Kaj Ilmonen was a pioneer in the third wave of the sociology of consumption. This book provides a balanced overview of the sociology of consumption, arguing that the enthusiasm of 'the third wave' exaggerated the role of the symbolic and imaginary at the expense of the materiality of human societies.

Few of us, amidst our daily chores and responsibilities, consider how mundane infrastructures-from electrical grids to sewage systems-have developed over millennia in ways that enable everything we cherish, from democracy to technological innovation to individual liberty. But what drives the evolution of this infrastructure? And why is infrastructure so critical to human flourishing? In this book, the most innovative and interdisciplinary study of cultural evolution ever produced, new concepts are explored, new histories are brought into contact and new ground-breaking insights are defended. What makes creativity unique in human societies is not only our capacity to generate and modify our diverse individual intuitions about the social and physical world, but also our capacity to form and leave groups fluidly in a dancing rhythm of oscillation across the expanse of history. This book walks the reader carefully through these processes, with clear concepts and an approachable writing style.

This volume explores the conflict between two forces: party polarization and party factionalism. The major change in America's two political parties over the past half-century has been increased polarization, which has led to a new era of heightened inter-party competition resulting in stronger and more cohesive parties. At the same time, elections, particularly primaries, often reveal deep internal factional divisions within both the parties, and the 2020 election was no different. The Democratic coalition typically pits moderate or establishment candidates against progressive activists and candidates, while the Republican Party in 2020 was, at times, polarized not only between moderates and conservatives but between those willing to criticize President Trump and those who would not. How did these two opposing forces shape the outcome of the 2020 election, and what are the consequences for the future of American party politics and elections?

Many of us have had the experience of suddenly realizing that the keys or glasses which we have been looking for in vain were right in front of us the whole time. Looking for something does not guarantee that you will notice it, as the capacity of our sense organs far exceeds our mental capabilities. Whether we know it or not, we organize our perception systematically and that requires focusing our attention: some things move to the foreground, other elements recede into the background. While neuroscience and psychology can tell us a lot about our cognitive hardware, the cognitive software we use often goes unnoticed. In this book, Eviatar Zerubavel argues that we notice and ignore things not just as human beings, but as social beings. What we attend and do not attend to is a function of the fact that we are lawyers rather than detectives, Koreans rather than Americans, theologians rather than economists, vegans rather than omnivores. It is our environment and our social lives that often determine how we actually use our vision and hearing to access the world. Drawing on fascinating examples from the art world, optical illusions, and all walks of life, Zerubavel investigates how what we notice or ignore varies across cultures and throughout history. A subtle yet powerful examination of one of the central features of our conscious life, this book offers a way to think about all that might otherwise remain hidden in plain sight.

What do we mean by the word "social?" In The Centrality of Sociality, scholars respond to themes of The Concept of the Social in Uniting the Social Sciences and Humanities in dialogue with Michael E. Brown. The Centrality of Sociality provides analyses of important distinctions between individual and society, agency-dependent and agency-independent objectivity, subject and object, theory and theorizing, and action and "course of activity." Apart from its theoretical interest, the book raises questions about the compelling idea that "the individual is the ultimate referent of moral discourse," formulating the question "what is human about human affairs" in such a way that the difficulties involved in defining the word individual appear to place in jeopardy the idea of the individual. The chapters analyze themes such as the conceptualization of the social vis-a-vis the individual, theories of action, and notions of subject-object relations. A thought-provoking collection of research, this edited volume is key reading for scholars and researchers in sociology.

How do we account for experiences of trauma and memory in multicultural and "globalized" societies? World Memory blends the study of trauma and memory with perspectives from postcolonial theory to explore a range of traumatic personal and socio-historical experiences: 9/11/01, the Holocaust, Stolen Generations, Apartheid, racism, sexual abuse, migration, and Diaspora. From diverse disciplinary bases, the writers examine psychoanalytic, artistic, literary, and vernacular accounts of trauma, collectively revealing what happens when languages of memory traverse boundaries of culture, space, and time.

A lively, thoughtful history of America's Jews, exploring their complex relationships with national culture, identity, and politics-and each other. You can be called a Bad Jew-by the community or even yourself-if you don't keep kosher, don't send your children to Hebrew school, or enjoy Christmas music; if your partner isn't Jewish, or you don't call your mother enough. But today, amid fears of rising antisemitism, what makes a Good or Bad Jew is a particularly fraught question. There is no answer, argues Emily Tamkin. Several million now identify as American Jews; but they don't all identify with one another. American Jewish history, like all Jewish history, has been about transformation-and full of discussions, debates and hand-wringing over who is Jewish, how to be Jewish, and what it means to be Jewish. Bad Jews is a rich, absorbing reflection on 100 years of American Jewish identities and arguments. Tamkin's fascinating, diverse interviews explore the complex story of American Jewishness, and its evolving, conflicting positions, from assimilation, race, and social justice; to politics, Zionism, and Israel. She pinpoints the one truth about Jewish identity: It's always changing.

Marx's masterpiece Capital (Das Kapital) ignored or misread as well as selectively and creatively interpreted by the generation of social scientists that came after him. Emile Durkheim, Max Weber, and Georg Simmel attempt to supplement what they call 'historical materialism' or to engage in debates about 'socialism' through their readings of The Communist Manifesto and occasional Capital. Although these and other classical sociologists did not have access to most of Marx's published and unpublished works as we do today, each is concerned with revising and refining Marx's unfinished critique of political economy. Despite their differences with Marx and with one another, they share his concern with how empirically detailed and scientifically valid knowledge of the social world may inform historical struggles for a more human world. This commitment can be called 'Faustian', after the title character of the poet J. W. von Goethe's tragic epic of modernity, insofar as Marx and the classical sociologists hope to translate theory into practice while making a pact or wager with the diabolical social, political, and economic forces of the modern world.

-London-based case studies are discussed in the broader context of metropolitan cities worldwide, providing generalizable as well as specific lessons and examples -Interviews across several fields: international architects, government planners, deputy prime ministers, community organizers, etc. -Targeted toward students as well as a wide range of urban practitioners (planners, politicians, architects, government officials, etc.)

This book by-passes both psychology and sociology to present an original social theory centered on seeing mathematical learning by everyone as an intrinsic dimension of how mathematics develops as a field in support of human activity. Here, mathematics is defined by how we collectively talk about it. Drawing on psychoanalytic theory, the student is seen as participating in the renewal of mathematics through their contributions to our collective gaze on mathematics as the field responds to ever new demands. As such learning takes a critical stance on the standard initiations into current practices often promoted by formal education. In the field of mathematics education, researchers have moved from psychology where individual students were seen as following natural paths of development through existing mathematical knowledge, to socio-cultural models predicated on students being initiated into the human world and understood through the reflective gazes this world has of itself, such as those found in comparisons of student learning in different countries. This book addresses the domain, purpose and functioning of contemporary research in mathematics education and is an original contribution to this theme. The book is aimed at a mathematics education research audience. It continues a dialogue with existing publications, seen widely as a cutting edge and will also be of interest to students and practitioners in the fields of qualitative research, social theory and psychology.

From the de-institutionalization of psychiatric hospitals to the privatization of prisons, the dramatic public policy changes of the last three decades have been, to a large extent, changes in organization. The chapters in this volume examine these organizational changes. We learn how organizations shift strategies, create alliances, cross boundaries and react to incentives as they respond to changing environmental pressures. We learn about the complex relationships between organizations and their clients and how these relations can be altered in response to environmental change. Chapters in the first section focus primarily on inter-organizational relations among health care and community development organizations. Chapters in the second section focus primarily on relations between organizations and their clients, both in medical organizations and in the criminal justice system.

Volume 53 of Studies in Symbolic Interaction is divided into three parts, providing contemporary readings of social situations. Part 1 includes three pathbreaking essays interpreting translational science. This is the study of the general scientific, medical and operational principles that turn observations into interventions, helping to improve patients' lives. Part 2 consists of five essays, including an analysis of the 'Phantasmal in Qualitative Research' and 'Miami's Sea-level Rise Committee'. Part 3, Norman K. Denzin and Studies in Symbolic Interaction, includes essays by Shing-Ling Sarina Chen, Michael Katovich and Joe Kotarba.

The Covid-19 pandemic and the disruptions of climate change are features of post-normal times. In Sociology in Post-Normal Times, Charles Thorpe contends that the modern project of creating normalcy within the nation state has broken down. Integral to this is sociology, which is the science of social reform. Drawing from the work of seminal theorists such as Zygmunt Baumann and Anthony Giddens, Thorpe contends that sociology's "society" is no longer viable because globalization has put an end to social reform, thus the assumptions and goals of sociology must be left behind in order to create a new global humanity. In the face of the pandemic and climate change, Sociology in Post-Normal Times demands no less than the birth of a global humanity beyond nation states as the precondition for human survival.

When it comes to extending citizenship to certain groups, why might ruling elites say neither 'yes' nor 'no', but 'wait'? The dominant theories of citizenship tend to recognize clear distinctions between citizens and aliens; either one has citizenship or one does not. This book shows that not all populations are fully included or expelled by a state; they can be suspended in limbo - residing in a territory for protracted periods without accruing citizenship rights. This in-depth case study of the United Arab Emirates uses new archival sources and extensive interviews to show how temporary residency can be transformed into a permanent legal status, through visa renewals and the postponement of naturalization cases. In the UAE, temporary residency was also codified into a formal citizenship status through the outsourcing of passports from the Union of Comoros, allowing elites to effectively reclassify minorities into foreign residents.

This edited collection brings together academics, artists and members of civil society organizations to engage in a discussion about the ideas of living with others, through concepts such as cosmopolitanism, solidarity, and conviviality, and the practices of doing so. In recent years, right wing and populist movements have emerged and strengthened across Europe and North America, rejecting the value of cultural, ethnic and religious plurality. Governments in Europe and North America are weakening their commitment to the international refugee regime, erecting new barriers to entry. Even as governments fail to accommodate growing pluralism, however, civil society initiatives have emerged with the aim of welcoming newcomers, such as migrants and refugees, and finding alternative ways of living together in diverse societies. Motivated by a desire to show solidarity, these initiatives demonstrate enormous creativity in fostering pluralism in an environment that has largely become hostile to the arrival of newcomers. The contributions gathered here seek to explore such initiatives and the important work that they do in fostering ways of living together with others from diverse cultural and religious backgrounds. In focusing conceptually and empirically on discussions and examples of civil society initiatives, this book interrogates why, how and under what circumstances are some communities more welcoming than others.

Since the dawn of social science, theorists have debated how and why societies appear to change, develop and evolve. Today, this question is pursued by scholars across many different disciplines and our understanding of these dynamics has grown markedly. Yet, there remain important areas of disagreement and debate: what is the difference between societal change, development and evolution? What specific aspects of cultures change, develop or evolve and why? Do societies change, develop or evolve in particular ways, perhaps according to cycles, or stages or in response to survival necessities? How do different disciplines-from sociology to anthropology to psychology and economics-approach these questions? This book provides complex and nuanced answers to these, and many other, questions. First, the book invites readers to consider the broad landscape of societal dynamics across human history, beginning with humanity's origins in small nomadic bands of hunter gatherers through to the emergence of post-industrial democracies. Then, the book provides a tour of several prominent existing theories of cultural change, development and evolution. Approaches to explaining cultural dynamics will be discussed across disciplines and schools of thought, from "meme" theories to established cumulative cultural evolutionary theories to newly emerging theories on cultural tightness-looseness. The book concludes with a call for theoretical integration and a frank discussion of some of the most unexamined structures that drive cultural dynamics across schools of thought.

Refiguring childhood stages a series of encounters with biosocial power, which is a specific zone of intensity within the more encompassing arena of biopower and biopolitics. Assembled at the intersection of thought and practice, biosocial power attempts to bring envisioned futures into the present, taking hold of life in the form of childhood, thereby bridging being and becoming while also shaping the power relations that encapsulate the social and cultural world(s) of adults and children. Taking up a critical perspective that is attentive to the contingency of childhoods - the ways in which particular childhoods are constituted and configured - this book offers a transversal genealogy that moves between past and present while also crossing a series of discourses and practices framed by children's rights (the right to play), citizenship, health, disadvantage, and entrepreneurship education. The overarching analysis converges on contemporary neo-liberal enterprise culture, which is approached as a conjuncture that helps to explain, and also to trouble, the growing emphasis on the agency and rights of children. It is against the backdrop of this problematic that the book makes its case for refiguring childhood, focusing on the how, where and when of biosocial power. -- .

This open access book focuses on a particular but significant topic in the social sciences: the concepts of "footprint" and "trace". It associates these concepts with hotly debated topics such as surveillance capitalism and knowledge society. The editors and authors discuss the concept footprints and traces as unintended by-products of other (differently focused and oriented) actions that remain empirically imprinted in virtual and real spaces. The volume therefore opens new scenarios for social theory and applied social research in asking what the stakes, risks and potential of this approach are. It systematically raises and addresses these questions within a consistent framework, bringing together a heterogeneous group of international social scientists. Given the multifaceted objectives involved in exploring footprints and traces, the volume discusses heuristic aspects and ethical dimensions, scientific analyses and political considerations, empirical perspectives and theoretical foundations. At the same time, it brings together perspectives from cultural analysis and social theory, communication and Internet studies, big-data informed research and computational social science. This innovative volume is of interest to a broad interdisciplinary readership: sociologists, communication researchers, Internet scholars, anthropologists, cognitive and behavioral scientists, historians, and epistemologists, among others.

At a time of growing concern over the fate of contemporary democracy this book shows how vast differences between countries in forms of political conduct, and taken for granted assumptions, determine what democracies actually accomplish. In Democratic Practice, Robert M. Fishman elucidates why some democracies include the economically underprivileged, and cultural others within the circles of political relevance that set policies and the political agenda, whereas others exclude them. On the basis of in-depth research on Portugal and Spain, Fishman develops a theoretically innovative explanation for the breadth of democratic inclusion and draws out large implications for democracies everywhere. Democratic Practice examines the record of two countries that began the worldwide turn to democracy in the 1970s, showing how and why basic assumptions about what democracy is, and how political actors should treat one another, diverged. The book offers detailed empirical evidence on how an inclusive approach to democratic politics provides major benefits not only for the poor and excluded but also for others, drawing large lessons for contemporary democracies.

This sequel to Randall Collins' world-influential micro-sociology of violence introduces the question of time-dynamics: what determines how long conflict lasts and how much damage it does. Inequality and hostility are not enough to explain when and where violence breaks out. Time-dynamics are the time-bubbles when people are most nationalistic; the hours after a protest starts when violence is most likely to happen. Ranging from the three months of nationalism and hysteria after 9/11 to the assault on the Capitol in 2021, Randall Collins shows what makes some protests more violent than others and why some revolutions are swift and non-violent tipping-points while others devolve into lengthy civil wars. Winning or losing are emotional processes, continuing in the era of computerized war, while high-tech spawns terrorist tactics of hiding in the civilian population and using cheap features of the Internet as substitutes for military organization. Nevertheless, Explosive Conflict offers some optimistic discoveries on clues to mass rampages and heading off police atrocities, with practical lessons from time-dynamics of violence.

This authoritative book explores cases of whistleblowing from around the world, with a focus on cases in South Africa. Whistleblowing is a vital tool in the fight against corruption and other forms of organizational wrongdoing. The author develops a sociology of whistleblowing by employing C. Wright Mills' concept of the sociological imagination that examines the private troubles and public issues related to whistleblowing. Organizational wrongdoing is a public issue that the whistleblower tries to expose so that it can be corrected and whistleblowing also is a personal trouble that can have devastating consequences for the whistleblower and his/her family, friends, and colleagues. After analyzing whistleblowing in terms of the personal troubles and public issues, this engrossing book considers ways in which whistleblowers and organizations could be supported to promote the public interest while mitigating the possible negative consequences for whistleblowers, organizations and our societies. This book is a must read for policymakers, researchers, whistleblowers and those who are interested in a just society.

This book covers key issues related to comprehensive reform in China in a broad range of areas, such as the economy, politics, culture, social management, the environment and CPC Party building. The insightful analyses will appeal to social science researchers interested in reform-era contemporary China, as well as both undergraduate and graduate students trying to understand this country better. Lawmakers and policymakers at different levels of government will find in the well-informed policy recommendations following the analyses a valuable source of reference and inspiration.

This book is an important contribution to narrative research and highlights how narratives can produce social change. The author demonstrates this through an analysis of concepts like future, uncertainty and risk, both in terms of individual impact and as collective forms of social life. The book reconstructs the relationships between future, uncertainty and risk through everyday how narratives exert power over individual and social life by influencing individual or collective decisions and choices. Narratives also change future prospects, thus producing social change. Some of the examples the author draws out for discussion are - in specific - the narration of the migration flows in the Mediterranean Sea, and the narration of the pandemic emergency from COVID-19. The result of different narratives has been the emergence of new ideologies and of a complex series of dynamics in which the local ends up becoming global and vice versa. Highly topical and interdisciplinary in its approach, this book is of interest to researchers and students of the sociology of culture and communication, media and communication studies, social and cultural psychology and cultural anthropology.

The diagnosis of social pathologies has long been a central concern for social researchers working within, and on the peripheries of, Critical Theory. As this volume will elaborate, the pathology diagnosing imagination enables a "thicker" form of social critique, fostering research that pushes beyond the parameters of liberal social and political thought. Faced with impending climatic catastrophe, the accelerating inequities of neoliberalism, the ascent of authoritarian movements globally, and one-dimensional computational modes of thought, a viable form of normative social critique is now more important than ever. The central aim of this volume is thus to champion the pathology diagnosing imagination as a vehicle for conducting such timely social criticism.

This book is about individualist ideas, and how they shape contemporary approaches to public policy. If we were to believe the existing literature, we might think that only markets can satisfy people's needs, and that any collective concept of welfare compromises individual welfare. The price mechanism is taken to be the best way to allocate resources, and it is assumed that individualised responses to need must be better than general ones. Reclaiming individualism reviews the scope of individualist approaches, and considers how they apply to issues of policy. It argues for a concept of individualism based on rights, human dignity, shared interests and social protection. A valuable resource for those working or studying in social or public policy, this book is a powerful restatement of some of the key values that led to individualism being such a force in the first place.