The manner in which we variously come to an understanding of our world presents problems for us all, but the unified method by which we ought best to acquire such knowledge represents the particular problem of contemporary education. This important book seeks to explore some of the underlying practises and assumptions that go to produce and sustain both such sets of activities. As a result of its concerns with the social organization of knowledge at all levels, the sociology of education has become a central form of much contemporary sociological theory. All the papers in this collection are formulations of a 'reflexive' method of theorizing within sociology of education. This is a mode of address, deriving partly from social phenomenology, which seeks to display the grounds of the theorists' speech as itself an essential feature of any informative dialogue. Major themes in education and in sociology are considered in this way, including the social form of rationality, the constitution of curricula, normative beliefs about Learning, the nature of literary study as liberal education and the character of scientific knowledge in the social world.

An extremely complex and highly contested concept, 'childhood' refers to a life phase, to the age-group defined as children, as well as to a cultural construction that is part of the social and economic structure of communities. Reflecting this complexity, these comprehensive volumes introduce the reader to the wide variety of interpretations placed on childhood both today and in the past. Illustrating the interdisciplinary nature of contemporary study of the area, the collection includes contributions from the fields of sociology, anthropology, psychology, social geography, history, philosophy, and socio-legal theory - undoubtedly making it an ideal resource for a range of students and scholars interested in this fascinating subject.

This set includes key pieces from Peter Ackroyd, Charles Baudelaire, Walter Benjamin, Homi Bhaba, Charles Dickens, Fredrick Engles, Paul Gilroy, Thomas Hobbes, Max Weber, George Simmel, Ian Sinclair, Edward W. Soja, Gayatri Spivak, Nigel Thrift, Virginia Woolf, Sharon Zukin, and many others.
The material is arranged thematically highlighting the variety of interests that coexist (and conflict) within the city. Issues such as gender, class, race, age and disability are covered along with urban experiences such as walking, politics & protest, governance, inclusion and exclusion. "Urban pathologies," including gangsters, mugging, and drug-dealing are also explored. Selections cover cities from around the globe, including London, Berlin, Paris, New York, Los Angeles, Rio de Janeiro, Bombay and Tokyo.
A general introduction by the editor reviews theoretical perspectives and provides a rationale for the collection.
This collection offers a valuable research tool to a broad rangeof disciplines, including: sociology; anthropology; cultural history; cultural geography; art critical theory; visual culture; literary studies; social policy and cultural studies.

'Culture' is an extremely complex and highly contested concept. The idea of culture embraces a range of topics, processes, differences and even paradoxes. The history, various usages and different meanings of 'Culture' derive from diverse areas of study, including philosophy, critical aesthetics, literary criticism, anthropology, and sociology.
These volumes introduce the reader to these multi-facets of the concept and the wide and often contradictory variety of interpretations that have been and continue to be placed on it. The diverse meanings and interpretations of the concept are also reflected in the interdisciplinary nature of the articles collected.
The structure of the collection places culture within a history of ideas, and also enables the reader to review different arguments and perspectives on the topic.

Series Information:
Key Ideas

Transgression is truly a key idea for our time. Society is created by constraint and boundaries, but as our culture is increasingly subject to uncertainty and flux we find it more and more difficult to determine where those boundaries lie.

In this fast moving study, Chris Jenks ranges widely over the history of ideas, the major theorists, and the significant moments in the formation of the idea of transgression. He looks at the definition of the social and its boundaries by Durkheim, Douglas and Freud, at the German tradition of Hegel and Nietzsche, and the increasing preoccupation with transgression itself in Baudelaire, Bataille and Foucault. The second half of the book looks at transgression in action in the East End myth of the Kray twins, in Artaud's theatre of cruelty, the spectacle of the Situationists and Bakhtin's analysis of carnival. Finally Jenks extends his treatment of transgression to its own extremity.

By including material from literary, philosophical, and anthropological sources, and by selecting readings which consider educational practice both within and beyond formal educational contexts, this book broadens the character of sociological inquiry in education. The editors bring together material they have found valuable when working with students of education and^sociology at all levels. Many of these articles and extracts are either inaccessible or have not been reprinted. The collection should stimulate inquiry about the assumptions underlying current debates on curriculum, streaming, school organization, methods of teaching, and preconceived notions of ability.Toward a Sociology of Education develops an alternative theoretical approach to and engages in critical dialogue with mainstream sociology, and also points to other theoretical and practical probabilities.

First Published in 1994. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

The sociology of childhood has a relatively short history, yet it has grown as an area of academic and policy interest in recent years. Investigating the social factors that make up our knowledge of children and childhood, this book provides a greater appreciation of this stage of life. The social sciences previously handled childhood either through theories of socialization or through developmental psychology - both of which have led to children being considered as a natural rather than social phenomenon. Viewing childhood from a social constructionist perspective, it gives a critical framework through which to understand private attitudes and public policy in relation to the child. approaches to the child' and 'the locations of childhood', covering a fascinating range of topics such as the importance of 'agency' in considering the child and the social spaces occupied by childhood. field, this book pursues its own distinctive line of argument. As an updated second edition, it consolidates the position achieved by the first as an acknowledged market leader, and as such will make essential reading for students of sociology and childhood studies.

In this book Chris Jenks looks at what the ways in which we construct our image of childhood can tell us about ourselves. After a general discussion of the social construction of childhood, the book is structured around three examples of the way the image of the child is played out in society:

• 
  
• the history of childhood from medieval times through the enlightenment 'discovery' of childhood to the present
• 
  
• the mythology and reality of child abuse and society's response to it
• 
  
• the 'death' of childhood in cases such as the James Bulger murder in which the child itself becomes the perpetrator of evil.

Part of the highly successful Key Ideas series, this book gives students a concise, provocative insight into some of the controlling concepts of our culture.

Culture is a concept that has remained on the top of the agenda within the social sciences for two decades. It incites controversy and debate and always appears fresh. This book, updated throughout and with new sections on visual culture, urban culture and subcultures, argues that to understand the concept we need to locate it within traditions of thought and appreciate its political and ideological bases. The book looks at the concept of culture in the context of idealism and materialism, examining its relation to the notion of social structure and assessing its once assumed monopoly within literary study.
Culture remains stimulating throughout. A standard reference text for students on sociology and cultural studies courses, this second concise and student-friendly edition offers an overview over the sociology of culture in an accessible format.

Traditionally, Sociology has identified its subject matter as a distinct set - social phenomena - that can be taken as quite different and largely disconnected from potentially relevant disciplines such as Psychology, Economics or Planetary Ecology. Within Sociology and Human Ecology, Smith and Jenks argue that this position is no longer sustainable. Indeed, exhorting the reader to confront human ecology and its relation to the physical and biological environments, Smith and Jenks suggest that the development of understanding with regards to the position occupied by the social requires, in turn, an extension of the component disciplines and methodologies of a 'new' human socio-ecology. Aiming to evoke critical change to the possibility, status and range of the social sciences whilst also offering essential grounding for inter-disciplinary engagement, Sociology and Human Ecology will appeal to postgraduate students and postdoctoral researchers interested in fields such as Social Theory, Socio-Biology and Ecological Economics.

In Visual Culture the 'visual' character of contemporary culture is explored in original and lively essays. The contributors look at advertising, film, painting and fine art journalism, photography, television and propaganda. They argue that there is only a social, not a formal relation between vision and truth. A major preoccupation of modernity and central to an understadning of the postmodern, 'vision' and the 'visual' are emergent themes across sociology, cultural studies and critical theory in the visual arts. Visual Culture will prove an indispensable guide to the field.

Contents:
Introduction - The Analytic Bases of Cultural Reproduction Theory Chris Jenks 1. Economy and Strategy: The Possibility of Feminism Malcolm Barnard 2. The Natural Man and the Virtuous Woman James Donald 3. Yes - But Logic: The Quasi-Science of Cultural Reproduction Stephen Featherstone 4. A Report on the Western Front: Postmodernism and the Politics of Style Dick Hebdige 5. Culture Made, Found and Lost: The Cases of Climbing and Art Ian Heywood 6. The Necessity of Tradition - Sociology or the Postmodern? Chris Jenks 7. Snapshots: Notes on Myth, Memory and Technology - Short Fictions Concerning the Camera Justin Lorentzen 8. Everyday Life, Technoscience and Cultural Analysis: A One-Sided Conversation Michael Phillipson 9. Unfixing the Subject: Viewing `Bad Timing' David Silverman 10. Going Shopping: Markets, Crowds and Consumption Don Slater 11. Manet and Durkheim: Images and Theories of Re-production John Smith 12. The Role of Ideology in Cultural Reproduction Dave Walsh

The manner in which we variously come to an understanding of our world presents problems for us all, but the unified method by which we ought best to acquire such knowledge represents the particular problem of contemporary education. This important book seeks to explore some of the underlying practises and assumptions that go to produce and sustain both such sets of activities.

As a result of its concerns with the social organization of knowledge at all levels, the sociology of education has become a central form of much contemporary sociological theory. All the papers in this collection are formulations of a reflexive method of theorizing within sociology of education. This is a mode of address, deriving partly from social phenomenology, which seeks to display the grounds of the theorists speech as itself an essential feature of any informative dialogue. Major themes in education and in sociology are considered in this way, including the social form of rationality, the constitution of curricula, normative beliefs about Learning, the nature of literary study as liberal education and the character of scientific knowledge in the social world.

By including material from literary, philosophical, and anthropological sources, and by selecting readings which consider educational practice both within and beyond formal educational contexts, this book broadens the character of sociological inquiry in education. The editors bring together material they have found valuable when working with students of education and DEGREESsociology at all levels. Many of these articles and extracts are either inaccessible or have not been reprinted. The collection should stimulate inquiry about the assumptions underlying current debates on curriculum, streaming, school organization, methods of teaching, and preconceived notions of ability.

Toward a Sociology of Education develops an alternative theoretical approach to and engages in critical dialogue with mainstream sociology, and also points to other theoretical and practical probabilities.

In Visual Culture the 'visual' character of contemporary culture is explored in original and lively essays. The contributors look at advertising, film, painting and fine art journalism, photography, television and propaganda. They argue that there is only a social, not a formal relation between vision and truth. A major preoccupation of modernity and central to an understadning of the postmodern, 'vision' and the 'visual' are emergent themes across sociology, cultural studies and critical theory in the visual arts. Visual Culture will prove an indispensable guide to the field.

Traditionally, Sociology has identified its subject matter as a distinct set - social phenomena - that can be taken as quite different and largely disconnected from potentially relevant disciplines such as Psychology, Economics or Planetary Ecology. Within Sociology and Human Ecology, Smith and Jenks argue that this position is no longer sustainable. Indeed, exhorting the reader to confront human ecology and its relation to the physical and biological environments, Smith and Jenks suggest that the development of understanding with regards to the position occupied by the social requires, in turn, an extension of the component disciplines and methodologies of a 'new' human socio-ecology. Aiming to evoke critical change to the possibility, status and range of the social sciences whilst also offering essential grounding for inter-disciplinary engagement, Sociology and Human Ecology will appeal to postgraduate students and postdoctoral researchers interested in fields such as Social Theory, Socio-Biology and Ecological Economics.

Offering a critique of the humanist paradigm in contemporary social theory, Qualitative Complexity is the first comprehensive sociological analysis of complexity theory. Drawing from sources in sociology, philosophy, complexity theory, 'fuzzy logic', systems theory, cognitive science and evolutionary biology, John Smith and Chris Jenks present a new series of interdisciplinary perspectives on the sociology of complex, self-organizing structures.

Offering a critique of the humanist paradigm in contemporary social theory, Qualitative Complexity is the first comprehensive sociological analysis of complexity theory. Drawing from sources in sociology, philosophy, complexity theory, 'fuzzy logic', systems theory, cognitive science and evolutionary biology, John Smith and Chris Jenks present a new series of interdisciplinary perspectives on the sociology of complex, self-organizing structures.

Culture is a concept that has remained on the top of the agenda within the social sciences for two decades. It incites controversy and debate and always appears fresh. This book, updated throughout and with new sections on visual culture, urban culture and subcultures, argues that to understand the concept we need to locate it within traditions of thought and appreciate its political and ideological bases. The book looks at the concept of culture in the context of idealism and materialism, examining its relation to the notion of social structure and assessing its once assumed monopoly within literary study.
Culture remains stimulating throughout. A standard reference text for students on sociology and cultural studies courses, this second concise and student-friendly edition offers an overview over the sociology of culture in an accessible format.

In this book Chris Jenks looks at what the ways in which we construct our image of childhood can tell us about ourselves. After a general discussion of the social construction of childhood, the book is structured around three examples of the way the image of the child is played out in society: the history of childhood from medieval times through the enlightenment 'discovery' of childhood to the present the mythology and reality of child abuse and society's response to it the 'death' of childhood in cases such as the James Bulger murder in which the child itself becomes the perpetrator of evil. Part of the highly successful Key Ideas series, this book gives students a concise, provocative insight into some of the controlling concepts of our culture.

A polished piece of work which takes a cool and dispassionate look at subculture... Meticulous and insightful'" - Jim McGuigan, Professor of Cultural Analysis, University of Loughborough

This illuminating book, which explores the idea of subcultures, traces the concept back to its foundations in the works of Tonnies and Durkheim and, to a lesser degree, Marx and Weber."This illuminating book, which explores the idea of subcultures, traces the concept back to its foundations in the works of Tonnies and Durkheim and, to a lesser degree, Marx and Weber.

The discussion moves on to an analysis of subcultures in American urban sociology and criminology, through the traditions of the Chicago School, structural functionalism and systems theory. The ground-breaking work of Stuart Hall and the Birmingham School is evaluated and a case is made for the continuing relevance of the concept for sociology and cultural studies.

The book provides:

" An unrivalled critical guide to subculture

" An assessment of the strengths and weaknesses of the concept in the study of society and culture

" A sharp assessment of its relevance and application today.

Both an appraisal and a sustained critique of the concept of subculture, the book will be of interest to students of Sociology, Cultural Studies and Urban Studies.