This concise and comprehensive volume provides an accessible overview of the main debates on the sociology and philosophy of the social sciences. Exploring the changing conceptions of social science from the 16th century to today, sociologist Gerard Delanty argues how this group of disciplines is recovering its role as the critical voice of modernity.

Nationalism is one of the critical media issues. This book guides the reader through the theoretical approaches to this field of study, its major themes - from modernity to memory, migration and genocide - and the diversity of nationalisms found around the globe.

A new way of conceptualizing the modernity-postmodernity debate, and an exciting new approach to the roots of contemporary social theory.

This book provides a critical interpretation of the construction of Irish national identity in the longer perspective of history. Drawing on recent sociological theory, the authors demonstrate how national identity was invented and codified by a nationalist intelligentsia in the late nineteenth century. The trajectory of this national identity is traced as a process of crisis and contradiction. One of the central arguments is that the negative implications of Irish national identity have never been fully explored by social science.

Gerard Delanty provides a comprehensive assessment of the idea of cosmopolitanism in social and political thought which links cosmopolitan theory with critical social theory. He argues that cosmopolitanism has a critical dimension which offers a solution to one of the weaknesses in the critical theory tradition: failure to respond to the challenges of globalization and intercultural communication. Critical cosmopolitanism, he proposes, is an approach that is not only relevant to social scientific analysis but also normatively grounded in a critical attitude. Delanty's argument for a critical,...

A survey of modern social theory, from Kant to Weber.

A critical analysis of the idea of Europe and the limits and possibilities of a European identity in the broader perspective of history. This book argues that the crucial issue is the articulation of a new identity that is based on post-national citizenship rather than ambivalent notions of unity.

Festivals and the Cultural Public Sphere provides the first major social scientific study of these festivals in the wake of their explosion in popularity over the past decade. It explores the cultural significance of contemporary arts festivals from their location within the cultural public sphere, examining them as sites for contestation and democratic debate, and also identifying them as examples of a particular aesthetic cosmopolitanism. The book approaches contemporary festivals as relatively autonomous social texts that need interpretation and contextualisation. This perspective,...

Revised edition of the author's Community, 2010.

This volume is a major social scientific study of contemporary arts festivals. It will have appeal to a wide readership in cultural sociology, cultural studies and cultural theory.