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.
Masculinity from the Inside: Gender Theory’s Missing Piece
1st Edition
By Bruce Fleming
September 29, 2022
Rejecting the vocabulary and presuppositions common in Western talk about men, this book considers the ways in which men see, speak about, and understand themselves. Based on the author’s experience of teaching young men at a military academy and drawing on a range of theory, it identifies a ...
The Future of Sociology: Ideology or Objective Social Science?
1st Edition
Edited
By Robert Leroux, Thierry Martin, Stephen Turner
August 05, 2022
This book explores the shift in sociology away from the shared aspiration of the classical transition, of transcending partiality through the construction of a "science of society", in the face of challenges to the notion of objectivity. With the increasing subjugation of sociology to political ...
The Detective of Modernity: Essays on the Work of David Frisby
1st Edition
Edited
By Georgia Giannakopoulou, Graeme Gilloch
August 01, 2022
This book explores the thought of – and is dedicated to – David Frisby, one of the leading sociologists of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Presenting original examinations of his unique social theory and underlining his interdisciplinary approach to the critical interpretation ...
Making the Familiar Strange: Sociology Contra Reification
1st Edition
By Ryan Gunderson
May 30, 2022
This book examines the meaning and implications of the sociological maxim, ‘make the familiar strange’. Addressing the methodological questions of why and how sociologists should make the familiar strange, what it means to ‘make the familiar strange’, and how this approach benefits sociological ...
Anxiety and Lucidity: Reflections on Culture in Times of Unrest
1st Edition
By Leszek Koczanowicz
April 29, 2022
This book explores the nature of modern culture as a culture of anxiety, analyzing the modes in which such anxiety presents itself. Drawing on sociological and philosophical concepts of modernity, the author builds on the work of Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud to offer an understanding of modern ...
Happiness, Flourishing and the Good Life: A Transformative Vision for Human Well-Being
1st Edition
By Garrett Thomson, Scherto Gill, Ivor Goodson
April 29, 2022
Well-being studies is an exciting and relatively new multi-disciplinary field, with data being gathered from different domains in order to improve social policies. In its reliance on a truncated account of well-being based implicitly on neoclassical economic assumptions, however, the field is ...
Towards a General Theory of Boredom: A Case Study of Anglo and Russian Society
1st Edition
By Elina Tochilnikova
April 29, 2022
Through comparative historical research, this book offers a novel theory explaining the emergence of boredom in modernity. Presenting a Durkheimian topology of cross-cultural boredom, it grounds the sociological cause of boredom in anomie and the perception of time, compares its development through...
The Civilizing Process and the Past We Now Abhor: Slavery, Cat-Burning, and the Colonialism of Time
1st Edition
By Bruce Fleming
April 20, 2022
Drawing on the thought of Norbert Elias and using as a thread a purposely apolitical example of cruelty to animals to focus on changes in attitudes, this book explores the ways in which we deal with a past that we now abhor. As we struggle to deal with the fact that our past shapes us—indeed is us,...
The End of the Modernist Era in Arts and Academia
1st Edition
By Bruce Fleming
March 29, 2022
This book identifies the—now moribund—Modernist spirit of the twentieth century, with its "make it new" attitude in the arts, and its tendency towards abstraction and the scientific process, as the impetus behind the academic structures of universities and museums, together with the ...
From the Peaceable to the Barbaric: Thorstein Veblen and the Charro Cowboy
1st Edition
By Beatriz Aldana Marquez
September 30, 2020
This book applies Thorstein Veblen’s cultural theory to a qualitative study of the charro cowboy culture and community in Mexico. Drawing on Veblen’s arguments regarding cultural lag, the peaceable and the barbaric, predatory culture, vested interest, and pecuniary interest, it examines the ...
The Making of a Postsecular Society: A Durkheimian Approach to Memory, Pluralism and Religion in Turkey
1st Edition
By Massimo Rosati
June 30, 2020
Drawing on the thought of Durkheim, this volume focuses on societal changes at the symbolic level to develop a new conceptualisation of the emergence of postsecular societies. Neo-Durkheimian categories are applied to the case of Turkey, which in recent years has shifted from a strong Republican ...
Urban Walls: Political and Cultural Meanings of Vertical Structures and Surfaces
1st Edition
Edited
By Andrea Mubi Brighenti, Mattias Kärrholm
January 14, 2020
In recent years, an increasing number of separation walls have been built around the world. Walls built in urban areas are particularly striking in that they have exacted a heavy toll in terms of human suffering. As territorialising devices, walls can be protective, but the protection they grant is...