The study of altruism, morality, and social solidarity is an emerging field of scholarship and research in sociology. This handbook will function as a foundational source for this subject matter and field, and as an impetus to its further development.

This book diagnoses the social, mental and political consequences of working and economic organizations that generate value from communication. It calls for the role of communication technologies to be reimagined in order to create a healthier, fairer society.

Assessing the political dimensions of Anthony Giddens' work from the 1970s to the present, this book highlights new directions for politics distinct from his Third Way. Kolarz provides an assessment of Giddens' political relevance and utility for present-day political endeavours, reflecting on the approach to critical social theory found in his early work, notably his theory of structuration and critique of historical materialism, and his consequent utopian realist analysis of late modernity. Giddens and Politics beyond the Third Way extracts from his work a rationale for global redistributive action, as well as an integrative approach to policymaking, suggesting that coherence of centre-left emancipatory politics requires coordination of policy areas previously thought of as separate.

Unlike most statistical texts, this book breathes real life into multivariate analysis. Starting with a range of actual research examples in the social sciences, it demonstrates how to make the most appropriate choice of technique. The examples are drawn from a broad spectrum of disciplines including: sociology, psychology, economics, political science and international comparative research.

Are reports of the 'death of deviance' premature? This collection brings together leading international scholars to analyse uses of the 'deviance' concept to argue its vitality and show its possible utility in a variety of fields including religion, education and media narratives.

This volume is subtitled "New Frontiers in Socialization". With a combination of invited and author initiated papers - all anonymously peer reviewed - this volume seeks to produce a cohesive source of information on socialization and the life course. It advances theory and research related to socialization during specific periods of adult life or across adulthood. We focus on the adult years because most scholarship on socialization pertains to the first two decades of life. The book addresses socialization experiences within one or more contemporary contexts - families, neighbourhoods and communities, peer and friendship groups, educational settings, work organizations, volunteer associations, medical institutions, the media, and nation and culture. It also discusses the processes that occur in these settings, the primary agents of socialization, the content of socialization messages, and the consequences of these experiences for individuals and society at large.

This book seeks to bring understanding of both complexity and temporality into criminology. It outlines why these are important in criminological models of causation and explanation and explores them by drawing on theories and approaches in political science, comparative history, social theory and systems analyses. It discusses what is meant by complexity and introduces historical institutionalism (which is rarely used in criminology) to criminological audiences; it introduces what is known as 'why-because' analyses to the social sciences. This style of thinking is used to explore the causes of major transportation accidents (such as aeroplane or ferry disasters) and involves the integration of structural, organisational and agentic inputs in accounting for such disasters. Chapters on realistic evaluation, theories of structuration and agency, and research design and research methods are included with an example project based on the author's recent studies of Thatcherism which shows how these theories can be applied to empirical data. This book speaks to those interested in criminology, sociology, political science, research methods and the wider social sciences.

This book critically explores the development of radical criminology through a range of written Ancient Greek works including epic and lyrical poetry, drama and philosophy, across different chapters. It traces the development of political power and the concepts of law, legitimacy, crime, justice and deviance in the Ancient Greek world and the political struggles that propelled that development, using the conflict perspective as a conceptual tool of the sociological analysis of reality. Theoretical discussions of crime and justice typically stem from the better known works of Plato or Aristotle although this book explores the works preceding these. This book will appeal to those interested in the (pre)history of criminology and the historical production of criminological knowledge.

This study introduces and systematizes the concept of global modernity as a paradigm for the analysis of the contemporary era. Building on Parson's distinction between social, cultural, personal and organismic systems, it presents a four-dimensional scheme that aims to identify modernity's key structural components. Each dimension is explored in turn, highlighting different aspects of the modern condition. While focusing on universal features, the scheme leaves ample room for capturing cross-regional diversity. The book's key argument is that we have entered a new phase of global, polycentric modernity which brings to a close several centuries of Western world domination and gives rise to a new world order.

This book proposes a comprehensive theory of the loss of religion in human societies, with a specific and substantive focus on the contemporary United States. Kevin McCaffree draws on a range of disciplines including sociology, psychology, anthropology, and history to explore topics such as the origin of religion, the role of religion in recent American history, the loss of religion, and how Americans are dealing with this loss. The book is not only richly theoretical but also empirical. Hundreds of scientific studies are cited, and new statistical analyses enhance its core arguments. What emerges is an integrative and illuminating theory of secularization.

When it comes to crime, everyone seems to take evil seriously as an explanatory concept - except criminologists. This book asks why, and why not, through exploring a variety of interdisciplinary approaches to evil from the perspectives of theology, philosophy, literary and cultural studies, and the social sciences.

Immanuel Wallerstein and Istvan Meszaros are prolific scholars whose analyses of global capitalism in crisis offer distinctive insights for research across the social sciences. This book engages readers with their main theses, encouraging their application in analysis of social reality and of its institutions of mass education, which aim to prepare workers for the global economy. Using the theoretical lenses offered by these two scholars, Tom G. Griffiths and Robert Imre develop a timely and provocative critique of mass education for this century, challenging readers to contribute to the construction of radical alternatives.

Climate change is prompting an unprecedented questioning of the fundamental bases upon which society is founded. Businesses claim that technology can save the environment, while politicians champion the role of international environmental agreements to secure global action. Economists suggest that we should pay developing countries not to destroy their forests, while environmentalists question whether we can solve ecological problems with the same thinking that created them. As the process of steering society, governance has a critical role to play in coordinating these disparate voices and securing collective action to achieve a more sustainable future. Environmental Governance is the only book to discuss the first principles of governance, while also providing a critical overview of the wide ranging theories and approaches that underpin policy and practice today. It places governance within its wider political context to explore how the environment is controlled, manipulated, regulated, and contested by a range of actors and institutions. This book shows how network and market governance have shaped current approaches to environmental issues, while also introducing emerging approaches such as transition management and adaptive governance. In so doing, it highlights the strengths and weaknesses of the different approaches currently in play, and considers their political implications. This text provides a groundbreaking overview of dominant and emerging approaches of environmental governance, drawing on cutting edge debates and forging critical links between them. Each chapter is complemented by case studies, key debates, questions for discussion and further reading. It is essential reading for students of the environment, politics and sociology, and, indeed, anyone concerned with changing society to secure a more sustainable future.

The aim of this book series is to provide a much needed outlet for the wealth of cross-cultural research that has not impacted upon mainstream education. This particular volume is divided into four parts: the motivation context; the learning context; the family context; and the curriculum context.

This sociological work examines the phenomenon of the Death Cafe, a regular gathering of strangers from all walks of life who engage in "death talk" over coffee, tea, and desserts. Using insightful theoretical frameworks, Fong explores the common themes that constitute a "death identity" and reveals how Cafe attendees are inspired to live in light of death because of death. Fong examines how the participants' embrace of self-sovereignty and confrontation of mortality revive their awareness of and appreciation for shared humanity. While divisive identity politics continue to foster neo-tribalisms and the construction of myriad "others," Fong makes visible how those who participate in Death Cafes end up building community while being inspired toward living more fulfilling lives. Through death talk unfettered from systemic control, they end up feeling more agency over their own lived lives as well as being more conscious of the possibility of a good death. According to Fong, participants in this phenomenon offer us a sublime way to confront the facticity of our own demise-by gathering as one.

'Belonging' is often overlooked in its relationship to society and social change, and yet it forms the bedrock of how we relate to the world around us. Through the work of Marx, Giddens and Goffman, this book covers the familiar terrain of identity theory, while going beyond it to other sites of identification and social change.

The law was central to Durkheim's sociological theory and to his efforts to establish sociology as a distinctive discipline. This revised and updated second edition of Durkheim and the Law brings together key texts which demonstrate the development of Durkheim's thinking on the sociology of law, several of them newly translated here. The editors, both world-renowned Durkheim scholars, provide a comprehensive analysis of the intellectual significance and distinctiveness of Durkheim's work on the subject. They show how his ideas evolved over time; how they contributed to the development of a distinctively Durkheimian vision of a science of society; and they provide a comprehensive assessment of the strengths and weaknesses of his theorizing about law, as well as its continuing relevance for contemporary sociology. Enriched with a new introduction and useful learning features, this book remains a major reference for students of socio-legal theory.

This volume brings together a range of different specialists in the arts and cultural industries, as well as international academics and public intellectuals, to explore how media and communication practices for social change are currently being reconfigured in both conceptual and rhetorical terms.

Within a social context where gender equality has been formally established as a social good and where feminism is generally dismissed as having achieved its purpose, third wave feminism offers an analysis of gender relations and feminist politics that has caused extensive debate. Situating third wave feminism within a late modern, postfeminist gender order this book offers a critical analysis of the assumptions that underpin the third wave perspective focusing on the solutions that third wave feminism proposes to counteract the popular perception that feminism has lost its relevance in today's society. In this analysis, the conceptual and theoretical resources that a third wave feminist perspective offers for advancing an understanding of the current state of a feminist 'politics of the self' are assessed and the claim that a set of new practices and identities are required to progress feminist interests is explored, focusing specifically upon the reconstruction of femininity through the ideals of autonomy, individuality and self-management.

While Georg Simmel is widely known, the impact of his work has been far from straightforward, with the ways in which his ideas have been taken up by later thinkers as complex and diverse as the ideas themselves. The Simmelian Legacy is a comprehensive study of the work of this influential sociologist and philosopher and its reception in the Anglophone, German, and French intellectual worlds. By returning to Simmel and his legacy, this text gives voice to a corpus of vast significance and great potential that has lived too much in the shadows. It examines how his relational mode of thought transforms the landscape of sociological problems to subvert conventional conceptions of Simmel's oeuvre as well as of sociology's history. It not only rediscovers key dimensions of Simmel's thought, but also explores its gradual and uneven re-emergence within subsequent scholarship. This is an engaging and lucid, intellectually illuminating and thoroughly accessible overview of the thought of one of sociology's key thinkers that will be essential reading for both scholars and students of sociology and social theory.

Bourdieu and Literature is a wide-ranging, rigorous and accessible introduction to the relationship between Pierre Bourdieu's work and literary studies. It provides a comprehensive overview and critical assessment of his contributions to literary theory and his thinking about authors and literary works. One of the foremost French intellectuals of the post-war era, Bourdieu has become a standard point of reference in the fields of anthropology, linguistics, art history, cultural studies, politics, and sociology, but his longstanding interest in literature has often been overlooked. This study explores the impact of literature on Bourdieu's intellectual itinerary, and how his literary understanding intersected with his sociological theory and thinking about cultural policy. This is the first full-length study of Bourdieu's work on literature in English, and it provides an invaluable resource for students and scholars of literary studies, cultural theory and sociology.

This book offers a systematic view of social analysis that will advance the communication of results between different academic disciplines. It overcomes misunderstandings that are due to the use of an unstructured variety of methodological traditions in the analysis of complex socioeconomic and political processes. The book focuses on the special features of human society: humans as subjects, non-repetitiveness and irreversibility of social actions and the peculiar relations between necessity and possibility in human action. It defines methodological criteria, procedures and rules that enable researchers to select and classify realistic hypotheses to derive general principles and basic organizational features. It then applies these criteria in critical reviews of major theories and interpretations of society and history, offering clarifications and alternative proposals with regard to crucial aspects of anthropological, political, juridical, sociological and religious thought.