Bringing together contributions from anthropology, sociology, religious studies, and philosophy, along with ethnographic case studies from diverse settings, this volume explores how different disciplinary perspectives on the good might engage with and enrich each other. The chapters examine how people realize the good in social life, exploring how ethics and values relate to forms of suffering, power and inequality, and, in doing so, demonstrate how focusing on the good enhances social theory. This is the first interdisciplinary engagement with what it means to study the good as a fundamental aspect of social life.

Some studies estimate that each year, around a quarter of the population of Western countries will suffer from at least one mental disorder. Should this be interpreted as evidence for the progress of psychiatry, a discipline that is now able to identify and treat mental illnesses that have always existed, or might it be the case that modern life somehow creates new conditions, or social pathologies? This book argues that in fact something more fundamental has been taking place in recent years: the development of diagnostic cultures. Taking account of the phenomenon of patients themselves 'pushing for' pathologization - and acknowledging therefore that this is not simply a case of psychiatry pursuing an agenda of 'medicalisation from above' - this volume examines the emerging trend towards interpreting our sufferings in terms of psychiatric conceptions and diagnostic categories. Drawing on new empirical case studies of psychological diagnoses, including depression and ADHD, and employing both cultural-psychological and sociological analyses, it charts the development of contemporary diagnostic cultures and asks whether, in transforming existential, moral and political concerns into individual psychiatric disorders, we risk losing sight of the larger historical and social forces that affect our lives. A ground-breaking examination of the shift towards the pathologization of suffering and the dangers that this presents to human self-understanding, Diagnostic Cultures will be of interest to scholars of social theory and philosophy, the sociology of culture, psychology and the sociology health and medicine.

The ebook edition of this title is Open Access and freely available to read online Digital technologies have led to many important social and cultural changes worldwide, but they are also implicated in the facilitation of violence and abuse. While cybercriminality is often described as one of the greatest threats to nation states and global security, the wide range of interpersonal crimes comprising technology-facilitated violence and abuse (TFVA) - including, but not limited to, image-based sexual abuse, hate speech, online sexual harassment and cyberstalking - has received little attention. This handbook features theoretical, empirical, policy and legal analysis of TFVA from over 40 multidisciplinary scholars, practitioners, advocates, survivors and technologists from 17 countries. Addressing a spectrum of abuse perpetrated online, offline and through new technologies, the book sets TFVA in the context of intersecting underlying systemic drivers - including misogyny, racism, classism, colonialism, ableism, ageism, transphobia and homophobia - and discusses ways forward in effectively responding to TFVA. Adopting a holistic approach, it explores a host of issues relating to TFVA, including the nature and experience of harmful and criminal conduct; organisational responses; regulatory, legal and ethical concerns; corporate and social responsibility; justice for victims; bystander intervention; and cultural and social attitudes. The handbook's international, interdisciplinary and intersectoral nature affords opportunities for learning from common experiences, but it also emphasises the equality-affirming importance of avoiding one-size-fits-all analyses that fail to reflect rich and diverse experiences from around the world.

Specially selected by Diane Reay, this is a collection of innovative and thought-provoking recently published papers that 'use' Bourdieu to put theory into practice in order to understand and analyse educational problems. Bourdieu's work is renowned for its focus on inequalities and its centering of social justice. The contributions utilise a wide range of diverse concepts in Bourdieu's theoretical 'tool-kit', and address educational inequalities across different aspects of the educational system - from higher education and parental choice of schooling, to teachers' professional development and the PE classroom. Illuminating key aspects of Bourdieu's scholarship, they reveal how good Bourdieu is 'for thinking with'; illustrate the merits of reflexivity, the move beyond binary ways of reading the social world; and demonstrate the significance of power in any analysis of education. The chapters in this book were all originally published as articles in Taylor and Francis journals.

The thinking of Antoine-Augustin Cournot has inspired a growing literature in economy and epistemology, but as of yet, his sociological thought has not been explicitly discussed and contextualized within the discipline. From the 1850s to the end of the 1870s, Cournot contributed significantly to the history of French sociology, particularly in the development of one essential idea: that forms of knowledge are intimately linked to the progress of reason. Philosophy, therefore, becomes interested in the development of the sciences, evolving as they do from the process of rationalizing human societies. Cournot's comparative-historical sociology, "rediscovered" especially by Gabriel Tarde in the 20th century, seeks to understand how a macro-sociological trend can depend on the aggregation of a host individual decisions and actions, or to discern a certain order out of apparent chaos.

Critically exploring the presuppositions of contemporary social theory, this collection argues for a trans-civilizational dialogue and a deepening of the universe of intellectual discourse in order to transform sociology into a truly planetary conversation on the human condition. Focusing on perspectives from Asia, notably East Asia and India, it interrogates presuppositions in contemporary critical social theory about man, culture and society, and considers central themes such as knowledge and power, knowledge and liberation. The diverse contributions tackle key questions such the globalization of social theory, identity and society in east asia, as well as issues such as biopolitics, social welfare and eurocentrism. They also examine dialogues along multiple trajectories between social theorists from the Euro-American world and from the Asian universe, such as between Kant and Gandhi, Habermas and Sri Aurobindo, the Bildung tradition in Europe and the Confucian traditions. Arguing for a global comparative engagement and cross-cultural dialogue, this is a key read for all those interested in the future of social theory in the wake of globalization and the rise of the global south.

Performing Intimacies with Hawthorne, Austen, Wharton, and George Eliot analyzes literary reproductions of everyday intimacies through a microsociological lens to demonstrate the value of reading microsocially. The text investigates the interplay between author, character, and reader and considers such concepts as face and moments of embarrassment to emphasize how art and life are inseparable. Drawing on narrative theory, the phenomenological approach, and macro approaches, Maya Higashi Wakana examines Hawthorne's "The Minister's Black Veil," Austen's Pride and Prejudice, Wharton's Ethan Frome and The Age of Innocence, and George Eliot's The Mill on the Floss. Through a multidisciplinary approach, this book provides new ways of reading the everyday in literature.

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.

This book looks at how sociological concepts that were first invented and applied to describe social inequality in Europe were also used to understand and explain inequality in the US. Hess analyzes changing uses of concepts and measurements of social inequality by looking at how some of the most prominent American sociologists have tried to conceptualize their own society while at the same time addressing the complex relationship between an assumed political equality and de facto social inequality.

Engaging with several emerging and interconnected approaches in the social sciences, including pragmatism, system theory, processual thinking and relational thinking, this book leverages John Dewey and Arthur Bentley's often misunderstood concept of trans-action to revisit and redefine our perceptions of social relations and social life. The contributors gathered here use trans-action in a more specific sense, showing why and how social scientists and philosophers might use the concept to better understand our social life and social problems. As the first collective sociological attempt to apply the concept of trans-action to contemporary social issues, this volume is a key reference for the growing audience of relational and processual thinkers in the social sciences and beyond.

Social scientists have long been resistant to the set of ideas known as "postcolonial thought." Meanwhile, postcolonial scholars have considered social science to be an impoverished discipline that is part of the intellectual problem for postcolonial liberation, not the solution. This divergence is fitting, given that postcolonial thought emerged from the anticolonial revolutions of the twentieth century and has since become an enterprise in the academic humanities, while social theory was born as an intellectual justification for empire and has since been institutionalized in social science. Given such divisions - and at times direct opposition - is it possible to reconcile the two? Postcolonial Thought and Social Theory explores the divergences and generative convergences between these two distinct bodies of thought. It asks how the intellectually insurrectionary ideas of postcolonial thinkers, such as Franz Fanon, Amilcar Cabral, Edward Said, Homi Bhabha and Gayatri Spivak, among others, pose a radical epistemic challenge to social theory. It charts the different ways in which social theory might be refashioned to meet the challenge and excavates the often hidden sociological assumptions of postcolonial thought. While various scholars suggest that postcolonial thought and social science are incompatible, this book illuminates how they are mutually beneficial, and argues for a third wave of postcolonial thought emerging from social science but also surmounting the narrow confines of disciplinary boundaries.

Racial and Ethnic Politics in American Suburbs examines racial and ethnic politics outside traditional urban contexts and questions the standard theories we use to understand mobility and government responses to rapid demographic change and political demands. This study moves beyond traditional scholarship in urban politics, departing from the persistent treatment of racial dynamics in terms of a simple black-white binary. Combining an interdisciplinary, multi-method, and multiracial approach with a well-integrated analysis of multiple forms of data including focus groups, in-depth interviews, and census data, Racial and Ethnic Politics in American Suburbs explains how redistributive policies and programs are developed and implemented at the local level to assist immigrants, racial/ethnic minorities, and low-income groups - something that given earlier knowledge and theorizing should rarely happen. Lorrie Frasure-Yokley relies on the framework of suburban institutional interdependency (SII), which presents a new way of thinking systematically about local politics within the context of suburban political institutions in the United States today.

This book presents a set theoretical approach to sociological research. It revisits existing sociological approaches and discusses their limitations, before suggesting an alternative. While the existing canonical approaches of Positivism, Conflictualism, and Pragmatism are based on biology, history, and physics, respectively, the set theoretical approach is based on mathematics. Utilising its philosophical exploration delineated by Alain Badiou, the book further translates his work into the field of social science. The result of this translation is termed Multiplitism, which evades the limiting contradictions of existing approaches. Drawing on the mathematical notion of 'set' and relating it to recent sociological turns such as the relational and the ontological, the book proposes a scale-relativity through which the researcher (as subject) and the researched (as object) are integrated. The book will be of interest to social scientists, particularly social theorists and advanced level students.

This volume examines the rise of an emerging sport as a grassroots effort (or "new social movement"), arguing that the growth of non-normative sports movements occurs through two social processes: one driven primarily by product development, commercialization, and consumption, and another that relies upon public resources and grassroots efforts. Through the lens of disc golf, informed by the author's experience both playing and researching the sport, Joshua Woods here explores how non-normative sports development depends on the consistency of insider culture and ideology, as well as on how the movement navigates a broad field of market competition, government regulation, community characteristics, public opinion, traditional media, social media and technological change. Throughout, the author probes why some sports grow faster than others, examining cultural tendencies toward sport, individual choices to participate, and the various institutional forces at play.

The book Profiles of Anthropological Praxis is something of a sequel to Anthropological Praxis: Translating Knowledge into Action, published in 1987 (Westview Press). As a casebook of anthropological projects, the new version shares a fascinating breadth of award-winning projects undertaken by applied anthropologists to address the needs of an array of stakeholders and situations. Each chapter will describe a problem and how a project attempted to address it with the following structure: Problem Overview, Project Description, Anthropologist's Role and Impact, Outcomes, and the Anthropological Difference - that is, how the unique approaches of anthropology were effectively applied to address human problems.

This book explores the relevance of social networking from the perspective of its users to reveal the sociological significance of (inter)active experiences on Facebook. In doing so, the work examines obscure aspects of Facebook by addressing such questions as: What constitutes keeping in touch?; how is knowing of the other different from being with the other?; and why is the presence of others such an important element of Facebook? Social Ties in Online Networking discusses the significance of social networking activity through a collection of interviews with the users of Facebook. It analyses what they do, what they like and watch, but first and foremost how they intend their own actions and others' actions to be perceived within the realm of social media. This book is an exploration of relationships, which will be of interest to academics and students in sociology, social theory, human geography, social networking, media studies and social psychology.

This book conducts a critical investigation into everyday intercultural recognition and misrecognition in the domain of paid work, utilising social philosopher Axel Honneth's recognition theory as its theoretical foundation. In so doing, it also reveals the sophistication and productivity of Honneth's recognition model for multiculturalism scholarship. Honneth and Everyday Intercultural (Mis)Recognition is concerned with the redress of intercultural related injustice and, more widely, the effective integration of ethically and culturally diverse societies. Bona Anna analyses the everyday experiences of cross-cultural misrecognition in a distinctive ethno-cultural group, including social norms that have been marginalised in the contexts of employment. In this endeavour, she deploys key constructs from Honneth's theory to argue for individual and social integration to be conceptualised as a process of inclusion through stables forms of recognition, rather than as a process of inclusion through forms of group representation and participation. This book will appeal to students and academics of multiculturalism interested in learning more about the usefulness of Honneth's recognition theory in intercultural inquiry, including the ways in which it can circumvent some of the impasses of classical multiculturalism.

Brian Leiter is widely recognized as the leading philosophical interpreter of the jurisprudence of American Legal Realism, as well as the most influential proponent of the relevance of the naturalistic turn in philosophy to the problems of legal philosophy. This volume collects newly revised versions of ten of his best-known essays, which set out his reinterpretation of the Legal Realists as prescient philosophical naturalists; critically engage with jurisprudential responses to Legal Realism, from legal positivism to Critical Legal Studies; connect the Realist program to the methodology debate in contemporary jurisprudence; and explore the general implications of a naturalistic world view for problems about the objectivity of law and morality. Leiter has supplied a lengthy new introductory essay, as well as postscripts to several of the essays, in which he responds to challenges to his interpretive and philosophical claims by academic lawyers and philosophers. This volume will be essential reading for anyone interested in jurisprudence, as well as for philosophers concerned with the consequences of naturalism in moral and legal philosophy.

This book explores and provides an overview of the Norwegian psychologist Jan Smedslund's life work on Psycho-logic. His contributions to science have been radical not only in challenging the empirical foundation of psychology, but also in seeking to develop a viable alternative. This book brings together various reflections on his key contributions from the 1960s to the present day. The volume features three chapters by Jan Smedslund, offering his updated views on psychological science and psychotherapy. It also features contributions from several scholars that critically evaluates his legacy. His seminal ideas are discussed, revised and expanded upon and the questions raised are put in relevant historical and interdisciplinary context. Respect for Thought is a valuable resource for psychological researchers, historians of psychology, cultural psychologists, critical psychologists, theoretical psychologists, clinical psychologists and psychotherapists, social scientists, philosophers of psychology, and philosophers of science.

This book explores the idea of social class in the liberal tradition. It collects classical and contemporary texts illustrating and examining the liberal origins of class analysis-often associated with Marxism but actually rooted in the work of liberal theorists. Liberal class analysis emphasizes the constitutive connection between state power and class position. Social Class and State Power documents the rich tradition of liberal class theory, its rediscovery in the twentieth century, and the possibilities it opens up for research in the new millenium.

The aims of this Introduction are to characterize the philosophy of science and technology, henceforth PS & T, to locate it on the map ofiearning, and to propose criteria for evaluating work in this field. 1. THE CHASM BETWEEN S & T AND THE HUMANITIES It has become commonplace to note that contemporary culture is split into two unrelated fields: science and the rest, to deplore this split - and to do is some truth in the two cultures thesis, and even nothing about it. There greater truth in the statement that there are literally thousands of fields of knowledge, each of them cultivated by specialists who are in most cases indifferent to what happens in the other fields. But it is equally true that all fields of knowledge are united, though in some cases by weak links, forming the system of human knowledge. Because of these links, what advances, remains stagnant, or declines, is the entire system of S & T. Throughout this book we shall distinguish the main fields of scientific and technological knowledge while at the same time noting the links that unite them.

One of Marxism's chief failings is its dependence on trans-historical categories. Theorists such as Jürgen Habernas also fall short by restricting their critique to the cultural sphere. This book extends the reach of critical theory and its key idea of intersubjectivity to the economic system. The economy is a realm of morality that social movements influence in the course of their struggles.

Civil society is frequently conceived as a field of multiple organizations, committed to highly diverse causes and interests. When studied empirically, however, its properties are often reduced to the sum of the traits and attitudes of the individuals or groups that are populating it. This book shows how to move from an 'aggregative' to a relational view of civil society. Drawing upon field work on citizens' organizations in two British cities, this book combines network analysis and social movement theories to show how to represent civil society as a system of relations between multiple actors. 'Modes of coordination' enables us to identify different logics of collective action within the same local settings. The book exposes the weakness of rigid dichotomies, separating the voluntary sector from social movements, 'civic' activism oriented to service delivery from 'un-civic' protest, grassroots activism external to institutions from formal, professionalized organizations integrated within the 'system'.

In the decades following World War II, factories in many countries not only provided secure employment and a range of economic entitlements, but also recognized workers as legitimate stakeholders, enabling them to claim rights to participate in decision making and hold factory leaders accountable. In recent decades, as employment has become more precarious, these attributes of industrial citizenship have been eroded and workers have increasingly been reduced to hired hands. As Joel Andreas shows in Disenfranchised, no country has experienced these changes as dramatically as China. Drawing on a decade of field research, including interviews with both factory workers and managers, Andreas traces the changing political status of workers inside Chinese factories from 1949 to the present, carefully analyzing how much power they have actually had to shape their working conditions.

Populism is a powerful force today, but its full scope has eluded the analytical tools of both orthodox and heterodox 'populism studies'. This book provides a valuable alternative perspective. It reconstructs in detail for the first time the sociological analyses of US demagogues by members of the Frankfurt School and compares these with contemporary approaches. Modern demagogy emerges as a key under-researched feature of populism, since populist movements, whether 'left' or 'right', are highly susceptible to 'demagogic capture'. The book also details the culture industry's populist contradictions - including its role as an incubator of modern demagogues - from the 1930s through to today's social media and 'Trumpian psychotechnics'. Featuring a previously unpublished text by Adorno on modern demagogy as an appendix, it will be of interest to everyone concerned about the rise of demagogic populism today. -- .