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Classical and Contemporary Social Theory

About the Book Series

Classical and Contemporary Social Theory publishes rigorous scholarly work that re-discovers the relevance of social theory for contemporary times, demonstrating the enduring importance of theory for modern social issues. The series covers social theory in a broad sense, inviting contributions on both 'classical' and modern theory, thus encompassing sociology, without being confined to a single discipline. As such, work from across the social sciences is welcome, provided that volumes address the social context of particular issues, subjects, or figures and offer new understandings of social reality and the contribution of a theorist or school to our understanding of it. The series considers significant new appraisals of established thinkers or schools, comparative works or contributions that discuss a particular social issue or phenomenon in relation to the work of specific theorists or theoretical approaches. Contributions are welcome that assess broad strands of thought within certain schools or across the work of a number of thinkers, but always with an eye toward contributing to contemporary understandings of social issues and contexts.

60 Series Titles


True Believers and the Great Replacement Understanding Anomie and Alienation

True Believers and the Great Replacement: Understanding Anomie and Alienation

1st Edition

By Alf H. Walle
October 09, 2024

True Believers and the Great Replacement explores the responses of segments of Western cultures who fear that changes in the racial, religious, and ethnic makeup of society threaten their way of life. The Great Replacement Theory (that suggests that the traditional character of Western society is ...

A Sociology of Seeking Portents of Belief

A Sociology of Seeking: Portents of Belief

1st Edition

By Kieran Flanagan
August 26, 2024

A response to the depletion of the rhetoric of sociology and the spiritual capital of theology, this volume explores the remains of Christianity that still lurk as portents in a progressively de-Christianised society seeking replacements for belief. With the sociologist set in the role of an oracle...

Dark Emotions Difficult Emotional Experiences in Social and Everyday Life

Dark Emotions: Difficult Emotional Experiences in Social and Everyday Life

1st Edition

Edited By Michael Hviid Jacobsen
July 22, 2024

Dark Emotions is a book about a range of emotional experiences that are often regarded or characterized as ‘negative’, ‘disturbing’ or ‘dark’ as contrasted with emotions that are ‘positive’, ‘pleasant’ or ‘light’. Each chapter in the book is devoted to introducing different ‘dark emotions’ such as ...

Care in the Iron Cage A Weberian Analysis of Failings in Care

Care in the Iron Cage: A Weberian Analysis of Failings in Care

1st Edition

By Rowena Slope
May 27, 2024

This book explores two public sector scandals in the UK, drawing on Max Weber’s thought on ‘the iron cage’ to understand how these cases of patient-neglect in NHS hospitals and failures by police and social workers to address the organised sexual exploitation of young girls occurred. Through ...

Emotions in Culture and Everyday Life Conceptual, Theoretical and Empirical Explorations

Emotions in Culture and Everyday Life: Conceptual, Theoretical and Empirical Explorations

1st Edition

Edited By Michael Hviid Jacobsen
May 27, 2024

This volume describes and analyses a series of emotions prevalent in everyday life and culture, with each chapter exploring the main facets of a particular emotion and considering the ways in which it manifests itself in and informs our culture and lives. Considering our expression, conception, ...

Revisiting Modernity and the Holocaust Heritage, Dilemmas, Extensions

Revisiting Modernity and the Holocaust: Heritage, Dilemmas, Extensions

1st Edition

Edited By Jack Palmer, Dariusz Brzeziński
September 25, 2023

Zygmunt Bauman’s Modernity and the Holocaust is a decisive text of intellectual reflection after Auschwitz, in which Bauman rejected the idea that the Holocaust represented the polar opposite of modernity and saw it instead as its dark potentiality. Bringing together leading scholars from across ...

Simmel and Beyond The Contemporary Relevance of Simmel’s Thought

Simmel and Beyond: The Contemporary Relevance of Simmel’s Thought

1st Edition

Edited By Pedro Caetano, Maria Manuela Mendes
September 25, 2023

Bringing together the work of scholars from across Europe, this book shows how Simmel's categories can be used to explore contemporary issues and further shed light on trends characteristic of global modernity. Thematically organised around the major societal challenges currently faced by developed...

Temporal Politics and Banal Culture Before the Future

Temporal Politics and Banal Culture: Before the Future

1st Edition

By Peter Conlin
September 25, 2023

This book addresses the absence of a strong alignment with the future in contemporary social life and explores anomalous temporal experience as a way to expand political imaginations. In the aftermath of the modern myth of progress, it argues we have entered into a kind of dystopia—brutal or ...

The Concept of Tragedy Its Importance for the Social Sciences in Unsettled Times

The Concept of Tragedy: Its Importance for the Social Sciences in Unsettled Times

1st Edition

By Sam Han
April 03, 2023

Events in the world today appear to be increasingly uncontrollable and unknowable. Climate change, refugee crises, and global pandemics seem to demonstrate the limits of human reason, science, and technology. In light of this, the terms "tragedy" and "tragic" have come into greater use. What does ...

Global Economic Crisis as Social Hieroglyphic Genesis, Constitution and Regressive Progress

Global Economic Crisis as Social Hieroglyphic: Genesis, Constitution and Regressive Progress

1st Edition

By Christos Memos
January 09, 2023

This book examines the 2008 global economic crisis as a complex social phenomenon or "social hieroglyphic", arguing that the crisis is not fundamentally economic, despite presenting itself as such. Instead, it is considered to be a symptom of a long-standing, multifaceted, and endemic crisis of ...

The University Revolution Outline of a Processual Theory of Modern Higher Education

The University Revolution: Outline of a Processual Theory of Modern Higher Education

1st Edition

By Eric Lybeck
January 09, 2023

The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/e/9781351017558, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license. Few institutions in modern society are as significant as universities, yet our historical ...

Perspectivism A Contribution to the Philosophy of the Social Sciences

Perspectivism: A Contribution to the Philosophy of the Social Sciences

1st Edition

By Kenneth Smith
December 30, 2022

Perspectivism: A Contribution to the Philosophy of the Social Sciences advances the philosophy of perspectivism, showing how its capacity to assess competing views of a particular concept by approaching them as different ‘sides’ of a multi-dimensional object supports a concept of ‘adequate’ rather ...

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