Judith Butler's work on gender, sexuality, identity, and the body has proved massively influential across a range of academic disciplines in the humanities and social sciences. Yet it is also notoriously difficult to access.

This key book provides a comprehensive introduction to Butler's work, plus a critical examination of it and its precursors, both feminist (including Simone de Beauvoir, Monique Wittig, Julia Kristeva and Luce Irigaray), and non-feminist (including Erving Goffman, Michel Foucault, Jacques Lacan, and Jacques Derrida). The volume covers such topics as:

• gender as performance and performativity
• sociological notions of performance
• the materiality of the body and the role of biology
• power, identity and social regulation
• subjectivity, agency and feminist political practice.

A comprehensive introduction to Butler s work, this book also covers melancholia and gender identity, hate speech, pornography and 'race', social change and transformation, and Butler s shifting relation to psychoanalysis.

Clearly laid out to cover key themes for a student audience, this text will be an essential read for undergraduates in the fields of gender, psychoanalysis and sociology.

Changing Family Values offers a comprehensive introduction to contemporary debates and new research surrounding the family. It explores how we define traditional family values and how these values are perceived as being underthreat in contemporary society. Ranging across politics, social policy, law and sociology, the contributors focus on the diverse realities of contemporary family life. Issues covered include:
* the recent backlash against single mothers
* lesbian and gay families and the law
* men's changing roles within the family
* the future of the nuclear family.
This book is ideal for courses covering the family, a central topic in sociology and women's studies.

Judith Butler's work on gender, sexuality, identity, and the body has proved massively influential across a range of academic disciplines in the humanities and social sciences. It is also notoriously difficult to access. This book provides a comprehensive introduction to Butler's work, plus a critical examination of it and its precursors, both feminist (including Simone de Beauvoir, Monique Wittig, Julia Kristeva and Luce Irigaray), and non-feminist (including Erving Goffman, Michel Foucault, Jacques Lacan, and Jacques Derrida).