Appeals to the 'common good' or 'public interest' have long been used to justify planning as an activity. While often criticised, such appeals endure in spirit if not in name as practitioners and theorists seek ways to ensure that planning operates as an ethically attuned pursuit. Yet, this leaves us with the unavoidable question as to how an ethically sensitive common good should be understood. In response, this book proposes that the common good should not be conceived as something pre-existing and 'out there' to be identified and applied or something simply produced through the correct configuration of democracy. Instead, it is contended that the common good must be perceived as something 'in here,' which is known by engagement with the complexities of a context through employing the interpretive tools supplied to one by the moral dimensions of the life in which one is inevitably embedded. This book brings into conversation a series of thinkers not normally mobilised in planning theory, including Paul Ricoeur, Alasdair MacIntyre and Charles Taylor. These shine light on how the values carried by the planner are shaped through both their relationships with others and their relationship with the 'tradition of planning' - a tradition it is argued that extends as a form of reflective deliberation across time and space. It is contended that the mutually constitutive relationship that gives planning its raison d'etre and the common good its meaning are conceived through a narrative understanding extending through time that contours the moral subject of planning as it simultaneously profiles the ethical orientation of the discipline. This book provides a new perspective on how we can come to better understand what planning entails and how this dialectically relates to the concept of the common good. In both its aim and approach, this book provides an original contribution to planning theory that reconceives why it is we do what we do, and how we envisage what should be done differently. It will be of interest to scholars, students and practitioners in planning, urban studies, sociology and geography.

This book is the first full critical history of incognito social investigation texts - in other words, works detailing their authors' experiences whilst pretending to be poor. The most famous example is Down and Out in Paris and London, but there has been a vast array of other works in the genre since it was created in 1866 by James Greenwood's 'A Night in a Workhouse'. It draws up a classification of incognito social investigation texts, dividing them into four subtypes. The first comprises those texts following most narrowly in James Greenwood's footsteps, taking the extreme poor as their object of study. The next is the investigation of poverty through walking, for pedestrianism and poverty are fascinatingly linked. The third is that of people looking at relative poverty rather than absolute, where authors take on badly-paid work in order to report on it, which is when incognito social investigation becomes very much something carried out by women. We end looking at those incognito social investigators who settled in the areas they explored. Not only will this book recover the history of a genre that has long been ignored, however, but it will also offer significant close reading of many of the texts that it places within the tradition(s) it discovers.

One of the first books of its kind that documents historical transition of healthcare system and policy reform interventions in India since independence and contributes to the ongoing debate within development and institutional economics on the approaches towards reform in the public health system. It measures the effectiveness of these interventions in improving the access to and equity in healthcare services and outcomes of the health sector. The book argues for increase in allocative efficiency, efficiency of resource use and efficacy of allocated public funds through decentralised governance and for greater participation of diversified community in politics to influence the policy makers towards reprioritisation of health. This timely book during the pandemic era, will be of great interest to departments of health economics, governance and institutional economics, political economy, sociology, public policy, regional studies, and development studies. It will also be useful to policymakers, health economists, social scientists, public health experts and professionals, and government and nongovernment institutions.

This book looks at how the ideas of freedom, property, and order are expressed in modern social contract theories (SCTs). Drawing on the theories of Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, and Rawls, it studies how notions of freedom promulgated by these SCTs invariably legitimise and defend the private ownership of the means of production. It argues that capitalism's impact on individual dependence and economic inequality still stems from this model, ultimately working in favour of proprietors. The author highlights the problematic nature of SCTs, which work as ideological mechanisms put forward under the guise of formal equality and formal freedom, by focusing on the historical and social context behind them. From a methodological point of view, the author presents a de-ideologization of the contractarian issue and provides insight into the political 'layers' within the discourse of individualism, human nature and morality shaping the outer corners of contractarian theory. An important intervention in the study of SCTs, this volume will be of great interest to scholars and researchers of political and social theory, sociology, political history, and political philosophy.

This book explores the role atmospheres play in shared emotion. With insights from leading scholars in the field, Atmospheres and Shared Emotions investigates key issues such as the relation between atmospheres and moods, how atmospheres define psychopathological conditions such as anxiety and schizophrenia, what role atmospheres play in producing shared aesthetic experiences, and the significance of atmospheres in political events. Calling upon disciplinary methodologies as broad as phenomenology, film studies, and law, each of the chapters is thematically connected by a rigorous attention on the multifaceted ways atmosphere play an important role in the development of shared emotion. While the concept of atmosphere has become a critical notion across several disciplines, the relationship between atmospheres and shared emotion remains neglected. The idea of sharing emotion over a particular event is rife within contemporary society. From Brexit to Trump to Covid-19, emotions are not only experienced individually, they are also grasped together. Proceeding from the view that atmospheres can play an explanatory role in accounting for shared emotion, the book promises to make an enduring contribution to both the understanding of atmospheres and to issues in the philosophy of emotion more broadly. Offering both a nuanced analysis of key terms in contemporary debates as well as a series of original studies, the book will be a vital resource for scholars in contemporary philosophy, aesthetics, human geography, and political science.

The second volume of The Class Structure of Capitalist Societies maps the distribution of social powers and associated properties and lifestyles in unparalleled detail by examining the results of a brand-new survey delivered in Sweden, Germany and the US. Continuing the cross-national investigation of the shape and effects of class systems across capitalist nations, the analyses in Volume 2 are embedded in a novel sociological theory of international relations, sustained reflections on the relationship between national standing and class structure and extensive reconstruction of the histories of class in each of the three nations studied. The ultimate conclusion, however, is that not only that the fundamental structure of class today the same across the three cases, for all their unique cultural and historical features, but their translation into differences of taste, practice and symbolic violence, always cross-cut by gender, follow highly familiar patterns too. This volume will appeal to scholars and advanced undergraduate and postgraduate students interested in sociology, politics and demography and is essential reading for all those interested in social class across the globe.

Between Habit and Thought in New TV Serial Drama: Serial Connections is a consideration of some of the key examples of serial television drama available via transnational streaming platforms in recent times. Through the individual works examined, the book exemplifies the ways in which aesthetics, technology, and capitalism weave a complex social fabric around the production of the respective television series, thus presenting this type of serial drama as a finely engineered cultural production. Taking Bernard Stiegler's notion of an "image warfare" as its starting point, the author critically investigates the strategies deployed by the shows' producers to navigate this dynamic, shaped by the "new spirit of capitalism". With creativity intrinsic to the process, on the one hand, and a highly efficient drive for capturing and fixing attention driven by algorithm and economic logic, on the other, the author maps the processes at work in the production of high-value serial drama and considers how, despite this tension, they manage to present meaningful insights into the experience of being in this world: A world shaped by trauma, a desire for justice, and a search for systems of belief that can offer a way through the vicissitudes of contemporary life. Framed by a detailed analysis of the multiple processes that shape these works is a sustained analysis of the serials Mr Robot, Billions, The Leftovers, Rectify, and Westworld, and the dynamics of despair and hope that ripple through them. As such, it will appeal to readers of film and television studies, cultural theory, and those interested in furthering a critical aesthetics for our time.

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.

Since the 1980s, two different paradigms have reshaped industrial societies: the Neoliberal paradigm and a Research and Innovation paradigm. Both have been conceptualized and translated into strong policies with massive economic and social consequences. They provide divergent responses to the environmental transition. The Neoliberal paradigm is based on economic models and geopolitical solutions. The Research and Innovation paradigm's goal is to manage knowledge differently in order to reorient the evolution of society. Since the mid-1990s, a version of the Research and Innovation paradigm has led to the design of large-scale research and innovation policies. This book examines how these policies have evolved and how they can be extended and reformed to respond to present and future environmental constraints. It studies the mutation of the conception, organization and role of science and technology in the evolution of industrial societies and explores the future of these developments. The book offers three unique lines of enquiry. The first is to focus not specifically on economics, sociology, political science or history, but on knowledge creation from an institutional and reflexive point of view. The second is to establish a convergence between the British school of science and technology studies and the research trends opened by the work of Michel Foucault. Both introduced trans-disciplinary and policy-oriented research associating case studies, long-term perspectives and theory. The third is to consider climate change as the overwhelming challenge of our time. The book is an insightful guide for students, scholars and researchers across the humanities and social sciences, including philosophy, political science, law, economics, business and media.

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.

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.

At this crucial moment in American history, when voting rights could be expanded to include all citizens, or legislatively limited, this significantly updated edition of Who Rules America? shows precisely how the top 1% of the population, who own 43% of all financial wealth, and receive 20% of the nation's yearly income, dominate governmental decision-making. They have created a corporate community and a policy-planning network, made up of foundations think-tanks, and policy-discussion groups, to develop the policies that become law. Through a leadership group called the power elite, the corporate rich provide campaign donations and other gifts and favors to elected officials, serve on federal advisory committees, and receive appointments to key positions in government, all of which make it possible for the corporate rich and the power elite to rule the country, despite constant challenges from the inclusionary alliance and from the Democratic Party. The book explains the role of both benign and dark attempts to influence public opinion, the machinations of the climate-denial network, and how the Supreme Court came to have an ultraconservative majority, who serve as a backstop for the corporate community as well as a legitimator of restrictions on voting rights, union rights, and abortion rights, by ruling that individual states have the power to set such limits. Despite all this highly concentrated power, it will be the other 99.5%, not the top 0.5%, who will decide the fate of the United States in the 2020s on all the important issues.

Appeals to the 'common good' or 'public interest' have long been used to justify planning as an activity. While often criticised, such appeals endure in spirit if not in name as practitioners and theorists seek ways to ensure that planning operates as an ethically attuned pursuit. Yet, this leaves us with the unavoidable question as to how an ethically sensitive common good should be understood. In response, this book proposes that the common good should not be conceived as something pre-existing and 'out there' to be identified and applied or something simply produced through the correct configuration of democracy. Instead, it is contended that the common good must be perceived as something 'in here,' which is known by engagement with the complexities of a context through employing the interpretive tools supplied to one by the moral dimensions of the life in which one is inevitably embedded. This book brings into conversation a series of thinkers not normally mobilised in planning theory, including Paul Ricoeur, Alasdair MacIntyre and Charles Taylor. These shine light on how the values carried by the planner are shaped through both their relationships with others and their relationship with the 'tradition of planning' - a tradition it is argued that extends as a form of reflective deliberation across time and space. It is contended that the mutually constitutive relationship that gives planning its raison d'etre and the common good its meaning are conceived through a narrative understanding extending through time that contours the moral subject of planning as it simultaneously profiles the ethical orientation of the discipline. This book provides a new perspective on how we can come to better understand what planning entails and how this dialectically relates to the concept of the common good. In both its aim and approach, this book provides an original contribution to planning theory that reconceives why it is we do what we do, and how we envisage what should be done differently. It will be of interest to scholars, students and practitioners in planning, urban studies, sociology and geography.

The datafication of our world offers huge challenges and opportunities for social science. The 'data-drivenness' of computational research can occur at the expense of theoretical reflection and interpretation. Additionally, it can be difficult to reconcile the 'quantitative' dimensions of big data with the 'qualitative' sensibilities needed for its understanding. At the same time, this opens up possibilities for reimagining key principles of social inquiry. In this experimental and provocative book, Simon Lindgren argues that a hybrid approach to data and theory must be developed in order to make sense of today's ambivalent, turbulent, and media-saturated political landscape. He pushes for the development of a critical science of data, joining the interpretive theoretical and ethical sensibilities of social science with the predictive and prognostic powers of data science and computational methods. In order for theories and research methods to be more useful and relevant, they must be dismantled and put together in new, alternative, and unexpected ways. Data Theory is essential reading for social scientists and data scientists, as well as students taking courses in social theory and data, digital methods, big data, and data and society.

Interdisciplinary in approach, this book combines philosophy, sociology, history and psychology in the analysis of contemporary forms of suffering. With attention to depression, anxiety, chronic pain and addiction, it examines both particular forms of suffering and takes a broad view of their common features, so as to offer a comprehensive and parallel view both of the various forms of suffering and the treatments commonly applied to them. Highlighting the challenges and distortions of the available treatments and identifying these as contributory factors to the overall problem of contemporary suffering, Empty Suffering promises to widen the horizon of therapeutic interventions and social policies. As such, it will appeal to scholars across the social sciences and humanities with interests in mental health and disorder, social theory and social pathologies.

This book explores the thought of Pierre Bourdieu, one of the most influential sociologists of the twentieth century, proposing a modification and extension of his concept of habitus. Building on Bourdieu's notion of the translational reproduction of social structure - the idea that while social classes move in the same direction, dominant groups are able to preserve their relative power position, thus maintaining the structure of the gap - the author proposes that as social structures change, habitus change correspondingly, and thus become plural. Informed by Norbert Elias' process sociology, this volume offers examples of habitus pluralisation, arguing that this modification of Bourdieu's thought renders it more suitable for the study of social changes and represents the development of a path that Bourdieu himself had begun to explore in the later stages of his career. As such it will appeal to scholars of sociology and social theory with interests in historical sociology, process sociology, social structures and the thought of Bourdieu.

What is social visibility? How does it affect people and public issues? How are visibility regimes created, organized and contested? Tackling both social theory and social research, the book is an exploration into how intervisibilities produce crucial sociotechnical and biopolitical effects.

The Sinking Middle Class challenges the "save the middle class" rhetoric that dominates our political imagination. The slogan misleads us regarding class, nation, and race. Talk of middle class salvation reinforces myths holding that the US is a providentially middle class nation. Implicitly white, the middle class becomes viewed as unheard amidst supposed concerns for racial justice and for the poor. Roediger shows how little the US has been a middle class nation. The term seldom appeared in US writing before 1900. Many white Americans were self-employed, but this social experience separated them from the contemporary middle class of today, overwhelmingly employed and surveilled. Today's highly unequal US hardly qualifies as sustaining the middle class. The idea of the US as a middle class place required nurturing. Those doing that ideological work-from the business press, to pollsters, to intellectuals celebrating the results of free enterprise-gained little traction until the Depression and Cold War expanded the middle class brand. Much later, the book's sections on liberal strategist Stanley Greenberg detail, "saving the middle class" entered presidential politics. Both parties soon defined the middle class to include over 90% of the population, precluding intelligent attention to the poor and the very rich. Resurrecting radical historical critiques of the middle class, Roediger argues that middle class identities have so long been shaped by debt, anxiety about falling, and having to sell one's personality at work that misery defines a middle class existence as much as fulfillment.

This book comprehensively collects the thinking - over the last 25 years - of one the most important contemporary scholars in the field of ideology studies. Clearly organised, it expounds on the changing nature of the sub-discipline, its components and methods of investigation. As such, it serves the need for a general, well-informed identification and elaboration of thematic possibilities in current ideology studies and represents the most developed and productive methodological approach to the study of ideologies in the last three decades. Freeden presents ideology studies as an evolving and vibrant field, encountering and surmounting a series of challenges in its successful path towards recognition as a fully legitimate and respected branch of political theory. This book will be of key interest to students and scholars of political ideologies, political theory, political philosophy and more broadly to sociology, political science, anthropology, human geography, international studies and the humanities.

This book comprehensively collects the thinking - over the last 25 years - of one the most important contemporary scholars in the field of ideology studies. Clearly organised, it expounds on the changing nature of the sub-discipline, its components and methods of investigation. As such, it serves the need for a general, well-informed identification and elaboration of thematic possibilities in current ideology studies and represents the most developed and productive methodological approach to the study of ideologies in the last three decades. Freeden presents ideology studies as an evolving and vibrant field, encountering and surmounting a series of challenges in its successful path towards recognition as a fully legitimate and respected branch of political theory. This book will be of key interest to students and scholars of political ideologies, political theory, political philosophy and more broadly to sociology, political science, anthropology, human geography, international studies and the humanities.

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.

This authoritative two volume collection presents both the classic articles and the most important recent literature which are essential for an understanding of the sociology of knowledge. Topics covered in Volume I include the intellectual precursors and emergence of the sociology of knowledge; the classical sociology of knowledge; and the sociology of knowledge dispute. Volume II focuses on more contemporary sociologies of knowledge and the future of the debate.

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.

In Toward a Good Society, authors Tianjia Dong and Dongxiao Qin theorize a mutually empowering and growth-fostering society. The authors first demonstrate the feasibility of this society by grounding it in the framework of relational psychology. Departing from there, they travel along nine paths reconstructed from nine classic social science theories. In each chapter, they respectively reconstruct and find ways to move beyond Durkheimian structural-functionalism, de Tocqueville's communalism, Mead's symbolic interactionism, Freud's psychoanalytic perspective, Simmel's network theory, Smith's "invisible hand", Marx's class theory, Hobbes's contractualism, and Weber's rational-legal formulation. This leads them to propose a new Golden Rule that is as simple as it is profound and foundational to what makes a good society.

This book examines the largely-neglected shift in Max Weber's work from political economy to economic sociology. Considering the importance of his recognition-made during his research on the Protestant Ethic-of the reciprocal influences that exist between economics and society and the role of this realization in prompting him to rethink the study of political economy, the author sheds fresh light on his emerging belief that the study of the relationship between economic factors and social issues required a new discipline. A study that charts an important development in the thought of one of the founding figures of sociology, this volume will appeal to scholars of social theory with interests in the history of the field and the legacy of Max Weber.