Nothing really matters. All the things that we do not do, have or become in our lives can be important in shaping self-identity. From jobs turned down to great loves lost, secrets kept and truths untold, people missed and souls unborn, we understand ourselves through other, unlived lives that are imaginatively possible. This book explores the realm of negative social phenomena - no-things, no-bodies, non-events and no-where places - that lies behind the mirror of experience. Taking a symbolic interactionist perspective, the author argues that these objects are socially produced, emerging from and negotiated through our relationships with others. Nothing is interactively accomplished in two ways, through social acts of commission and omission. Existentialism and phenomenology encourage us to understand more deeply the subjective experience of nothing; this can be pursued through conscious meaning-making and reflexive self-awareness. The Social Life of Nothing is a thought-provoking book that will appeal to scholars across the social sciences, arts and humanities, but its message also resonates with the interested general reader.

One of the world's top anthropologists recounts his formative experiences doing fieldwork in this accessible memoir ideal for anyone interested in anthropology. Drawing on his research in five Latin American countries, Steve Gudeman describes his anthropological fieldwork, bringing to life the excitement of gaining an understanding of the practices and ideas of others as well as the frustrations. He weaves into the text some of his findings as well as reflections on his own background that led to better fieldwork but also led him astray. This readable account, shorn of technical words, complicated concepts, and abstract ideas shows the reader what it is to be an anthropologist enquiring and responding to the unexpected. From the Preface: Growing up I learned about making do when my family was putting together a dinner from leftovers or I was constructing something with my father. In fieldwork I saw people making do as they worked in the fields, repaired a tool, assembled a meal or made something for sale. Much later, I realized that making do captures some of my fieldwork practices and their presentation in this book.

The notion of quality features prominently in contemporary discourse. Numerous ratings, rankings, metrics, auditing, accreditation, benchmarking, smileys, reviews, and international comparisons are all used regularly to capture quality. This book paves the way in exploring the socio-political implications of evaluative statements, with a specific focus on the contribution of the concept of quality to these processes. Drawing on perspectives from the history of ideas, sociology, political science and public management, Dahler-Larsen asks what is the role of quality, and more specifically quality inscriptions, such as measurement? What do they accomplish? And finally, as a consequence of all this, does the term quality make it possible to deal with public issues in a way that lives up to democratic standards? This cross-disciplinary book will be of interest to scholars and students across various fields, including sociology, social epistemology, political science, public policy, and evaluation.

Niklas Luhmann's social theory stands in direct opposition to the dominant "anthropocentric" traditions of legal and political analysis. King and Thornhill now offer the first comprehensive, critical examination of Luhmann's highly original theory of the operations of the legal and political systems. They describe how from the perspective of his "sociological enlightenment" Luhmann continually calls to account the certainties, the ambitions and rational foundations of The Enlightenment and the idealized versions of law and politics that they have produced.

This book draws upon the work of Georg Simmel to explore the limits, tensions and dynamism of social life through a close analysis of the works produced in the final years of his life and reveals what they might still offer some 100 years later. Focusing on the relationships between worlds, lives and fragments in these works, David Beer opens up a conceptual toolkit for understanding life as both an individual experience and as a deeply social phenomenon. Taking the reader through artistic and musical forms of inspiration, to the problems of culture and on to the conceptual understanding of lived experience, the book illuminates the richness of Simmel's ideas and thinking. This sophisticated dialogue with Simmel's lesser known later works will provide fresh insights for students and scholars of cultural and social theory and pave the way for a reinvigorated engagement with his ideas.

'To construct a civilization around the nostrum that the public realm is morally, economically and socially inferior to the private realm is to submit to an alien barbarism in which what we hold in common is permanently placed as second best. David Marquand has constructed a masterly and highly readable plea for the idea of the public once again to be celebrated in British life. His re-entry into the national conversation could not be better timed or more important. Let's hope our fellow citizens take arms in the battle he invites us to join.'
--Will Hutton, Columnist, "Observer Newspaper"

'A profound analysis of the decline of the public realm and the growth of unaccountable government in Britain. The summation of a life's work by one of Britain's leading political thinkers.'
--John Gray, The London School of Economics

The public domain of citizenship, equity and service is crucial for individual fulfilment and social well-being. But it has been under attack for thirty years - first from the market fundamentalists of the New Right, and then from their New Labour imitators. The results are everywhere - resource-starved public services; the marketization of the public sector; the soul-destroying targets and audits that go with it; the denigration of professionalism and the professional ethic; and the erosion of public trust. More damaging still are the hollowing out of citizenship, the manipulative populism that now pervades British government and a slide towards a new version of the 'Old Corruption' that our Victorian ancestors thought they had banished.

David Marquand traces the growth of the public domain from Gladstone to Attlee, analyses theforces that began to undermine it in its post-war heyday and exposes the campaign that the Thatcher and Blair governments have waged against it. He ends with a call for a counter-attack, based on a re-statement of the civic ideal in a twenty-first century idiom.

This book will appeal to all those who take an interest in current political events as well as those studying politics and social policy.

Michel Foucault is recognized as one of the twentieth century's most influential thinkers, however the authors in this volume contend that more use can be made of Foucault than has yet been done and that some of the uses to which Foucault has so far been put run the risk of and occasionally simply amount to misuse. This interdisciplinary volume brings together a group of esteemed scholars, recognized for their command of and insights into Foucault's oeuvre. They demonstrate the many respects in which Foucault's project of an ontology of the present remains vital and continues to yield compelling insights and show that an ontology of the present is restricted to no particular terrain, but instead ranges widely and on paths that frequently intersect. The essays in this much-needed new collection address the key components of Foucault's thought, ranging from his approach to power, biopolitics and parrhesia to analysis of key texts such as Folie et Deraison and Histoire de la sexualite. This collection will spark debate amongst students and scholars alike and demonstrates that that every further encounter with Foucault's corpus is more likely than not to demand a revisiting of interpretations already formulated, conclusions already drawn, uses already devised. Contributors include Didier Eribon, Eric Fassin, John Forrester, Ian Hacking, Lynne Huffer, Colin Koopman, James Laidlaw, Laurence McFalls, Mariella Pandolfi, Paul Rabinow and Cary Wolfe.

STEPHEN M. CHERRY draws upon a rich set of ethnographic and survey data, collected over a six-year period, to explore the roles that Catholicism and family play in shaping Filipino American community life. From the planning and construction of community centers, to volunteering at health fairs or protesting against abortion, this book illustrates the powerful ways these forces structure and animate not only how first-generation Filipino Americans think and feel about their community, but how they are compelled to engage it over issues deemed important to the sanctity of the family. Revealing more than intimate accounts of Filipino American lives, Cherry offers a glimpse of the often hidden but vital relationship between religion and community in the lives of new immigrants, and allows speculation on the broader impact of Filipino immigration on the nation. The Filipino American community is the second-largest immigrant community in the United States, and the Philippines is the second-largest source of Catholic immigration to this country. This ground-breaking study outlines how first-generation Filipino Americans have the potential to reshape American Catholicism and are already having an impact on American civic life through the engagement of their faith.

Cosmopolitanism is about the extension of the moral and political horizons of people, societies, organizations and institutions. Over the past 25 years there has been considerable interest in cosmopolitan thought across the human social sciences. The second edition of the Routledge International Handbook of Cosmopolitanism Studies is an enlarged, revised and updated version of the first edition. It consists of 50 chapters across a broader range of topics in the social and human sciences. Eighteen entirely new chapters cover topics that have become increasingly prominent in cosmopolitan scholarship in recent years, such as sexualities, public space, the Kantian legacy, the commons, internet, generations, care and heritage. This Second Edition aims to showcase some of the most innovative and promising developments in recent writing in the human and social sciences on cosmopolitanism. Both comprehensive and innovative in the topics covered, the Routledge International Handbook of Cosmopolitanism Studies is divided into four sections. Cosmopolitan theory and history with a focus on the classical and contemporary approaches, The cultural dimensions of cosmopolitanism, The politics of cosmopolitanism, World varieties of cosmopolitanism. There is a strong emphasis in interdisciplinarity, with chapters covering contributions in philosophy, history, sociology, anthropology, media studies, international relations. The Handboook's clear and comprehensive style will appeal to a wide undergraduate and postgraduate audience across the social and human sciences.

The Psychosocial Imaginaries of Defence Nationalism interrogates the emergence of far-right nationalist 'defence leagues' in Australia and the UK. Throughout the book, Liam Gillespie refers to these groups as defence nationalists: that is, as nationalists who imagine themselves as defenders of the nation and therefore national subjects par excellence. Drawing on original research, psychoanalytic and psychosocial theory-and particularly the work of Jacques Lacan-the author explores the narratives, imaginaries and subjectivities that sustain these groups, as well as the narratives, imaginaries and subjectivities these groups sustain. He argues that unlike other nationalist groups, defence nationalists are not primarily concerned with realising their avowed political projects. Instead, they are concerned with constructing and then enjoying themselves as the nation's self-ordained defenders. This means that which threatens the nation can paradoxically have a fortifying effect upon defence nationalists, legitimising and securing both the way they see themselves, and the position they see themselves occupying with/in the nation. The Psychosocial Imaginaries of Defence Nationalism will be of interest to anyone concerned with critical theorisations of contemporary nationalism, as well as with the application of psychoanalytic and psychosocial theory to social, cultural and political analysis.

Ours is a post-political society that cannot imagine radical change; a 'one dimensional' society in which politics is reduced to economic concerns. Paradoxically, however, everybody today is subjected to the imperative of regular radical change. Populations have grown accustomed to the idea that one constantly needs to adapt to radical transformations, modify one's life strategy in tune with the demands of the market on the one hand and the politics of security on the other. Indeed, the idea that there are unquestionable authorities, the idea of 'despotism', no longer refers to exceptional circumstances in which politics is suspended but rather seems to have become normalized as part of daily life. This book aims to articulate the genealogy of the despotism-economy-voluntary servitude nexus focusing on their different constellations in the prism of social theory and political philosophy. As it traces the genealogy of this nexus its concern is the field of formation, intervention and intelligibility that arises when and as the three concepts encounter one another.

The Expression of Emotion collects cutting-edge essays on emotional expression written by leading philosophers, psychologists, and legal theorists. It highlights areas of interdisciplinary research interest, including facial expression, expressive action, and the role of both normativity and context in emotion perception. Whilst philosophical discussion of emotional expression has addressed the nature of expression and its relation to action theory, psychological work on the topic has focused on the specific mechanisms underpinning different facial expressions and their recognition. Further, work in both legal and political theory has had much to say about the normative role of emotional expressions, but would benefit from greater engagement with both psychological and philosophical research. In combining philosophical, psychological, and legal work on emotional expression, the present volume brings these distinct approaches into a productive conversation.

This book offers a solution for the problem of structure and agency in sociological theory by developing a new pair of fundamental concepts: metric and nonmetric. Nonmetric forms, arising in a crowd made out of innumerable individuals, correspond to social groups that divide the many individuals in the crowd into insiders and outsiders. Metric forms correspond to congested zones like traffic jams on a highway: individuals are constantly entering and leaving these zones so that they continue to exist, even though the individuals passing through them change. Building from these concepts, we can understand "agency" as a requirement for group identity and group membership, thus associating it with nonmetric forms, and "structure" as a building-up effect following the accumulation of metric forms. This reveals the contradiction between structure and agency to be a case of forced perspective, leaving us victim to an optical illusion.

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.

One of the world's top anthropologists recounts his formative experiences doing fieldwork in this accessible memoir ideal for anyone interested in anthropology. Drawing on his research in five Latin American countries, Steve Gudeman describes his anthropological fieldwork, bringing to life the excitement of gaining an understanding of the practices and ideas of others as well as the frustrations. He weaves into the text some of his findings as well as reflections on his own background that led to better fieldwork but also led him astray. This readable account, shorn of technical words, complicated concepts, and abstract ideas shows the reader what it is to be an anthropologist enquiring and responding to the unexpected. From the Preface: Growing up I learned about making do when my family was putting together a dinner from leftovers or I was constructing something with my father. In fieldwork I saw people making do as they worked in the fields, repaired a tool, assembled a meal or made something for sale. Much later, I realized that making do captures some of my fieldwork practices and their presentation in this book.

Recent historical studies on the Ottoman Empire have taken for granted that subjects of the Ottoman polity flourished under a so-called "Pax Ottomanica." This edited volume probes the rosy narrative of Ottoman tolerance that has long dominated the discussions. The articles carefully strive to contextualize the many issues that sound like ethnic slurs, racial stereotyping, religious discrimination, misogyny and elitism to modern ears. The goal of the volume is not to prove that Ottoman society was a persecuting one, or that dislike or distrust was its defining characteristic, but to investigate the axes of tension, blemishes, and fractures in the everyday practice of coexistence in a dynamic, multi-religious, multi-confessional and multi-ethnic empire in which difference was the norm rather than the exception.

This book brings together essays on modernity, social integration, social differentiation, and social exclusion by Lockwood, Mouzelis, and other eminent social theorists. At the same time it addresses critical issues facing Western democracies, such as social exclusion, the underclass, unemployment, new inequalities, globalization, and the new competitive environment. Its novelty lies in the imaginative way it uses social theory to critique old and suggest new policies and political practices.

Drawing on cutting-edge neuroscience and social psychology research, an acclaimed author demonstrates how so much of our thinking is informed by false assumptions—making us dangerously mistrustful as a society and needlessly unhappy as individuals.

The desire to fit in is one of the most powerful, least understood forces in society.

Todd Rose believes that as human beings, we continually act against our own best interests because our brains misunderstand what others believe. A complicated set of illusions driven by conformity bias distorts how we see the world around us. From toilet paper shortages to kidneys that get thrown away rather than used for transplants; from racial segregation to the perceived “electability” of women in politics; from bottled water to “cancel culture,” we routinely copy others, lie about what we believe, cling to tribes, and silence people.

The question is, Why do we keep believing the lies and hurting ourselves?

Todd Rose proves that the answer is hard-wired in our DNA: our brains are more socially dependent than we realize or dare to accept. Most of us would rather be fully in sync with the social norms of our respective groups than be true to who we are. Using originally researched data, Collective Illusions shows us where we get things wrong and, just as important, how we can be authentic in forming opinions while valuing truth. Rose offers a counterintuitive yet empowering explanation for how we can bridge our inference gap, make decisions with a newfound clarity, and achieve fulfillment.

This unique book offers a timely analysis of the impact of rapidly advancing knowledge about the brain, mind and behaviour on contemporary public policy and practice. Examining developments in behaviour change policies, neuroscience, architecture and urban design, education, and workplace training programmes the book analyses the global spread of research agendas, policy experiments and everyday practice informed by 'brain culture'. It offers an alternative, geographically informed set of explanations for what matters in explaining how people behave and how citizens' behaviour should be governed. It will be of interest to students and academics across the social and behavioural sciences.

'Today the smallest details of our daily lives are tracked and traced more closely than ever before, and those who are monitored often cooperate willingly with the monitors. From London and New York to New Delhi, Shanghai and Rio de Janeiro, video cameras are a familiar and accepted sight in public places. Air travel now commonly involves devices such as body-scanners and biometric checks that have proliferated in the wake of 9/11. And every day Google and credit-card issuers note the details of our habits, concerns and preferences, quietly prompting customized marketing strategies with our active, all too often zealous cooperation.

In today's liquid modern world, the paths of daily life are mobile and flexible. Crossing national borders is a commonplace activity and immersion in social media increasingly ubiquitous. Today's citizens, workers, consumers and travellers are always on the move but often lacking certainty and lasting bonds. But in this world where spaces may not be fixed and time is boundless, our perpetual motion does not go unnoticed. Surveillance spreads in hitherto unimaginable ways, responding to and reproducing the slippery nature of modern life, seeping into areas where it once had only marginal sway.

In this book the surveillance analysis of David Lyon meets the liquid modern world so insightfully dissected by Zygmunt Bauman. Is a dismal future of moment-by-moment monitoring closing in, or are there still spaces of freedom and hope? How do we realize our responsibility for the human beings before us, often lost in discussions of data and categorization? Dealing with questions of power, technology and morality, this book is a brilliant analysis of what it means to be watched - and watching - today.

While the term 'culture' has come to be very widely used in both popular and academic discourse, it has a variety of meanings, and the differences among these have not been given sufficient attention. This book explores these meanings, and identifies some of the problems associated with them, as well as examining the role that values should play in cultural analysis. The development of four, very different, conceptions of culture is traced from the nineteenth century onwards: a notion of aesthetic cultivation associated with Matthew Arnold; the evolutionary view of culture characteristic of nineteenth-century anthropology; the idea of diverse cultures characteristic of twentieth and twenty-first century anthropology; and a conception of culture as a process of situated meaning-making - found today across anthropology, sociology, and cultural studies. These conceptions of culture are interrogated, and a reformulation of the concept is sketched. This book will be of interest to students and scholars across a variety of fields, including anthropology, sociology, cultural studies, and education.

This book investigates death as part of contemporary everyday experience and practices. Through a cultural sociological lens, it studies death as it remains constantly at the edge of our consciousness, shaping the ways in which we move through social reality. As such, Death Matters is a significant contribution to death studies, going beyond traditional parameters of the field by addressing the cultural omnipresence of death. The contributions analyse several death-related meaning-making processes, arguing that meanings emerging from culturally shared narratives, social institutions, and material conditions, are just as important as 'death practices' in understanding the role of death in society. Drawing on the related themes of places of absence and presence, disease and bodies, and persons and non-persons, the authors explore a variety of areas of social life, from haunting to celebrity deaths, to move the notion of death from the margins of social reality to ongoing everyday life. This far-reaching collection will be of use to scholars and students across death studies, sociology, anthropology, philosophy, culture, media and communication studies.

Presenting sixty theoretical ideas, David Zeitlyn asks 'How to write about anthropological theory without making a specific theoretical argument.' "David Zeitlyn has written a wryly engaging, short book on, essentially, why we should not become theoretical partisans-that, indeed, being a serious theorist means accepting precisely that principle."-Michael Herzfeld, Harvard University To answer, he offers a series of mini essays about an eclectic collection of theoretical concepts that he has found helpful over the years. The book celebrates the muddled inconsistencies in the ways that humans live their messy lives. There are, however, still patterns discernible: the actors can understand what is going on, they see an event unfolding in ways that are familiar, as belonging to a certain type and therefore, Zeitlyn suggests, so can researchers. From the introduction: This book promotes an eclectic, multi-faceted anthropology in which multiple approaches are applied in pursuit of the limited insights which each can afford.... I do not endorse any one of these idea as supplying an exclusive path to enlightenment: I absolutely do not advocate any single position. As a devout nonconformist, I hope that the following sections provide material, ammunition and succour to those undertaking nuanced anthropological analysis (and their kin in related disciplines).... Mixing up or combining different ideas and approaches can produce results that, in their breadth and richness, are productive for anthropology and other social sciences, reflecting the endless complexities of real life. ...This is my response to the death of grand theory. I see our task as learning how to deal with that bereavement and how to resist the siren lures of those promising synoptic overviews. This book is relevant to anthropology, communication studies, cultural studies and sociology.

In the contemporary context of increasing inequality and various forms of segregation, this volume analyzes the transition to neoliberal politics in Santiago de Chile. Using an innovative methodological approach that combines georeferenced data and multi-stage cluster analysis, Mendez and Gayo study the old and new mechanisms of social reproduction among the upper middle class. In so doing, they not only capture the interconnections between macro- and microsocial dimensions such as urban dynamics, schooling demands, cultural repertoires and socio-spatial trajectories, but also offer a detailed account of elite formation, intergenerational accumulation, and economic, cultural, and social inheritance dynamics.