Sociology as Everyday Life: Voices from the Field features carefully selected readings that provide students with unique insight into the challenges faced by practicing sociologists. Students explore the study and practice of sociology from a highly practical point of view, cultivating a better understanding of how sociology impacts our perceptions of the world and our place within it. The articles within the anthology illuminate the role of theory in understanding complex human behavior and also provide readers with insight as to how social scientists conduct research. Over the course of 10 topical sections, students read about the roles of values in shaping an individual's beliefs and worldviews, the importance of groups to individuals and society, rule breakers in society and questions of deviance, whether race and ethnicity influence social interaction, the relationship between religious beliefs and human behavior, and more. Engaging and enlightening, Sociology as Everyday Life provides students with modern perspectives from the field regarding critical topics of today. It is an ideal resource for foundational courses in sociology.

Among numerous ancient Western tropes about gender and procreation, "the seed and the soil" is arguably the oldest, most potent, and most invisible in its apparent naturalness. The Gender Vendors denaturalizes this proto-theory of procreation and deconstructs its contemporary legacy. As metaphor for gender and procreation, seed-and-soil constructs the father as the sole generating parent and the mother as nurturing medium, like soil, for the man's seed-child. In other words, men give life; women merely give birth. The Gender Vendors examines seed-and-soil in the context of the psychology of gender, honor and chastity codes, female genital mutilation, the taboo on male femininity, femiphobia (the fear of being feminine or feminized), sexual violence, institutionalized abuse, the early modern witch hunts, the medicalization and criminalization of gender nonconformity, and campaigns against women's rights. The examination is structured around particular watersheds in the history of seed-and-soil, for example, Genesis, ancient Greece, early Christianity, the medieval Church, the early modern European witch hunts, and the campaigns of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries against women's suffrage and education. The neglected story of seed-and-soil matters to everyone who cares about gender equality and why it is taking so long to achieve.

A sequel to the groundbreaking volume, Race and Racism in Modern East Asia: Western and Eastern Constructions, the present volume examines in depth interactions between Western racial constructions of East Asians and local constructions of race and their outcomes in modern times. Focusing on China, Japan and the two Koreas, it also analyzes the close ties between race, racism and nationalism, as well as the links race has had with gender and lineage in the region. Written by some of the field's leading authorities, this insightful and engaging 23-chapter volume offers a sweeping overview and analysis of racial constructions and racism in modern and contemporary East Asia that is unsurpassed in previous scholarship.

Gotz proposes that there is no opposition between faith and humor, belief and laughter. To argue this point, he shows how both the structure of faith and that of humor are the same, and this structure is paradox. Paradox, which is well known in the secular realms of mathematics and philosophy, is explored, first, in detail, and then he shows how faith and humor, both, are paradoxical in nature. The result is that there is no real opposition between faith and humor. The tragic and the comic are sisters, as Aristotle saw in antiquity.

On the other side, Gotz shows what happens when faith and humor depart from paradox: faith becomes dogmatic and fanatical, and humor becomes superficial and banal. Fanatical faith latches onto beliefs and dogmas rather than to the openness of paradox, and so it leads to terrorism against those who hold onto different beliefs. Gotz also warns against an easy embrace of tolerance as the only alternative to fanaticism, because tolerance itself is imperfect and is often forced to accept evil. It should not, Gotz argues, be the sole solution inculcated in our schools. This is a thoughtful and provocative analysis that will be of interest to the general reader as well as scholars and students interested in the place of religion in contemporary society.

Using examples from different historical contexts, this book examines the relationship between class, nationalism, modernity and the agrarian myth. Essentializing rural identity, traditional culture and quotidian resistance, both aristocratic/plebeian and pastoral/Darwinian forms of agrarian myth discourse inform struggles waged 'from above' and 'from below', surfacing in peasant movements, film and travel writing. Film depictions of royalty, landowner and colonizer as disempowered, 'ordinary' or well-disposed towards 'those below', whose interests they share, underwrite populism and nationalism. Although these ideologies replaced the cosmopolitanism of the Grand Tour, twentieth century travel literature continued to reflect a fear of vanishing rural 'otherness' abroad, combined with the arrival there of the mass tourist, the plebeian from home.

That the publics of Western democracies are becoming increasingly disenchanted with their political institutions is part of the conventional wisdom in Political Science. This trend is often equated with the expectation that all forms of political attachment and participation show similar patterns of decline. Based on empirical underpinnings derived from a range of original and sophisticated comparative analyses from Europe and beyond, this collection shows that no such universal pattern of decline exists. Nor should it be expected, given the diversity of reasons that citizens have to place or withdraw trust, and to engage in conventional political participation or in protest. Contributers are: Christoph Arndt, Wiebke Breustedt, Christina Eder, Manfred te Grotenhuis, Alexia Katsanidou, Rik Linssen, Michael P. McDonald, Ingvill C. Mochmann, Kenneth Newton, Maria Oskarson, Suzanne L. Parker, Glenn R. Parker, Markus Quandt, Peer Scheepers, Hans Schmeets, Thoralf Stark, and Terri L. Towner.

Although many contemporary scholars have deepened our understanding of civil society, a concept that made its entry into modern social thought in the 17th century, by offering insightful exegetical inquiries into the tradition of thinking about this concept, critiquing the limits of civil society discourse, or seeking to offer empirical analyses of existing civil societies, none have attempted anything as bold or original as Jeffrey C. Alexander's The Civil Sphere. While consciously building on this three centuries long tradition of thought on the subject, Alexander has broken new ground by articulating in considerable detail a theoretical framework that differs from what he sees as the two major perspectives that have heretofore shaped civil society discourse. In so doing, he has sought to construct from the bottom up a model of what he calls the civil sphere, which he treats in Durkheimian fashion as a new social fact. In this volume, six internationally recognized scholars comment on the civil sphere thesis. Robert Bellah, Bryan S. Turner, and Axel Honneth consider the work as a whole. Mario Diani, Chad Alan Goldberg, and Farhad Khosrokhavar offer analyses of specific aspects of the civil sphere. In their substantive introduction, Peter Kivisto and Giuseppe Sciortino locate the civil sphere thesis in terms of Alexander's larger theoretical arc as it has shifted from neofunctionalism to cultural sociology. Finally, Alexander's clarifies and further elaborates on the concept of the civil sphere.

This work by the distinguished Mexican theorist Adrian Sotelo Valencia explores new dimensions of super-exploitation in a context of the structural crisis of capitalism and imperialism. Steeped in a new generation of radical dependency theory and informed by the legacy of his own mentor, the famous Brazilian Marxist Ruy Mauro Marini, Sotelo rigorously examines prevailing theoretical debates regarding the expansion of super-exploitation in advanced capitalism. Building upon a Marinist framework, he goes beyond Marini to identify new forms of super-exploitation that shape the growing precarity of work. Sotelo demonstrates the inextricable link between reliance upon fictitious capital and the intensification of super-exploitation. Poignant contrasts are drawn between US capitalism and Mexico that reveal the nefarious new forms of imperialist dependency.

In Come Hell or High Water: Feminism and the Legacy of Armed Conflict in Central America, Tine Destrooper analyzes the political projects of feminist activists in light of their experience as former revolutionaries. She compares the Guatemalan and Nicaraguan experience to underline the importance of ethnicity for women's activism during and after the civil conflict. The first part of the book traces the influence of armed conflict on contemporary women's activism, by combining an analysis of women's personal histories with an analysis of structural and contextual factors. This critical analysis forms the basis of the second part of the book, which discusses several alternative forms of women's activism rooted in indigenous practices The book thereby combines a micro- and macro-level analysis to present a sound understanding of post-conflict women's activism.

Comprised of carefully selected readings, Explaining Social Psychology to a Sociologist introduces students to the field of social psychology from a sociological perspective. The anthology demonstrates how psychology and sociology are bridged by social psychology. Students learn how the study of social behaviors, and more specifically, the patterns of those social behaviors in groups, can help us better understand the inherent relationship between individuals and society. The anthology is divided into five units. Unit I introduces readers to social psychology through readings that explore the sociological mindset, how humans develop a sense of individuality, and research methods commonly used in the field. In Unit II, students learn about nature and nurture, socialization through interaction, and the formation of identity. Unit III focuses on the concept of morality and contains readings on altruism, aggression, and decision-making. In Unit IV, students read about control theory, crime, attraction, and social attitudes in the physical world. The final unit delves into group dynamics and explores crowd behavior and conformity. Engaging and effective, Explaining Social Psychology to a Sociologist is well suited for foundational courses in social psychology.

This volume offers a comparative survey of diverse settler colonial experiences in relation to food, food culture and foodways - how the latter are constructed, maintained, revolutionised and, in some cases, dissolved. What do settler colonial foodways and food cultures look like? Are they based on an imagined colonial heritage, do they embrace indigenous repertoires or invent new hybridised foodscapes? What are the socio-economic and political dynamics of these cultural transformations? In particular, this volume focuses on three key issues: the evolution of settler colonial identities and states; their relations vis-a-vis indigenous populations; and settlers' self-indigenisation - the process through which settlers transform themselves into the native population, at least in their own eyes. These three key issues are crucial in understanding settler-indigenous relations and the rise of settler colonial identities and states.

The essentials of the systematic and scientific study of human social behavior, groups and society. Extremely easy to access, study by, and reference for students in college courses or students of the world around them.

Human Rights, Hegemony and Utopia in Latin America: Poverty, Forced Migration and Resistance in Mexico and Colombia by Camilo Perez-Bustillo and Karla Hernandez Mares explores the evolving relationship between hegemonic and counter-hegemonic visions of human rights, within the context of cases in contemporary Mexico and Colombia, and their broader implications. The first three chapters provide an introduction to the books overall theoretical framework, which will then be applied to a series of more specific issues (migrant rights and the rights of indigenous peoples) and cases (primarily focused on contexts in Mexico and Colombia,), which are intended to be illustrative of broader trends in Latin America and globally.

Rooted in feminist ethnography and decolonial feminist theory, this book explores the subjectivity of Palestinian hunger strikers in Israeli prisons, as shaped by resistance. Ashjan Ajour examines how these prisoners use their bodies in anti-colonial resistance; what determines this mode of radical struggle; the meanings they ascribe to their actions; and how they constitute their subjectivity while undergoing extreme bodily pain and starvation. These hunger strikes, which embody decolonisation and liberation politics, frame the post-Oslo period in the wake of the decline of the national struggle against settler-colonialism and the fragmentation of the Palestinian movement. Providing narrative and analytical insights into embodied resistance and tracing the formation of revolutionary subjectivity, the book sheds light on the participants' views of the hunger strike, as they move beyond customary understandings of the political into the realm of the 'spiritualisation' of struggle. Drawing on Foucault's conception of the technologies of the self, Fanon's writings on anti-colonial violence, and Badiou's militant philosophy, Ajour problematises these concepts from the vantage point of the Palestinian hunger strike.

Post-Materialist Religion discusses the transformations of the individual's worldview in contemporary modern societies, and the role general societal value change plays in these. In doing so, Mika Lassander brings into conversation sociological theories of secularisation and social-psychological theories of interpersonal relations, the development of morality, and the nature of basic human values. The long-term decline of traditional religiosity in Europe and the emerging ethos that can be described as post-secular have brought religion and values back into popular discussion. One important theme in these discussions is about the links between religion and values, with the most common assumption being that religions are the source of individuals' values. This book argues for the opposite view, suggesting that religions, or people's worldviews in general, reflect the individual's priorities. Mika Lassander argues that the transformation of the individual's worldview is a direct consequence of the social and economical changes in European societies since the Second World War. He suggests that the decline of traditional religiosity is not an indication of linear secularisation or of forgetting traditions, but an indication of the loss of relevance of some aspects of the traditional institutional religions. Furthermore, he argues that this is not an indication of the loss of ethical value base, but, rather, a change in the value base and consequently the transformation of the legitimating framework of this value base.

Deafening Modernism tells the story of modernism from the perspective of Deaf critical insight. Working to develop a critical Deaf theory independent of identity-based discourse, Rebecca Sanchez excavates the intersections between Deaf and modernist studies. She traces the ways that Deaf culture, history, linguistics, and literature provide a vital and largely untapped resource for understanding the history of American language politics and the impact that history has had on modernist aesthetic production. Discussing Deaf and disability studies in these unexpected contexts highlights the contributions the field can make to broader discussions of the intersections between images, bodies, and text. Drawing on a range of methodological approaches, including literary analysis and history, linguistics, ethics, and queer, cultural, and film studies, Sanchez sheds new light on texts by T.S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, Gertrude Stein, William Carlos Williams, Charlie Chaplin, and many others. By approaching modernism through the perspective of Deaf and disability studies, Deafening Modernism reconceptualizes deafness as a critical modality enabling us to freshly engage topics we thought we knew.

This book explores the identity work and conflicted perspectives of general practitioner (GP) trainees working in hospitals in the UK. Drawing on empirical and theoretical scholarship, and privileging the analysis of social language-in-use, Johnston describes primary care medicine as a separate paradigm with its own philosophy, identity and practice. Casting primary and secondary care in historical conflict, the perceived lower status of primary care in the world of medicine is explored. Significant identity challenges ensue for GP trainees positioned at the coalface of conflict. Problematising structures of GP training and highlighting how complex historical power dynamics play out in medical training, the author advocates for radical change in how GPs are trained in order to manage the current primary care recruitment and retention crisis.