Semiotics provides key analytical tools to understand the creation and reproduction of meaning in social life. Although some fields have productively incorporated semiotic models, sociology still needs to engage with semiotic mediation. Written by a diverse group of authors in interpretive sociology, this ambitious volume asks what the relationship between meaning systems and action is, how we can describe culture and which roles we assign to language, social processes and cognition in a sociological context. Contributors offer empirical research that not only outlines the conceptual issues at stake, but also demonstrates ‘how to do things’ with semiotics through case studies. Synthesizing a diverse and fragmented landscape, this is a key reference work for scholars interested in the connection between semiotics and sociology.

Semiotics provides key analytical tools to understand the creation and reproduction of meaning in social life. Although some fields have productively incorporated semiotic models, sociology still needs to engage with semiosis mediation. Written by a diverse group of authors in interpretive sociology, this ambitious volume asks what the relationship between meaning systems and action is, how we can describe culture and which roles we assign to language, social processes and cognition in a sociological context. Contributors offer empirical research that not only outlines the conceptual issues at stake, but also demonstrates 'how to do things' with semiotics through case studies. Synthesizing a diverse and fragmented landscape, this is a key reference work for scholars interested in the connection between semiotics and sociology.

This Festschrift for Irving M. Zeitlin honors a scholar whose work has influenced and continues to influence sociology, particularly classical sociological theory, sociology of religion, and historical sociology. Irving M. Zeitlin's scholarship and mentoring has also influenced and inspired a new generation of sociologists. The essays presented here address a wide range of topics that include classical sociological theory, globalization, bureaucracy, genocide, resistance, ethnic diversity, the intifada, anti-Semitism, democracy, geopolitical theory, war literature, science, and national culture. The contributions span a wide range of geographical areas that include Korea, China, India, Poland, Spain, Germany, the ex-Soviet Union, Canada, and the United States. These essays by eminent scholars located in many parts of the world affirm the incredibly broad range of expertise and learning that Irving M. Zeitlin's work has engaged with. The contributions to this volume also serve to highlight the contemporary relevance of the classical sociological tradition in making sense of the global human condition.

The importance of the global rural-urban matrix is often overlooked due to urban-normativity. But sometimes agrarian populism and a pastoral rural imaginary result in the equally fallacy of a rural-normativity, as in Jeffersonian nostalgia for a lost way of life that never existed. The nature of rurality in North America is important to study, but as Alessandro Bonanno makes clear, we cannot limit ourselves to the study of one or two nation-states. We must take a global perspective when it comes to the bio-physical environment and the nature of the world capitalist system. This collection takes such a perspective. The editor frames the contributions with a Meta-Paradigm called the New Political Economy Perspective (NPEP) and explains the roots of that approach in Classical Political Economy and the Canadian Political Economy Tradition of Harold Adams Innis. There are chapters by an anthropologist, a geographer, two generalist sociologists and a group of rural sociologists. There is also a chapter on psychiatry and mental health; and, another chapter which discusses pedagogy. The use of an inter-disciplinary framework to study global issues makes this a stimulating book which provides a window on issues that are often overlooked.