This innovative volume offers analytical and comparative insights into current socio-economic practices as well as an assessment of the overall economic globalization phenomenon. By looking at empirical case studies of different civilations and cultures, this volume assesses of intertwining of local socio-economic practices and global economic modernity.

Renowned author Ulrike Schuerkens presents an in-depth exploration of social transformations and developments. Combining an international approach with up-to-date research, the book: Has dedicated chapters on contemporary topics including technology, new media, war and terror, political culture and inequality Includes an analysis of societal structures – inequality, globalization, transnationalism Contains learning features including: discussion questions, annotated further reading, chapter summaries and pointers to online resources to assist with study A must buy for students taking modules in social change, social inequality, social theory and globalization.

The idea of ‘pornography’ is often employed to invoke titillation, anger, and disgust. Stigma and the Shaping of the Pornography Industry explores the effects that this stigmatized identity has on the pornography industry itself. From the video era to the emergence of the internet, to trade shows, white-collar workers, technological innovation, and industry-wide characteristics, this book looks beyond content production to explore how stigma has shaped the structures, practices, norms, and boundaries of the wider sector. By drawing on concepts such as dirty work, core-stigmatized industries, and outlaw innovation, this book offers rich insights into the ways in which stigma is socially constructed and managed, and the deep structural effects that it has on the industry.

The past decades have seen significant advances in the sociological understanding of human emotion. Sociology has shown how culture and society shape our emotions and how emotions contribute to micro- and macro-social processes. At the same time, the behavioral sciences have made progress in understanding emotion at the level of the individual mind and body. Emotion and Social Structures embraces both perspectives to uncover the fundamental role of affect and emotion in the emergence and reproduction of social order. How do culture and social structure influence the cognitive and bodily basis of emotion? How do large-scale patterns of feeling emerge? And how do emotions promote the coordination of social action and interaction? Integrating theories and evidence from disciplines such as psychology, cognitive science, and neuroscience, Christian von Scheve argues for a sociological understanding of emotion as a bi-directional mediator between social action and social structure. This book will be of interest to students and scholars of the sociology of emotion, microsociology, and cognitive sociology, as well as social psychology, cognitive science, and affective neuroscience.

In the face of high unemployment in Europe for the past thirty years, the unemployed have organized themselves and mobilized at levels ranging from the local to the transnational. This work explores why, when, and how the unemployed move from acquiescence to protest.

Public debates over the last two decades about social memories, about how as societies we remember, make sense of, and even imagine and invent, our collective pasts suggest that grand narratives have been abandoned for numerous little stories that contest the unified visions of the past. But, while focusing on the diversity of social remembering, these fragmentary accounts have also revealed the fault-lines within the theoretical terrain of memory studies. This critical anthology seeks to bridge these rifts and breaks within the contemporary theoretical landscape by addressing the pressing issues of social differentiation and forgetting as also the relatively unexplored futuristic aspect of social memories. Arranged in four thematic sections which focus on the concepts, temporalities, functions and contexts of social memories, this book includes essays that range across disciplines and present a variety of theoretical approaches, from phenomenological sociology and systems theory to biography research and post-colonialism.

Gabriel Tarde was a highly influential figure in 19th century French sociology: a prolific and evocative writer whose understanding of the social differed radically from that of his younger opponent Emile Durkheim. Whereas Durkheimian sociology went on to become the core of the social scientific canon throughout much of the 20th century, Tarde’s sociology fell out of the picture, and he was remembered mostly through a few footnotes in which Durkheim dismissed him as an individualist, a psychologist and a metaphysician. The social sciences and humanities are now being swept by a Tardean revival, a rediscovery and reappraisal of the work of this truly unique thinker, for whom ‘every thing is a society and every science a sociology’. Tarde is being brought forward as the misrecognised forerunner of a post-Durkheimian era. Reclaimed from a century of near-oblivion, his sociology has been linked to Foucaultian microphysics of power, to Deleuze's philosophy of difference, and most recently to the spectrum of approaches related to Actor Network Theory. In this connection, Bruno Latour hailed Tarde’s sociology as "an alternative beginning for an alternative social science". This volume asks what such an alternative social science might look like. This second edition has been expanded to include, alongside the original chapters, two key essays by Gabriel Tarde himself - Monadology and Sociology and The Two Elements of Sociology, as well as a significantly revised and extended introduction by the editor.

Bourdieu’s theory of social fields is one of his key contributions to social sciences and humanities. However, it has never been subjected to genuine critical examination. This book fills that gap and offers a clear and wide-ranging introduction to the theory. It includes a critical discussion of its methodology and relevance in different subject areas in the social sciences and humanities. Part I "theoretical investigations" offers a theoretical account of the theory, while also identifying some of its limitations and discussing several strategies to overcome them. Part II "Education, culture and organization" presents the theory at work and highlights its advantages and disadvantages. The focus in Part III devoted to "The State" is on the formation and evolution of the State and public policy in different contexts. The chapters show the usefulness of field theory in describing, explaining and understanding the functioning of the State at different stages in its historical trajectory including its recent redefinition with the advent of the neoliberal age. A last chapter outlines a postcolonial use of the theory of fields.

Concerns about immigration and the rising visibility of minorities have triggered a lively scholarly debate on the consequences of ethnic diversity for trust, cooperation, and other aspects of social cohesion. In this accessibly written volume, leading scholars explore where, when, and why ethnic diversity affects social cohesion by way of analyses covering the major European immigration countries, as well as the United States and Canada. They explore the merits of competing theoretical accounts and give rare insights into the underlying mechanisms through which diversity affects social cohesion. The volume offers a nuanced picture of the topic by explicitly exploring the conditions under which ethnic diversity affects the ‘glue’ that holds societies together. With its interdisciplinary perspective and contributions by sociologists, political scientists, social psychologists, as well as economists, the book offers the most comprehensive analysis of the link between ethnic diversity and social cohesion that is currently available.

Culture now has a prominent place on the urban policy and re-profiling agendas of cities around the world. City-based cultural planning emphasising creativity in all its guises has emerged as a significant local policy initiative, while the notion of the ‘creative city’ has become an urban imaging cliché. The proliferation of local blueprints for cultural planning/creative cities has been remarkable, while supra-state bodies such as the European Union and UNESCO are also fostering the use of culture in strategies to revive cities and urban economies and to brand places as ‘different’. Cities of Culture highlights significant trends in cultural planning since its inception, revealing and analysing key discourses and influential (globally-circulating) manifestos and processes, as well as their interpretation and implementation in specific places. With reference to examples drawn from Europe, Australia, Asia and North America, Cities of Culture provides insights into the application of urban cultural strategies in different local, national and international contexts, highlighting regularities, tensions and intersections as well as core underpinning assumptions. This book explores the now-pervasive expectation that cultural planning is capable of achieving a wide range of social, economic, urban and creative outcomes. It will be of interest for students and scholars of urban sociology, urban studies, cultural policy studies and human geography.