Dialogue has become a central theoretical concept in human and social sciences as well as in professions such as education, health, and psychotherapy. This 'dialogical turn' emphasises the importance of social relations and interaction to our behaviour and how we make sense of the world; hence the dialogical mind is the mind in interaction with others - with individuals, groups, institutions, and cultures in historical perspectives. Through a combination of rigorous theoretical work and empirical investigation, Markova presents an ethics of dialogicality as an alternative to the narrow perspective of individualism and cognitivism that has traditionally dominated the field of social psychology. The dialogical perspective, which focuses on interdependencies among the self and others, offers a powerful theoretical basis to comprehend, analyse, and discuss complex social issues. Markova considers the implications of dialogical epistemology both in daily life and in professional practices involving problems of communication, care, and therapy.

Brands and logos are all around us - from the clothes we wear and the objects we buy, to the advertisements which cover our cities and the celebrities created by the media. We regard the brand as a new phenomenon, something born with the consumer society, but branding was born with civilization, its earliest examples dating to the Roman Empire.Branding is now a growing industry, applied not only to commodities but to charities, cities, the worlds of sport and entertainment, even government initiatives. Such is the ubiquity and power of branding that it is increasingly taken as a sign of the commodification of everyday life and the rapacity of corporate power. Examining the brand in history, the growth of national and global brands, the changing approaches of the branding industry and the exploration of new spaces for advertising, The Rise of Brands analyses exactly how brands develop and operate in contemporary society.

This volume examines the rise of an emerging sport as a grassroots effort (or "new social movement"), arguing that the growth of non-normative sports movements occurs through two social processes: one driven primarily by product development, commercialization, and consumption, and another that relies upon public resources and grassroots efforts. Through the lens of disc golf, informed by the author's experience both playing and researching the sport, Joshua Woods here explores how non-normative sports development depends on the consistency of insider culture and ideology, as well as on how the movement navigates a broad field of market competition, government regulation, community characteristics, public opinion, traditional media, social media and technological change. Throughout, the author probes why some sports grow faster than others, examining cultural tendencies toward sport, individual choices to participate, and the various institutional forces at play.

This book presents a set theoretical approach to sociological research. It revisits existing sociological approaches and discusses their limitations, before suggesting an alternative. While the existing canonical approaches of Positivism, Conflictualism, and Pragmatism are based on biology, history, and physics, respectively, the set theoretical approach is based on mathematics. Utilising its philosophical exploration delineated by Alain Badiou, the book further translates his work into the field of social science. The result of this translation is termed Multiplitism, which evades the limiting contradictions of existing approaches. Drawing on the mathematical notion of 'set' and relating it to recent sociological turns such as the relational and the ontological, the book proposes a scale-relativity through which the researcher (as subject) and the researched (as object) are integrated. The book will be of interest to social scientists, particularly social theorists and advanced level students.

Engaging with several emerging and interconnected approaches in the social sciences, including pragmatism, system theory, processual thinking and relational thinking, this book leverages John Dewey and Arthur Bentley's often misunderstood concept of trans-action to revisit and redefine our perceptions of social relations and social life. The contributors gathered here use trans-action in a more specific sense, showing why and how social scientists and philosophers might use the concept to better understand our social life and social problems. As the first collective sociological attempt to apply the concept of trans-action to contemporary social issues, this volume is a key reference for the growing audience of relational and processual thinkers in the social sciences and beyond.

In this timely and important book, Professor Brad K. Blitz, a leading expert on post-conflict integration, statelessness, migration, development and human rights, reminds us how the concept of freedom of movement, and its relationship to migration, has received little comprehensive treatment among academics, even though it underpins what we expect as individuals living in liberal states. Yet, there are 214 million international migrants and 740 million internal migrants in the world today. It is all the more paradoxical therefore that there is no guarantee of the right of freedom of movement where most migration takes place against the backdrop of both official and unofficial controls. With strong theoretical underpinnings, and drawing from a range of philosophers, both ancient and modern, Professor Blitz, examines the legal foundations for the free movement of people, before undertaking a practical critique of recent free movement experiences in Spain, Italy, Serbia, Croatia, Russia and Slovenia. This is a tour de force. A work of remarkable scholarship, prescience, and practical relevance, which deserves to be read by all on this much-neglected subject of freedom of movement.' - Satvinder Juss, King s College London, UK'An advance, both analytically and empirically, for migration studies. With a base in international law and political theory, Blitz admirably opens up the ambiguous question of freedom of movement in relation to the restrictions still imposed by national borders and sovereignty, and the difficulties migrants face turning movement into successful settlement. Focusing on Europe, and migration experiences internal and external to the EU, as well as within and across national boundaries, the book significantly challenges current immigration paradigms with a series of atypical and provocative case studies.' - Adrian Favell, Sciences Po, Paris, France Migration and Freedom is a thorough and revealing exploration of the complex relationship between mobility and citizenship in Europe. Brad Blitz draws upon European and international law, political theory, economics, history and contemporary studies of migration to provide an original account of the opportunities and challenges associated with the right to free movement in Europe and beyond. Integrating over 160 interviews with individuals in Croatia, Slovenia, Italy, Spain, the UK and Russia, this book provides a unique focus on both internal and inter-state mobility and a re-evaluation of the concept of freedom of movement. The author documents successful and unsuccessful settlement and establishment cases and records how both official and informal restrictions on individuals' mobility have effectively created new categories of citizenship and exclusion within Europe. This book is an original study aimed at academics, students and government officials interested in migration, international studies, public and social policy, and politics. Contents: 1. Migration and Freedom 2. Investigating Freedom of Movement 3. Freedom of Movement in Europe 4. Spanish Doctors in the United Kingdom 5. European Language Teachers in Italy 6. Displaced Serbs in Croatia 7. Internal Migrants in Russia 8. Discrimination and Immobility in Slovenia 9. Analysis 10. Conclusion Bibliography

An anthropologist, folklorist, and literary critic besides being a marketing professor, Alf H. Walle takes a refreshingly interdisciplinary look at the impact of modern social thought upon marketing and social research. Tracing key ideas back to their intellectual roots, Walle shows how the evolution of social theory, and the controversies it has engendered, can and should transform the way marketers approach consumers. He provides a theoretic underpinning for qualitative consumer research and presents a lucid theoretical and methodological overview for qualitative methods in marketing, research that parallels what others, such as Shelby Hunt, have provided for scientific methods in marketing. His book is a provocative, thoughtful, and probing study of qualitative social theory and its important contributions to marketing and consumer research. It is of value to both practitioners and academics. Arguing that the social structural methods have been largely ignored, Walle rehabilitates this general method and compares it to poststructural alternatives.

Walle shows that to understand the evolution of modern social theory, one must come to grips with the work of three towering pioneers: Immanuel Kant, Friedrich Hegel, and Karl Marx, and that researchers must understand and appreciate the contributions and influence of pioneers in order to avoid the myopic vision of our own time. Praising Hegel's metaphor of cultures as living organisms and his forging of the concept we now call National Character, Walle points to Hegel as the pioneering social structuralist and as the man who, as a negative example, inspired the poststructuralists to action. Walle ends with a well reasoned analysis of poststructural thought in marketing-consumer research, and suggests that conflict theory--an alternative to poststructural methods that evolved from social structural roots--is often more appropriate than poststructural analysis in marketing and consumer research. Relating both conflict theory and poststructural analysis to the actual needs of marketing consumer researchers, "Exotic Visions in Marketing Theory and Practice" provides unique, practical insights for those who teach market research as well as practitioners who pursue it for a living.

This book explores three worlds shared by the humans in their collective experiences. It identifies and explores the world of commonsense, the world of religion, and the world of science as three essential dimensions of human experience. The book helps understand that humans can gain comfort and pleasure in commonsense, achieve meaning and purpose from religion, and attain truth and rationality through science. It actively applies theories to and develops theoretical explanations from different domains or situations of human existence. This book is of interest to theorists, researchers, instructors, and students across major academic disciplines in the humanities and social sciences.

Performing Intimacies with Hawthorne, Austen, Wharton, and George Eliot analyzes literary reproductions of everyday intimacies through a microsociological lens to demonstrate the value of reading microsocially. The text investigates the interplay between author, character, and reader and considers such concepts as face and moments of embarrassment to emphasize how art and life are inseparable. Drawing on narrative theory, the phenomenological approach, and macro approaches, Maya Higashi Wakana examines Hawthorne's "The Minister's Black Veil," Austen's Pride and Prejudice, Wharton's Ethan Frome and The Age of Innocence, and George Eliot's The Mill on the Floss. Through a multidisciplinary approach, this book provides new ways of reading the everyday in literature.

This book explores and provides an overview of the Norwegian psychologist Jan Smedslund's life work on Psycho-logic. His contributions to science have been radical not only in challenging the empirical foundation of psychology, but also in seeking to develop a viable alternative. This book brings together various reflections on his key contributions from the 1960s to the present day. The volume features three chapters by Jan Smedslund, offering his updated views on psychological science and psychotherapy. It also features contributions from several scholars that critically evaluates his legacy. His seminal ideas are discussed, revised and expanded upon and the questions raised are put in relevant historical and interdisciplinary context. Respect for Thought is a valuable resource for psychological researchers, historians of psychology, cultural psychologists, critical psychologists, theoretical psychologists, clinical psychologists and psychotherapists, social scientists, philosophers of psychology, and philosophers of science.

This book is grounded in psychosocial research that explores the complex intergenerational transmission of memories within families and the transgenerational social issues that form a part of those memories. The author demonstrates that the organising framework of moving back and forth between inter- and transgenerational processes is key to mapping those relationships leading to the ideas of generational companionship, a multigenerational self and intergenerational mentalisation. Drawing on sociological and psychoanalytic approaches, it provides a framework for thinking about continuity and discontinuity in the lives of individuals and in the longer sweep of the generations. The role and potential for a psychosocial approach in deep-level problem solving is addressed through chapters on psychotherapy and on psychosocial interventions. Social imagination in personal and social healing is a core theme, as is the study of the relationship between creative and destructive forces that play out in human life. The book will be an invaluable resource for students and scholars of psychosocial research and psychotherapy as well as in memory studies, history, genealogy and social theory.

Fashion is bound up with promoting the "new," concerned with constantly changing aesthetics. The favored styles or looks of a season arise out of the work of a vast range of different actors who collectively produce, select, distribute and promote the new ideals, before moving on next season. If fashion is defined, in part, by the incessant requirement to be "new," this requirement means aesthetic qualities are always in motion and, therefore, unstable. How, then, are fashionable commodities stabilized long enough for them to be calculated--i.e., selected, distributed and sold--by those critically placed inside the fashion system? Since there are few studies that actually examine the work that goes on inside the world of fashion we know little about these processes. "Fashion and the Cultural Economy" addresses this gap in our knowledge by examining how aesthetic products are defined, distributed and valued. It focuses attention on the work of some of the market agents, in particular model agents or "bookers" and fashion buyers, shaping the aesthetics inside their markets. In analyzing their work, Entwistle develops a theoretical framework for understanding the distinctive features of aesthetic marketplaces and the aesthetic calculations within them.

In Living the Questions: Dispatches From a Life Already in Progress, Wade Tillett takes up the question of how to live - not in some abstract sense, but in the urgent present. Tillett realizes that how to live is a question that each of us is already asking - and answering - moment-by-moment. These texts offer surprising discoveries of how we are already inventing solutions to living in multiple and discontinuous worlds through our daily actions. By examining small specific pieces of daily life, Tillett explores how we navigate through tentative, multiple, and often contradictory positions. Among the many situations artistically explored are visiting a church, narrating a family movie, exposing students to a nearby school, re-working a found sculpture, taking a licensure exam, attending a protest, and waiting for the El. By juxtaposing multiple voices and images, he attempts to see how, in both method and content, the texts themselves act on the worlds and lives they describe. Tillett narrates from many perspectives: teacher, researcher, writer, artist, architect, activist, parent, theorist, and struggling protagonist of his own life. As such, many readers sharing such roles will immediately find connections within the book. For researchers struggling to find workable qualitative methodologies after poststructuralism, the experimental methods employed here may provide welcome inspiration. However, the book seems aimed not so much at particular disciplines but at anyone who, like Tillett, is actively searching for how to live. Anyone involved in such a search will likely find hope and ways forward in his methods that look at life as we are already living it.

This book explores the relevance of social networking from the perspective of its users to reveal the sociological significance of (inter)active experiences on Facebook. In doing so, the work examines obscure aspects of Facebook by addressing such questions as: What constitutes keeping in touch?; how is knowing of the other different from being with the other?; and why is the presence of others such an important element of Facebook? Social Ties in Online Networking discusses the significance of social networking activity through a collection of interviews with the users of Facebook. It analyses what they do, what they like and watch, but first and foremost how they intend their own actions and others' actions to be perceived within the realm of social media. This book is an exploration of relationships, which will be of interest to academics and students in sociology, social theory, human geography, social networking, media studies and social psychology.

Critically exploring the presuppositions of contemporary social theory, this collection argues for a trans-civilizational dialogue and a deepening of the universe of intellectual discourse in order to transform sociology into a truly planetary conversation on the human condition. Focusing on perspectives from Asia, notably East Asia and India, it interrogates presuppositions in contemporary critical social theory about man, culture and society, and considers central themes such as knowledge and power, knowledge and liberation. The diverse contributions tackle key questions such the globalization of social theory, identity and society in east asia, as well as issues such as biopolitics, social welfare and eurocentrism. They also examine dialogues along multiple trajectories between social theorists from the Euro-American world and from the Asian universe, such as between Kant and Gandhi, Habermas and Sri Aurobindo, the Bildung tradition in Europe and the Confucian traditions. Arguing for a global comparative engagement and cross-cultural dialogue, this is a key read for all those interested in the future of social theory in the wake of globalization and the rise of the global south.

This book conducts a critical investigation into everyday intercultural recognition and misrecognition in the domain of paid work, utilising social philosopher Axel Honneth's recognition theory as its theoretical foundation. In so doing, it also reveals the sophistication and productivity of Honneth's recognition model for multiculturalism scholarship. Honneth and Everyday Intercultural (Mis)Recognition is concerned with the redress of intercultural related injustice and, more widely, the effective integration of ethically and culturally diverse societies. Bona Anna analyses the everyday experiences of cross-cultural misrecognition in a distinctive ethno-cultural group, including social norms that have been marginalised in the contexts of employment. In this endeavour, she deploys key constructs from Honneth's theory to argue for individual and social integration to be conceptualised as a process of inclusion through stables forms of recognition, rather than as a process of inclusion through forms of group representation and participation. This book will appeal to students and academics of multiculturalism interested in learning more about the usefulness of Honneth's recognition theory in intercultural inquiry, including the ways in which it can circumvent some of the impasses of classical multiculturalism.

This book explores the idea of social class in the liberal tradition. It collects classical and contemporary texts illustrating and examining the liberal origins of class analysis-often associated with Marxism but actually rooted in the work of liberal theorists. Liberal class analysis emphasizes the constitutive connection between state power and class position. Social Class and State Power documents the rich tradition of liberal class theory, its rediscovery in the twentieth century, and the possibilities it opens up for research in the new millenium.

The eighteenth-century Enlightenment saw the birth of an era which sought legitimacy not from the past but from the future. No longer would human beings invoke the authority of tradition; instead, modern societies emerging in the West justified themselves by their success at increasing, through the application of scientific knowledge, human control over the world. Ever since this notion of modernity was formulated it has provoked intense debate.

In this wide-ranging historical introduction to social theory, Alex Callinicos explores the controversies over modernity and examines the connections between social theory and modern philosophy, political economy and evolutionary biology. He offers clear and accesssible treatments of the thought of Montesquieu, Adam Smith and the Scottish Enlightenment, Hegel, Marx, Tocqueville, Maistre, Gobineau, Darwin, Spencer, Kautsky, Nietzsche, Durkheim, Weber, Simmel, Freud, Lukacs, Gramsci, Heidegger, Keynes, Hayek, Parsons, the Frankfurt School, Levi-Strauss, Althusser, Foucault, Habermas and Bourdieu, and concludes by surveying the state of contemporary social thought.

A remarkably comprehensive and lucid primer, Social Theoryis essential reading for students of politics, sociology and social and political thought.

Baudrillard, Youth, and American Film examines the portrayal of youth in American cinema with Jean Baudrillard's radical social theory and philosophical system. Kline uses Baudrillard's corpus to analyze the troubling effects of the portrayal of youth in American teen films, namely, its contribution to discursive violence against young people which holds such a prominent place in many adult-controlled, modern institutions like schools. This kind of violence has multiple iterations, including the inability to imagine youth as meaningful political actors, the insistence on taking teenagers to be morally impoverished, and the propensity for viewing young people as thoroughly heteronomous. While there are certainly pockets of exception, violent discourses often animate institutional disregard for youth. Kline promotes Baudrillard's fatal theory as a way for critical educators, philosophers, sociologists, and other concerned pedagogues to argue for an alteration in the way that youth is portrayed in American films, and to discourage the negative discourse that have colonized conceptions and treatment of young people.