Living Racism is based on the premise that race and racism are well-entrenched elements of US society. The contributors of this volume argue that race and racism are more than mere concepts; instead, they see and treat these as part of the fabric that constitutes and organizes everyday life. Consequently, race and racism are maintained through structures such as social institutions (e.g., schools, criminal justice system, media, etc.) and are carried by individual actors through racial ideologies and a racial etiquette (beliefs, practices, traditions, and customs) that inform how people relate to and interact with one another (or not). As expressed throughout this book, the notion of living racism is twofold. On the one hand, living racism denotes the ways in which racism is embodied and active, much like a living organism. On the other hand, living racism connects with the ways that people must navigate racism in their individual and collective lives.

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.

'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.

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.

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.

An integrated social science view of the world This best-selling text emphasizes that social and cultural changes are the pervasive realities of our era. One of the main themes of Contemporary Society is that the transition from an industrial to a post-industrial order in the modern world is fraught with difficulties, as was the transition from an agricultural to an industrial order in an earlier era. Within this framework, we can observe the increasing fragmentation of the social order, which tends to lead people away from community and a common purpose and often invites conflict and disunity. At the same time, countervailing social forces are also at work, providing some stability, some shelter in the storm. Finally, societies are faced with the rapid and transformative power of information technology, a fact that propels separate groups of people into a global entity.Teaching & Learning Experience * Personalize Learning - MySearchLab delivers proven results in helping students succeed, provides engaging experiences that personalize learning, and comes from a trusted partner with educational expertise and a deep commitment to helping students and instructors achieve their goals. *Improve Critical Thinking - Boxed features provide topics for classroom discussion and encourage students to think like social scientists. *Engage Students - Emphasis on social and cultural change and how they impact social order. *Explore Theory - An integrated social science view of the world. *Support Instructors - Written activities and assessment in MySearchLab offer instructors supplemental materials to help their students succeed.

A bright portrait of modern Africa that pushes back against harmful stereotypes to tell a more comprehensive story.

You already know these stereotypes. So often Africa is depicted simplistically as an arid red landscape of famines and safaris, uniquely plagued by poverty and strife.

In this funny and insightful book, Dipo Faloyin offers a much-needed corrective. He examines each country's colonial heritage, and explores a wide range of subjects, from chronicling urban life in Lagos and the lively West African rivalry over who makes the best Jollof rice, to the story of democracy in seven dictatorships and the dangers of stereotypes in popular culture.

By turns intimate and political, Africa Is Not A Country brings the story of the continent towards reality, celebrating the energy and fabric of its different cultures and communities in a way that has never been done before.

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.

This fascinating fictional account will introduce the reader to key ideas in social and political philosophy. It presents crucial skills of philosophical investigation in an accessible, rigorous and light-hearted way. The novel is funny, informative and entertaining, allowing the reader to experience often complex ideas from the 'inside' by using skills they will have acquired, unconsciously, from films, TV and novels. The reader will learn about freedom, responsibility, justice and fairness and see how these are played out in the different utopian futures of a range of socio-political regimes. The book is supported by a companion website, containing additional materials for both students and lecturers using the book, which is available from the link above. This work of fiction covers the following philosophies: Market Liberal; Marxist/Communist; Communitarian/Republican; Moral Conservative; Egalitarian/Socialist; Social Democratic; Feminist; and Ecological.

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.

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.

Master-Servant Childhood offers a new understanding of childhood in the Middle Ages as a form of master-servant relation embedded in an ancient sense of time as a correspondence between earthly change and eternal order. It challenges the misnomer that children were 'little adults' in the Middle Ages and corrects the prevalent misconceptions that childhood was unimportant, unrecognized or disregarded. The book argues for the value of studying childhood as a structure of thought and feeling and as an important avenue for exploring large scale historical changes in our sense of what it is to be and become human.

The book is a comparative analysis of all the major social science/political science grand theories. It focuses on developmentalism, dependency theory, the world systems approach, Marxism, institutionalism, rational choice, psychoanalysis, political sociology, sociobiology, environmentalism, neuro-politics, transitions to democracy, and non-Western systems of analysis. To facilitate comparison and analysis, a common framework and outline are employed throughout. An integrating introduction and conclusion help tie the book together.

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.

Yar examines the autobiographies of fallen sports stars, exploring their fall from grace and the stigma it entails. Drawing upon sociological and criminological perspectives, it illuminates how fallen stars use confessional acts of story-telling to seek forgiveness, vindication and redemption.

Just how bad is television? Drawing on a range of theoretical sources including Husserl Lacan, Lefebvre, Sartre, Schutz and Adam Smith, this book takes a phenomenological approach to the small screen to offer an original sociological approach to television and its contribution to moral culture of late modern societies.

"Rethinking Contemporary Feminist Politics" puts forward a timely analysis of contemporary feminism. Critically engaging with both narratives of feminist decline and re-emergence, it draws on poststructuralist political theory to assess current forms of activism in the UK and present a provocative account of recent developments in feminist politics.

Social scientists are motivated to understand how various facets of society influence all sorts of behavior. Individual's perceptions about their significance in a given community can have meaningful effects on the way in which we look to communities to develop and foster democratic values and promote civic engagement. The focus of this book is on how community comes to influence political behavior; it takes an interdisciplinary approach blending the fields of community psychology, sociology, and political science. We know from previous research that the context in which an individual interacts influences his/her political behaviors and attitudes. With this in mind, the present research addresses two major questions, 1) how does sense of community influence political behavior and attitudes? and 2) what impact--if any--does involvement in multiple contexts have on political behavior and attitudes?