Social theory can sometimes seem as though it's speaking of a world that existed long ago, so why should we continue to study and discuss the theories of these dead white men? Can their work still inform us about the way we live today? Are they still relevant to our consumer-focused, celebrity-crazy, tattoo-friendly world? This book explains how the ideas of classical sociological theory can be understood, and applied to, everyday activities like listening to hip-hop, reading fashion magazines or watching reality TV. Taking the reader through central sociological texts, Social Theory In Popular Culture explains why key theorists - from Marx to Saussure - are still considered to be the bedrock of sociology and sociological enquiry. Each chapter examines a different key thinker and applies their work to a recognisable aspect of popular cultural, showing how the central issues underpinning classic social thought - class, conflict, gender, power, ethnicity, and social status - can still be readily observed within the modern global world. Encouraging the reader to critique and reflect upon the ways in which classic social theory applies to their own worlds, this is the perfect antidote to dry social theory explanations. It is an eye-opening read for all students and scholars across the social sciences.

Steve Ditko (1927-2018) is one of the most important contributors to American comic books. As the cocreator of Spider-Man and sole creator of Doctor Strange, Ditko made an indelible mark on American popular culture. Mysterious Travelers: Steve Ditko and the Search for a New Liberal Identity resets the conversation about his heady and powerful work. Always inward facing, Ditko's narratives employed superhero and supernatural fantasy in the service of self-examination, and with characters like the Question, Mr. A, and Static, Ditko turned ordinary superhero comics into philosophic treatises. Many of Ditko's philosophy-driven comics show a clear debt to ideas found in Ayn Rand's Objectivism. Unfortunately, readers often reduce Ditko's work to a mouthpiece for Rand's vision. Mysterious Travelers unsettles this notion. In this book, Zack Kruse argues that Ditko's philosophy draws on a complicated network of ideas that is best understood as mystic liberalism. Although Ditko is not the originator of mystic liberalism, his comics provide a unique window into how such an ideology operates in popular media. Examining selections of Ditko's output from 1953 to 1986, Kruse demonstrates how Ditko's comics provide insight into a unique strand of American thought that has had a lasting impact.

Kathy Charmaz (1939-2020) was the developer of Constructivist Grounded Theory (CGT), a key method in qualitative research internationally and across many disciplines and professions. She was Professor Emerita of Sociology at Sonoma State University, California, and former Director of its Faculty Writing Program. Her book, Constructing Grounded Theory, is the definitive guide to developing a constructivist perspective, and is the seminal title for anyone serious about doing CGT research. This Festschrift to honour Kathy Charmaz's scholarship features fourteen chapters plus an editors' introduction, exploring CGT extensively, examining topics including "Indigenization" of the method, its approaches to decolonizing research, uses of CGT in social justice research, and the legacies of Kathy Charmaz's remarkable mentorship. Edited by Antony Bryant and Adele E. Clarke, both of whom co-authored and edited with Kathy, and eminent scholars of qualitative methods in their own right, this is a glowing tribute to her long and distinguished career.

Georg Lukacs was one of the most important intellectuals and philosophers of the 20th century. His last great work was an systematic social ontology that was an attempt to ground an ethical and critical form of Marxism. This work has only now begun to attract the interest of critical theorists and philosophers intent on reconstructing a critical theory of society as well as a more sophisticated framework for Marxian philosophy. This collection of essays explores the concept of critical social ontology as it was outlined by Georg Lukacs and the ways that his ideas can help us construct a more grounded and socially relevant form of social critique.

Toxic Loves, Impossible Futures is an homage to a constellation of women writers, feminists, and creators whose voices draw a map of our current global political-environmental crisis and the interlinked massive violence, enabled by the denigration of life and human relationships. In a world, in which ""a woman's voice"" exists in bodies called in to occupy important positions in corporations, government, cultural and academic institutions, to work in factories, to join the army, but whose bodies are systematically rendered vulnerable by gender violence and by the double burden imposed on us to perform both productive and reproductive labor, I ask what is the task of thought and form in contemporary feminist situated knowledge? Toxic Loves, Impossible Futures is a collection of essays rethinking feminist issues in the current context of the production of redundant populations, the omnipresence of the technosphere and environmental devastation, toxic relationships, toxic nationalisms, and more. These reflections and dialogues are an urgent attempt to resist the present in the company of the voices of women like bell hooks, Sarah Ahmed, Leslie Jamison, Lina Meruane, Leanne Simpson, Chris Kraus, AlaIde Foppa, Lorena Wolffer, Sayak Valencia, Pip Day, Veronica GonzAlez, Eimear McBride, Simone de Beauvoir, Elena Poniatowska, Susan Sontag, Margaret Randall, Simone Weil, Arundhati Roy, Marta Lamas, Paul B. Preciado, Dawn Paley, Raquel GutiErrez, etc. Toxic Loves, Impossible Futures continues the discussion on how to undo misogyny and dismantle heteropatriarchy's sublimating and denigrating tricks against women, which are intrinsically linked to colonialism and violence against the Earth.

This timely and fascinating feminist ethnography is the first of its kind to focus on commercial surrogacy workers in Russia and from other countries of the former Soviet Union. Examining surrogacy workers' reproductive labour, and experiences of stratification and migration, the study presents innovative insights into current research on global surrogacy practices and travels for assisted reproduction. It links to wider fields of studies, such as ethnicity, feminism, women's and gender studies in the post-Soviet sphere. Weis expertly brings together rigorous ethnographic research, feminist debates and anthropological theory to explore the attributed significance of origin, citizenship, race, ethnicity and religion, and the cultural framing and social organization of surrogacy as an economic exchange; thereby challenging and contributing to the discourse of surrogacy as a gift, a labour of love, a maternal sacrifice or work. Tracing surrogacy workers' journeys for surrogacy work across Russia, Weis introduces geographic and geopolitical stratifications as two new lenses of stratified reproduction to analyse how surrogacy in Russia builds on and propels surrogacy workers' mobility and results in reproductive migrations. Given the rapid global increase in the use of surrogacy and its increasingly internationalised nature, Weis's research has implications for surrogacy users, medical practitioners and regulators, as well as researchers concerned with (cross-border) surrogacy, reproductive stratifications and reproductive justice. Shortlisted for the Foundation for the Sociology of Health and Illness Book Prize 2022

Covering a topic applicable to fields ranging from education to health care to psychology, this book provides a broad critical analysis of the assumptions that researchers and practitioners have about causation and explains how readers can improve their thinking about causation. In virtually every laboratory, research center, or classroom focused on the social or physical sciences today, the concept of causation is a core issue to be questioned, tested, and determined. Even debates in unrelated areas such as biology, law, and philosophy often focus on causality-"What made that happen?" In this book, experts from across disciplines adopt a reader-friendly approach to reconsider this age-old question in a modern light, defining different kinds of causation and examining how causes and consequences are framed and approached in a particular field. Each chapter uses applied examples to illustrate key points in an accessible manner. The contributors to this work supply a coherent critical analysis of the assumptions researchers and practitioners hold about causation, and explain how such thinking about causation can be improved. Collectively, the coverage is broad, providing readers with a fuller picture of research in social contexts. Beyond providing insightful description and thought-provoking questioning of causation in different research areas, the book applies analysis of data in order to point the way to smarter, more efficient practices. Consequently, both practitioners and researchers will benefit from this book.

Many governments in developing nations are finding it nearly impossible to address challenges posed to their countries, including poverty, disease, and high levels of youth unemployment. Thus, social entrepreneurs are attempting to address these social challenges through the creation of social enterprises. However, further research is needed as to what social entrepreneurship is and how these enterprises can utilize and formulate marketing strategies. Strategic Marketing for Social Enterprises in Developing Nations provides innovative insights for an in-depth understanding of where marketing and social entrepreneurship interact, providing clarity as to what social entrepreneurship is as an organizational offering, what drives social entrepreneurship, and the formulation of marketing strategies for social enterprises. Highlighting topics such as income generating, marketing management, and media dependency theory, it is designed for managers, entrepreneurial advisors, entrepreneurs, industry professionals, practitioners, researchers, academicians, and students.

Brian Skyrms presents eighteen essays which apply adaptive dynamics (of cultural evolution and individual learning) to social theory. Altruism, spite, fairness, trust, division of labor, and signaling are treated from this perspective. Correlation is seen to be of fundamental importance. Interactions with neighbors in space, on static networks, and on co-evolving dynamics networks are investigated. Spontaneous emergence of social structure and of signaling systems are examined in the context of learning dynamics.

Black Feminist Sociology offers new writings by established and emerging scholars working in a Black feminist tradition. The book centers Black feminist sociology (BFS) within the sociology canon and widens is to feature Black feminist sociologists both outside the US and the academy. Inspired by a BFS lens, the essays are critical, personal, political and oriented toward social justice. Key themes include the origins of BFS, expositions of BFS orientations to research that extend disciplinary norms, and contradictions of the pleasures and costs of such an approach both academically and personally. Authors explore their own sociological legacy of intellectual development to raise critical questions of intellectual thought and self-reflexivity. The book highlights the dynamism of BFS so future generations of scholars can expand upon and beyond the book's key themes.

Over half of all American Jewish children are being raised by intermarried parents. This demographic group will have a tremendous impact on American Judaism as it is lived and practiced in the coming decades. To date, however, in both academic studies about Judaism and in the popular imagination, such children and their parents remain marginal. Jennifer A. Thompson takes a different approach. In Jewish on Their Own Terms , she tells the stories of intermarried couples, the rabbis and other Jewish educators who work with them, and the conflicting public conversations about intermarriage among American Jews. Thompson notes that in the dominant Jewish cultural narrative, intermarriage symbolizes individualism and assimilation. Talking about intermarriage allows American Jews to discuss their anxieties about remaining distinctively Jewish despite their success in assimilating into American culture. In contrast, Thompson uses ethnography to describe the compelling concerns of all of these parties and places their anxieties firmly within the context of American religious culture and morality. She explains how American and traditional Jewish gender roles converge to put non-Jewish women in charge of raising Jewish children. Interfaith couples are like other Americans in often harboring contradictory notions of individual autonomy, universal religious truths, and obligations to family and history. Focusing on the lived experiences of these families, Jewish on Their Own Terms provides a complex and insightful portrait of intermarried couples and the new forms of American Judaism that they are constructing.

This volume exposes the contested history of a virtue so central to modern disciplines and public discourse that it can seem universal. The essays gathered here, however, demonstrate the emergence of impartiality. From the early seventeenth century, the new epithet 'impartial' appears prominently in a wide range of publications. Contributors trace impartiality in various fields: from news publications and polemical pamphlets to moral philosophy and historical dictionaries, from poetry and drama to natural history, in a broad European context and against the backdrop of religious and civil conflicts. Cumulatively, the volume suggests that the emergence of impartiality is implicated in the period's epochal shifts in epistemology and science, religious and political discourse, print culture, and scholarship. Contributors include: Joerg Jochen Berns, Tamas Demeter, Derek Dunne, Anne Eusterschulte, Christine Gerrard, Rainer Godel, N.J.S. Hardy, Rhodri Lewis, Hanns-Peter Neumann, Joad Raymond, Bernd Roling, Bastian Ronge, Richard Scholar, Nathaniel Stogdill, Anita Traninger, and Anja Zimmermann.

How might practice theories and engagement with practice contribute to and advance theological study of religion and religious life and practices? This volume explores and discusses how theological engagement with practice, theoretically as well as empirically, might profit from theories of practice developed in disciplines such as philosophy, sociology, education and organisational studies during the recent decades, but so far scarcely employed within theology. In part I, the volume unfolds key components of practice theory, especially as they have more recently been developed within sociological practice theories, reflect on their significance and potential with regard to theology. In part II, these perspectives are employed in the study of concrete religious practices - established as well as experimental religious practices, and collective as well as individual ones. By unfolding connections between theology and practice theories, and reflecting on practice theories' analytical and theoretical potential for theological study of religion, the book will be of interest for any scholar in the study of contemporary religion and practical theology.

*Once again a New York Times bestseller! First the original edition, and now the new Final Edition* An essential new edition revised and updated from cover to cover of one of the most important books of the last two decades, by Nobel Prize winner Richard H. Thaler and Cass R. Sunstein More than 2 million copies sold Since the original publication of Nudge more than a decade ago, the title has entered the vocabulary of businesspeople, policy makers, engaged citizens, and consumers everywhere. The book has given rise to more than 400 "nudge units" in governments around the world and countless groups of behavioral scientists in every part of the economy. It has taught us how to use thoughtful "choice architecture"-a concept the authors invented-to help us make better decisions for ourselves, our families, and our society. Now, the authors have rewritten the book from cover to cover, making use of their experiences in and out of government over the past dozen years as well as an explosion of new research in numerous academic disciplines. To commit themselves to never undertaking this daunting task again, they are calling this the "final edition." It offers a wealth of new insights, for both its avowed fans and newcomers to the field, about a wide variety of issues that we face in our daily lives-COVID-19, health, personal finance, retirement savings, credit card debt, home mortgages, medical care, organ donation, climate change, and "sludge" (paperwork and other nuisances we don't want, and that keep us from getting what we do want)-all while honoring one of the cardinal rules of nudging: make it fun!

Max Weber believed that discipline underpins modern rationalized society. For Weber, modern discipline is the quality that gives a population the capacity to coordinate action across vast expanses. But modern discipline also requires individuals to shape their very psychobiological being to fit the larger socioeconomic system, be it a military unit, factory, bureaucracy, or other unit of modern society. Max Weber and the Modern Problem of Discipline explores how Weber developed his ideas using examples from Ancient Egypt to the modern world and asks how his description of a habitus of discipline informs understanding of modernity not just in Europe but in places that continue to befuddle well-educated and well-paid modern economists, strategists, and politicians in places like the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Myanmar/Burma. These are the areas that, as Weber would have said, are still governed by traditional authority rather than the legal- disciplined habitus of rational authority brought by the modernizing outsiders. This book challenges development economists, foreign service officers, government officials, administrators, and development workers to rethink modern discipline and the costs that modern legal-rational rule imposes on traditional societies. By doing so, this book goes beyond standard prescriptions for good governance, free markets, and property rights, which underpin modern development planning. To describe modern discipline, Tony Waters also draws on more the contemporary work of Karl Polanyi, James Scott, Goran Hyden, Teodor Shanin, and James Ferguson, among others. Each describes how and why independent peasantries ignored and even resisted the blandishments and trinkets proffered by development bureaucracies to sell their traditional rights in the modern marketplace. Waters agrees with them about farmer resilience, but he takes the argument a step further by pointing out that Weber was proposing a general theory of a disciplined modernity, not one focused on just a particular society.

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.

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.