The book focuses on the status and role of the social sciences in the current millennium. Drawing inspiration from a range of theorists, it critically examines the key debates on the social science stream and focuses on its ir/relevance in our times in the background of changing state-market dialectics. It specifically scrutinises knowledge politics of the global times to reveal how the neoliberal project aligns and fuses steep economic ‘conditionalities’ with professional cultural parameters of higher academia to constrain autonomy and weaken radical expressions in social science pedagogy and research. Asserting that the humanistic core of social sciences has the potential to resist acts of reducing knowledge to a monochromatic form, the book argues that the social science stream can challenge and resist such hegemonic ambitions. It also identifies and analyses the contradictions, dilemmas, predicaments and false steps of social scientists, and avoids a reductive approach based on the ‘west versus non-west’ binary. The volume will be of interest to scholars and researchers of the social sciences in general, and of sociology/politics of knowledge, political theory, political sociology and education in particular.

A pioneering approach to social theory that rectifies overreliance on Western historical experience of development and modernization. In this pioneering volume, leading international scholars argue for the development of a new approach to social theory that draws on regional studies for the conduct of comparative analysis in the global age. Social Theory and Regional Studies in the Global Age moves beyond facile generalizations based on the historical experience of modernization in the West by highlighting differences rather than similarities and contrasts rather than commonalities, and by examining civilizational processes and culturally specific developmental patterns distinctive of different world regions. Essays combine comparative and historical sociology with civilizational analysis and the study of multiple and alternative modernities. Different patterns of modernization are compared within the framework of global/local compressed communication and interaction that results from globalization. The introductory chapter puts the present effort in the context of the seminal work of three generations of comparative sociologists, and what follows is a penetrating analysis of modernization and globality, opening the way for rectifying the erasure of the historical experience of a very sizeable portion of humankind from the foundation of social theory.

Many authors who discuss the idea of globalization see it as continuing pre-established paths of development of modern societies. Post-modernist writers, by contrast, have lost sight of the importance of historical narrative altogether. Martin Albrow argues that neither group is able to recognize the new era which stares us in the face. A history of the present needs an explicit epochal theory to understand the transition to the Global Age. When globality displaces modernity there is a general decentering of state, government, economy, culture, and community. Albrow calls for a recasting of the theory of such institutions and the relations between them. He finds an open potential for society to recover its abiding significance in the face of the declining nation state. At the same time a new kind of citizenship is emerging. This important book will provoke both radicals and conservatives. Its scholarship ranges widely across the social sciences and humanities. It is bound to promote wide cross-disciplinary debate.

At the beginning of the new millennium, the social sciences took an epochal 'turn' that revolutionized their theory-building. As a response to what they called the globalization of the social, they found the need to globalize their theorizing as well. It is curious that only after two centuries of colonialism and imperialism, after two world wars and several economic world crises, did they discover that there is a world beyond the national socials; it is even more strange that the social sciences globalize their theorizing by comparing theories about nationally confined socials and by creating all sorts of 'local' theories, as if any national social was a secluded social biotope. Trying to globalize the social sciences, they argue that globalizing social science theorizing means finding a way of theorizing that must, above all, be liberated from 'scientism' in order to allow a 'provincialization' of thinking. Not surprisingly, the globalizing social sciences have also rediscovered mythological and moral thinking as a means for a true scientific universalism. Michael Kuhn argues that the oddities of the globalizing social sciences are not accidents, but a consequence of the nature of how the social sciences theorize about the social.

This brilliant new book by one of Europe's leading social thinkers throws light on the global power games being played out between global business, nation states and movements rooted in civil society. Beck offers an illuminating account of the changing nature of power in the global age and assesses the influence of the ever-expanding counter-powers. The author puts forward the provocative thesis that in an age of global crises and risks, a politics of "golden handcuffs" - the creation of a dense network of transnational interdependencies - is exactly what is needed in order to regain national autonomy, not least in relation to a highly mobile world economy. It is imperative that the maxim of nation-based realpolitik - that national interests have necessarily to be pursued by national means - be replaced by the maxim of cosmopolitan realpolitik. The more cosmopolitan our political structures and activities, Beck suggests, the more successful they will be in promoting national interests, and the greater our individual power in this global age will be.

Attitudes towards death are shaped by our social worlds. This book explores how beliefs, practices and representations of dying and death continue to evolve and adapt in response to changing global societies. Introducing students to debates around grief, religion and life expectancy, this is a clear guide to a complex field for all sociologists.

The third edition of The Social Studies Curriculum thoroughly updates the definitive overview of the primary issues teachers face when creating learning experiences for students in social studies. By connecting the diverse elements of the social studies curriculum—history education, civic, global, and social issues—the book offers a unique and critical perspective that separates it from other texts in the field. This edition includes new work on race, gender, sexuality, critical multiculturalism, visual culture, moral deliberation, digital technologies, teaching democracy, and the future of social studies education. In an era marked by efforts to standardize curriculum and teaching, this book challenges the status quo by arguing that social studies curriculum and teaching should be about uncovering elements that are taken for granted in our everyday experiences, and making them the target of inquiry.

In the spirit of communitarianism and dialogue between civilizations, this ambitious book seeks a political philosophy where a diversity of world-views can meet. The main objective of the book is to propose a theoretical basis for convergence and to explain how it can be built. After considering key positions in the current debate on political theory, the author offers a theoretical solution to the seeming impossibility of universalizing an ethics of caring and responsibility.

Leading political theorists demonstrate the transformative potential of de-centering Western traditions in the field of political theory.

Sixteen leading international sociologists are brought together in this volume to share their experiences of becoming practitioners in the field. Selected for their comparative and transnational interests and experiences, the contributors include Martin Albrow, Karin Knorr Cetina, Diane E. Davis, Pierpaolo Donati, Leon Grunberg, Horst J. Helle, Eiko Ikegami, Tiankui Jing, Hyun-Chin Lim, Ewa Morawska, Richard Münch, Saskia Sassen, Joachim J. Savelsberg, Piotr Sztompka, Edward A. Tiryakian and Ruut Veenhoven. Each contributor provides an auto-biographical review of their journey into the discipline, with special attention paid to the intellectual and social-political contexts in which their work matured. Each chapter concludes with a commentary on the anticipated future direction of that particular sociological area. These original and reflective contributions provide fascinating and rare insights into the careers of sociologists living in a global age.