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.
Emotions, Everyday Life and Sociology
1st Edition
Edited
By Michael Hviid Jacobsen
December 05, 2019
This volume explores the emotions that are intricately woven into the texture of everyday life and experience. A contribution to the literature on the sociology of emotions, it focuses on the role of emotions as being integral to daily life, broadening our understanding by examining both ‘core’ ...
Lost in Perfection: Impacts of Optimisation on Culture and Psyche
1st Edition
Edited
By Vera King, Benigna Gerisch, Hartmut Rosa
December 05, 2019
The permanent struggle for optimisation can be seen as one of the most significant cultural principles of contemporary Western societies: the demand for improved performance and efficiency as well as the pursuit of self-improvement are con-sidered necessary in order to keep pace with an accelerated...
Critical Theory and the Classical World
1st Edition
By Martyn Hudson
November 28, 2019
This book radically re-examines Europe’s imaginaries of its origin in the ancient Greek world. Extracting central concepts of critical theory in its widest sense - beyond the Frankfurt School - like the human, force, spirit and domination, it allies them to characters, mythologies and motifs in ...
(Inter)Facing Death: Life in Global Uncertainty
1st Edition
By Sam Han
November 04, 2019
In modern times, death is understood to have undergone a transformation not unlike religion. Whereas in the past it was out in the open, it now resides mostly in specialized spaces of sequestration—funeral homes, hospitals and other medical facilities. A mainstay in so-called traditional societies ...
Entanglements of Modernity, Colonialism and Genocide: Burundi and Rwanda in Historical-Sociological Perspective
1st Edition
By Jack Palmer
October 17, 2019
This book offers a novel sociological examination of the historical trajectories of Burundi and Rwanda. It challenges both the Eurocentric assumptions which have underpinned many sociological theorisations of modernity, and the notion that the processes of modernisation move gradually, if ...
The Iron Cage Revisited: Max Weber in the Neoliberal Era
1st Edition
By R. Bruce Douglass
October 17, 2019
At the start of the twentieth century, when Germany, among other nations, was undergoing industrialization, Max Weber famously characterized modern life in words that have often been translated as "iron cage." During the industrial era, that image caught on and was often used by scholars to express...
Depressive Love: A Social Pathology
1st Edition
By Emma Engdahl
September 11, 2019
Love and depression are key elements in the cultural script of emotions or affectual life within contemporary Western society, and the two have become intertwined to such an extent that it is informative to talk about depressive love. Indeed, the most common source of depression is intimate ...
We Count, We Matter: Voice, Choice and the Death of Distance
1st Edition
By Christopher Steed
September 11, 2019
This book examines the meaning of Brexit, the election of Trump and the rising tide of populist revolt on the right amidst the collapse of the left. Exploring the reaction against the establishment or ‘the system’, the author contends that we are witnessing a new divide between those who wish to ...
The Unmasking Style in Social Theory
1st Edition
By Peter Baehr
May 22, 2019
This book examines the nature of unmasking in social theory, in revolutionary movements and in popular culture. Unmasking is not the same as scientific refutation or principled disagreement. When people unmask, they claim to rip off a disguise, revealing the true beneath the feigned. The author ...
The New Narcissus in the Age of Reality Television
1st Edition
By Megan Collins
April 15, 2019
This book explores the emergence and encouragement of the new narcissus in our society and the ways in which this is portrayed in reality television. Through studies of well-known reality shows, including Toddlers and Tiaras, Hoarders, Sister Wives, Catfish: The TV Show, Celebrity Rehab with Dr. ...
Existence, Meaning, Excellence: Aristotelian Reflections on the Meaning of Life
1st Edition
By Andrius Bielskis
February 04, 2019
This book addresses the ‘perennial’ question of the meaning of life from the point of view of a novel interpretation of Aristotle’s teleology. Beginning with the premise that at the core of modernity and modern moral imagination are the entropy of meaning and the sense of meaninglessness, the ...
Ghosts, Landscapes and Social Memory
1st Edition
By Martyn Hudson
October 18, 2018
This book is a groundbreaking attempt to rethink the landscapes of the social world and historical practice by theorising ‘social haunting’: the ways in which the social forms, figures, phantasms and ghosts of the past become present to us time and time again. Examining the relationship between ...