Organizations are central actors of modern society. No understanding of our world is complete without a theory of how they work. Successful organizations must engage in power-projects. Such is the overarching argument of this volume, a collection of papers by many of the world's leading social scientists and organizational scholars.

This book provides a critical analysis of classical and contemporary social theory from a class perspective. It is concise, lucid, and well written.

This encyclopedic reference/text provides an analysis of the basic issues and major aspects of bureaucracy, bureaucratic politics and administrative theory, public policy, and public administration in historical and contemporary perspectives. Examining theoretical, philosophical, and empirical interpretations, as well as the intricate position of b

This book traces the expansion of Islamisation within a modern and plural state such as Malaysia. It elaborates on how elements of theology, sacred space, resources, and their interactivity with secular instruments such as legislative, electoral, and new social technological platforms are all instrumentally employed to consolidate a divine bureaucracy. The book makes the point that religious social movements and political parties are only few of the important agents of Islamisation in society. The other is the modern and secular state structure itself. Weber’s legal rational bureaucracy or Hegel’s ethical bureaucracy predominantly characterises a modern feature of governmentality. In this instance an Islamic bureaucracy is advantageously situated not only within an ambit of modernity and therefore legality, but divinity and therefore sacrality as well. This positioning gives religious state agents more salience than any other form of bureaucracy leading to their unquestioned authority in the current contexts of societies with Muslim majority rule. One of the requisites of this condition is the homogenisation of Islam followed by ring-fencing of its constituents. The latter can involve contestations with women, other genders, ‘secular’ Muslims, non-Muslims as well as dissenting Muslims with their differing truthful ‘Islams’.

Social life is a collective process, virtually all shaped in contemporary industrial nations by formal organizations and recognized social institutions. Understanding Organizations takes a fresh look at the sociology of organizations, blending classic theories with contemporary studies and debates.

The Social Science Encyclopedia, first published in 1985 to acclaim from social scientists, librarians and students, was thoroughly revised in 1996, when reviewers began to describe it as a classic. This third edition has been radically recast. Over half the entries are new or have been entirely rewritten, and most of the balance have been substantially revised. Written by an international team of contributors, the Encyclopedia offers a global perspective on the key issues within the social sciences. Some 500 entries cover a variety of enduring and newly vital areas of study and research methods. Experts review theoretical debates from neo-evolutionism and rational choice theory to poststructuralism, and address the great questions that cut across the social sciences. What is the influence of genes on behaviour? What is the nature of consciousness and cognition? What are the causes of poverty and wealth? What are the roots of conflict, wars, revolutions and genocidal violence? This authoritative reference work is aimed at anyone with a serious interest in contemporary academic thinking about the individual in society.

Bureaucracy is an age-old form of government that has survived since ancient times; it has provided order and persisted with durability, dependability, and stability. The popularity of the first edition of this book, entitled Handbook of Bureaucracy, is testimony to the endurance of bureaucratic institutions. Reflecting the accelerated globalizatio

In The Dead Sociologists Society, Mark Stobbe manages to attend a meeting of the Dead Sociologists Society where he learns that the magical struggle between Harry Potter and Lord Voldemort really happened. The Harry Potter series was implanted in the mind of J.K. Rowling in order to disguise the turbulent events as fiction. What follows is a brilliant imagining of what the ghosts of famous dead sociologists would make of the elaborate magical world. From the perspective of thinkers, such as Max Weber, Karl Marx, Georg Simmel, Pitirim Sorokin, W.E.B. DuBois, and Emile Durkheim, Stobbe examines questions such as: • Were the secret societies of the Order of the Phoenix and the Death Eaters really that different? • Why was Hermione Granger's attempt to free house-elves from slavery so unsuccessful? • How was stigma handled in the magical world? In addition to chapters written from the perspective of one sociologist, the book contains two panel discussions. In the first, Karl Marx and Max Weber debate the reasons for the technological backwardness of the magical world. In the second, six famous dead criminologists give different explanations for why Tom Riddle became the notorious Lord Voldemort. The Dead Sociologists Society is an entertaining compendium of sociological analyses of the Harry Potter series. Perhaps more importantly, this book offers a serious and insightful journey through classical sociological thought. It is an ideal text for high school and university sociology students.

This exploration of the political and policy-making roles of public bureaucracies offers comparative analysis of the effects of politics on bureaucracy including international case studies on North America, Western and Eastern European and Asian countries; discussion of how governments have been developing strategies to enhance co-ordination and coherence across their programmes; analysis of the use of performance management in public administration; and revision and updating to take into account new literature that has emerged in recent years, including a discussion of E-Governance and analysis of 'new public management'.