democracy builds further on deep ecology, ecophenomenology, and animism by articulating an ecocentric view on nature which defends an intrinsic moral value of all existence as well as formulating the democratic principle of all ecologically affected parties. This book provides a sophisticated, convincing, and accessible argument for how to re-imagine ecological democracy as ecocentrism in practice: ecological love. To love ecologically means caring for and encountering all existence on the Earth and in the cosmos. This book is multi-disciplinary and will be of great value to researchers as well as undergraduate and postgraduate students from many disciplines.

The Materiality of Nothing explores the invisible, intangible and transient materials and objects of everyday life and the relationships we have with them. Drawing on over 15 years of original, empirical research, it builds on growing research on the everyday, and unites the established field of material culture and materiality with emerging sociological studies exploring notions of nothing and the unmarked. The chapters cover topics such as lost property, museum curation, plastic microfibres, thrift, music and even hair, illuminating how invisible and intangible materials conjure memories, meanings and identities, inextricably binding us to other people, places and things. In turn, the book also engages with issues of sustainability and consumption, raising questions regarding society’s increasing need for material accumulation and posing some alternatives.

The Portuguese Colonial War and the African Liberation Struggles: Memory, Politics and Uses of the Past presents a critical and comparative analysis on the memory of the colonial and liberation wars that led to a regime change in Portugal and to the independence of five new African countries: Angola, Mozambique, Guinea-Bissau, Cape Verde and São Tomé and Príncipe. Covering more than six decades and based on original archival research, critical analysis of sources and interviews, the book offers a plural account of the public memorialization of this contested past in Portugal and in former colonized territories in Africa, focusing on diachronic and synchronic processes of mnemonic production. This innovative exercise highlights the changing and crossed nature of political memories and social representations through time, emphasizing three modes of mnemonic intersections: the intersection of distinct historical times; the intersection between multiple products and practices of memory; and the intersection connecting the different countries and national histories. The Portuguese Colonial War and the African Liberation Struggles: Memory, Politics and Uses of the Past is the major and final output of the research developed by CROME – Crossed Memories, Politics of Silence, a project funded by a Starting Grant (715593) from the European Research Council (ERC). The book advances current knowledge on Portugal and Africa and deepens ongoing conceptual and epistemological discussions regarding the relationship between social and individual memories, the dialectics between memory, power and silence, and the uses and representations of the past in postcolonial states and societies.

Considering Space demonstrates what has changed in the perception of space within the social sciences and how useful – indeed indispensable – this category is today. While the seemingly deterritorializing effects of digitalization might suggest that space is a secondary consideration, this book proves such a presumption wrong, with territories, borders, distances, proximity, geographical ecologies, land use, physical infrastructures – as well as concepts of space – all being shown still to matter, perhaps more than ever before. Seeking to show how society can and should be perceived as spatial, it will appeal to scholars of sociology, geography, architecture and urban studies. The Open Access version of this book, available at www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license. Funded by the DeutscheForschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation) – Projektnummer 290045248 – SFB 1265.

Young people imagine, perceive, experience, talk about, use, and produce space in a wide variety of ways. In doing so, they acquire and produce stocks of spatial knowledge. A quite dynamic and ever-changing process by nature, young people’s production and acquisition of spatial knowledge are susceptible to many kinds of conditions—from those that shape their everyday routines to those that constitute historical turning points. Against this backdrop and drawing on a qualitative metaanalysis, the authors set out to discover what changes the spatial knowledge of young people has undergone during the past five decades. To that end, sixty published studies were sampled, analyzed, and synthesized to offer a meta-interpretation in terms of both the evolution of young people’s spatial knowledge and the refiguration of spaces. As such, this book will appeal to scholars conducting spatial research on childhood and youth as well as scholars interested in urban studies from diverse disciplines such as sociology, anthropology, geography, architecture, urban planning, and design. The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license. The Open Access fee was funded by Technische Universität Berlin

This book presents gender and diversity in smart transport as a cutting-edge issue in urban contexts around the globe. It addresses new challenges and possibilities related to the smart transport sector. It demonstrates how gender and diversity are entangled in concepts and various forms of current smart mobility practices in policy, planning, and innovation. Gender Smart Mobility is presented as a game changer for future transport planning and mobility practices and how smart mobility technologies and practices might be created as a common good for all. The readers are presented with fresh approaches ranging from intersectional and visual analysis of smart mobility, gender scripts and language, to gendered innovation of design and planning. Moreover, the readers will encounter engaging boxed features which present historical, cross-cultural, and methodological examples and pose questions for critical thinking. This book meets a need for a systematic, accessible, and practical introduction and is of interest to city planners, transport providers, and politicians as well as the general public. It will also be a valuable reference for graduate and postgraduate students at technical universities, schools of architecture and planning, and for students and faculties in the social sciences, humanities, and IT and design studies.