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.
Freud as a Social and Cultural Theorist: On Human Nature and the Civilizing Process
1st Edition
By Howard L. Kaye
June 30, 2020
This book offers a new account of Freud’s work by reading him as the social theorist and philosopher he always aspired to be, and not as the medical scientist he publicly claimed to be. In doing so, the author demonstrates that’s Freud’s social, moral, and cultural thought constitutes the core of ...
Max Weber's Theory of Modernity: The Endless Pursuit of Meaning
1st Edition
By Michael Symonds
June 30, 2020
This book illuminates an important dimension of the work of Max Weber. Weber’s theory of meaning and modernity is articulated through an understanding of his account of the way in which the pursuit of meaning in the modern world has been shaped by the loss of Western religion and how such pursuit ...
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 ...
The Poetics of Crime: Understanding and Researching Crime and Deviance Through Creative Sources
1st Edition
By Michael Hviid Jacobsen
June 30, 2020
The Poetics of Crime provides an invitation to reconsider and reimagine how criminological knowledge may be creatively and poetically constructed, obtained, corroborated and applied. Departing from the conventional understanding of criminology as a discipline concerned with refined statistical ...
Updating Charles H. Cooley: Contemporary Perspectives on a Sociological Classic
1st Edition
Edited
By Natalia Ruiz-Junco, Baptiste Brossard
June 30, 2020
This book explores the contemporary relevance of Charles H. Cooley’s thought, bringing together scholars from the US, Europe and Australia to reflect on Cooley’s theory and legacy. Offering an up-to-date analysis of Cooley’s reception in the history of the social sciences, an examination of ...
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...
Sociological Amnesia: Cross-currents in Disciplinary History
1st Edition
Edited
By Alex Law, Eric Royal Lybeck
December 12, 2019
The history of sociology overwhelmingly focuses on 'the winners' from the classical 'canon' - Marx, Durkheim, and Weber - to today's most celebrated sociologists. This book strikingly demonstrates that restricting sociology in this way impoverishes it as a form of historically reflexive knowledge ...
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 ...