Sociology Books

Book SynopsisIn this landmark effort to understand African American people in the New World, Gunnar Myrdal provides deep insight into the contradictions of American democracy as well as a study of a people within a people. The title of the book, An American Dilemma, refers to the moral contradiction of a nation torn between allegiance to its highest ideals and awareness of the base realities of racial discrimination. The touchstone of this classic is the jarring discrepancy between the American creed of respect for the inalienable rights to freedom, justice, and opportunity for all and the pervasive violations of the dignity of blacks.The appendices are a gold mine of information, theory, and methodology. Indeed, two of the appendices were issued as a separate work given their importance for systematic theory in social research. The new introduction by Sissela Bok offers a remarkably intimate yet rigorously objective appraisal of Myrdal—a social scientist who wanted to see himself as an analytic intellectual, yet had an unbending desire to bring about change. An American Dilemma is testimonial to the man as well as the ideas he espoused.When it first appeared An American Dilemma was called "the most penetrating and important book on contemporary American civilization" by Robert S. Lynd; "One of the best political commentaries on American life that has ever been written" in The American Political Science Review; and a book with "a novelty and a courage seldom found in American discussions either of our total society or of the part which the Negro plays in it" in The American Sociological Review. It is a foundation work for all those concerned with the history and current status of race relations in the United States.Table of ContentsVI: Justice; 24: Inequality of Justice; 25: The Police and Other Public Contacts; 26: Courts, Sentences and Prisons; 27: Violence and Intimidation; VII: Social Inequality; 28: The Basis of Social Inequality; 29: Patterns of Social Segregation and Discrimination; 30: Effects of Social Inequality; VIII: Social Stratification; 31: Caste and Class; 32: The Negro Class Structure; IX: Leadership and Concerted Action; 33: The American Pattern of Individual Leadership and Mass Passivity; 34: Accommodating Leadership; 35: The Negro Protest; 36: The Protest Motive and Negro Personality; 37: Compromise Leadership; 38: Negro Popular Theories a; 39: Negro Improvement and Protest Organizations; 40: The Negro Church; 41: The Negro School; 42: The Negro Press; X: The Negro Community; 43: Institutions; 44: Non-Institutional Aspects of the Negro Community; XI: An American Dilemma; 45: America Again at the Crossroads

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Book SynopsisNationwide, more and more entrepreneurs are committing themselves to creating and running "third places," also known as "great good places." In his landmark work, The Great Good Place, Ray Oldenburg identified, portrayed, and promoted those third places. Now, more than ten years after the original publication of that book, the time has come to celebrate the many third places that dot the American landscape and foster civic life. With 20 black-and-white photographs, Celebrating the Third Place brings together fifteen firsthand accounts by proprietors of third places, as well as appreciations by fans who have made spending time at these hangouts a regular part of their lives. Among the establishments profiled are a shopping centre in Seattle, a three-hundred-year-old tavern in Washington, D.C., a garden shop in Amherst, Massachusetts, a coffeehouse in Raleigh, North Carolina, a bookstore in Traverse City, Michigan, and a restaurant in San Francisco.

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Book SynopsisOne in every twenty difficult conflicts ends up grinding to a halt. That's fully 5 percent of not just the diplomatic and political clashes we read about in the newspaper, but disputations and arguments from our everyday lives as well. Once we get pulled into these self-perpetuating conflicts it is nearly impossible to escape. The 5 percent rule us. So what can we do when we find ourselves ensnared? According to Dr. Peter T. Coleman, the solution is in seeing our conflict anew. Applying lessons from complexity theory to examples from both American domestic politics and international diplomacy- from abortion debates to the enmity between Israelis and Palestinians- Coleman provides innovative new strategies for dealing with intractable disputes. A timely, paradigm-shifting look at conflict, The Five Percent is an invaluable guide to preventing even the most fractious negotiations from foundering.Trade ReviewMorton Deutsch "This book is an important, original contribution to understanding destructive, intractable conflicts and how to change them. It is well-writen and can be read with much profit by the general reader as well as by conflict specialists." Geoffrey Canada"As the world gets smaller and more complex, we have to improve our ability to live together peaceably - whether it is in our homes, our streets or between nations. This thoughtfully constructed examination of human conflict and how we can resolve it is a welcome antidote to the contentious times in which we live. Peter Coleman delivers hope in this guidebook to untangling our most intractable problems." Forward.com, July, 2011 "The Arty Semite" "Groundbreaking... Based on the work of an extraordinary multi-disciplinary team that includes specialists in complexity science, astrophysics, mathematics, social psychology, anthropology and conflict resolution, 'The Five Percent: Finding Solutions to Seemingly Impossible Conflicts' brings to the general reader, for the first time, research that could reshape our understanding of intractable conflicts... Coleman's book should be required reading for peacemakers around the world." Huntington News Network, August 13, 2011

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Book SynopsisIn Debord, Time and Spectacle Tom Bunyard provides a detailed philosophical study of the theoretical work of Guy Debord and the Situationist International. Drawing on evidence from Debord's books, films, letters and notes, Bunyard reconstructs the Hegelian and Marxian ideas that support Debord's central concept of 'spectacle'. This affords a reconsideration of Debord's theoretical claims, and a reinterpretation of his broader work that foregrounds his concerns with history and lived time.Table of ContentsAcknowledgementsList of IllustrationsIntroduction: Radioactivity Subjectivity, Temporality and Spectacle 1 Interpreting the Theory of Spectacle2 Five Aspects of Debord’s Theoretical Work The New Beauty: 1951–62 3 ‘We are Artists Insofar as We are No Longer Artists’4 The Everyday and the Absolute5 ‘Avant-Gardes Have Only One Time’ ‘Everything that had Formerly been Absolute Became Historical’ 6 Debord and French Hegelianism7 Subjects and Objects: Debord, Lukács and the Young Marx8 Life and Non-life In Pursuit of the Northwest Passage: 1963–73 9 Never Work!10 ‘I am Nothing and I Should be Everything’11 The ‘Fetishism of Capital’ The Integrated Spectacle: 1974–94 12 Moving with History’s ‘Bad Side’13 Strategy and Tactics in the Integrated Spectacle14 The Knight, Death and the DevilBibliographyIndex

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Book SynopsisFeagin and Cobas provide the first in-depth examination of the everyday racism faced by middle-class Latinos. Based on a national survey, we learn how a diverse group of talented Latinos Mexican Americans, Puerto Rican Americans, Cuban Americans, and others respond to and cope with the commonplace white racial framing and discriminatory practices. Drawing on extensive interviewing, the authors address the recurring discrimination of ordinary whites directed against Spanish speakers and individuals with presumed Latino phenotypes. These incidents occur in everyday encounters, such as when male and female Latinos travel or shop. The book also chronicles the mistreatment that Latinos face from immigration officials when they cross US borders and from the police when they are racially profiled outside Latino areas. Critical and conforming Latino responses to recurring white discrimination are also extensively examined, as well as the diverse Latino reactions to remedial programs like affirmative action and to the ideal of assimilation into the proverbial US melting pot. "Trade Review“One of the more vibrant debates among contemporary scholars of race and immigration concerning the racial fate of Latinos” —American Journal of Sociology “An outstanding overview of theories of racism…an excellent read for students and scholars in the field. Summing Up: Highly recommended.” —CHOICE “Latinos Facing Racism is an up to date, clear and well documented [book] that highlights the pervasiveness of the dynamics of racial discrimination still active in American society.” —Iperstoria “Feagin and Cobas wake the daydreamer who assumed in 2013 that Latinos are now viewed as American as apple pie, that they are seen as the warp and weave of our nation’s fabric. With passionate prose and solid scholarship, they point out the stereotypes, images, words, narratives, ways of speaking, and other white racial framings that perpetuate two ranks of American citizens. Their volume is a needed memorandum to remind us that the freedom from discrimination has not been achieved in the United States.” —Otto Santa Ana, University of California–Los Angeles “The explanatory power of the ‘white racial frame,’ grounded in compelling histories, elucidates these detailed accounts of Latino experiences in the United States. Attention to the power of the frame to shape these experiences is balanced by emphasis on a long tradition of Latino resistance. An original, important, and useful book.” —Jane H. Hill, University of Arizona Table of Contents1. Racializing Latinos 2. Spanish Language: Denigration and Racialization 3. The Racialization of Place and Space: Latinos in Public Spaces 4. Operating Out of the White Frame: Latino Adaptation and Conformity 5. Affirmative Action Programs: Latino Opposition and Support 6. Melting Pot, or Not: Latinos and Whiteness 7. The Great Demographic Shift and the US Future

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Book Synopsis"Globalization: An Introduction to the End of the Known World" surveys the history of globalization from the earliest of ancient texts through contemporary debates and the prospects for anticipating the new worlds to come. At the end of the twentieth century, debates over the nature of globalization were unable to agree on a simple resolution, except to say that globalization is economic, political, and cultural all at once. Cultural globalization affects everyone with a smartphone, on which global youth from Los Angeles to Jakarta listen to Jay-Z and Beyonce. States are torn in several directions at once by unsettling economic, political, and cultural forces. Lemert concludes with a serious outline of the possible ways of imagining what the still-unknown global world will become next ways including optimism, caution, and skepticism."Trade Review"Lemert is inviting us to wonder along with him how globalization came to be as it is, and that is a key to the art of teaching. A special and compelling work.” —Kai Erikson, Professor Emeritus, Yale University “With his usual combination of style and wit, Charles Lemert delights students and teachers of social theory once again. Distilling and assessing the most important aspects of the globalization debates while also pushing forth new conceptual ground in an unexpected engagement with actor-network theory and world-systems analysis, Globalization is a must for teachers from all disciplines who are looking for a rigorous intellectual statement on what may be the defining condition of our times.” —Sam Han, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore “A book of highest importance. Putting sociology and history into a reflective analysis, Charles Lemert helps us to see globalization anew. The book is full of quiet wisdom from a global expert, enlivened by personal examples. Just when it seemed that everything that could be said about globalization had been said, Lemert intervenes to make us think again!” —Professor Anthony Elliott, Director – Hawke Research Institute, University of South Australia Table of ContentsChapter 1 World under Siege; Chapter 2 What is Globalization?; Chapter 3 When did Globalization Begin?; Chapter 4 Globalization in the Modern World-System, 1500–1914; Chapter 5 Changing Global Structures in the Short Twentieth Century, 1914–1991; Chapter 6 The Globalization Debates; Chapter 7 The Future of Globalization;

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Book SynopsisThe everyday practices, policy ideas, and ideological and political battles that have shaped Egyptian education, from the era of nation-building in the twentieth century to the age of digital disruption in the twenty-firstFrom the 1952 revolution onward, a main purpose of formal education in Egypt was to socialize children and youth into adopting certain attitudes and behaviors conducive to the regimes in power. Control by the state over education was never entirely hegemonic. National education came increasingly under pressure due to a combination of the growing privatization of the education sector, the growth of political Islam, and rapidly changing digital technologies.Educating Egypt traces the everyday practices, policy ideas, and ideological and political and economic contests over education from the era of nation-building in the twentieth century to the age of global change and digital disruption in the twenty-first. Its overarching theme is that schooling and education, broadly defined, have consistently mirrored larger debates about what constitutes the model citizen and the educated person. Drawing on three decades of ethnographic research inside Egyptian schools and among Egyptian youth, Linda Herrera asks what happens when education actors harbor fundamentally different ideas about the purpose, provision, and meaning of education. Her research shows that, far from serving as a unifying social force, education is in reality an ongoing battleground of interests, ideas, and visions of the good society.Trade Review"A collection of studies conducted over the last 30 years by the preeminent American scholar of education in Egypt, this book paints an evocative portrait of the educational philosophies, institutions, and practices that have so poorly equipped Egyptian young people for the world they encounter as adults."—Foreign Affairs“[A] gem of a book in the expanding literature on the sociology of education and civic values in Egypt and the MENA region.”—Contemporary Sociology"[E]ngages some of the most difficult issues facing Egyptian students, parents, teachers, and state officials as this critical sector struggles under the accumulated weight of failed policies promoted by both Egyptian officials and international development 'experts.'”—Laurie A. Brand, Political Science Quarterly"[A] valuable and timely contribution to the small but expanding literature that views education as a way to understand societal structures and imaginaries and how they change."—Die Welt des Islams"A seminal work of original, informative, insightful, and thought-provoking scholarship. Exceptionally well written, organized and presented, Educating Egypt will be of particular interest to students of modern Egyptian political, educational, and cultural history."—Midwest Book Review"What makes this book important is the breadth and depth of the research. Combining ethnography and oral history with critical analysis of educational policies, laws, textbooks, and school curricula, Herrera offers a detailed, comprehensive study of educational policy in modern Egypt."—Khaled Fahmy, University of Cambridge"This book steers a skillful route through the complexity of education in Egypt, but it does more than that. It deals with the complexity of Egyptian society in general, against the background of mass poverty, high levels of unemployment, the digital divide, the country's geopolitical location, and long standing mores with respect to gender and other social relations. These all impinge on the education of Egyptian children, youth, and especially girls as Educating Egypt's thick ethnographic descriptions show. I cannot think of any better 'foreigner' than Linda Herrera, who lived and studied in Egypt, to carry out the task of researching all of the above. This volume proves me right."—Peter Mayo, University of MaltaTable of ContentsList of Figures and TablesAcknowledgmentsIntroduction: Educating Egypt: From Nation Building to Digital DisruptionPart 1: Schooling the Nation: Inside a Girls’ Preparatory School1: An Ethnographer’s Orientation2: Schooling Citizens3: Educating Girls4: Teachers of The Nation5: Grade FeverPart 2: Political Islam and Education6: The Islamist Wave and Education Markets7: Experiments in Counter-Nationalism8: DownveilingPart 3: Youth in a Changing Global Order9: Education, Empire, and Global Citizenship10: Young Egyptians’ Quest for Jobs and Justice11: Youth and Citizenship in the Digital Age: A View from Egypt12: It’s Time to Talk about Youth in the Middle East as “The Precariat’Part 4: Conclusions and Future Directions13: Is the School as We Know it on its Way to Extinction?NotesBibliographyIndex

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Book SynopsisWriting on Raving is the definitive mix of voices from the Brooklyn underground rave scene and beyond, providing fresh language for the shared and infinitely varied experience of dancing through the night until the morning. New York rave culture is having a moment. The music, mostly, is techno, certain flavors of which became the soundtrack to a dancefloor culture that is queer in a different way to house music centered gay nightlife. Wark, Mak and Beery want to document and annotate and celebrate, but also critique, this world in the making. Writing on Raving centers the New York scene, but isn’t limited to it. This is a book for all of those who need the rave. Who need to dance. Who have at some point needed that beat in their lives. This is a book for all those who have journeyed through the night, through sound, through movement, through chemistry, into other places, other times, other encounters. This seeking gives us hours, years, on the dance floor to think about why we rave, to locate these reasons in our bodies and the space around us. But the rave is not the place to articulate them. It is too loud; our friends are too distracted, or too high. At the afters, tired and drained and covered in schmutz, we think some more. We look around at our raver friends, and wonder: How did we get here? What happened to us? What is this tentacular, thrashing, swelling thing that we all made together? That thing that is now slumped and aching and coming down now into our fragmentary, singular lives? Between all of us, there are many answers to such questions. Wark, Mak and Beery have gathered their favorite ones to share in this first-ever anthology of writing on raving. Writing on Raving is a night of readings and performances about nightlife, dancing, and techno, about why we love these things, but also how that love is complicated. It brings together a diverse range of writers whose dispatches from dance floors, bedrooms, and their own histories hold a mirror to a community whose cultural preservation is still emergent. The series was founded in 2021 by Geoffrey Mak, Zoë Beery and McKenzie Wark and has included events in Brooklyn, San Francisco, and Los Angeles.

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Book SynopsisToday, more and more grandmothers around the world are taking on varied responsibilities and many roles, sometimes concurrently. Consequently, grandmothers continue to play, as in the past, an influential role not only in the lives of their grandchildren, but also in our communities and in society more broadly. Grandmothers and Grandmothering: Creative and Critical Contemplations in Honour of our Women Elders, as the title suggests, seeks to pay homage to our grandmothers and their contributions to society. As well, it aims to explore the textured and complex phenomena of grandmothering from a range of disciplines and cultural perspectives. Our hope is that this collection challenges preconceived notions of what it means to be a grandmother and provides insight into the multifaceted nature of grandmothering.Trade ReviewGrandmothers and Grandmothering is an important collection that will help all readers honor the legacy of their grandmothers and foremothers. The stories, art, poems, and analysis herein complicate and expand our cultural expectations of grandmothers, while creating nuanced portraits of women who were much more than their grandmotherly role. This is an excellent book for anyone interested in revisiting treasured (or painful) pasts, as well as those looking toward a rich future as an elder. - Nicole L. Willey, PhD, Professor of English, Kent State University Tuscarawas // Grandmothers & Grandmothering: Weaving Creative and Scholarly Perspectives In Honour of Our Women Elders is a timely and vast look at the subject. This take on the topic t offers new research, and considerations, on the importance of grandmothers. The result is both highly instructive, and optimistic about the possibilities of this identity, and the many roles it fills. The book challenges our notions of traditional grandmothers/mothering and, in doing so, spurs the subject to new research and conversational opportunities. Requiring a modern rewrite, this book reshapes the folklore around elder knowledge production and indeed, weaves, creativity and scholarship in important ways, resulting in an important reengagement with and identity category prone to dismissal. - Jessica Jennrich Ph.D., Director of the Center for Women and Gender Equity, Grand Valley State UniversityTable of ContentsDedication Acknowledgements Foreword Gina Valle Introduction & Postscript Kathy Mantas Chapter 1 The Paradoxes of Grandmothering: An Autobiographical Experience of Two Lesbian Grandmothers in South Africa Fikile Vilakazi & Janette Zodwa Magubane Chapter 2 North of the Diamond Elizabeth Johnston Ambrose Chapter 3 Saying I Love You: Khmer-American Style Bunkong Tuon Chapter 4 My Esther: Darkness and the Shine Joanne M. Clarkson Chapter 5 The Stories of Carolyn King of Parry Island Jennifer King Chapter 6 Malleable Matter Maja A. Ngom Chapter 7 Gail Peters Little: Relationship of Love and Abandonment Marion G. Dumont Chapter 8 Grandmothering in the Context of Criminal Justice: Grandmothers in Prison and Grandmothers as Caregivers When a Parent is Imprisoned Lucy Baldwin Chapter 9 A Series of Four Poems, Variations on a Theme: The Mother of a New Mother, at Birth of a Child Janet e. Smith Chapter 10 Grandmothers Near and Far Michele Hoffnung and Emily Stier Adler Chapter 11 Walk Beside Me Debbie Lee Chapter 12 Have Moon Fairies Flown Away?: Evolving Role of Grandmothers in Pakistan Anwar Shaheen & Abeerah Ali Chapter 13 A Patchwork Life Gladys Loewen, Sharon Loewen Shepherd and William Loewen Chapter 14 Not a Fairy Grandmother Lorinda Peterson Chapter 15 When Wisdom Speaks Sparks Fly: Raging Grannies Perform Humor as Protest Carole Roy Chapter 16 Nokmisag: Bemnigying Moktthewenkwe Barbara Wall Contributor Notes

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Book SynopsisHomosexuals, transvestites, transsexuals, sado-masochists, necrophiliacs - all of these have been, or still are, considered 'deviants'. Concomitantly there has been almost universal acceptance that unembellished vaginal penetration, performed by one man and one woman, is 'normal' sex. This is now contested. But what is perverse sex and what isn't? The Pleasure's All Mine explores the gamut of sexual activity that has been seen as strange, abnormal or deviant over the last 2,000 years. This first comprehensive history of sexual perversion examines an abundance of original sources - letters, diaries, memoirs, court records, erotic books, medical texts and advice manuals - and shows how, for ordinary people, different kinds of sex have always offered myriad different pleasures. There never was a 'normal'. Almost all sexual behaviours have travelled to and fro along a continuum of proscription and acceptance. Attitudes have changed towards masturbation, leatherwear, 'golden showers' and sado-masochism.From the specialized cultures of pain, necrophilia and bestiality to the social world of plushies and furries, and lovers of life-sized sex dolls, some previously acceptable behaviour now provokes social outrage, while activities as diverse as sodomy and wife-swapping have moved on the spectrum of acceptance from sin to harmless fun. Each 'perversion' is explored from the time it was first visible in history, to how it is viewed today, and along the way the book asks why we can be so intolerant of other people's sexual preferences. Carefully researched as well as a fascinating read, and featuring a wide array of illustrations, The Pleasure's All Mine reaches conclusions that are surprising and sometimes shocking. This is an essential volume for anyone interested in the art, history and culture of sex.Trade Review'For those with an erudite interest in debauchery, this latest from author, historian, and sex scholar Peakman is just the ticket... Peakman's broad overview is stunning, sweeping, and very carefully nonjudgmental. She recounts the history of each so-called perversion from its earliest recorded occurrence through the present, showing how the shifting mores of society color our views on this endlessly fascinating subject ... Exhaustively researched and packed with startling images, this work is a fact-filled, entertaining read for sex history neophytes and scholars alike.' - Library Journal 'Throughout history, sexual norms have shifted drastically: an act that is seen as deviant at one time may be widely accepted at another. Peakman argues that sexual acts have not changed much through the ages, but the cultural response to them has. Today, discussions about sexual preferences are still taboo in many parts of the world, and many opinions are still colored by society's long-held beliefs ... This is a history for the general reader, primarily covering Western thought; it's also a wonderful reference source for sexual studies and research ... Peakman asks readers to think about how society dictates their own opinions, and her work helps pave the way for more open discussions of sexuality in the future.' - Publishers' Weekly 'Serious, historically informed, and as close to an exhaustive account as we are likely ever to see of the extravagant creativity that humans have invested in sex. A masterpiece.' - Thomas W. Laqueur, Helen Fawcett Distinguished Professor in the Department of History, University of California, Berkeley

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Book SynopsisThis book explores how fishers make the sea productive through their labour, using technologies ranging from wooden boats to digital GPS plotters to create familiar places in a seemingly hostile environment. It shows how their lives are affected by capitalist forces in the markets they sell to, forces that shape even the relations between fishers on the same boat. Fishers frequently have to make impossible choices between safe seamanship and staying afloat economically, and the book describes the human impact of the high rate of deaths in the fishing industry. The book makes a unique contribution to understanding human-environment relations, examining the places fishers create and name at sea, as well as technologies and navigation practices. It combines phenomenology and political economy to offer new approaches for analyses of human-environment relations and technologies.This book is relevant to United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 14, Life below waterTrade Review'Brilliant...boldly bridging the conceptual gap between studies of work and the environment, McCall Howard's ethnography charts an innovative and ambitious course for research on the Anthropocene...tremendously compelling.'Brandon Hunter-Pazzara, Current Anthropology‘As Howard makes clear capital and its drive to profit must be challenged—this book is a weapon in that fight.’Sarah Ensor, International Socialism, A quarterly review of socialist theoryHow do the fishers relate to each other, their boats, their technologies, the sea, their catches? In this deeply researched book, written with an intimate feel for fishing and the sea, Penny McCall Howard answers these questions. Based on the Scottish industry, this important book shows how class relations continue to shape labour, working relationships, environments and at times life and death. Few researchers hold both a 100-ton captain’s licence from the US Merchant Marine and a doctoral degree; few are as at home on a fishing boat’s deck as they are in a library. Penny McCall Howard brings a unique blend of abilities to this compelling account of work and has produced an argument for rethinking how we understand the nature of labour in any industry and in all places. Professor Bradon Ellem, University of Sydney Business School‘It is rare to find a work that so compellingly integrates a phenomenological analysis of the experience of work, based on participant observation, with an account of the pressures of political economy and dynamic patterns of class relations in a specific industry. Inspired by Robert Desjarlais, Howard achieves a ‘critical phenomenology’, giving greater depth to phenomenological description by linking sensation, perception and subjectivity to pervasive systems of power and inequality. These in turn are connected to the mutually constitutive connections between workers and the environment that create productive fishing grounds.’Professor Linda Connor, The Australian Journal of Anthropology‘The description of the lived experiences of the author and fishers are used to create an absorbing and, at times, moving narrative….It is the ability to connect the daily lives of fishers to seemingly distant market forces that makes Environment, labour and capitalism at sea an exceptional book…There is an incredible amount to this text that will be of relevance to those interested in global supply chains, environment labour relations, social relations of work, neo-liberalism and regulation….McCall Howard’s deeply rich and confronting account of the social relations that face and at times overwhelm the fishers of the west coast of Scotland needs be read by people interested in work and our collective environmental future.’Dr. Caleb Goods, Journal of Industrial Relations ‘This story of how livelihoods are wrestled from the sea is an anthropological first. Never before has the work of commercial fishermen been brought to life with such vividness, depth and attention to detail, or subjected to such rigorous and hard-headed analysis.’ Professor Tim Ingold, Chair in Social Anthropology, University of Aberdeen, UK‘Environment, Labour and Capitalism at Sea unpacks the broader social forces that mediate interactions between human beings and their marine environment while simultaneously drawing out the individual stories and life histories of Scottish fishers….It is well written and emotive. The honest portrayal of the suffering of conflicted fishers who struggle against forces beyond their control aids in our understanding of the root causes of environmental change and the metabolic relationship between humankind and nature. Readers who study environmental sociology, food, and agricultural systems would do well to read Howard’s work.’Timothy P. Clark, Human Ecology Review‘This well-written and memorable account provides thought-provoking reading on an industry that is poorly understood. As such it will merit a space on the shelves of those who are interested in fishing, in ethnography, and in the human costs of capitalism.’Helen Sampson Cardiff University, Journal of Royal Anthropological Institute, 24:4'Penny McCall Howard provides us with a thoroughly engaging and sensitively written account of the multiple forces that shape fishers’ lives at sea. Based on extended participant observation both on boats and on land on the west coast of Scotland, the richness of the material presented for analysis reveals the quality of her fieldwork practices and the strength of the relationships she forged with fishers during that time….Howard’s work represents a refreshing contribution to ethnographies of northern Scotland because it firmly dispels the tired tropes of rural idylls and bucolic landscapes that have long been associated with this part of the world.'Louise Rebecca Senior, Social Anthropology‘Environment, Labour and Capitalism at Sea is a remarkable work. It’s a first rate piece of Marxist anthropology that puts human labor at the center of a discussion about ecology. It shows how the biodiversity crisis in the oceans is related to wider social relations, and emphasizes again how the fight to prevent environmental destruction requires challenging the priorities of the system — not just changes to our diet. For radical environmentalists and Marxist ecologists this should be a required read.’Martin Empson, climate and Capitalism, June 2019'It has been a pleasure to read this book, and I highly recommend it to everyone.' Charles Menzies, Journal of Agrarian Change'Howard has written a rare book that presents complex and well-formulated arguments while also being immersive, exciting, and hugely enjoyable to read. Drawing together phenomenology and political economy, Howard analyzes labor through its perceptual engagement with the environment, insisting that the environment is not just land and sea, but also markets, competition, and traumatic experiences of loss.'Rebecca Prentice, Focaal-Journal of Global and Historical Anthropology -- .Table of ContentsIntroductionPart I: A metabolism of labour and environment1 'Working the ground'2 From Wullie's Peak to the Burma: naming places at seaPart II: Techniques and technologies3 Techniques to extend the body and its senses4 From 'where am I?' to 'where is that?' Rethinking navigationPart III: Capitalism and class5 'You just can't get a price': the difference political economy makes6 Structural violence in ecological systemsConclusion: labour, class, environments and anthropologyIndex

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Book SynopsisFrom Title IX cases on campus, to #metoo and #timesup, rape is a definitive issue at the heart of feminism, and lately, it's barely out of the news. Cultural critic Mithu Sanyal is picking up where Susan Brownmiller left off in her influential 1975 book Against Our Will. In fact, she argues that the way we understand rape hasn't changed since then, even as the world has changed beyond recognition. She contends that it is high time for a new and informed debate about rape, sexual boundaries and consent.Sanyal argues that the way we as a society understand rape tells us not just how we understand sexual violence, but how we understand sex, sexuality, and gender itself. For instance, why is it so hard to imagine men as victims of rape? Why do we expect victims to be irreparably damaged? When we think of rapists, why do we still think of strangers in dark alleys, rather than uncles, husbands, priests, or boyfriends?The book examines the role of race and the trope of the black rapist, the omission of male victims, and what we mean when we talk about rape culture. She provocatively takes every received opinion we have about rape, and turns it inside out - arguing with liberals, conservatives, feminists and sexists alike.Trade ReviewAn essential book for our times by a writer at the height of her powers. Gripping, informed and accessible, this will be an instant feminist classic. -- Laurie Penny, author of Unspeakable ThingsMithu Sanyal demonstrates why society tends to stick to centuries-old stigmata of sexual stereotypes when talking about sexual violence - she enlightens an irrational discourse. * Spiegel *Offers a refreshing perspective on how and what feminists should prioritise * Australian Book Review *

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Book SynopsisDon't just see the sights get to know the people. Nestling in the foothills of the Himalayas, Nepal is a land of contrasts and incongruities not least in the variety of its cultural, ethnic, and religious weave. The Nepalese attitude to life is essentially religious. Hindu and Buddhist values predominate and help to maintain social harmony despite the divisions between rich and poor, urban and rural, highlands and lowlands. Culture Smart! Nepal sets out to explain the complexities of Nepalese life, from home to business, to the marketplace. It tells you what to expect, and provides insights that will help you to go beyond friendly smiles and turn your visit into an enlightening and rewarding experience. Have a more meaningful and successful time abroad through a better understanding of the local culture. Chapters on values, attitudes, customs, and daily life will help you make the most of your visit, while tips on etiquette and communication will help you navigate unfamiliar situations and avoid faux pas.Trade Review"Culture Smart! has come to the rescue of hapless travellers," - Sunday Times Travel; "...the perfect introduction to the weird, wonderful and downright odd quirks and customs of various countries," - Global Travel; "...full of fascinating, as well as common sense, tips to help you avoid embarrassing faux pas," - Observer; "...as useful as they are entertaining," - Easy Jet Magazine; "...offer glimpses into the psyche of a faraway world," - New York TimesTable of ContentsKey History - Politics - Economic Life - Values - Attitudes - Religion - Traditions - Taboos - Festivals & Holidays - Friendships & Family - Women in Society - Humour - Hospitality & Home life - Cultural Life - Cuisine & Dining Out - Socializing - Dos and Don'ts - Business Etiquette - Punctuality & Time Keeping - Meetings & Presentations - Negotiating - Bureaucracy - Communication & Language - Tips

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Book SynopsisDon’t just see the sights―get to know the people. Italy delights and stimulates with its magnificent cities and monuments, stunningly beautiful landscapes, the glory of its art and architecture, the richness and variety of its food, the elegance of its design and fashion, and the vitality and charm of its people. Italian style and culture have been exported all over the world. At home, however, Italian society and politics are facing challenges as the country struggles to maintain its standard of living, the stability of its currency, and its ability to provide jobs. The influx of refugees across the Mediterranean is putting pressure on both its social fabric and its economy. Culture Smart! Italy is an insider s guide to their daily lives, passions, and preoccupations. It introduces you to their history and culture, and provides vital information and practical tips to help smooth your path in different social situations. Have a more meaningful and successful time abroad through a better understanding of the local culture. Chapters on values, attitudes, customs, and daily life will help you make the most of your visit, while tips on etiquette and communication will help you navigate unfamiliar situations and avoid faux pas.Trade Review"Culture Smart! has come to the rescue of hapless travellers," - Sunday Times Travel; "...the perfect introduction to the weird, wonderful and downright odd quirks and customs of various countries," - Global Travel; "...full of fascinating, as well as common sense, tips to help you avoid embarrassing faux pas," – Observer; "...as useful as they are entertaining," - Easy Jet Magazine; "...offer glimpses into the psyche of a faraway world," - New York TimesTable of ContentsKey History – Politics – Economic Life – Values – Attitudes – Religion – Traditions – Taboos – Festivals & Holidays – Friendships & Family – Women in Society – Humour – Hospitality & Home life – Cultural Life – Cuisine & Dining Out – Socializing – Dos and Don’ts – Business Etiquette – Punctuality & Time Keeping – Meetings & Presentations – Negotiating – Bureaucracy – Communication & Language – Tips

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Book SynopsisThe institution of sport has pervasive roots that are steeped in patriarchy. Despite this tradition, sport is at the forefront in making us aware of personal and social issues in global societies. However, sociological attention to family and sport is long overdue and sorely needed. Providing timely knowledge and long-awaited insights into pressing issues, this volume of Research in the Sociology of Sport establishes family and sport as a clearly identified field of study within sociology. Focusing on how families participate in sport in global societies where traditional norms are rapidly evolving, this edited collection presents unique contributions to an under researched area of sociological inquiry. Offering a wide range of perspectives and a multidisciplinary approach, contributors provide applicable solutions to this sociological oversight, and nuanced scholarship that invites future consideration. Divided into three major sections, chapters explore traditional values that are actively challenged by both children and adults, examine the effects of cultural shifts on family relationships, and assess the patriarchal structure of sport participation in global societies. Highlighting the microlevel of the family to grapple with contemporary social issues at the macrolevel of society, Family and Sport: Notable Contributions to Sociology charts new territory to advance a valuable understanding of family and sport issues.Table of ContentsIntroduction; Steven M. Ortiz PART I. Family-Sport Socialization Chapter 1. The Great Sport Myth: Children’s Non-elite Sport in New Zealand; Aleksandra Stojanovska, Roslyn Kerr, and Greg Ryan Chapter 2. Exploring Gendered Stereotypes: Sports Participation and Adolescent Closeness to Mothers; Tom R. Leppard and Mikaela J. Dufur PART II. Sport as Social Control Chapter 3. Parenting in School-based Sailing Programs: Gender and Social Class Reproduction; Anne Schmitt and Matthew Atencio Chapter 4. Women and Sports in Pakistan: Family Perpetuation of the Hymen Rupture Stigma; Umer Hussain Chapter 5. Latina Teens and Sports Participation: Moving Beyond Gendered Cultural Explanations; Vera Lopez PART III. Work-Family Challenges Chapter 6. Footballer Wives: Communication and Coping at Home in Absence of Spouse; Chuka Onwumechili and Unwana Samuel Akpan Chapter 7. Iron Moms: Toward an Endurance Sport Identity; Diana Tracy Cohen Chapter 8. Jogging Toward Responsibility: Pregnant and Parenting Elite Distance Runners Need Support; Francine Darroch, Sydney Smith, Audrey Giles, and Heather Hillsburg Conclusion; Steven M. Ortiz

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Book SynopsisWhat is incest? Is it universally prohibited? Does this prohibition concern only "biological" kinships or does it extend to various "social" kinships, such as those that are formed today in so-called blended families but which also exist in many other societies?This prohibition plays a fundamental role in the functioning of the multiple kinship systems studied throughout the world. But where does it come from? Can we think, with Claude Lévi-Strauss, that the prohibition of incest alone marks the passage from nature to culture? And how can we understand, then, the persistent tension between the proclaimed, institutionalized prohibition and the incestuous practice which, everywhere, remains?World-renowned anthropologist Maurice Godelier highlights an essential fact, the spontaneously asocial and undifferentiated character of human sexuality and the need for a social regulation of this spontaneity. It thus brings to light the main teachings of anthropology on the question of incest, a major social fact of burning relevance today.

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Book SynopsisThis book draws on data gathered during eighteen months of ethnographic fieldwork in the Chubut Province of Patagonia, Argentina. It focuses on the formation of Welsh subjectivity through sight and sound, seeking to unpack the multiple and multisensory ways in which identity is constructed in this context. The chapters analyse a series of encounters, in choir rehearsals, the Eisteddfod and in film nights, to consider the usefulness and limitations of theoretical concepts that have been developed and used to theorise the self. This is a book about power, music, tourism and the self. It argues that the creation of Welshness in Y Wladfa was not only explicitly foregrounded in performances for tourists under an imagined Welsh gaze, but also for a Welsh ear, with subjectivities created and re-created through musical encounters. It is the first anthropological monograph of its kind that provides an insight into the significance of music in the Welsh Patagonian context.

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Book SynopsisCompellingly argued and lyrically charged, A World without Police offers concrete strategies for confronting and breaking police power, as a first step toward building community alternatives that make the police obsolete. Surveying the post-protest landscape in Minneapolis, Philadelphia, Chicago, and Oakland, as well as the people who have experimented with policing alternatives at a mass scale in Latin America, Maher details the institutions we can count on to deliver security without the disorganizing interventions of cops: neighborhood response networks, community-based restorative justice practices, democratically organized self-defense projects, and well-resourced social services.Tens of millions of people poured onto the streets for Black Lives Matter, bringing with them a wholly new idea of public safety, common security, and the delivery of justice, communicating that vision in the fiery vernacular of riot, rebellion, and protest. A World without Police transcribes these new ideas-written in slogans and chants, over occupied bridges and hastily assembled barricades-into a compelling, must-read manifesto for police abolition.A World without Police argues that abolition is not a distant dream or an unreachable horizon but an attainable reality. In communities around the world, we are beginning to glimpse a real, lasting justice in which we keep us safe.Trade ReviewCiccariello-Maher's book is a triumph of reporting, narrative, and theoretical analysis. It's a testament to what happens when you keep your eyes open, your ear to the ground, and your head on straight. -- Corey Robin, author of The Enigma of Clarence Thomas, in praise of Building the CommuneFrom the ashes of the Third Precinct, Geo Maher looks for what grows when the deadly shadow of the police is removed. He writes an urgent history of the present. The ingredients of white supremacy, colonialism, and capitalism are baked into the cake called America, especially the institution of the police. You can't unbake that cake. Maher contends creating a world without police is not only possible, but necessary. -- Nick Estes, author of Our History Is the FutureA World Without Police is provocative in the best possible ways: It dares the reader to imagine a future only without policing, but shorn of the capitalism and white supremacy that refashions a public in the image of the police. It situates the carceral and coercive institutions in the US within broader global currents of imperial violence. And it demands that we together build strong, antiracist, and egalitarian communities that can defend themselves here and across national boundaries. -- Laleh Khalili, author of Sinews of War and TradeGeo rips away the band-aid of liberal police reform to expose the open wound of racism, colonialism, and economic exploitation at the heart of capitalism and its police and shows us that healing that wound will require deep global transformations rooted in community empowerment. -- Alex Vitale, author of End of PolicingStunning in conception. Forceful in Argument. Expert in proposing remedies. In sum, this is a book that must not only be read - but studied. -- Gerald Horne, author of Fire This TimeNo reasonable person can read this book and still believe police are good for us. Geo Maher proves on every single page that A World Without Police is no utopia but a concrete necessity if we want to preserve life and make our communities safer. And he shows us precisely how it could be done. Take this book everywhere. Read, share, act; defund, disarm, abolish. -- Robin D. G. Kelley, author of Freedom DreamsMaher's prose, trenchant and unapologetic, helps us write a poetry of abolition. -- Tyler Wall, author of Police: A Field GuideA thesis sure to stir plenty of controversy but worthy of discussion. * Kirkus Reviews *A clear-sighted and passionate case for abolition that is ultimately an argument for changing the world as we know it. Maher's work is steeped in historical understanding and revolutionary insight, but it is, above all, determinedly hopeful and humane in its vision of another way of living together that is absolutely possible. -- Priyamvada Gopal, author of Insurgent EmpireThanks to the tireless organizing work of the "stubborn agitators, zealots, and fanatics of the best sort" who inspire Geo Maher, police abolition is an increasingly widespread political demand. A World Without Police dismantles every argument cops and their supporters offer to defend our present world with police, incisively detailing their flaws and falsehoods. In our future world without police, Maher's persuasive book will serve as the institution's autopsy report. -- Stuart Schrader, author of Badges Without BordersGeo Maher not only demonstrates definitively that police serve a wealthy white elite and don't protect us, but also illuminates the path toward abolishing policing. By describing concrete local and global experiments in grassroots resistance, he brings clarity to how community organizing works tactically and politically to make policing obsolete. A World without Police offers inspiring assurance that we can achieve the vision embodied in its title. -- Dorothy Roberts, author, Killing the Black Body and Shattered BondsIn A World Without Police, Geo Maher considers modern day abolitionist movements against policing. Through the flames of the 2020 uprisings, he illuminates a long history of abolitionist struggles for freedom, for democracy, and for the radical transformation of the world. An urgent text for our times. -- Christina Heatherton, editor of Policing the PlanetA World without Police analyzes the unfinished business of 'abolition democracy' in the twenty-first century. Amidst a cycle of rebellion, Geo Maher deftly illuminates how policing is a 'racket'. The power to transform society, he argues, lies in the visions of radical democratic movements to abolish the police. -- Jordan Camp, author of Incarcerating the CrisisWhat is the 'thin blue line' if not a border, writes Geo Maher in his terrific new book A World Without Police. In nine beautifully written chapters, he takes us on a terrifying tour of that border, reminding us that cops have never engaged in law enforcement, crime fighting, or public safety. The claim by cops and police reformists that policing secures democracy and civilization against savagery and barbarism is a cruel lie that hides a sadistic police history of white supremacist violence against the poor. We'll never be free as long as cops patrol our streets, and Geo Maher's book helps light our way in our struggle to build a world free from the plague of police. -- David Correia, author of Police: A Field GuideAn essential introduction to the case for abolishing the police. * Publishers Weekly *In A World Without Police, [Maher] advocates for police abolition alongside community safety. * Lit Hub (75 Nonfiction Books You Should Read This Summer) *[A World Without Police] is nothing if not exhaustive. From transit police to the police unions under the Fraternal Order of the Police to a complicit Black elite, Maher implicates the police and its allies in the history of American violence writ large. -- Kamil Ahsan * NPR Books *Both one of the most compelling arguments for police abolition and a complete depiction of the nationwide George Floyd uprisings to date...Sure to be a key abolitionist text for activists and organizers. -- Christian Noakes * Workers World *Compelling ... combin[ing] political theory and history with accessible writing ... [A World Without Police] demonstrate[s] that democratic and egalitarian alternatives already exist. -- Christopher McMichael * New Frame *A World Without Policing lays out a withering takedown of the institution of policing with fiery vim and audacious aplomb. A searing and incisively argued indictment of the edifice of policing and an argument for abolition. -- Brian Bean * Rampant *

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Book SynopsisAcross the world, algorithms are changing the nature of work. Nowhere is this clearer than in the logistics and distribution sectors, where workers are instructed, tracked and monitored by increasingly dystopian management technologies.In Cyberboss, Craig Gent takes us into workplaces where algorithms rule to excavate the politics behind the newest form of managerial power. Combining worker testimony and original research on companies such as Amazon, Uber, and Deliveroo, the cutting edge of algorithmic management technology, this book reveals the sometimes unexpected effects these new techniques have on work, workers and managers. Gent advances an alternative politics of resistance in the face of digital control.

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Book Synopsis‘Human zoos’, forgotten symbols of the colonial era, have been totally repressed in our collective memory. In these ‘anthropo-zoological’ exhibitions, ‘exotic’ individuals were placed alongside wild beasts and presented behind bars or in enclosures. Human zoos were a key factor, however, in the progressive shift in the West from scientific to popular racism. Beginning with the early nineteenth-century European exhibition of the Hottentot Venus, this thoroughly documented volume underlines the ways in which they affected the lives of tens of millions of visitors, from London to New York, from Warsaw to Milan, from Moscow to Tokyo… Through Barnum’s freak shows, Hagenbeck’s ‘ethnic shows’ (touring major European cities from their German base), French-style villages nègres, as well as the great universal and colonial exhibitions, the West invented the ‘savage’, exhibited the ‘peoples of the world’, whilst in many cases preparing for or contributing to their colonization… This first mass contact between ‘us’ and ‘them’, between the West and elsewhere, created an invisible border. Measured by scientists, exploited in shows, used in official exhibitions, these men, women and children became extras in an imaginary and in a history that were not their own. Based on the best-selling French volume Zoos Humains but with a number of newly commissioned chapters, Human Zoos puts into perspective the ‘spectacularization’ of the Other, a process that is at the origin of contemporary stereotypes and of the construction of our own identities. A unique book, on a crucial phenomenon, which takes us to the heart of Western fantasies, and allows us to understand the genesis of identity in Japan, Europe and North America.Table of Contents List of Contributors Human Zoos: The Greatest Exotic Shows in the West: Introduction - Pascal Blanchard, Gilles Boetsch, Eric Deroo and Sandrine Lemaire Part I - The Specifity of the Human Zoo: Histories and Definitions 1. From Wonder to Error: Monsters from Antiquity to Modernity - Rosemarie Garland-Thomson 2. The Hottento Venus: Birth of a 'Freak' (1815)- Gilles Boetsch and Pascal Blanchard 3. Barnum and Joice Heth: The Birth of Ethnic Shows in the United States (1836) - Benjamin Reiss 4. London, Capital of Exotic Exhibitions from 1830-1860 - Nadja Durbach 5. When the Exotic Becomes a Show - Robert Bogdan 6. Ethnographic Showcases: Account and Vision - Raymond Corbey 7. From Scientific Racism to Popular and Colonial Racism in France and the West - Pascal Blanchard, Nicolas Bancel and Sandrine Lemaire 8. Human Zoos: The Savage and the Anthropologist - Gilles Boetsch and Yann Ardagna 9. The Cinema as Zoo-Keeper - Eric Deroo Part II- Models of the Human Zoo: Populations on Display 10. American Indians in Buffalo Bill's Wild West - Sam Maddra 11. The Ethnographic Exhibitions of the Jardin Zoologique d'Acclimatation - William H. Schneider 12. The Onas Exhibited in the Musee du Nord, Brussels: Reconstruction of a Lost File - Peter Mason 13. Meeting the Amazons - Suzanne Preston Blier 14. Hagenbeck's European Tours: The Development of the Human Zoo - Hilke Thode-Arora 15. Africa Meets the Great Farini - Shane Peacock 16. India and Ceylon in Colonial and World Fairs (1851-1931) - Catherine Servan- Schreiber 17. Seeing the Imaginary: On the Popular Reception of Wild West Shows in Germany, 1885-1910 - Eric Ames 18. Billy the Australian in the Anthropological Laboratory - Rosalyn Poignant 19. Dr Khan and the Niam-Niams - Bernth Lindfors 20. Photography and the Making of the Other - Elizabeth Edwards Part III- National Identities: The Human Zoo in Context 21. Colonial Expositions and Ethnic Hierarchies in Modern Japan - Arnaud Nanta 22. The Imperial Exhibitions of Great Britain - John MacKenzie 23. The Congolese in 'Imperial' belgium - Jean-Pierre Jacquemin 24. Freaks and Geeks: Coney Island Sideshow Performers and Long Island Eugenicists, 1910-1935 - Tanfer Emin Tunc 25. Africans in America: African Villages at America's World's Fairs (1893-1901) - Robert W. Rydell 26. The 1904 St Louis Anthropological Games - Fabrice Delsahut 27. From the Diorama to the Dialogic: A Century of Exhibiting Africa at the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History - Mary Jo Arnoldi 28. Human Zoos in Switzerland - Patrick Minder 29. Living Ethnological and Colonial Exhibitions in Liberal and Fascist Italy - Guido Abbattista and Nicola Labanca 30. Exhibiting People in Spain: Colonialism and Mass Culture - Neus Moyano Miranda 31. The Zoos of the Exposition Coloniale Internationale, Paris 1931 - Herman Lebovics Postface: Situating 'Human Zoos' - Chrles Forsdick General Bibliography

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Book Synopsis"Violence is sadly central to social life and yet oddly marginal to social theory. It’s there in the background, not least as Weber defines the state by its monopoly of legitimate violence. But as the example suggests, it’s the control of violence that looms large. Michel Wieviorka does a considerable service by calling our attention to violence itself, and to the theories like those of Sorel and Fanon who took it seriously. Wieviorka addresses the state, the media, and social movements. But perhaps his most important contributions come in examination of the ways in which violence informs and is informed by different dimensions of subjectivity. Thoughtfully intertwining classical theory and contemporary observation this is an engaging book, and one that should spark much new thought and research." - Craig Calhoun, London School of Economics and Political Science Violence is an ever-present phenomenon - obstinately resistant to interpretation. This text offers new tools to understand and analyze violence, presenting a new approach based on the subjectivity of the actor, and on the relation between violence and meaning. The first section discusses violence and conflict, violence and the state, and violence and the media. This provides critical context for developing a new paradigm - in the second section - that gives more importance to the concept of the subject than more classical paradigms. The text distinguishes different possible relations between the meaning of action and violence and proposes a new typology of the subjects involved in violence. It gives particular emphasis to discussing cruelty, violence for violence sake, and ′pure′ violence. The relationship between conflict and violence; the place of victims, and the role of the media all shape new forms of violence. This text is an engaged response to these new forms that presents a convincing interpretation and new tools that will be essential for researchers in the social sciences.Trade ReviewViolence introduces us to French social theory at it best. An ambitious book becomes a major, indeed a fundamental investigation into the most cruel social relationship of our time. It tells the truth. -- Professor Jeffrey C. AlexanderViolence is sadly central to social life and yet oddly marginal to social theory. It’s there in the background, not least as Weber defines the state by its monopoly of legitimate violence. But as the example suggests, it’s the control of violence that looms large. Michel Wieviorka does a considerable service by calling our attention to violence itself, and to the theories like those of Sorel and Fanon who took it seriously. Wieviorka addresses the state, the media, and social movements. But perhaps his most important contributions come in examination of the ways in which violence informs and is informed by different dimensions of subjectivity. Thoughtfully intertwining classical theory and contemporary observation this is an engaging book, and one that should spark much new thought and research. -- Craig CalhounTable of ContentsPart One: Violence and Conflict Violence and the State The Emergence of Victims Violence and the Media Part two: Violence Loss and Change of Meaning The Hypothesis of Non-Meaning Cruelty The Mark of the Subject Conclusion

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Book SynopsisIllustrated guide to the controversial sociologist Jean Baudrillard, who died in 2007. Did the Gulf War take place? Is it possible to fake a bank robbery? Was sexual liberation a disaster? Jean Baudrillard has been hailed as one of France's most subtle and powerful theorists. But his provocative style and assaults on sociology, feminism and Marxism have exposed him to accusations of promoting a dangerous new orthodoxy - of being the 'pimp' of postmodernism. Introducing Baudrillard cuts beneath the controversy of this misunderstood intellectual to present his radical claims that reality has been replaced by a simulated world of images and events ranging from TV news to Disneyland. It provides a clear account of Baudrillard's work on obesity, pornography and terrorism and traces his development from critic of mass consumption to prophet of the apocalypse. Chris Horrocks' text and Zoran Jevtic?s artwork invite us to decide whether Baudrillard was a cure for the vertigo of contemporary culture - or one of its symptoms

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Book SynopsisEngaging exploration of race and youth culture which examines the development of new identities, ethnicities and forms of racism. This text analyzes the relationship between racism, community and adolescent social identities in the African and South Asian diasporas.; This book is intended for undergraduate and postgraduate students on courses in race and ethnicity, urban sociology, cultural studies and social anthropology. It will also have some appeal within social policy and social work.Table of ContentsPart 1 Racism, community and youth culture: white flight - locality, nostalgia and the preservation of privilege; neighbourhood nationalism - youth, race, nation and identity; social context and racist practice. Part 2 Transculturism and the politics of dialogue: our area - community, resistance and multiculture; not something we're new to, it's something we grew to... - youth, identification and alliance; experiencing and parodying racism. Part 3 Black music, youth culture and syncretism: Inglan, nice up - black music, autonomy and the cultural intermezzo; future reality - racisms, new ethnicity and the millennium.

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Book SynopsisThis is an accessible introduction to the philosophy of social research which relates philosophical ideas to actual research practice. The book makes effective use of illustrations from the UK, US and Europe to examine specific problems and broader issues. The book is intended for undergraduate and postgraduate courses in social research methods within sociology, social policy, politics, social psychology, human geography; philosophy of social science and social theory courses; and as a personal reference for professional researchers.Table of ContentsChapter 1 Introduction; Chapter 2 What is science?; Chapter 3 Philosophy, social science and method; Chapter 4 Knowing the social world; Chapter 5 Objectivity and values in social research; Chapter 6 Philosophical issues in the process of social research; Chapter 7 Poststructuralism, postmodernism and social research; Chapter 8 Conclusion;

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Book SynopsisThis book focuses on human behavioural processes and describes them from an interdisciplinary perspective. It introduces readers to the main theories and approaches in the field of organisational development and change (ODC), and discusses their relevance and purpose with a clear focus on improving how readers perceive and handle change. The book is tailor-made for business students without any background in the humanities, helping them to conceptualise organisational development and change, and to practically organise interventions to increase organisational effectiveness. The book’s goal is to help future managers and consultants recognise and handle the ‘full situation’, which includes purposes, people and relationships. Furthermore, it elaborates on those theories and instruments that can deliver real benefits to real people working in real fuzzy and complex circumstances, and includes several practical cases focusing on the role of the interventionist.Table of ContentsIntroduction.- Change Management.- Organisation Development.- Beyond Organisation Development.- Large-Group Interventions.- Changing and Learning.- Change Dynamics.- A Complexity Perspective.

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Book SynopsisThis textbook introduces political ecology as an interdisciplinary approach to critically examine land and environmental issues. Drawing on discourse and narrative analysis, Marxist political economy and insights from natural science, the book points at similarities, differences and inter-connections between environmental governance in the global North and South. A wide range of carefully curated case studies are presented, with a particular focus on Africa and Norway. Key themes of power, justice and environmental sustainability run through all chapters. The authors challenge established views and leading discourses and present research findings that may surprise readers. Chapters cover topics including wildlife conservation, climate change and conflicts, land grabbing, the effects of population growth on the environment, jihadism in the African Sahel, bioprospecting, feminist political ecology, and struggles around carbon mitigation within a fossil fuel-based economy. This introductory text provides tools and examples for both undergraduate and postgraduate students to better understand on-going struggles about some of the world’s most urgent challenges. Table of Contents

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Book SynopsisThis open access book represents one of the key milestones of PoliVisu, an H2020 research and innovation project funded by the European Commission under the call “Policy-development in the age of big data: data-driven policy-making, policy-modelling and policy-implementation”. It investigates the operative and organizational implications related to the use of the growing amount of available data on policy making processes, highlighting the experimental dimension of policy making that, thanks to data, proves to be more and more exploitable towards more effective and sustainable decisions. The first section of the book introduces the key questions highlighted by the PoliVisu project, which still represent operational and strategic challenges in the exploitation of data potentials in urban policy making. The second section explores how data and data visualisations can assume different roles in the different stages of a policy cycle and profoundly transform policy making.Table of ContentsPreface.- Acknowledgments.- About the Contributors.- Part 1: The data shake: open questions and challenges for policy making.- Cha[ter 1. The data shake: an opportunity for experiment-driven policy making.- Chapter 2. data ownership and open data: the potential for data-driven policy making.- Chapter 3. Towards a public sector data culture: data as an individual and communal resource in progressing democracy.- Chapter 4. Innovation in data visualisation for public policy making.- Part 2: The PoliVisu project.- Chapter 5. Policy-related decision making in a smart city context: the polivisu approach.- Chapter 6. Turning data into actionable policy insights.- Chapter 7. Data-related ecosystems in policy making. the polivisu contexts.- Chapter 8. Making policies with data: the legacy of the polivisu project

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Book SynopsisThis book presents Ibn Khaldūn's anticipatory sociology of civilisations and power. Half a millennium before the birth of modern sociology in the West, Ibn Khaldūn—scholar, political counsellor, and Malikite judge—wrote a revolutionary sociological-philosophical treatise, the Muqaddima. This book places his broad, complex, and refined treatise against the background of the Islamo-Greek culture of his time and analyses its main sociological, but also philosophical, historical, and scientific perspectives. Finally, thanks to its "universalisable" core, the author recontextualizes the teachings from the Muqaddima to reveal the deep insights it provides into the society, politics and law of contemporary liberal and multicultural civilisations. A deeper reception of Ibn Khaldūn's perspective is not only important in understanding the Arab contribution to social theory, social history and philosophy, but also diversifies the sociological project beyond the Euro-American standpoint. Given its interdisciplinary appeal, the book addresses a wide readership of students and scholars in sociology, the sociology of law, philosophy of law, philosophy of history, political philosophy, history of civilisations, political sociology, and Arabic studies.Table of ContentsPreface.- Foreword.- Chapter 1. The Rediscovery of Ibn Khaldūn’s Work.- Chapter 2. Sense and Form of a “New History”.- Chapter 3. Inside the Muqaddima: Sociocultural Compactness and Social Transformations.- Chapter 4. The Internal Forces of the Crisis and the “Colouring” of Civilisation.- Chapter 5. The Topicality of Ibn Khaldūn’s Thought: From the Muqaddima to Our Society.- Index.

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Book SynopsisThis open access book explores new research directions in social inequality and urban segregation. With the goal of fostering an ongoing dialogue between scholars in Europe and China, it brings together an impressive team of international researchers to shed light on the entwined processes of inequality and segregation, and the implications for urban development. Through a rich collection of empirical studies at the city, regional and national levels, the book explores the impact of migration on cities, the related problems of social and spatial segregation, and the ramifications for policy reform. While the literature on both segregation and inequality has traditionally been dominated by European and North American studies, there is growing interest in these issues in the Chinese context. Economic liberalization, rapid industrial restructuring, the enormous growth of cities, and internal migration, have all reshaped the country profoundly. What have we learned from the European and North American experience of segregation and inequality, and what insights can be gleaned to inform the bourgeoning interest in these issues in the Chinese context? How is China different, both in terms of the nature and the consequences of segregation inequality, and what are the implications for future research and policy? Given the continued rise of China’s significance in the world, and its recent declaration of war on poverty, this book offers a timely contribution to scholarship, identifying the core insights to be learned from existing research, and providing important guidance on future directions for policy makers and researchers. Table of ContentsIntroduction.- Part I: Lessons from Europe.- Re-theorising spatial segregation: A European perspective.- Income inequality and residential segregation in European cities.- The role of migration costs in residential sorting.- Part II: Urban inequality and segregation in China.- Research on residential segregation in Chinese cities.- Urbanisation, migration and the anti-poverty programme in China.- Urban villages, their redevelopment and implications for inequality and integration.- Renovation of Shantytowns and construction of new communities.- Public service provision in China: Towards a more equal access system.- Housing policies for rural migrant workers in China.- Part III: Future directions for research and policy.- Multi-scale inequality and segregation: Theory and estimation.- Characterising social integration between rural migrants and local residents in urban China.- Social frontiers: Estimating the spatial boundaries between residential groups and their impacts on crime.- Deprivation indices in China: Establishing principles for application and interpretation.- Future directions for research on residential segregation and inequality in China.

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Book SynopsisThe ambition of most countries across the world is to develop a low-carbon economy, evidenced by the fact that the vast majority of countries have signed the Paris COP21 agreement. This book contends that this global societal transition to a low-carbon economy must be just. As such, it will be an invaluable and accessible reference for scholars from all research disciplines who aim in their research to see a fairer, more equitable and inclusive world where sustainability is at the fore and climate targets are achieved.This is the first in-depth and original analysis to explore the central importance of law in achieving a just transition to a low-carbon economy. In addition, it advances the JUST framework, a unique framework for assessing the just transition. This important research and theoretical tool provides a practical perspective as it ensures the geographical space and timelines of development are factored into analysis. The research also provides analysis on the just transition movement around the world and the influence of international institutions.Through several case studies on Just Transition Commissions and Critical Mineral Development, the book details and demonstrates key elements of justice, including distributive, procedural, restorative, recognition, and cosmopolitan justice. It is clear from the analysis that while these are vast areas for analysis, if applied in practice, they all centrally contribute to ensuring society will advance in achieving a just transition to a low-carbon economy.Table of Contents1. Introduction – The Just Transition to a Low-Carbon Economy.- 2. What is the Just Transition?.- 3. The Just Framework.- 4. The Advance of Just Transitions Commissions.- 5. Just Transitions Around the World.- 6. The Elements of the Just Transition within International Institutions.- 7. Conclusion - The Just Transition Movement post pandemic, COP26 and the Financial Crisis.

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Book SynopsisThis open access book deals with the role of written texts in an increasingly diverse and dynamic society, bringing together a series of studies anchored in the Scandinavian research tradition of sakprosa, which roughly translates as ‘subject-oriented prose’ or ‘professional communication’. The authors examine the written text’s capacity to transcend contextual boundaries, as a crucial factor in the importance of capturing and maintaining content as a manageable entity. The chapters each deal with a text type that manages complex content in a specialized way, including genre shifting in CSR reports, discourse networks in modern digital culture, digital and social media crisis communication, and epistemic positions in non-fiction. This book is relevant to fields such as text research, professional/digital communication, discourse analysis and literacy studies, and may also be of interest to disciplines such as history, rhetoric, organization studies, media studies/journalism, and linguistics. Table of ContentsChapter 1: A discourse of things. Nordic perspectives on texts negotiating issues that matter in professional communicationChapter 2: Texts complying with societal pressures - Changing genres in Finnish companies’ CSR reportingChapter 3: Subject-oriented prose in digital discourse networks: digital media as a socio-material condition for access and circulationChapter 4: Crisis communication on social media: Informalization in the hour-by-hour struggle for informationChapter 5: Sheep, watchdogs and wolves as epistemic positions: How a master’s programme in non-fiction writing produced and reflected an epistemic practice for the field of sakprosa in Norway.Chapter 6: Postscript: The Power and Potential of the Concept Sakprosa (CPS) A guided tour through five topoi.

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Book SynopsisThis book examines the rise of exclusionary neoliberalism by assessing how far-right populist actors impact economic policy change.

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Book SynopsisThis book delves into the complexities of masculinity, mental health, and cultural identity among young Bangladeshi-Canadian men. Employing an anthropological, intersectional approach, it scrutinizes the interplay of neoliberal ideologies, Islamic values, and diasporic experiences in shaping their masculine trajectories. The study unravels the intergenerational trauma, parental pressures, and societal expectations that contribute to their deteriorating mental well-being. With a unique insider perspective and rich empirical data, this book fills a crucial gap in the literature by offering invaluable insights for scholars exploring the nuances of migration, ethnicity, gender, and psychological resilience. Strikingly, the author proposes evidence-based interventions and policy recommendations to address the mental health struggles of this underserved population, making it a must-read for academics and students in diaspora studies, migration studies, sociology of race and ethnicity, gender studies, anthropology, political science and development studies, as well as NGOs and policymakers alike.

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Book SynopsisThis book, part of the new wave of political sociology in EU studies, examines the dialectics of construction/deconstruction of the European civil service through a succession of empirically grounded case studies. Breaking with the usual representations of ‘Eurocrats’, it sheds light on a hidden aspect of the current European crisis: a crisis of social reproduction which affects the European civil service in a heavy context of management reforms, enlargements, institutional changes and the euro crisis. This in turn has a number of consequences in terms of internal tensions, power, and more broadly, the capacity of EU institutions to create convergence between diverging national and economic interests, and to embody a European future.European Civil Service in (Times of) Crisis will be of interest to students and scholars across a wide range of disciplines, including politics, sociology and public administration, to practitioners working in and with the EU institutions, as well as those wishing to know more about the EU. Table of ContentsIntroduction: Moving pictures.- 1. A contested identity: genesis of the Eurocrat figure: between stigma and affirmation of a differentiated supranational body.- 2. The making of a status group: Reconsidering socialization to the European Institutions .- 3. Genesis and structure of European bureaucratic capital: Senior European Commission officials.- 4. Soft skills versus expertise and knowledge: The changing core competencies of European civil servants.- 5. Reforming EU open competitions or how the ‘Custodians of Europe’ are now imitating undifferentiated international managers.- 6. How domination matters: New internal struggles and integrating European-enlargement newcomers.- 7. Both the pilot and a victim of austerity? How the European Commission’s administration changed under the economic and financial crisis.-Conclusion: Neoliberalized neoliberalists? The weakening sociological foundations of a pivot group and European political order.

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Book SynopsisThe Enlightenment promised humanity a bright future of emancipation which never actuallymaterialized. Instead, our social order is still based on gender inequality, which rests upon afalse conviction: that the individual can be conceived of as separate from community; that the more individualized a person is, the less they need to establish links with their community to feel safe; and that the more they use reason to build a relationship with the world, the less they need emotions. Th is conviction, which guides the ideals of our social system, is based on a fantasy: the fantasy of individuality.This volume is a step in fleshing out the historical reasons for gender inequality from theorigins of humankind to present times in the Western world. It is a theoretically-informedand up-to-date overview of the history of gender inequality that takes as its starting pointthe mechanisms through which human beings construct their self-identity.Starting from a peripheral, interdisciplinary and heterodox perspective, this book intends toappraise the complexity of gender identity in all its richness and diversity. It seeks to understand the persistence of relationality in supposedly fully individualized male selves, and the construction of new forms of individuality among women that did not follow the masculine model. It is argued here that by balancing community and self beyond the contradictions of hegemonic masculinity, modern women are struggling to build a new, more empowering form of personhood.The author is an archaeologist, who uses her discipline not only to provide data, theory anda long-term perspective, but also in a metaphorical sense: to construct a socio-historicalgenealogy of current gender systems, through an examination of how personhood and self- identity have been constructed in the Western world.Table of Contents1: General approach.- 2: Sex and gender.- 3: The Origin.- 4: Relational identity or identity when one has no power over the world.- 5: Individuality or identity when one has power over the world.- 6: Relational identity/ Individuated identity. The appearance of things.- 7: The fantasy of individuality. Part I: women and gender identity.- 8: The fantasy of individuality. Part II: men’s (unconscious) performance of relational identity.- 9: Dependent individuality and independent individuality.- 10: Sex and gender all over again. 11: Conclusion.

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Book SynopsisSociety is complicated. But this book argues that this does not place it beyond the reach of a science that can help to explain and perhaps even to predict social behaviour. As a system made up of many interacting agents – people, groups, institutions and governments, as well as physical and technological structures such as roads and computer networks – society can be regarded as a complex system. In recent years, scientists have made great progress in understanding how such complex systems operate, ranging from animal populations to earthquakes and weather. These systems show behaviours that cannot be predicted or intuited by focusing on the individual components, but which emerge spontaneously as a consequence of their interactions: they are said to be ‘self-organized’. Attempts to direct or manage such emergent properties generally reveal that ‘top-down’ approaches, which try to dictate a particular outcome, are ineffectual, and that what is needed instead is a ‘bottom-up’ approach that aims to guide self-organization towards desirable states.This book shows how some of these ideas from the science of complexity can be applied to the study and management of social phenomena, including traffic flow, economic markets, opinion formation and the growth and structure of cities. Building on these successes, the book argues that the complex-systems view of the social sciences has now matured sufficiently for it to be possible, desirable and perhaps essential to attempt a grander objective: to integrate these efforts into a unified scheme for studying, understanding and ultimately predicting what happens in the world we have made. Such a scheme would require the mobilization and collaboration of many different research communities, and would allow society and its interactions with the physical environment to be explored through realistic models and large-scale data collection and analysis. It should enable us to find new and effective solutions to major global problems such as conflict, disease, financial instability, environmental despoliation and poverty, while avoiding unintended policy consequences. It could give us the foresight to anticipate and ameliorate crises, and to begin tackling some of the most intractable problems of the twenty-first century.Trade ReviewFrom the reviews:“Phil Ball’s little book is one of the best summaries I have come across on complexity theory and its applications. This little triumph of clarity argues that society’s problems are those of highly connected systems. … Nice gentle text. If are a newcomer to complexity sciences, then read this first.” (Urban Models + Spatial Complexity + Smart Cities, August, 2012)Table of ContentsSociety: a Complex Problem.- On the Road: Predicting traffic.- Every Move You Make: Patterns of crowd movement.- Making Your Mind Up: Norms and decisions.- Broken Windows: The spread and control of crime.- The Social Web: Networks and their failures.- Spreading It Around: Mobility, disease and epidemics.- After the Crash: Economic and financial systems.- Love Thy Neighbour: How to foster cooperation.- Living Cities: Urban development as a complex system.- The Transformation of War: Modelling modern conflict.- Towards a Living Earth Simulator: The FuturICT Project.

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