Necrogeopolitics: On Death and Death-Making in International Relations brings together a diverse array of critical IR scholars, political theorists, critical security studies researchers, and critical geographers to provide a series of interventions on the topic of death and death-making in global politics. Contrary to most existing scholarship, this volume does not place the emphasis on traditional sources or large-scale configurations of power/force leading to death in IR. Instead, it details, theorizes, and challenges more mundane, perhaps banal, and often ordinary modalities of violence perpetrated against human lives and bodies, and often contributing to horrific instances of death and destruction. Concepts such as "slow death," "soft killing," "superfluous bodies," or "extra/ordinary" destruction/disappearance are brought to the fore by prominent voices in these fields alongside more junior creative thinkers to rethink the politics of life and death in the global polity away from dominant IR or political theory paradigms about power, force, and violence. The volume features chapters that offer thought-provoking reconsiderations of key concepts, theories, and practices about death and death-making along with other chapters that seek to challenge some of these concepts, theories, or practices in settings that include the Palestinian territories, Brazilian cities, displaced population flows from the Middle East, sites of immigration policing in North America, and spaces of welfare politics in Scandinavian states.

The fields of Critical Disability Studies and Critical Animal Studies are growing rapidly, but how do the implications of these endeavours intersect? Disability and Animality: Crip Perspectives in Critical Animal Studies explores some of the ways that the oppression of more-than-human animals and disabled humans are interconnected. Composed of thirteen chapters by an international team of specialists plus a Foreword by Lori Gruen, the book is divided into four themes: Intersections of Ableism and Speciesism Thinking Animality and Disability together in Political and Moral Theory Neurodiversity and Critical Animals Studies Melancholy, Madness, and Misfits. This book will be of interest to undergraduate and postgraduate students, as well as postdoctoral scholars, interested in Animal Studies, Disability Studies, Mad Studies, philosophy, and literary analysis. It will also appeal to those interested in the relationships between speciesism, ableism, saneism, and racism in animal agriculture, culture, built environments, and ethics.

Individuals are equipped with a wide range of knowledge that enhances their employability, health, family life, and social engagement. On this basis, providing equality for all has been set to be achieved as one of the United Nations sustainable development priorities. However, the international understandings are not only of what equality and inclusivity entail but also the social vision to achieve social justice. Best practices provide a meaningful cross-national discussion with respect to the following topics: power relations within research, social inequalities in society, science research for social justice, the redefinition of the notion of social justice, education for social justice, spatial justice, the research of gender and marginalized groups, the re-conceptualization of the epistemological foundation of research, hegemonic discourses on research, science technology for social justice and welfare, as well as culture and social justice. This edited book aims to provide a new perspective for other benefits of research because generally, the research carried out only aims to answer scientific problems and often override aspects of humanities. In response to these concerns, the book attempts to re-map the main objectives of the research. The authors in this book offer new perspectives, especially in formulating the purposes of the studies they will perform. Therefore, this book presents a unique review of research with a variety of approaches that are coherent with the state of society in the world, followed by eleven scopes of various cases from a variety of perspectives that highlight theoretical and methodological questions about research and social justice. This book presents outstanding applications through multiple types of approaches that are relevant to the current context of world community issues. The articles in this book will be of interest to undergraduate and graduate students, as well as researchers who are interested in the social field, especially research for social justice.

Tourism has become increasingly shaped by neoliberal policies, yet the consequences of this neoliberalisation are relatively under-explored. This book provides a wide-ranging inquiry into the particular manifestations of different variants of neoliberalism, highlighting its uneven geographical development and the changing dynamics of neoliberal policies in order to explain and evaluate the effects of neoliberal processes on tourism. Covering a variety of different aspects of neoliberalism and tourism, the chapters investigate how different types of tourism are used as part of more general neoliberalisation agendas, how neoliberalism differs according to the geographic context, the importance of discourse in shaping neoliberal practices and the different approaches of putting the neoliberal ideology into practice. Aiming to initiate debates about the connections between neoliberalism and tourism and advance further research avenues, this book makes a timely contribution which discusses the relationships between markets, nation-states and societies from a social science perspective. Neoliberalism is considered as a political-economic ideology, as variants of the global neoliberal project, as discourse and practices through which neoliberalism is enacted.

Space is crucial to geography and is widely used as a concept across the humanities and social sciences. Space will provide the first accessible, in-depth textbook which provides a critical introduction to different geographical approaches to space, tracing the link between conceptualisations of space and key traditions in the history and philosophy of geography, as well as broader thinking in philosophy, the humanities and the social sciences Consolidates and develops recent debates about how different species of space co-exist in contemporary geographical thought, as such it will clarify existing debates and provide useful pointers for further conceptual and theoretical elaboration. Use of the same three case studies throughout the various books chapters offers an excellent strategy for conveying the continuities and discontinuities that distinguish the ebbs, flows and evaporation of intellectual currents. It will include 'key idea boxes', 'key scholar boxes', 'case study boxes' and guides for further reading. The case studies will include both 'longitudinal' and 'one-off' examples. Thematic organization provides an effecient and creative way of synthesizing diverse material and drawing out differences between theorizations of space and spatiality Each chapter has been planned so as to demonstrate how space has been approached and analysed by scholars working in specific traditions of geography (as well as traditions of thought within the humanities and social sciences). This will enable the text to be used as a core reading for compulsory first/second year undergraduate courses on the 'history and philosophy of geography' and 'theory and methodology in geography' the book draws upon the author's own theoretical research on theories of space and spatiality, to advance original arguments as to what space is and what spacing and spatiality entail

Space is crucial to geography and is widely used as a concept across the humanities and social sciences. Space will provide the first accessible, in-depth textbook which provides a critical introduction to different geographical approaches to space, tracing the link between conceptualisations of space and key traditions in the history and philosophy of geography, as well as broader thinking in philosophy, the humanities and the social sciences Consolidates and develops recent debates about how different species of space co-exist in contemporary geographical thought, as such it will clarify existing debates and provide useful pointers for further conceptual and theoretical elaboration. Use of the same three case studies throughout the various books chapters offers an excellent strategy for conveying the continuities and discontinuities that distinguish the ebbs, flows and evaporation of intellectual currents. It will include 'key idea boxes', 'key scholar boxes', 'case study boxes' and guides for further reading. The case studies will include both 'longitudinal' and 'one-off' examples. Thematic organization provides an effecient and creative way of synthesizing diverse material and drawing out differences between theorizations of space and spatiality Each chapter has been planned so as to demonstrate how space has been approached and analysed by scholars working in specific traditions of geography (as well as traditions of thought within the humanities and social sciences). This will enable the text to be used as a core reading for compulsory first/second year undergraduate courses on the 'history and philosophy of geography' and 'theory and methodology in geography' the book draws upon the author's own theoretical research on theories of space and spatiality, to advance original arguments as to what space is and what spacing and spatiality entail

This book offers a new approach for theorising and undertaking childhood research. It combines insights from childhood and generational studies with object-oriented ontologies, new materialisms, critical race and gender theories to address a range of key, intractable challenges facing children and young people. Bringing together traditional social-scientific research methods with techniques from digital media studies, archaeology, environmental nanoscience and the visual arts, After Childhood: Re-thinking Environment, Materiality and Media in Children's Lives presents a way of doing childhood research that sees children move in and out of focus. In doing so, children and their experiences are not completely displaced; rather, new perspectives on concerns facing children around the world are unravelled which dominant approaches to childhood studies have not yet fully addressed. The book draws on the author's detailed case studies from his research in historical and geographical contexts. Examples range from British children's engagement with plastics, energy and other matter, to the positioning of diverse Brazilian young people in environmental and resource challenges, and from archaeological evidence about childhoods in the USA and Europe to the global circulation of children's toys through digital media. The book will appeal to human geographers, sociologists, anthropologists, education studies scholars and others working in the interdisciplinary field of childhood studies, as well as to anyone looking for a range of novel, interdisciplinary frames for thinking about childhood.

This book draws together debates from two burgeoning fields, liminality and informality studies, to analyze how dynamics of rule-bending take shape in Rome today. Adopting a multiscalar and transdisciplinary approach, it unpacks how gaps and contradictions in institutional rulemaking and application force many residents into protracted liminal states marked by intense vulnerability. By merging a political economy lens with ethnographic research in informal housing, illegal moneylending, unauthorized street-vending and waste collection, the author shows that informalities are not marginal or anomalous conditions, but an integral element of the city's governance logics. Multiple actors together construct the local cultural norms, conventions and moral economies through which rule-negotiation occurs. However, these practices are ultimately unable to reconfigure historically rooted power dynamics and hierarchies. In fact, they often aggravate weak urbanites' difficulties in accessing rights and services. A study that challenges assumptions that informalities are predominantly features of developing economies or limited to specific groups and sectors, this volume's critical approach and innovative methodology will appeal to scholars of sociology and anthropology interested in social theory, urban studies and liminality.

This book proposes the study of norms as a method of explaining human choice and behaviour by introducing a new scientific perspective. The science of norms may here be broadly understood as a social science which includes elements from both the behavioural and legal sciences. It is given that a science of norms is not normative in the sense of prescribing what is right or wrong in various situations. Compared with legal science, sociology of law has an interest in the operational side of legal rules and regulation. This book develops a synthesizing social science approach to better understand societal development in the wake of the increasingly significant digital technology. The underlying idea is that norms as expectations today are not primarily related to social expectations emanating from human interactions but come from systems that mankind has created for fulfilling its needs. Today the economy, via the market, and technology via digitization, generate stronger and more frequent expectations than the social system. By expanding the sociological understanding of norms, the book makes comparisons between different parts of society possible and creates a more holistic understanding of contemporary society. The book will be of interest to academics and researchers in the areas of sociology of law, legal theory, philosophy of law, sociology and social psychology.

In the wake of an unparalleled housing crisis at the end of the Second World War, Glasgow Corporation rehoused the tens of thousands of private tenants who were living in overcrowded and unsanitary conditions in unimproved Victorian slums. Adopting the designs, the materials and the technologies of modernity they built into the sky, developing high-rise estates on vacant sites within the city and on its periphery. This book uniquely focuses on the people's experience of this modern approach to housing, drawing on oral histories and archival materials to reflect on the long-term narrative and significance of high-rise homes in the cityscape. It positions them as places of identity formation, intimacy and well-being. With discussions on interior design and consumption, gender roles, children, the elderly, privacy, isolation, social networks and nuisance, Glasgow examines the connections between architectural design, planning decisions and housing experience to offer some timely and prescient observations on the success and failure of this very modern housing solution at a moment when high flats are simultaneously denigrated in the social housing sector while being built afresh in the private sector. Glasgow is aimed at an academic readership, including postgraduate students, scholars and researchers. It will be of interest to social, cultural and urban historians particularly interested in the United Kingdom.

In On Biopolitics, Marco Piasentier discusses one of the most persistent questions in biopolitical theory - the divide between nature and language - and attempts to redraw the conceptual map which has traditionally defined the permissible paths to address this question. Taking his cue from Foucault's exhortation to think philologically and biologically, Piasentier traverses the main theoretical and methodological frameworks which have informed the biopolitical debate on nature and language, biology and politics. Biopolitical theory becomes the center of gravity for an investigation encompassing diverse philosophical models, from the Heideggerian linguistic turn to post-Darwinian naturalism. The divide between traditions is not proof of an impossible encounter, but constitutes the site for a new conceptual topography. Working in this interdisciplinary space, Piasentier puts into question the command of language and the ends of nature: two vestiges of a 'human, all too human' worldview that preclude the possibility of thinking philologically and biologically about biopolitics. On Biopolitics: An Inquiry into Nature and Language is essential reading for humanities and social sciences scholars with an interest in moving beyond debates about nature and language.

Evolution, Order and Complexity reflects topical interest in the relationship between the social and natural worlds. It represents the cutting edge of current thinking which challenges the natural/social dichotomy thesis by showing how the application of ideas which derive from biology can be applied and offer insight into the social realm. This is done by introducing the general system theory to the methodological debate on the relation of human and natural sciences.

It is widely asserted that we are now living in a post-truth society. What that means, this book argues, is that the contemporary global world is thoroughly infested not only with trickster figures but an entire and operational trickster logic; or, that we now live in a Trickster Land - an argument advanced by the claim that in modernity liminality has become permanent; or that modern life is patently absurd. The first part of the book presents a series of 'guides' to this condition, in the form of key thinkers and writers who can help us understand and navigate our Trickster Land. Such guides include Hermann Broch, Lewis Hyde, Roberto Calasso, Michel Serres, Sandor Marai, Colin Thubron and Albert Camus. The second part goes on to discuss five main regions of Trickster Land: art, thought, the economy, politics and society. This last, central chapter of the book contrasts trickster logic with the basic, foundational logic of social life, presented as gift-giving by Marcel Mauss and as sociability by Georg Simmel, and which is expressed here, combining Heraclitus and Plato with the Gospel of John, by three basic terms of ancient Greek culture, as arkhe charis logos: meaningful social life originally and in its essence is animated by the power of kind benevolence. This volume will appeal to scholars of social theory, anthropology and sociology with interests in political thought and contemporary culture.

In his scathing The Theory of the Leisure Class, Thorstein Veblen produced a landmark study of affluent American society that exposes, with brilliant ruthlessness, the habits of production and waste that link invidious business tactics and barbaric social behavior. Veblen's analysis of the evolutionary process sees greed as the overriding motive in the modern economy, and with an impartial gaze he examines the human cost paid when social institutions exploit the consumption of unessential goods for the sake of personal profit. Fashion, beauty, animals, sports, the home, the clergy, scholars--all are assessed for their true usefulness and found wanting. Indeed, Veblen's critique covers all aspects of modern life from dress, class, the position of women, home decoration, industry, business, and sport, to religion, scholarship, and education. The targets of Veblen's coruscating satire are as evident today as they were a century ago, and his book still has the power to shock and enlighten. Martha Banta's introduction illuminates Veblen's uncompromising arguments as it highlights the literary force of Veblen's writing and its influence on later American writers such as Edith Wharton, Henry James, Dos Passos, and F. Scott Fitzgerald. She also sheds light on his critique of the plight of women and his evolutionary arguments as they relate to modern society.
About the Series: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the broadest spectrum of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, voluminous notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

Now in its third edition, Anthony Elliott's comprehensive, stylish and accessible introduction continues to be the indispensable guide to social theory. Fully revised and updated, the book examines the major theoretical traditions from the Frankfurt School to posthumanism, and from feminism and post-structuralism to globalization theory and beyond. Classical debates in social theory are given careful appraisal, as are the major contemporary theorists - including Jurgen Habermas, Judith Butler, Anthony Giddens, Pierre Bourdieu, Julia Kristeva, Slavoj Zizek, Manuel Castells, Ulrich Beck, Zygmunt Bauman, Shoshana Zuboff and Bernard Stiegler. This edition includes a new chapter on the digital revolution, with consideration of how digital technologies in general and artificial intelligence in particular are reshaping societies. Like its predecessors, the third edition of Contemporary Social Theory combines stylish exposition with reflective social critique and original insights. This volume will prove a superb textbook with which to navigate the twists and turns of contemporary social theory as taught in the disciplines of sociology, politics, cultural and media studies and many more.

Originally published in 1968, these ten essays by one of Europe's leading sociological theorists deal with important issues on the borderline between sociology and social philosophy and demonstrate the author's deep insight into history and political analysis. The author maintains that the structures of power in which the political process takes place not only originate change and give it direction, but also produce the fertile conflicts that give expression to the fundamental uncertainty of human existence. Through an examination of various concepts inherent in this dynamic process - power, resistance, conflict, change, freedom, uncertainty - a coherent theory of society emerges.

Originally published in 1975, Ralf Dahrendorf's Reith Lectures were an important contribution to public debate, exploring as they do the theme of the new liberty and being concerned to refashion liberalism to cope with the problems and tension of contemporary societies. The analysis covers endemic economic problems, such as growth, inflation and development, the complex nature of organizations, and the problems of political representation.

First published in English as part of the Essays in the Theory of Society, this volume reissues the stand-alone Homo Sociologicus for which the author wrote a new introduction when it was originally published in 1973. The controversial book deals with the history, significance and limits of the category of social role and discusses the dilemma posed by homo sociologicus. The author shows that for society and sociology, socialization invariably means depersonalization, the yielding up of man's absolute individuality and liberty to the constraint and generality of social roles. This volume includes the essay, Sociology and Human Nature, written as a postscript to Homo Sociologicus.

Originally published in England in 1959, this book evolves a new theory of conflict in industrial society. By way of illustrating and testing this theory, the book provides detailed analyses of various social phenomena. The author carries out a full critique of Marx in the light of history and modern sociology and discusses the theories of class-conflict of James Burnham, Fritz Croner and Karl Renner.

This book addresses the absence of a strong alignment with the future in contemporary social life and explores anomalous temporal experience as a way to expand political imaginations. In the aftermath of the modern myth of progress, it argues we have entered into a kind of dystopia-brutal or seemingly benign-of the continual present that is resistant to systemic change but is nevertheless animated through cycles of novelty and obsolescence. Exploring a condition in which we are out of ideas and facing a 'non-future' of blind technical improvement and fear, the author examines the heterochronia of eerie atmospheres and temporal suspensions. Rather than a reinstatement of the great dream of The Future, a temporality of possibility is explored in strange dimensions of otherwise mundane sites: logistic spaces and ex-urban landscapes; boredom connected to digital media; and the material culture of a recently abandoned town. Drawing on contemporary social and cultural theory, as well as urban geography and media studies, the book develops its conceptual position through a series of vignettes of key sites and experiences. Through an elliptical and generative approach, it analyses zones where novelty collapses and where figures of defiance and possibility might emerge. A rigorous theoretical examination of contemporary life and culture grounded in a close examination of sites and material examples, Temporal Politics and Banal Culture: Before the Future will appeal to scholars of social theory, sociology, cultural geography, cultural studies and social philosophy.

Urban Change and Citizenship in Times of Crisis addresses the fact that in the beginning of the twenty-first century the majority of the world's population is urbanised, a social fact that has turned cities more than ever into focal sites of social change. Multiple economic and political strategies, employed by a variety of individual and collective actors, on a number of scales, constitute cities as contested spaces that hold opportunities as well as restrictions for their inhabitants. While cities and urban spaces have long been of central concern for the social sciences, today, classical sociological questions about the city acquire new meaning: Can cities be spaces of emancipation, or does life in the modern city entail a corrosion of citizenship rights? Is the city the focus of societal transformation processes, or do urban environments lose importance in shaping social reality and economic relationships? Furthermore, new questions urgently need to be asked: What is the impact of different historical phenomena such as neo-liberal restructuring, financial and economic crises, or migration flows, as well as their respective counter-movements, on the structure of contemporary cities and on the citizenship rights of city inhabitants? The three volumes address such crucial questions thereby opening up new spaces of debate on both the city and new developments of urbanism. The contributions to Theories and Concepts offer new theoretical reflections on the city in a philosophical and historical perspective as well as fresh empirical analyses of social life in urban contexts. Chapters not only critically revisit classical and modern philosophical considerations about the nature of cities but no less discuss normative philosophical reflections of urban life and the role of religion in historical processes of the emergence of cities. Composed around the question whether there can be such a thing as a 'successful city', this volume addresses issues of urban political subjectivities by considering the city's role in historical processes of emancipation, the fight for citizenship rights, and today's challenges and opportunities with regard to promoting social justice, integration, and diversity. Consequentially, theory-driven empirical analyses offer new insight into ways of solving problems in urban contexts and a genuine approach to analyse the Social Quality in cities.

A comprehensive and scholarly exploration of the personal and philosophical origins of Andre Gorz's work, this book includes a unique analysis of his early untranslated texts, as well as critical discussion of his relationship to the work of Husserl, Sartre, Merleau-Ponty, Marx and Habermas. Reassessing pivotal notions such as the 'lifeworld' and the 'subject', it argues that Gorz has pioneered a person-centred social theory in which the motive and meaning of social critique is firmly rooted in people's lived experience.

How is social work shaped by global issues and international problems and how should it address them? This book employs a radical perspective to examine international social work. Globalisation had opened up many issues for social work, including how to address global inequalities, the impact of global economic problems and trends towards neoliberalism. By examining the origins of modern social work, problematising its definition and addressing the care/control dichotomy the book reveals what we can learn from different approaches and projects across the globe. Case studies from the UK, the US, Canada, Spain, Latin America, Australia, Hungary and Greece bring the text to life and allow both students and practitioners to apply theory to practice.

* Explores and explains what happens when citizens cannot pay the debts they owe to their governments * Provides insights for students and academics in criminology, sociology, public policy, and economics, as well as policymakers and government officials interested in effecting change * Unique in addressing the various ways in which governments have become privileged creditors, using their power to collect debts owed to them by their citizens

In an era of digital revolution, artificial intelligence, big data and augmented reality, technology has shifted from being a tool of communication to a primary medium of experience and sociality. Some of the most basic human capacities are increasingly being outsourced to machines and we increasingly experience and interpret the world through digital interfaces, with machines becoming ever more 'social' beings. Social interaction and human perception are being reshaped in unprecedented ways. This book explores this technologisation of the social and the attendant penetration of permanent liminality into those aspects of the lifeworld where individuals had previously sought some kind of stability and meaning. Through a historical and anthropological examination of this phenomenon, it problematises the underlying logic of limitless technological expansion and our increasing inability to imagine either ourselves or our world in other than technological terms. Drawing on a variety of concepts from political anthropology, including liminality, the trickster, imitation, schismogenesis, participation, and the void, it interrogates the contemporary technological revolution in a manner that will be of interest to sociologists, social and anthropological theorists and scholars of science and technology studies with interests in the digital transformation of social life.