This book discusses the failures of liberal democracy to overcome the structural and racist inequalities in post-Apartheid South Africa, and it presents hopeful outlooks on new ideas and forms of democracy in social movements in the MENA region.

Sociology has developed theories of social change in the fields of evolution, conflict and modernization, viewing modern society as essentially unstable and conflict driven. However, it has not seriously studied catastrophe. A Theory of Catastrophe develops a sociology of catastrophes, comparing natural, social and political causes and consequences, and the social theories that might offer explanations. A catastrophe is a general and systematic breakdown of social and political institutions resulting, among other things, in what we could call a catastrophe consciousness. The Greek...

This edited collection focuses on the comparative analysis of the application of Shari’a in countries with Muslim minorities (e.g. USA, Australia, Germany and Italy) and majorities (e.g. Malaysia, Bangladesh, Turkey, and Morocco). Most chapters in this new edition have been revised and the book as a whole has been updated to give even more international coverage.This text provides a sociological and global analysis of a phenomenon that goes beyond the ‘West versus the rest’ dichotomy. One example of this is how included are case studies in Muslim minority countries not exclusively...