Kategoria BISAC: Social Science >> Sociology - General

The 6^th edition of Environment and Society continues to connect issues about human societies, ecological systems, and environments with data and perspectives from different fields. The text looks at the environment from a primarily sociological viewpoint and is designed for courses in Environmental Sociology and Environmental Issues in departments of Sociology, Environmental Studies, Anthropology, Political Science, and Human Geography. Clearly-defined terms and theories help quickly acquaint students from various backgrounds with the material.

Every...

Women of Asiais an anthology that focuses on globalization, development and change. The book incorporates 20 original contributions organized by region with introductory essays from the editors politically, sociologically, and economically contextualizing each area.

Encouraging a conversation among scholars working with questions of transnationalism from the perspective of gender and race, this book explores the intersectionality between these two forms of oppression and their relation to transnational migration. How do sexism and racism articulate the experience of transnational migrants? What is the complex relationship between minorities and migrants in terms of gender and racial discrimination? What are the empirical and theoretical insights gained by an analysis that emphasizes the 'intersectionality' between gender and race? What empirical...

Challenging the classical conception of Goffman s sociology, this book offers a new interpretation based on a comprehensive examination of previous interpretations and critical assessments of Goffman s work.

Epistemologically, the book acknowledges the important but overlooked influences of both pluralism and particularly of pragmatism, where not only Simmel but also James and Dewey played a pivotal role in his work, thus rooting Goffman s thought in symbolic interactionism. With attention to two central theoretical principles underlying his work - the pertinence of studying social...

The digital music revolution and the rise of piracy cultures has transformed the music world as we knew it. Digital Music Distribution aims to go beyond the polarized and reductive perception of 'piracy wars' to offer a broader and richer understanding of the paradoxes inherent in new forms of distribution. Covering both production and consumption perspectives, Spilker analyses the changes and regulatory issues through original case studies, looking at how digital music distribution has both changed and been changed by the cultural practices and politicking of ordinary youth, their...

Why do critics and celebrants of globalization concur that international trade and finance represent an inexorable globe-bestriding force with a single logic? The Known Economy shows that both camps rest on the same ideas about how the world is scaled. Two centuries ago romantic and rationalist theorists concurred that the world was divided into discrete nations, moving at different rates toward a -modernity- split between love and money. Though differing over whether this history is tragedy or triumph, they united in projecting an empty -international- space in which a...

This book draws on a wealth of evidence including young people's own stories, to document how they are now faring in increasingly unequal societies like America, Britain, Australia, France and Spain. It points to systematic generational inequality as those born since 1980 become the first generation to have a lower standard of living than previous generations. While governments and experts typically explain this by referring to globalisation, new technologies, or young people's deficits, the authors of this book offer a new political economy of generations which identifies the central role...

Consumer Sexualities explores women's experiences of shopping in 'sex shops' and using sexual commodities in their everyday lives. This enlightening volume shows how women take up sexual consumer 'technologies of the self' to work upon and understand themselves as confident and active sexual agents in postfeminist neoliberal culture. In guiding the reader through the historical emergence of sexual commodities 'for women' in feminism and postfeminism, Wood points to the normalisation and regulation of sexual practices and identities in and through consumption. Indeed, women's accounts show...

This book examines the question of whether the process of European integration in research funding has led to new forms of oligarchization and elite formation in the European Research Area. Based on a study of the European Research Council (ERC), the author investigates profound structural change in the social organization of science, as the ERC intervenes in public science systems that, until now, have largely been organized at the national level.

Against the background of an emerging new science policy, Europe's New Scientific Elite explores the social mechanisms that...

Imagining, forecasting and predicting the future is an inextricable and increasingly important part of the present. States, organizations and individuals almost continuously have to make decisions about future actions, financial investments or technological innovation, without much knowledge of what will exactly happen in the future. Science and technology play a crucial role in this collective attempt to make sense of the future. Technological developments such as nanotechnology, robotics or solar energy largely shape how we dream and think about the future, while economic forecasts, gene...

On the eve of the financial crisis, the USA was inhabited by almost 70 percent homeowning households, in comparison to about 45 percent in Germany. Homeownership, Renting and Society presents new evidence showing that this homeownership gap already existed between American and German cities around 1900. Existing explanations based on culture, government housing policy or typical socio-economic factors have difficulties in accounting for these long-term cross-country differences.

Using historical case studies on Germany and the USA, the book identifies three institutional...

Patriarchy, particularly as embedded in the Old and New Testaments and Roman legal precepts, has been a powerful organising concept with which social order has been understood, maintained, enforced, contested, adjudicated and dreamt about for over two millennia of western history. This brief book surveys three influential episodes in this history: seventeenth-century debates about absolutism and democracy, nineteenth-century reconstructions of human prehistory, and the broad mobilisations linked to twentieth-century women's movements. It then considers how feminist scholars today tackle...

Undoubtedly Romantic love has come to saturate our culture and is often considered to be a, or even the, major existential goal of our lives, capable of providing us with both our sense of worth and way of being in the world. The Radicalism of Romantic Love interrogates the purported radicalism of Romantic love from philosophical, cultural and psychoanalytic perspectives, exploring whether it is a subversive force capable of breaking down entrenched social, political and cultural norms and structures, or whether, in spite of its role in the fight against certain barriers, it is in...