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.
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 Chris 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 ...
C. Wright Mills and the Criminological Imagination: Prospects for Creative Inquiry
1st Edition
By Jon Frauley
June 16, 2017
In spite of its widespread use within criminology, the term ’criminological imagination’, as derived from C. Wright Mills’ classic The Sociological Imagination, has yet to be fully developed and clarified as an analytic concept capable of guiding theorizing or empirical enquiry. This volume, with a...
Fiction and Social Reality: Literature and Narrative as Sociological Resources
1st Edition
By Mariano Longo
June 16, 2017
In spite of their differing rhetorics and cognitive strategies, sociology and literature are often concerned with the same objects: social relationships, action, motivation, social constraints and relationships, for example. As such, sociologists have always been fascinated with fictional ...
A Sociology of the Total Organization: Atomistic Unity in the French Foreign Legion
1st Edition
By Mikaela Sundberg
January 11, 2017
Examining the organization of everyday life inside the regiments of the French Foreign Legion, this book takes its theoretical point of departure in the notion of the voluntary total organization; that is to say, an institution that constitutes a geographically delimited place of residence and work...
A Genealogy of Social Violence: Founding Murder, Rawlsian Fairness, and the Future of the Family
1st Edition
By Clint Jones
December 07, 2016
Examining the mimetic theory of René Girard, this book investigates the development of society as a result of an original crime (a murder) that shaped the way the earliest humans organized the social structures we live with today - an analysis that reveals the dangerous structure of the most basic ...
Fallgirls: Gender and the Framing of Torture at Abu Ghraib
1st Edition
By Ryan Ashley Caldwell
December 07, 2016
Fallgirls provides an analysis of the abuses that took place at Abu Ghraib in terms of social theory, gender and power, based on first-hand participant-observations of the courts-martials of Lynndie England and Sabrina Harman. This book examines the trials themselves, including interactions with ...