Offering a fresh approach to new explorations of the reconfigurations of sociological thought, this book provides a mix of literature review, original theory and autobiographical material in order to understand formations of sociological knowledge.

This book questions the simplistic view that convenience food is unhealthy and environmentally unsustainable. By exploring how various types of convenience food have become embedded in consumers' lives, it considers what lessons can be learnt from the commercial success of convenience food for those who seek to promote healthier and more sustainable diets. The project draws on original findings from comparative research in the UK, Denmark, Germany and Sweden (funded through the ERA-Net Sustainable Food programme). Reframing Convenience Food avoids moral judgments about convenience food, and instead provides a refreshingly novel perspective guided by an understanding of everyday consumer practice. It will appeal to those with an interest in the sociology and politics behind health, consumerism, sustainability and society.

This book is devoted to the exploration of environmental Prometheanism, the belief that human beings can and should master nature and remake it for the better. Meyer considers, among others, the question of why Prometheanism today is usually found on the political right while environmentalism is on the left. Chapters examine the works of leading Promethean thinkers of nineteenth and early and mid-twentieth century Britain, France, America, and Russia and how they tied their beliefs about the earth to a progressive, left-wing politics. Meyer reconstructs the logic of this "progressive Prometheanism" and the reasons it has vanished from the intellectual scene today. The Progressive Environmental Prometheans broadens the reader's understanding of the history of the ideas behind Prometheanism. This book appeals to anyone with an interest in environmental politics, environmental history, global history, geography and Anthropocene studies.

There has been a growth in the use, acceptance, and popularity of indigenous knowledge. High rates of poverty and a widening economic divide is threatening the accessibility to western scientific knowledge in the developing world where many indigenous people live. Consequently, indigenous knowledge has become a potential source for sustainable development in the developing world. The Handbook of Research on Theoretical Perspectives on Indigenous Knowledge Systems in Developing Countries presents interdisciplinary research on knowledge management, sharing, and transfer among indigenous communities. Providing a unique perspective on alternative knowledge systems, this publication is a critical resource for sociologists, anthropologists, researchers, and graduate-level students in a variety of fields.

There is surprisingly little fieldwork done on the United States by anthropologists from abroad. America Observed fills that gap by bringing into greater focus empirical as well as theoretical implications of this phenomenon. Edited by Virginia Dominguez and Jasmin Habib, the essays collected here offer a critique of such an absence, exploring its likely reasons while also illustrating the advantages of studying fieldwork-based anthropological projects conducted by colleagues from outside the U.S. This volume contains an introduction written by the editors and fieldwork-based essays written by Helena Wulff, Jasmin Habib, Limor Darash, Ulf Hannerz, and Moshe Shokeid, and reflections on the broad issue written by Geoffrey White, Keiko Ikeda, and Jane Desmond. Suitable for introductory and mid-level anthropology courses, America Observed will also be useful for American Studies courses both in the U.S. and elsewhere.

Children born and raised on the religious fringe are a distinctive yet largely unstudied social phenomenon -they are irreversibly shaped by the experience having been thrust into a radical religious culture by birth. The religious group is all encompassing. It accounts for their family, their school, social networks, and everything that prepares them for their adult life. The inclusion of a second generation of participants raises new concerns and legal issues. Perfect Children examines the ways new religious movements adapt to a second generation, how children are socialized, what happens to these children as they mature, and how their childhoods have affected them. Amanda van Twist conducted over 50 in-depth interviews with individuals born into new religious groups, some of whom have stayed in the group, some of whom have left. She also visited the groups, their schools and homes, and analyzed support websites maintained by those who left the religious groups that raised them. She also attended conferences held by NGOs concerned with the welfare of children in "cults." The main groups she studies include the Bruderhof, Scientology, the Family International, the Unification Church, and the International Society for Krishna Consciousness. Children born into new religions often start life as "special children" believed to be endowed with heightened spiritual capabilities. But as they mature into society at large they acquire other labels. Those who stay in the group are usually labeled as "goodies" and "innovators". Those who leave tend to be labeled as "baddies" or seen as "troubled." Whether they stay or leave, children raised on the religious fringe experience a unique form of segregation in adulthood. Van Twist analyzes group behavior on an organizational/institutional level as well as individual behavior within groups, and how these affect one another. Her study also raises larger questions about religious freedom in the light of the State's responsibility towards children, and children's rights against the rights of parents to raise their children within their religion.

Battered and bruised by injuries (often self-inflicted) sustained in the first half of the twentieth century since 1950 sociology in Australia has fought its way back into the academic mainstream. This has not been easy; its fortunes seem forever mixed - good in some places and dismal in others. But it has proved itself resilient, it is a survivor.

Divorce has long been viewed as a single phenomenon affecting two individuals without considering the framework conditions in which it occurs. Due to the increase of divorce rates in the past decades researchers have changed their perspective and have concentrated on the view of divorce as a personal experience that is greatly affected by the socials and economic environment. The aim of this thesis is to investigate divorce that has become a mass phenomenon in our present society. The assumption is that in order to understand the grounds for divorce and its consequences, we have to view divorce as a phenomenon that occurs at the intersection of personal, socio-economic and legal factors. Family disputes involve persons who have interdependent and continued relati- ships and arise in a context of distressing emotions. Separation and divorce affect all the members of the family, especially children. The study presents a comprehensive analysis of divorce as a psychological process that is situated within a social and a legal context. It presents a comprehensive view of divorce as a psychosocial, economic and legal phenomenon and contains a review of the research literature about divorce and its consequences for parents and children. Moreover, it describes divorce by proposing conceptual frames and explanatory models.

Crime is perceived as a perennial problem in society. However, in the one hundred and fifty years or so of criminological study, we have, arguably, learned very little about questions of criminality. The reason for this is that criminology remains largely a modernist empirical discipline with attendant modernist assumptions. Primary among these is the assumption that criminals are pathological in their responses to the world around them. This book demonstrates that this is not the case. In order to do this it deconstructs conventional modernist criminological conceptualizations of the role of individuals in the construction of the world of which they are a part and provides a radically new model of the relationship between humans' way of being in the world and the capacities of society to constrain them.

Looking For Lady takes up where Dennis Apperly's first novel Wasteground leaves off - at the funeral of The Professor, in the cathedral. They are all there - Midnight Sam, Scots Robby, Fen, Nobby and Splodge and Brian Davies, to name but a few - as Bishop John leads the huge congregation in a poignant farewell to the city's best-loved tramp. After the funeral, life on the wasteground goes on much as before, although Midnight Sam - who regarded the late street-drinker as his personal responsibility - is not the same since The Prof's death. Not only does he miss his friend, but he misses the vulnerable Lady Jane, who has been whisked 'up north' by the violent Blacklock. With not altogether welcome assistance from cronies old and new, Midnight embarks upon a chaotic mission to find the woman he slowly begins to realise he is in love with. The lovable down-and-out soon makes a remarkable discovery: find Lady Jane and he finds Midnight Sam. Meanwhile, Lady makes a remarkable discovery of her own - a discovery which changes her life and the life of Midnight Sam forever. Looking for Lady is more than a bitter-sweet love story with a difference. It is an Odyssey of hope for two seemingly hopeless individuals. Against a background of intermingled tragedy and comedy, the book demonstrates how it is possible for society's so-called misfits to rise triumphantly above the wasteground and proves that love really can conquer all.

How are the ways that race organizes our lives related to the ways gender and class organize our lives? How might these organizing mechanisms conflict or work together? In Digesting Race, Class, and Gender, Ivy Ken likens race, class, and gender to foods - foods that are produced in fields, mixed together in bowls, and digested in our social and institutional bodies. In the field, one food may contaminate another through cross-pollination. In the mixing bowl, each food's original molecular structure changes in the presence of others. And within a meal, the presence of one food may impede or facilitate the digestion of another. At each of these sites, the "foods" of race, class, and gender are involved in dynamic relationships with each other that have implications for the shape - or the taste - of our social order.

This book analyzes the connections between social policies and politics of sensibilities. The authors show how social policies build sociabilities, experiences and sensibilities, producing processes of conflict avoidance and consecration of the given. After discussing violence against women as a case study in order to understand the current state of social policies, the authors then describe how the "place" and "value" of education have become central features to social policies in order to disband conflict. Finally, they explain the emergence of a social phenomenon in the last sixteen years in Latin America and particularly Argentina: the compensatory consumption system and the resulting emergence of the "assisted citizen."

This volume fills a gap in the existing literature and proposes an interdisciplinary and multicultural comparative approach to the impact of Hallyu worldwide. The contributors analyze the spread of South Korean popular products from different perspectives (popular culture, sociology, anthropology, linguistics) and from different geographical locations (Asia, Europe, North America, and South America). The contributors come from a variety of countries (UK, Japan, Argentina, Poland, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Indonesia, USA, Romania). The volume is divided into three sections and twelve chapters that each bring a new perspective on the main topic. This emphasizes the impact of Hallyu and draws real and imaginary "maps" of the export of South Korean cultural products. Starting from the theoretical backgrounds offered by the existing literature, each chapter presents the impact of Hallyu in a particular country. This applied character does not exclude transnational comparisons or critical interrogations about the future development of the phenomenon. All authors are speaking about their own, native cultures. This inside perspective adds an important value to the understanding of the impact of a different culture on the "national" culture of each respective country. The contributions to this volume illustrate the "globalization" of the cultural products of Hallyu and show the various faces of Hallyu around the world.

The Legacies of Ursula K. Le Guin explores how Le Guin's fiction and essays have built a speculative ethical practice engaging indigenous knowledge and feminism, while crafting utopias in which human and other-than-human life forms enter into new relations. Her work also delineates new ways of making sense of the "science" of science fiction. The authors of this collection provide up-to-date discussions of well-known works as well as more experimental writings. Written in an accessible style, Legacies will appeal to any readers interested in literature, science fiction and fantasy, as well as specialists of science and technology studies, philosophy of science, ethics, gender studies, indigenous studies and posthumanism.

New digital technologies have fostered much debate about the nature of social relationships, institutions and structures in a new information age. An amorphous and interdisciplinary field of research has emerged, concerning itself with the complexities and contradictions involved in the fundamental shifts and radical transformations which information and communication technologies (ICTs) are purportedly bringing about across cultural, political and economic practices. From cyberselves to cyber communities, from media wars to the digital divide, sociology confronts a new digital landscape. This text takes stock of how the discipline has addressed the challenge of the digital providing a uniquely sociological framework with which to critically re-evaluate fundamental social concerns: from digital intimacies and online relationships to new forms of mediated inequality and network structures, from digitally mediated media practices to education and health 2.0, this text provides a comprehensive introduction to the transformations wrought by digital technologies to contemporary societies and a critical reflection on how the digital is reconfiguring the tools, concepts and precepts of the discipline.

Crime, Critique and Utopia examines the relationship between Utopia and the political through an analysis of utopian conceptualisations around crime and justice. It addresses the relevance of utopian principles in relation to a range of issues of direct and contemporary relevance to criminology, investigating theoretical possibilities, the use of utopian methods, and the application of utopian principles, in the quest for a transformative agenda within criminology and beyond.This book refines important social and historical themes of utopian construct from a criminological perspective, examining the interconnections between theoretical work on Utopia and political doctrines such as abolitionism and anarchism. It provides a critical analysis of criminal law and state policy on crime, considering various aspects of the utopian 'impulse' as it shapes criminological and abolitionist thinking.This edited collection includes contributions from Sarah Armstrong (Glasgow University, UK), Lynne Copson (University of Edinburgh, UK), Michael Lowy (CNRS, France), Mike Nellis (University of Strathclyde, UK), Vincenzo Ruggiero (Middlesex University, UK), David Scott (University of Central Lancashire, UK) and Loic Wacquant (University of California at Berkeley, USA).

This book explores the importance of freedom and liberalism in the context of socialities, individualities and materialities. The authors provide a highly unusual and innovative blending of concepts about space and landscape through a deeply theoretical exploration of liberalism. Liberalism is often problematized in contemporary discussions with regard to gentrification, environmental problems and inequality. In contrast, this book refers to a liberalism that maximizes life chances in the context of dealing with spaces. A connection between freedom and space, based on liberal ideas, provides a much needed theoretical intervention in the fields of social and spatial sciences.

In the eighteenth century, before a national political movement took hold in either the United States or Norway, both countries were agrarian societies marked by widespread private land ownership. Tracing the emergence and development of national ideology in each, Eirik Magnus Fuglestad argues that land ownership became tied up with these national ideologies and was ultimately a central driver of nationalism. In this book, the United States and Norway emerge as propertied communities, shaped by historical narratives of self-government and by property regimes that linked popular sovereignty with land ownership. Covering the mid-eighteenth century through industrialization in the nineteenth century, this book lays the groundwork for understanding the rise of nationalism as an agrarian, landed phenomenon, which later became the foundation of industrial society.

The growing scale of international migration has reshaped the debate on the social rights and social protection available to people outside their countries of origin. This book uses conceptual frameworks, policy analysis and empirical studies of migrants to explore international migrants' needs for and access to social protection across the world.

This book features ten high academically achieving, low-income, inner city students from Newark, New Jersey, who graduated from public high schools at or near the top of their class and continued to excel in college. Using a qualitative research design, the author interviewed the ten students and the person who most influenced their educational progress about what motivated them to achieve at such high levels. Three mutually reinforcing anticipatory images emerged as a common element of their stories. In their own voices, the students describe the anticipatory images they framed, how they developed them, and how they used them to their advantage. Davy advances a theoretical model of the Anticipatory Competent student who continually progresses in the directions of the images projected ahead.

This edited collection introduces conceptual innovations that critically engage with understanding refugee movements as part of the broader category of 'poor people's movements'. The empirical focus of the work lies on the protest events related to the so-called 'long summer of migration' of 2015. It traces the route followed by the migrants from the places of first arrival to the places of passage and on to the places of destination. Through qualitative and quantitative data, the authors map, within a cross-national comparative perspective, the wide set of actions and initiatives that are being created in solidarity with refugees who have made their journey seeking asylum to the European Union, either travelling across the Mediterranean Sea or through South Eastern Europe. It explores these cases from the perspective of social movement studies alongside critical studies on migration and citizenship.