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 provides a comprehensive overview of caste in contemporary India. With contributions from scholars like Valerian Rodrigues, B.B. Mohanty, Surinder Jodhka, and Anand Teltumbde, it discusses wide-ranging themes like the trajectory of caste in post-independence India; Dalits and cultural identity; the paradox of being a Dalit woman; caste violence and social mobility; Ambedkar’s quest for the right of social equality; social security for the inclusive development of Dalits; discrimination and exclusion of Dalits in education; and Dalit merit and institutional injustice, and presents an overview of the struggles for distributive justice in India. This volume will be of importance to scholars and researchers of Dalit studies, social justice, exclusion studies, caste studies, affirmative action, political studies, sociology, social anthropology, and South Asian politics.

In Governing Social Risks in Post-Crisis Europe, Colin Crouch mounts an impressive comparative analysis to uncover the contrasting ways in which different countries have sought to address the exacerbated social risks, both 'new' and 'old', unleashed by the financial and economic crisis. It demonstrates that growing recourse to market forms of governance in social and labour market policy is inversely related to the strength and influence of organised labour across countries and, in turn, to the degree of security provided for workers and their dependents. The three main patterns identified for governing social risks in the current era - neo-liberal, social democratic and traditional - are shown to exhibit a clear lineage reaching back to the early 20th century.' - Paul Marginson, University of Warwick, UK'Crouch's new book offers an empirically based up-to-date theory relating governance, egalitarianism, and labor market security in contemporary post-industrial societies. It provides a highly sophisticated, original assessment of modes of governance in Europe in terms of their social and economic performance, drawing on extensive comparison of European countries including the new Eastern democracies. Contrasting in particular neoliberalism and social democracy, Crouch shows that the social-democratic model of state and associational intervention in markets performs much better than its neoliberal opponent, raising the question why it is the latter rather than the former that has become the leading model for the post-crisis capitalist political economy.' - Wolfgang Streeck, Max-Planck-Institute for the Study of Societies, Germany How can a capitalist system reconcile its need to combine workers on uncertain incomes and conditions with consumers confident that they can spend? The approaches of different national economies to this conundrum have had varying degrees of success, as well as diverse implications for social inequality. Through the study of European societies, and comparisons with experience from the rest of the world, Colin Crouch scrutinizes this diversity, and looks at how the 2008 global financial crisis has impacted it. Crouch identifies three broad approaches that countries adopt in response to this central dilemma of a capitalist economy, and examines these across three different contexts: time, place, and the role of inclusion and exclusion. This primarily statistical study embraces all except the smallest European countries, with comparative material on Japan, Russia and the United States. Countries are grouped according to differences found in them in the roles of governance by market, state, and community. This important book will appeal to academics, policy makers and others interested in comparative employment relations, European political economy and social policy. Undergraduate and postgraduate students alike will also find this a compelling, jargon-free insight into social policy and the 2008 global financial crisis in Europe.

Relational sociology draws attention to non-utilitarian aspects of sociality that reach beyond instrumental rationality, and presents the problem of relational reason. Shaping a civil society under cultural plurality requires reflection upon relational rationality. This book focuses on relational goods as an emergent effect of social relations, focusing on the issue of good life and the Good Society. The relational approach involves viewing social relations neither as an expression of the system nor as an individual action, but as a human reality in its own right, based on reciprocity. The authors explore the moral dimensions of sociality in various areas of social life. The aim is to enrich the understanding of relationality and of the significance of the relational theory of society.

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 volume traces the origins and evolution of the idea of human extinction, from the ancient Presocratics through contemporary work on "existential risks." Many leading intellectuals agree that the risk of human extinction this century may be higher than at any point in our 300,000-year history as a species. This book provides insight on the key questions that inform this discussion, including when humans began to worry about their own extinction and how the debate has changed over time. It establishes a new theoretical foundation for thinking about the ethics of our extinction, arguing that extinction would be very bad under most circumstances, although the outcome might be, on balance, good. Throughout the book, graphs, tables, and images further illustrate how human choices and attitudes about extinction have evolved in Western history. In its thorough examination of humanity’s past, this book also provides a starting point for understanding our future. Although accessible enough to be read by undergraduates, Human Extinction contains new and thought-provoking research that will benefit even established academic philosophers and historians.

This Handbook is the first attempt to systematically examine, empirically and analytically, the contours of the third sector policy process in the European Union (EU). While scholarship on the social, economic and political contributions of organisations existing between the market and the state has proliferated in recent years, no sustained attention has previously been paid to how such organisations are collectively treated by, and respond to, public policy. The expert contributors examine the policy environment for, and evolving policy treatment of, the third sector in the Czech Republic, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Sweden, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom from a comparative perspective. They also look at how the third sector relates to multi-level European policy processes, including the Open Method of Co-ordination, the Community Method, nationally-led 'partnership' approaches within an overall EU framework and the United Nations International Year of Volunteering; an initiative implemented in the EU but originating externally. Providing a rich and compelling examination of a crucially important aspect of policymaking, this unique Handbook will fill a major gap in the knowledge of both general policy analysts and specialists in third sector studies. Researchers and students in the overlapping fields of organised civil society, voluntary and third sector studies and the non-profit sector will also warmly welcome this important book.

There is an ideological war of words waging in America, one that speaks to a new fundamentalism rising not just within the American public, but across other ideologically-torn nations around the globe as well. At its heart is climate skepticism, an ideological watershed that has become a core belief for millions of people despite a large scientific consensus supporting the science of anthropogenic climate change. While many scholars have examined the role of lobbyists and conservative think tanks in fueling the climate skepticism movement, there has not yet been a systematic analysis of why the narrative itself has resonated so powerfully with the public. Pulling from science and technology studies, narrative and discourse theory, and public policy, The Power of Narrative examines the strength of climate skepticism as a story, offering a thoughtful analysis and comparison of anti-climate science narratives over time and across geographic boundaries. This book provides fresh insight into the rhetorical and semantic properties on both sides of the climate change debate that preclude dialogue around climate science, and proposes a means for moving beyond ideological entrenchment through language mediation, further ethnographic study, and research-informed teaching. The Power of Narrative culminates in the revelation of a parallel between narratives about climate skepticism and those in other issue areas (e.g., gun rights, immigration, health crises), exposing a genetic meta-narrative of public distrust and isolation. Ultimately, The Power of Narrative is not a book about climate change in itself: it is, instead, a book about how our society understands and interacts with science, how a social narrative becomes ideology, and how we can move beyond personal and political dogma to arrive at a sense of collective rapprochement.

Due to his major contributions in qualitative inquiries, Norman K. Denzin is regarded as 'the Father of Qualitative Inquiries.'Festschrift in Honor of Norman K. Denzin: He Knew His Song Well, Volume 55 of Studies in Symbolic Interaction, is a compilation of writings published in his honor. Featuring chapters which detail Denzin's unrivalled contributions to qualitative inquiries, the authors describe the immense scope of Denzin's qualitative research, from symbolic interactionism and postmodernism to justice studies. Documenting Denzin's inclusive efforts to embrace various perspectives in qualitative inquiries to advance the mission of qualitative research, this edited collection chronicles Denzin's continuous efforts in nurturing the field of qualitative inquiries via editorship and conference organization, fostering generations of qualitative researchers around the world. This collection is a comprehensive and compelling read for students and academics interested in qualitative research who wish to chart the impressive impact that Norman K. Denzin's work has had on the field.

The organization of individuals into networks and groups is of fundamental importance in many social and economic interactions. Examples range from networks of personal contacts used to obtain information about job opportunities to the formation of trading partnerships, alliances, cartels, and federations. Much of our understanding of how and why such networks and groups form, and the precise way in which the network or groups structure affects outcomes of social and economic interaction, is relatively new. This volume collects some of the central papers in this recent literature, which have made important progress on this topic.

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 volume examines minimality in cooperation and shared agency from various angles. It features essays written by top scholars in the philosophy of mind and action. Taken together, the essays provide a genuine contribution to the contemporary joint action debate. The main accounts in this debate present sufficient rather than necessary or minimal criteria for there to be cooperation. Much discussion in the debate deals with robust rather than more attenuate and simple cases of cooperation or shared agency. Focusing on such minimal cases, however, may help to explain how cooperation comes into existence and how minimal cooperation interrelates with more complex cases of cooperation. The contributors discuss minimality in cooperation by focusing on particular aspects. For example, they consider how social roles might deliver minimal cooperation constraints or what the minimal contextual criteria are for cooperation to emerge. Readers will find the answers to these and other questions: What is minimally cooperative behavior? By what steps could full members of a society organized by conventions, norms and institutions be constructed from creatures with minimal social skills and cognitive abilities? What do we experience of actions when we act together with a purpose?

In this cutting edge collection authors examine risk thinking in a range of policy and practice contexts, including special needs education, digital exclusion, domestic violence and abuse, child protection and youth work. Four key interlinking themes emerge from the chapters. The first is how, within a neoliberal context, risk agendas can be used to justify and normalise the rationing and targeting of services. The second theme demonstrates that the use of such agendas can in themselves redefine what is constituted as social problems, and how they are understood and responded to in practice. Thirdly, it is clear welfare practice itself is being re-structured and re-theorised to adapt and conform to the new definitions and understandings that risk thinking has brought about. Finally, the fourth theme illustrates how the use of risk as a negative organising discourse is not inevitable but, in different contexts, can create positive outcomes for service users, practitioners and society.

Humans have engaged in theatre for at least 50,000 years for good reason: it builds social connections, provides opportunities to learn, and creates meaning through storytelling. Perhaps most importantly, it is an enjoyable, and therefore self-reinforcing, activity. Theatre offers readers an introduction to the role that theatre plays in health and wellbeing, and provides guidance on how to incorporate it into professional health and social care environments, community spaces, and the family home. The book provides an overview of the current evidence demonstrating the effects of theatre on specific domains of health and wellbeing, including mental health, physical health, and public health, as well as its impacts on the education of health and social care professionals. Case studies illustrate the broad range of applied theatre methods currently in use across the human lifespan - from bedside theatre performed for children in hospital to theatre workshops for people living with dementia and theatre-based interpersonal communication training for medical students. Theatre also delivers plenty of practical advice on how to bring theatre into health and social care environments, including step-by-step instructions for specific activities, insights into potential barriers, and (most importantly) strategies needed to overcome them with empathy, collaboration, and creativity. This volume will be useful to professionals working in health and social care settings, as well as to theatre artists and educators who already are or who would like to work in health or social care settings with special populations.

This book offers a critical introduction to trends and developments in contemporary criminological theory. Designed both as a companion to An Introduction to Criminological Theory - also by Roger Hopkins Burke and published by Routledge - and as a standalone advanced textbook, it develops themes introduced previously in more detail, incorporates new critical and radical concepts and explores cutting-edge advances in theory. Key topics include the following: * Constitutive, anarchist, green and species, bio-critical, cultural, abolitionist and convict criminologies * Globalization and organized crime * Southern theory * Critical race theory * Terrorism and state violence * Gender, feminism and masculinity * Ultra-realism * Radical moral communitarianism These key issues are discussed in the context of debates about the fragmentation of modernity and the postmodern condition; the rise of political populism, risk, surveillance and social control, and speculation about living in post-COVID-19 society and the future of neoliberalism. Written in a clear and direct style, this book will appeal to both undergraduate and postgraduate students of criminology, sociology and politics and is essential reading for advanced students of criminology looking for a way to engage with contemporary themes and concepts in theory.

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.

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.

Building from the level of individual interaction, this book intends to shed light on what the author terms "infrasocial power" and the relation between this individual-actor oriented level and public power. In overviewing the origins of power, the author allows for the disaggregation of the social fabric, thus making it possible to: 1) isolate the "sequence" in which the phenomenon of superordination and subordination materialises; 2) identify the institutional "instruments" which can be used to limit infrasocial power; 3) discriminate between a social position achieved through engagement with others (and what we are capable of doing for them) from one occupied by means of force and deception; 4) explain the birth and function of public power; and 5) analyze the consequences produced by different political regimes.

This groundbreaking collection explores the profound power of Social Reproduction Theory to deepen our understanding of everyday life under capitalism. While many Marxists tend to focus on the productive economy, this book focuses on issues such as child care, health care, education, family life and the roles of gender, race and sexuality, all of which are central to understanding the relationship between economic exploitation and social oppression. In this book, leading writers such as Lise Vogel, Nancy Fraser, David McNally and Susan Ferguson reveal the ways in which daily and generational reproductive labour, found in households, schools, hospitals and prisons, also sustains the drive for accumulation. Presenting a more sophisticated alternative to intersectionality, these essays provide ideas which have important strategic implications for anti-capitalists, anti-racists and feminists attempting to find a path through the seemingly ever more complex world we live in.

What does 'Art' Mean Now? asks, and answers, fundamental questions about the nature of aesthetic experience and role of the arts in contemporary society. The Modern Age, Romanticism and beyond. viewed art as something transcending and separated from life, and usually something encountered in museums or classrooms. Nowadays, however, art tends to be defined not by a commonly agreed-upon standard of 'quality' or by its forms, such as painting and sculpture, but instead by political and ideological criteria. So how do we connect with the works in museums whose point was precisely they stood apart from such considerations? Can we and should we be educated to "appreciate" art-and what does it do for us anyway? What are we to make of the so-different newer works-installations, performances, excerpts from the world-held to be art that increasingly make it into museums? Adopting a subjectivist approach, this book argues that in the absence of a universal judgement or standard of taste, the experience of art is one of freedom. The arts and literature give us the means to conceptualize our lives, showing us ourselves as we are and as we might wish-or not wish-to be, as well as where we have been and where we are going. It will appeal to scholars of sociology, philosophy, museum studies, and art history, and to anyone interested in, or puzzled by, museums or college courses and their presentation of art today.

What does 'Art' Mean Now? asks, and answers, fundamental questions about the nature of aesthetic experience and role of the arts in contemporary society. The Modern Age, Romanticism and beyond. viewed art as something transcending and separated from life, and usually something encountered in museums or classrooms. Nowadays, however, art tends to be defined not by a commonly agreed-upon standard of 'quality' or by its forms, such as painting and sculpture, but instead by political and ideological criteria. So how do we connect with the works in museums whose point was precisely they stood apart from such considerations? Can we and should we be educated to "appreciate" art-and what does it do for us anyway? What are we to make of the so-different newer works-installations, performances, excerpts from the world-held to be art that increasingly make it into museums? Adopting a subjectivist approach, this book argues that in the absence of a universal judgement or standard of taste, the experience of art is one of freedom. The arts and literature give us the means to conceptualize our lives, showing us ourselves as we are and as we might wish-or not wish-to be, as well as where we have been and where we are going. It will appeal to scholars of sociology, philosophy, museum studies, and art history, and to anyone interested in, or puzzled by, museums or college courses and their presentation of art today.

This book provides a theoretical framework for understanding the micropolitics of speed; a rich, nuanced, and embodied account of life in an accelerating world. What does it feel like to live in an era of profound social acceleration? What kinds of affects, perceptions, and identities does an accelerating world produce? The answers to these questions mean more than simply understanding the psychology of speed; they also mean understanding issues in contemporary politics as diverse as xenophobia and anti-immigration policies, patterns of transnational identification and solidarity, social isolation and alienation, and the ability of new media to coordinate social movements. While drawing extensively on the work of contemporary theorists, Simon Glezos recognizes that social acceleration is not a purely recent phenomenon. He therefore turns to thinkers such as Nietzsche, Spinoza, Bergson, and Merleau-Ponty, to ask how they sought to understand, and respond to, the rapid changes and unsettling temporalities of their eras, and how their insights can be applied to our own. Advancing theoretical understanding and offering a useful way to analytically conceptualize the nature of time, Speed and Micropolitics will be of interest to students and scholars studying affect theory, theories of the body, new materialism, phenomenology, as well as the history of political thought.

Cultural practices and artifacts, in their multiple and varied forms, are grounded on values, which are so deeply internalized by people that usually remain in the background, as taken-for-granted guides for interpretations and decisions in everyday life. Shaping individual moral horizons is at the core of socialization processes, through which older generations aim to disseminate their culturally established values to the new ones, making use of suggestions mainly implicit in daily experiences and interactions. Despite the strength of these processes of cultural canalization, people find particular ways of positioning and interpreting social suggestions, drawing singular life trajectories and developing themselves as unique beings. This is truthful also in case of highly institutionalized settings like the military, in which people play in many forms an agentic role in their own development, being prepared to perform their professional duties in very complex and challenging activity contexts. This book is an invitation to dive deeper into human experiences lived in the military through qualitative and in-depth approaches, observing their affective qualities, the meanings they acquire and how they shape individuals' identities, fostering the development and try-out of specific ethical and moral values. The present work can contribute to research and professional practice in fields related to human development, social processes, education and people management in the military, as well as in other institutional contexts, especially by highlighting the affective, meaningful and moral-ethical dimensions of cultural experiences.

This book examines the economy of contemporary Catholic monasticism from a sociological perspective, considering the ways in which monasteries engage with the capitalist world economy via a model which aims less at 'performance' per se, than at the fulfilment of human and religious values. Based on fieldwork across several countries in Europe, Africa and South America, it explores not only the daily work and economy in monastic communities in their tensions with religious life, but also the new interest from society in monastic products or monastic management. With attention to present trends in monastic economy, including the growth of ecology and the role of monasteries in the social and economic development of their localities, the author demonstrates that monastic economy consists not solely in the subsistence of religious communities outside the world, but in economic activity that has a real impact on its local or even more global environment, in part through transnational networks of monasteries. As such, Contemporary Monastic Economy: A Sociological Perspective will appeal to scholars of religious studies and sociology with interests in contemporary monasticism.