Sociology and anthropology Books

A major new resource book for academics and students of youth studies, this work offers a rare comparative review of a field which is often focused on the local or national situation. Drawing together authors from across the world, the book combines...

It has been half a century since the Geneva Refugee Convention came into place, but there is still no comparable international regime which provides for the increasing phenomenon of mobile economic migrants. At a time of global mobility, when migration...

Lifestyles have a history, and lifestyle media is fundamentally implicated in this history. This original volume examines issues of taste, media and lifestyle from the 1900s to 1970s, providing a wealth of empirical evidence and debate from varied...

Recent years have witnessed growing concerns about the disengagement of young people from conventional politics both in Britain and internationally. Their non-participation is often viewed as reflecting both a deeper political alienation and 'apathy'...

The influx of female migrants to Europe has posed challenges to established European feminist movements. In this book the author assesses the significance of female immigration to Italy and its impact on Italian feminism by analyzing the way in which...

Every week thousands of people in Europe and the USA consult psychic practitioners. Communication is crucial to the performance of psychic powers in a range of settings. Psychic practitioners use language to demonstrate their powers, whether they are...

Recent years have seen a growing emphasis upon the need for universities to contribute to the economic, social and environmental well-being of the regions in which they are situated, and for closer links between the university and the region. This book...

What can diversity management offer those concerned with ethnic inequality, racial discrimination, and issues of social and economic inclusion and exclusion? In this book John Wrench traces the emergence of diversity management in the US in the late...

Once a marginal political issue, crime control now occupies a central place on the social, political and economic agenda of contemporary liberal democracies. Nowhere more so than in post-apartheid South Africa, where the transition from apartheid rule to...

There is a saying that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, implying that beauty is subjective. But can it be said that 'better looking' people have more social power? This book provides a fascinating insight into the social stratification of people...

Many people in the West or global North now live in a culture of 24/7 instant messaging, iPods and MP3s, streamed content, blogs, ubiquitous digital images and Facebook. But they are also surrounded by even more paper, books, telephone calls and material...

Journalism, Ethics and Society provides a comprehensive overview and critical analysis of debates within media ethics in relation to the purpose of news and journalism for society. It assesses how the meaning of news and journalism is central to a...

Complying with Colonialism presents a complex analysis of the habitual weak regard attributed to the colonial ties of Nordic Countries. It introduces the concept of 'colonial complicity' to explain the diversity through which northern European countries...

Across sociology and cultural studies in particular, the concept of authenticity has begun to occupy a central role, yet in spite of its popularity as an ideal and philosophical value authenticity notably suffers from a certain vagueness, with work in...

This book focuses on the developments in research, national-historical narratives, and geographies of East Central Europe. It explores the emergence of specific discursive practices, architectures of ethnic identity, and the eventual juxtaposition during...

Globalization, European integration, and migration are challenging national identities and changing education across Europe. The nation-state no longer serves as the sole locus of civic participation and identity formation, ceasing to have the influence...

Advertising and Cultural Politics in Global Times traces daringly transgressive convergences between cultural politics and global advertising media. It engages with a range of interpolations between cultural politics and advertising technologies...

Re-crafting Rationalization contributes to debates relating to the public understanding of science, regarding the conceptualization of the relationship between 'science' and 'the public'. It challenges the prevailing science-centred or 'top-down'...

Gender and Rural Migration: Realities, Conflict and Change explores the intersection of gender, migration, and rurality in 21st-century Western and non-Western contexts. In a world where heightened globalization is making borders increasingly...

Through an in-depth case study of the black professional middle class in Oakland, this book provides an analysis of the experiences of black professionals in the workplace, community, and local politics. Brown shows how overlapping...

Call centers have come, in the last three decades, to define the interaction between corporations, governments, and other institutions and their respective customers, citizens, and members. The offshoring and outsourcing of call center employment, part...

Digitalization and computerization are now pervasive in science. This has deep consequences for our understanding of scientific knowledge and of the scientific process, and challenges longstanding assumptions and traditional frameworks of thinking of...

Multiple killings by serial or spree killers and the mass violence seen in war crimes and other atrocities have typically been understood as discrete category types, which can foster the view that there are fundamentally different kinds of human beings,...

This edited collection explores issues that arise when researching "hard-to-reach" groups and those who remain socially excluded and marginalized in society, such as access, the use of gatekeepers, ethical dilemmas, "voice," and how such...

This book explores the transition from the era of internationalization into the era of globalization of Japan by focusing on language and identity as its central themes. By taking an interdisciplinary approach covering education, cultural studies,...

This book focuses on the diverse interrelationships between aging and transnationality. It argues that the lives of older people are increasingly entangled in transnational contexts on the social as well as the cultural, economic and political levels...

Research in the humanities and social sciences thrives on critical reflections that unfold with each research project, not only in terms of knowledge created, but in whether chosen methodologies served their purpose.  Ethics forms the bulwark of any...

This book critically explores from a comparative international perspective the role medicine plays in constructing and managing natural and social risks, including those belonging to modern medical technology and expertise. Drawing together chapters...

Fifty years ago, familiar images of the lottery would have been strange, as no state lottery existed then. Few researchers have uncovered the obscure role lotteries play in the changing composition of American taxation. Even less is known about what role...

The question of recourse to self-medication arises at the intersection of two partly antagonistic discourses: that of the public authorities, who advocate the practice primarily for economic reasons, and that of health professionals, who condemn it for...

Vulnerability has traditionally been conceived as a dichotomised status, where an individual by reason of a personal characteristic is classified as vulnerable or not. However, vulnerability is not static, and most, if not all, people are vulnerable at...

A particular culture is associated with a particular community, and thus has a social dimension. But how does culture operate and how is it to be defined? Is it to be taken as the behavioral repertoire of members of that community, as the products of...

Southern Africa, where most of these book chapters originate, has been identified as one of regions of the world most at risk of the consequences of environmental degradation and climate change. At the same time, it is still seeking ways to overcome the...

This book explores contemporary transformations of identities in a digitizing society across a range of domains of modern life. As digital technology and ICTs have come to pervade virtually all aspects of modern societies, the routine registration of...

This book analyzes in detail the main social, economic and special transformation of the city of São Paulo. In the last 30 years, São Paulo has become a more heterogeneous and less unequal city. Contrary to some expectations, the recent economic...

Contrary to what is suggested in media and popular discourses, Europe is neither a monolithic entity nor simply a collection of nation states. It is, rather, a union of millions of individuals who differ from one another in a variety of ways while also...

At the end of the 1970s, Chinese merchandise moved to Brazil via Paraguay, forming an on-the-margins-of-the-law trade chain involving the production, distribution, and consumption of cheap goods. Economic changes in the twenty-first century, including...

This volume brings together new anthropological research on the Greek crisis. With a number of contributions from academics based in Greece, the book addresses a number of key issues such as the refugee crisis, far-right extremism and the psychological...

Following the defeat of Napoleon in 1814, an event that signalled an end to nearly fourteen years of French domination, Florence seemed to enter a new cultural 'golden age' and by 1824 was described as 'an Earthly Paradise' by the political and liberal...

Global economic recovery in the aftermath of the Great Recession has not been experienced equally: while the share of wealth owned by the richest 3% has grown, the share owned by the poorest 90% continues to decline, as reported by Oxfam in 2016...

Following the subprime lending crisis and the financial market crash of 2008-9, governments throughout Europe implemented a series of debt reduction measures collectively known as austerity. Across the continent, citizens and social movements mobilized...

Although much has been written on the making of art objects as a means of engaging in creative productions of the self (most famously Alfred Gell's work), there has been very little written on Orthodox Christianity and its use of material within...

How we dispose of our rubbish, choose the foods we buy, enjoy art, relate to our families, and think about ourselves are just a few of the ways that ideas about nature shape our everyday ethical decisions. Nature and 'natural facts' have long been used...

The Supreme Court ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges (2015) ended a 20-year political battle over same-sex marriage in the USA. The ruling in favor of a constitutional right for gays and lesbians to marry reflected growing social acceptance and political...

Dogs in the North offers an interdisciplinary in-depth consideration of the multiple roles that dogs have played in the North. Spanning the deep history of humans and dogs in the North, the volume examines a variety of contexts in North America and...

Sporting mega-events habitually spawn protests from local groups discommoded by the building of new infrastructure, environmental lobbies contesting the long-term legacies of such events, and expressions of outrage at the expenditure of public funds on...

This book provides an alternative, complementary approach to the existing conventional approaches to religious and spiritually oriented coping. By focusing on the role of culture, the authors take into account the methods employed by a vast number of...

How should we respond to the worst refugee crisis since the World War II? What are our duties towards refugees, and how should we distribute these duties among those at the receiving end of the refugee flow? What are the relevant political solutions? Are...