Attempts to show the relevance of Durkheim's sociology to the debate on modernity and postmodernism. This title examines how Durkheim's ideas can be applied to current social issues. It is suitable for readers of sociology, as well as the related disciplines of philosophy, psychology, cultural studies and history.

Hannah Arendt is today widely regarded today as a political theorist, who sought to rescue politics from society, and political theory from the social sciences. But this view has had the effect of distracting attention from many of Arendt's most important insights concerning the constitution of society, and the significance of its 'science', sociology. Arendt Contra Sociology re-assesses the relationship between Arendt's work and the theoretical foundations of sociology, bringing her insights to bear on some key themes within contemporary theoretical sociology. Re-reading Arendt's...

This book offers a new perspective on sociological studies of the consumer society, introducing neglected normative questions relating to the good life and human flourishing - subjects more commonly discussed in fields of moral, political, and social philosophy. With attention to a wide range of subjects, including postemotional law and responsibility, dehumanised consumption and prosumerism, fashion, embodiment, conspicuous consumption, and sustainability, this book analyzes the structural and cultural transformations that can be identified in consumer society. It also offers a critical -...

Examining the organization of everyday life inside the regiments of the French Foreign Legion, this book takes its theoretical point of departure in the notion of the voluntary total organization; that is to say, an institution that constitutes a geographically delimited place of residence and work in which inmates are voluntarily separated from the outside world, leading an enclosed, formally administered life. Informed by a modified version of Goffman's original concept of the total institution, A Sociology of the Total Organization untangles the Foreign Legion and the ways in...

The history of sociology overwhelmingly focuses on 'the winners' from the classical 'canon' - Marx, Durkheim, and Weber - to today's most celebrated sociologists. This book strikingly demonstrates that restricting sociology in this way impoverishes it as a form of historically reflexive knowledge and obscures the processes and struggles of sociology's own making as a form of disciplinary knowledge. Sociological Amnesia focuses on singular contributions to sociology that were once considered central to the discipline but are today largely neglected. Chapters explore the work of illustrious...