This book outlines the history and developments of interactionist social thought through a consideration of its key figures. Arranged chronologically, each chapter illustrates the impact that individual sociologists working within an interactionism framework have had on interactionism as perspective and on the discipline of sociology as such. It presents analyses of interactionist theorists from Georg Simmel through to Herbert Bulmer and Erving Goffman and onto the more recent contributions of Arlie R. Hochschild and Gary Alan Fine. Through an engagement with the latest scholarship this work...

Throughout history mankind has struggled to reconcile itself with the inescapability of its own mortality. This book explores the themes of immortality and survivalism in contemporary culture, shedding light on the varied and ingenious ways in which humans and human societies aspire to confront and deal with death, or even seek to outlive it, as it were.

Bringing together theoretical and empirical work from internationally acclaimed scholars across a range of disciplines, Postmortal Society offers studies of the strategies adopted and means available in modern society for...

This title was first published in 2001: For over 30 years it has been argued that contemporary society is undergoing a fundamental transformation. The portrait of the modern society or modernity offered by philosophers and social scientists from Hobbes to Parsons is no longer understood as a description of the final and highest stage in the social evolution of mankind. Modern society is not the end of history but simply another more or less contingent social and cultural formation on planet earth. This new perspective on modernity and its transformation, which has emerged from the...

With contributions by many of the most prominent scholars in law, sociology, criminology, and film, Framing Law and Crime offers a critical survey of a variety of genres and media, integrating descriptions of technique with critical analyses.