This book provides a timely forum for current thinking on consumption and citizenship, exploring overlaps and tensions between them. Experts from history, theory, media studies, law, and civil society, retrieve alternative traditions of consumption and citizenship in West and East, and evaluate the civic prospects of consumption for the future.

Theorizing Nationalism provides a comprehensive and accessible review of the main theoretical approaches to understanding nations, nationalism and national identities. Its systematic and clearly structured approach makes it an ideal purchase for undergraduate students of Sociology, Politics and International Relations. Well illustrated with a variety of international examples, it gives a detailed insight into the contributions of key social theorists, including Anderson, Billig, Gellner, Hobshawn and Smith. It shows how the analysis of nationalism is linked to contemporary studies of gender, 'race' and ethnicity and it gives due consideration to important recent developments in the field, including liberal nationalism, globalization and the formation of national identities. Throughout the book, the authors place developments in the study of nationalism in the context of wider changes taking place in social theory, and show how shifting theoretical perspectives pose new questions about the meaning and importance of nations and nationalism. This is a balanced and wide-ranging text that opens up debates in a clear and helpful manner for students who are new to the field.

Drawing on case studies from the global South, this book explores the politics of mediated citizenship in which citizens are represented to the state through third party intermediaries. The studies show that mediation is both widely practiced and multi-directional and that it has an important role to play in deepening democracy in the global South.

First published in 1985, this book provides a comprehensive reappraisal of the diverse Communist development strategies that shaped the twentieth century. Robert Bideleux emphasises the appalling human and economic costs of the most widely adopted 'Stalinist' strategies of forced industrialisation and rural collectivisation. He also reconsiders the powerful arguments in favour of the most feasible and cost-effective alternatives to Stalinism, including 'village communisms' and 'market socialisms'. A highly readable and challenging study, this reissue will be of particular value to students with research interests in Development Studies, East European History and Politics.

Any study of contemporary industrial societies must take into account the role of power, ideology and class, and the degree to which these determine the development of social structures. This book, first published in 1977 and based on a selection of eleven papers given at a conference of the British Sociological Association, focuses upon aspects of continuity and change in modern society, comparing and contrasting dimensions of class, cleavage and control in capitalist and socialist societies. This book is key reading for students of both sociology and business studies.

This book provides the history and genealogy of an increasingly important subject: liminality. Coming to the fore in recent years in social and political theory and extending beyond is original use as developed within anthropology, liminality has come to denote spaces and moments in which the taken-for-granted order of the world ceases to exist and novel forms emerge, often in unpredictable ways. Liminality and the Modern offers a comprehensive introduction to this concept, discussing its development and laying out a conceptual and experiential framework for thinking about change in terms of liminality. Applying this framework to questions surrounding the implosion of 'non-spaces', the analysis of major historical periods and the study of political revolution, the book also explores its possible uses in social science research and its implications for our understanding of the uncertainty and contingency of the liquid structures of modern society. Shedding new light on a concept central to social thought, as well as its capacity for pushing social and political theory in new directions, this book will be of interest to scholars across the social sciences and philosophy working in fields such as social, political and anthropological theory, cultural studies, social and cultural geography, and historical anthropology and sociology.

Professional practice is in crisis. The formal theoretical knowledge on which practitioners base their practice is often outstripped by rapid changes in the contexts of this practice. The unpredictability of workplace and broader contexts often renders existing traditional practices irrelevant or ineffective. How can practitioners develop new ways of working which are flexible and responsive? The reflective approach, whereby practitioners draw out their theories of action directly from their own practice, is becoming increasingly popular as a new approach which enables breakthroughs in practice impasses. Yet reflectivity is often difficult to teach and learn because it challenges traditional, often unquestioned, paradigms of knowledge development. Therefore, rather than simply arguing for a reflective approach, this book makes a unique contribution by actually modelling the use of the reflective approach in practice. Students, educators and practitioners are able to read illustrations of how individual social workers used a reflective process to break through specific dilemmas in their practice. Thus, they are enabled to understand a reflective approach by gaining in insight into their experience of it. Contributors to this volume come from Australia, the United Kingdom and North America. Their personal backgrounds are diverse. They report on seminal experiences in a wide range of settings, from community work in the Gorbals, to hospice care in Sydney, from child protection to work with addictions. The book will appeal to: .Trainers and managers in social work, social care and health .Social work students and trainees .Social work academics .Professional and vocational educators generally who are interested in gaining practical insights into the development of reflective understanding. Lindsey Napier is Senior Lecturer in Social Work at the University of Sydney. Jan Fook is Professor of Social Work, Deakin University, Geelong, Australia

Political sociology has often left the discussion of collective political behavior to those working within a social movement framework. The politics of inequality and social division invoke important questions for political sociology. Many argue that at the heart of political sociology is the study of power differences and social inequality. This volume focuses upon how politics influences the patterns of social stratification and how the various inequalities in society affect politics. Inequalities of race, ethnicity, gender, and sexual orientation are included at local, regional, national, and transnational levels. Several studies consider "hate groups" and victims of hate.
This collection of research serves as an example of aspects of social status, social class, and ideology connected to contemporary questions about "who wins" in struggles for civic, economic, and individual citizenship. Inequalities of race, ethnicity, gender, and sexual orientation are studied at local, regional, national and transnational levels. Several articles consider "hate groups" and victims of hate. The politics of inequality are discussed in enduring theoretical frameworks and emerging literatures related to political groups and associations, the order of law and the state, social movements, and terrorism and violence. The authors hope that this volume will stimulate further work in the political sociology of social inequality.

Written by a team of experts on the contemporary global capitalist political economy who are able to shed light on the inner workings of global capitalism and the capitalist globalization process that has led to the growth and development of capitalism from the national to the global level, this groundbreaking volume provides critical analyses of the causes and consequences of the Great Recession of 2008-2009. Through a careful examination of the origin, development and aftermath of the catastrophic economic crisis from which the world is still trying to recover, editor Berch Berberoglu and his colleagues demonstrate that those most responsible for the economic collapse are the ones least affected by its devastating impact felt most severely by working people around the world. Ultimately, this book argues that it is only through the systematic restructuring of the world economy by the working class that society will be able to prevent the boom and bust cycle of global capitalist crises and usher in a more egalitarian socialist economy and society.

This text provides an overview of the sociology of change and transition, exploring how global transformation processes impact on everyday life by examining a number of 'hot spots' of change in contemporary society: the city, the workplace, patterns of consumption, politics, broader areas and the environment. It engages with a range of theories and concepts, in order to investigate the interplay of continuity and change in contemporary society, and assesses their usefulness. It also speculates on the shape of emerging social orders.

America today is a hypersexual society. Sexual discourse, erotica, and pornography are pervasive in the culture. Sexual materials, many times extending into erotica and pornography, are found in the consumer world, academia, sex therapy, the publishing world, mass media (especially radio, television and movies) and the Internet. The sexual materials found in all these areas of American society provoke relentless opposition by groups and individuals who want to repress or censor sexual materials. The combined effects of those who promote and produce sexual materials, and those who try to supress them, add up to a cacophony of sexual discourse.

New media, especially in relation to video gaming, now occupies a dominant position within popular culture. The book offers new and critical perspectives on computer game culture. It illustrates key debates in game studies and is a guide to complexity and diversity of the phenomenon.It maintains its originality in bringing together international experts from among social scientists, game designers, artists and literature scholars. Internationally renowned media and literature scholars, social scientists, game designers and artists explore the cultural potential of computer games in this rich anthology, which introduces the latest approaches in the central fields of game studies and provides an extensive survey of contemporary game culture.

In this detailed investigation of masculine gendered identity, first published in 1990, David Jackson uses his own personal history to look at the specific ways in which men become masculine . In doing so he examines, but also offers some positive challenges to, the assumed qualities and values of growing up manly . Jackson looks closely at the psychological and social forces active in his own development: relations with his father, violence at school, male banter and joking, sporting activities, boys comics, and sexual relations. The title is a deliberate blend between life story and critical commentary that makes use of some areas of post-structuralist theory to make visible the social and emotional processes that contribute to one man s life history. With an innovative theoretical approach, this reissue will be of particular value to those interested in the social, psychological and cultural forces that have gone into the historical shaping of men and masculinities. "

We are at war. Human cultures are divided into two basic types, two antagonistic forces, one based on symbolic exchange, which is dual and reciprocal, and one based on money and sign exchange, which is totalising. Non-western societies can create genuinely symbolic, durable cultures. But the western world-system, based on a logic of empire, is designed to create an integrated and sealed reality, to snap tight around the world and its image. If the first is indestructible and the second is irresistible, who can win and what will victory look like? The answer may lie in the capacity for violence in the world-system itself, threatening that system from within with the purest of symbolic forms, the challenge of resistance. The Intelligence of Evil or the Lucidity Pact is the summation of Baudrillard's work over twenty years. It is the essential analysis of the fundamental conflict of our time.

First published in 1985, this book provides a comprehensive reappraisal of the diverse Communist development strategies that shaped the twentieth century. Robert Bideleux emphasises the appalling human and economic costs of the most widely adopted 'Stalinist' strategies of forced industrialisation and rural collectivisation. He also reconsiders the powerful arguments in favour of the most feasible and cost-effective alternatives to Stalinism, including 'village communisms' and 'market socialisms'. A highly readable and challenging study, this reissue will be of particular value to students with research interests in Development Studies, East European History and Politics.

This book discloses a largely unnoticed dialogue between Muslim and Western social thought on the search for meaning and transcendence in the human sciences. The disclosure is accomplished by a comparative reading of contemporary Muslim debates on secular knowledge on the one hand, and of a foundational Western debate on the demise of metaphysics in the human sciences on the other hand. The comparative reading is grounded in a dialogical hermeneutic approach; that is, a hermeneutic approach to texts and cultural traditions that draws upon the work of Hans Georg Gadamer and also upon the insights of inter-religious dialogue.

The field of political demography - the politics of population change - is dramatically underrepresented in political science. At a time when demographic changes - aging in the rich world, youth bulges in the developing world, ethnic and religious shifts, migration, and urbanization - are waxing as never before, this neglect is especially glaring and starkly contrasts with the enormous interest coming from policymakers and the media.
"Ten years ago, demography] was hardly on the radar screen," remarks Richard Jackson and Neil Howe of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, two contributors to this volume. "Today," they continue, "it dominates almost any discussion of America's long-term fiscal, economic, or foreign-policy direction."
Demography is the most predictable of the social sciences: children born in the last five years will be the new workers, voters, soldiers, and potential insurgents of 2025 and the political elites of the 2050s. Whether in the West or the developing world, political scientists urgently need to understand the tectonics of demography in order to grasp the full context of today's political developments. This book begins to fill the gap from a global and historical perspective and with the hope that scholars and policymakers will take its insights on board to develop enlightened policies for our collective future.

This four volume work, originally published in the 1980s and out of print for some years, represents a major attempt to redirect the course of contemporary sociological thought. Jeffrey Alexander analyses the most general and fundamental elements of sociological thinking about action and order and their ramifications for empirical study. He insists that sociological thought need not choose between voluntary action and social constraint. The four volumes can be read independently of one another as each presents a distinctive theoretical argument in its own right. The first volume is directed at contemporary problems and controversies, not only in 'theory' but in the philosophy and sociology of science. The last three volumes make interpretations, confronting the individual theorists, and the secondary literature, on their own terms.

Since the legalisation of off-course cash betting in 1960, and the rise of varying forms of gambling, the British have come to be known as a nation of gamblers. Until this study was published in 1976, barely any evidence existed against which to assess the claim that gambling had become a major social problem. The authors present data drawn from area surveys carried out in Swansea, Sheffield, Wanstead and Woodford, and explore how well previous sociological theories of gambling agree with their findings, particular in connection with certain aspects of work and leisure. Examining different forms of gambling, including betting, bingo and gaming machines, the chapters consider how gambling choices vary between different social groups, and how much time and money is spent on them. With the internet making it easier than ever before to place bets, this title is especially relevant, and provides a systematic basis for an explanation of gambling in relation to social structure.

This book, first published in 1973, explores the manner in which conceptions of deviancy arise and shows how the attitudes of non-deviants, of society and of authority, are as instrumental in forming these conceptions as the actions of the deviants themselves. Chapters include discussions on the definition of deviants and deviancy and the enforcement of the law, alongside a detailed introduction. This title will be of particular value to students and scholars with an interest in criminology and the sociology and psychology of deviancy.

Disasters are part of the modern condition, a source of physical anxiety and existential angst, and they are increasing in frequency, cost and severity. Drawing on both disaster research and social theory, this book offers a critical examination of their causes, consequences and future avoidance.

An outstanding feature of this book is the broad range of the contributors, drawn from Europe, the Middle East and North America, testifying both to the range of Professor Agassi's interests and the geographical spread of his influence. Most contributors use Agassi's ideas as a springboard to engage in debate on issues, or offer a contribution in an area that interests him. In this volume contributors consider such questions as Agassi's philosophy of education, in practice as well as in theory; the impact of psychologism in philosophy; the origins of critical rationalism in the Bible; the debates in economics stimulated by the work of Popper and Agassi, and many other topics. Besides the special topics, the reader gains some sense of the fruitfulness of critical rationalism in the hands of Agassi's friends and colleagues.

Zizek argues that the physical violence we see is often generated by the systemic violence that sustains our political and economic systems. With the help of eminent philosophers like Marx, Engel and Lacan, as well as frequent references to popular culture, he examines the real causes of violent outbreaks like those seen in Israel and Palestine and in terrorist acts around the world. Ultimately, he warns, doing nothing is often the most violent course of action we can take.

The purpose of this book is to analyse one of the most pressing social problems of recent years, namely exclusion. The authors bring a richness of perspective, drawing on the experiences of eight European countries and a range of disciplines from law and economics through to social policy and political studies. The EU is a special case worthy of study as it may be that the process of integration actually generates both problems and solutions to social exclusion.The authors focus on what can be achieved by European countries working together and pooling experiences. They show that not only is social exclusion ill-defined but that there are many differing concepts of social exclusion across Europe reflected in health, education, housing and employment. The book reveals the need for a strong dynamic element in policy, producing early and focused action for individuals and groups in society. While rejecting the need for transfers of income between countries, Social Exclusion and European Policy discusses whether there is something extra to be done at the EU level that cannot currently be carried out by member states or through existing co-operation. With its multi-disciplinary approach and emphasis on policy solution, this will be invaluable reading for policymakers within EU institutions, NGOs and scholars and researchers of European studies and social policy protection.