Research in and around popular culture continues to flourish. And its study is, more than ever, a key component of Media and Communications Studies courses, and a vital part of Cultural Studies and Cultural Sociology curricula.

The sheer scale of the available research exploring popular culture?and the breadth and complexity of the canon on which it draws?makes this new four-volume Routledge collection especially timely. It answers the urgent need for a wide-ranging collection which provides ready access to the key items of scholarly literature, material that is often inaccessible or scattered throughout a variety of specialist journals and books from a broad range of disciplines.

Volume I (?History and Theory?) brings together the best work on the rise of popular culture as a subject for serious academic study, uncovering its roots and exploring its rapid development in the years after the Second World War. Key debates (e.g. between base and superstructure, hegemony and control, colonialism and postcolonialism) are traced to provide users with a clear understanding of the foundational approaches that inform the more applied examinations of popular culture in the succeeding volumes.

Volume II assembles the most important thinking on ?Ideology and Representation?, including work drawn from feminism, structuralism, post-structuralism, and postmodernism. Volume III gathers crucial work on ?Fissures and Fusions?, while the last volume in the set is organized around ?Critical Departures?.

Popular Culture is supplemented with a full index, and includes a comprehensive introduction, newly written by the editor, which places the collected material in its historical and intellectual context. It is destined to be valued by scholars and advanced students as a vital research and reference resource.

How do figurational sociologists approach the subjects of sport and leisure? How does their approach differ from other approaches in the field? This major collection, edited by leading writers on sport and leisure, offers a superb introduction to the figurational sociology of sport and leisure. The distinctive features of the approach are clearly explained and contributors show how figurational sociology is applied in the analysis of concrete problems. However, the collection also gives space to critics of the figurational approach. Included here are contributions which claim that the approach is inaccurate, blinkered and irrelevant.

First published in 1989, The Haunt of Misery offers social workers and students critical essays for critical times. Faced with unreflective wealth creation and the fragmentation of the counterculture, social work is perceived as failing to meet the needs of the client. Many social workers are left feeling angry, stranded and confused. Written by academics and professionals, the essays range over social work and unemployment, the crisis of AIDS and HIV infection, drug use, client collectives, the elderly, the ethnic minorities, professionalism, and self-management. The authors offer constructive criticism of existing social work practice and suggest radical and exciting issues for the profession in the 1990s and beyond.

First published in 1985, this title explores theories of leisure in a capitalist society. Basing his argument on a refutation of the conventional association of leisure with freedom and free time, Chris Rojek examines the four main structural characteristics of modern leisure practice: privatisation, individuation, commercialisation and pacification. The writings of Marx, Durkheim, Weber, and Freud are used to locate the question of leisure in more mainstream social theory. This interesting reissue will be of particular value to students of sociology and leisure studies, and those with an interest in the relationship between leisure and power.

First published in 1985, this title explores theories of leisure in a capitalist society. Basing his argument on a refutation of the conventional association of leisure with freedom and free time, Chris Rojek examines the four main structural characteristics of modern leisure practice: privatisation, individuation, commercialisation and pacification. The writings of Marx, Durkheim, Weber, and Freud are used to locate the question of leisure in more mainstream social theory. This interesting reissue will be of particular value to students of sociology and leisure studies, and those with an interest in the relationship between leisure and power.

Full Contributors:
Ioan Davies, York University, Toronto, Canada; Mike Gane, Loughborough University, UK; John O'Neill, York University, Toronto, Canada; Caroline Ramazanoglu, Goldsmiths College, London, UK; Chris Rojek, Nottingham Trent University, UK; Victor J. Seidler, Goldsmiths College, London, UK; Barry Smart, University of Auckland, New Zealand; Bryan Turner, Deakin University, Australia

Social Work and Received Ideas examines the language of both traditional and radical social work as forms of power, arguing that the will to help and care for people unintentionally results in new types of dependency, control and domination.

It is becoming ever clearer that while people tour cultures, cultures and objects themselves are "on the bus" in the sense that they are in a constant state of migration. "Touring Cultures" is edited by John Urry, one of the most acclaimed authors in the field of tourism studies. This collection brings together some of the most influential writers in the field, including Jenni Craik and David Chaney, to examine the complex connections between tourism and cultural change and the relevance of tourist experience to current theoretical debates on space, time and identity. Certain to be an indispensible asset to those involved in learning or teaching about tourism, "Touring Cultures," bringing together in one volume a wealth of thinking from a multidisciplinary range, will also have cross-course appeal in a variey of fields.

Jean Baudrillard is a central figure in the area of sociology and cultural studies today, but his writings infuriate as many people as they intoxicate. This collection aims to provide a wide-ranging, measured assessment of Baudrillard's work. The contributors examine Baudrillard's relation to consumption, modernity, postmodernity, social theory, feminism, politics and culture. They attempt to steer a clear course between the hype which Baudrillard himself has done much to generate, and the solid value of his startling thoughts. Baudrillard's ideas and style of expression provide a challenge to established academic ways of proceeding and thinking. The book explores this challenge and speculates on the reason for the extreme responses to Baudrillard's work. The appeal of Baudrillard's arguments is clearly discussed and his place in contemporary social theory is shrewdly assessed. Baudrillard emerges as a chameleon figure, but one who is obsessed with the central themes of style, hypocrisy, seduction, simulation and fatality.

This collection of original papers provides a prismatic guide and reckoning to one of the most controversial and poorly understood writers of the present day. His work in relation to consumption, politics, feminism, culture, theory and postmodernity is clearly discussed and evaluated. The picture of Baudrillard that emerges is surprising but always engaging and accessible. This book is a benchmark for understanding and assessing this dazzling and disturbing writer.

Social Work and Received Ideas examines the language of both traditional and radical social work as forms of power, arguing that the will to help and care for people unintentionally results in new types of dependency, control and domination.

Jean-Francois Lyotard is still considered to be the father of postmodernism. An international range of contributors in the field of cultural and philosophical studies, including Barry Smart, John O' Neill and Victor J. Seidler consider Lyotard's writings on justice and politics of difference, feminism, youth and Judaism.

This book explores the meaning of leisure in the context of key social formations of our time. Chris Rojek brings together the insights of Marxism, feminism, Weber, Elias, Simmel, Nietzsche and Baudrillard to produce a survey - and rethinking - of leisure theory. At the same time he presents a radical critique of the traditional centring' of leisure, on escape', freedom' and choice'.

He describes the relations between capitalism and leisure, the meaning of free time for workers in a capitalist system, and the gendered nature of leisure. He then discusses the social construction of leisure under modernity and the main competing arguments. Finally he examines postmodernity. Revealing how leisure practices have responded t

How do figurational sociologists approach the subjects of sport and leisure? How does their approach differ from other approaches in the field? This major collection, edited by leading writers on sport and leisure, offers a superb introduction to the figurational sociology of sport and leisure. The distinctive features of the approach are clearly explained and contributors show how figurational sociology is applied in the analysis of concrete problems. However, the collection also gives space to critics of the figurational approach. Included here are contributions which claim that the approach is inaccurate, blinkered and irrelevant.

A collection of critical essays which reject the assumptions that leisure relations are relations of freedom, self determination, life satisfaction and growth. The essays look at power and policy issues in leisure relations and attempt to produce a critical sociology of the subject.;The first part deals with theoretical perspectives on leisure, associated with the conventional wisdom and neo-Marxism, Elias, Freud, Simmel and bourgeois thought. The second considers issues of power and planning in leisure practice. It consists of essays on leisure policy, women's leisure, the informal economy, drug use and struggles over leisure time and space.

This collection brings together some of the most influential writers in the field to examine the complex connections between tourisma and cultural change and the relevance of tourist experience to debates on space, time and identity.

Leisure has always been associated with freedom, choice and flexibility. The week-end and vacations were celebrated as 'time off'. In his compelling new book, Chris Rojek turns this shibboleth on its head to demonstrate how leisure has become a form of labour. Modern men and women are required to be competent, relevant and credible, not only in the work place but with their mates, children, parents and communities. The requisite empathy for others, socially acceptable values and correct forms of self-presentation demand work. Much of this work is concentrated in non-work activity, compromising traditional connections between leisure and freedom. Ranging widely from an analysis of the inflated aspirations of the leisure society thesis to the culture of deception that permeates leisure choice, Rojek shows how leisure is inextricably linked to emotional labour and intelligence. It is now a school for life. In challenging the orthodox understandings of freedom and free time, The Labour of Leisure sets out an indispensable new approach to the meaning of leisure. Chris Rojek is Professor of Sociology and Culture at Brunel University. In 2003 he was awarded the Allen V. Sapora Award for outstanding achievement in the field of leisure studies.

?An important and timely contribution, Society and Culture engages crucial debates that are reshaping the core identity and future agenda of sociology. Turner and Rojek start with an insightful reconsideration of Parsons? theory of action, identify the strengths and limits of contemporary projects like those of Giddens and Beck, and offer a valuable new direction for future development? ? Craig Calhoun, Professor of Sociology and History, New York University Society and Culture reclaims the classical heritage, provides a clear-eyed assessment of the promise of sociology in the 21st century and asks whether the `cultural turn' has made the study of society redundant. Sociologists have objected to the rise of cultural studies on the grounds that it produces cultural relativism and lacks a stable research agenda. This book looks at these criticisms and illustrates the relevance of a sociological perspective in the analysis of human practice. The book argues that the classical tradition must be treated as a living tradition, rather than a period piece. It analyzes the fundamental principles of belonging and conflict in society and provides a detailed critical survey of the principal social theories that offer solutions to the challenges of modernism.

"Chris Rojek provides a useful and well-referenced survey of modernist and postmodernist cultural theory. Always careful to locate his analysis in the work of leading thinkers, the reader is treated to a concise trip around the houses of recent and current cultural theory, stopping regularly to reconsider what light can be shed on the question of leisure in postmodern society." --Paul Ransome School of Social Studies University of Nottingham "This then is a book to get you thinking. It has proved impossible to convey accurately the exciting, wide-ranging, seemingly effortless travel across a wide variety of schools, disciplines and thinkers which Rojek employs to support his argument. he uses a direct personal style which shines through the closely argued material and keeps you turning the pages to the very end. Students brought up in the modernist traditions of sociologies of leisure may find this book challenging and ultimately even frustrating, but it is an essential text which I hope will appear on recommended reading lists everywhere leisure is studied." --Diane Seymour in Work, Employment & Society Prized and pursued by members of all societies, leisure is recognized as a consistent element of culture; yet within the context of disparate political and social structures, both its literal and symbolic significance differ greatly. In Decentring Leisure, author Chris Rojek considers the influence of such key social constructs as capitalism, modernity, and postmodernity on the ways we have come to perceive and use leisure. Within a capitalist framework, issues ranging from the meaning of workers' free time to the gendered nature of leisure are explored; the impact of modernity is examined next, offering accounts and analyses of the prevailing--and conflicting--theories. Finally, the author assays the cultural condition that has radically changed the idea of leisure: postmodernism. From a critical assessment of the effects of living in a risk society to a survey of the works of philosophic masters including Marx, Weber, Nietzsche, and Baudrillard, this absorbing volume will be required reading for students of leisure, culture, and social theory.

This book is available as open access through the Bloomsbury Open Access programme and is available on www.bloomsburycollections.com. The follow up to Chris Rojek's hugely successful Celebrity, this book assesses celebrity culture today. It explores how the fads, fashions and preoccupations of celebrities enter the popular lifeblood, explains what is distinctive about contemporary celebrity, and reveals the psychological, social and economic consequences of fame both upon the public and celebrities themselves. The book develops the framework for looking at celebrity culture which Rojek set out back in 2001, by showing how ascribed celebrity, achieved celebrity and celetoids overlap. The book gives a new emphasis to the role of the media and public relations in engineering fame, and the psychological consequences of celebrity - notably Narcissistic Personality Disorder and Celebrity Worship Syndrome. The book is a landmark contribution in explaining how celebrities dominate the social horizon and why we need them.

In recent years, the study of celebrity has developed and cohered into a flourishing field of social and cultural analysis. There is huge interest in topics such as the politics and logic of glamour; the role of the public-relations industry in manipulating television audiences; the relationship between fame and social control; and the economics of the so-called celebrity industry. And as interest in celebrity continues to explode, a variety of forerunners to its study drawing on materials from a wide range of disciplines including sociology, cultural studies, history, psychology, organization studies, politics, film, and literary studies have been rediscovered and reformulated. Among the lines of enquiry and critical tools that have been recuperated as pertinent to the study of celebrity are leadership, charisma, role models, heroes, role sets, ideology, manipulation, commodification, interpellation, narcissism, signification and individuality.

The sheer scale of the available research exploring the many implications of the phenomenon of celebrity and the breadth and complexity of the canon on which celebrity studies draws makes this new Major Work from Routledge especially timely. It answers the urgent need for a wide-ranging collection which provides easy access to the key items of scholarly literature, material that is often inaccessible or scattered throughout a variety of specialist journals and books. In four volumes, Celebrity brings together the best and most influential foundational and cutting-edge research on: the aetiology and basic concepts of celebrity (including charisma, narcissism, and commodification); theoretical and methodological approaches (e.g. Marxism, structuralism, semiotics, and cultural materialism); the mechanics of celebrity (such as the sociology and psychology of showmanship); and key controversies and current debates (e.g. the politics of stardom; the superstructure of celebrity; and the interpellation of celebrity news and the media).

Celebrity is supplemented with a full index, and includes a comprehensive introduction, newly written by the editor, which places the collected material in its historical and intellectual context. It is destined to be valued by scholars, students, and researchers as a vital research resource.

Edited by a leading scholar in the field, this new title from Routledge's Critical Perspectives on Business and Management series is a four-volume collection of canonical and cutting-edge research in Event Management. The origins of the serious study of Event Management are comparatively recent, but the subject has evolved rapidly, often drawing on scholarship, research, and practice from a number of other disciplines and cognate areas-primarily, Sports Studies, Leisure Studies, and Hospitality Studies, but also Business Studies, Organization Studies, Management Studies, Political Science, and Sociology. Event Management is now a vibrant and dynamic field of study and research, and the sheer scale of the growth in its output makes this collection especially timely. A wide range of social-science journals have published Event Management-related material and this collection makes readily available foundational pieces of scholarship-as well as cutting-edge research-from these disparate, and sometimes less accessible sources, and from other publications, some of which are no longer in print. Event Management provides a complete overview of the core and emergent issues in the field with a particular focus on the business, economic, and governmental aspects of events, especially issues of strategy formation and operational management. As well as bringing together the key studies and journal articles that have shaped Event Management, the collection will be welcomed as the first mapping of an area that to date has lacked an interdisciplinary synthesis. The thematic organization of the collection, together with the editor's introduction and commentary on the collected texts, will make sense of the wide range of approaches, theories, and concepts that have informed Event Management. It is an essential work of reference, destined to be valued as a vital research resource by all scholars and students of the subject.