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Framing 21st Century Social Issues

About the Book Series

The goal of this new, unique Series is to offer readable, teachable "thinking frames" on today’s social problems and social issues by leading scholars, all in short 60 page or shorter formats, and available for view on http://routledge.customgateway.com/routledge-social-issues.html

For instructors teaching a wide range of courses in the social sciences, the Routledge Social Issues Collection now offers the best of both worlds: originally written short texts that provide "overviews" to important social issues as well as teachable excerpts from larger works previously published by Routledge and other presses.

39 Series Titles


Identity Problems in the Facebook Era

Identity Problems in the Facebook Era

1st Edition

By Daniel Trottier
November 08, 2013

How have new social media altered how individuals present themselves? What dilemmas have they introduced? In the age of Facebook, Twitter and other forms of instant communication, individuals are losing (or relinquishing) control over their personal information! Trottier provides a trenchant ...

The Pains of Mass Imprisonment

The Pains of Mass Imprisonment

1st Edition

By Benjamin Fleury-Steiner, Jamie Longazel
October 10, 2013

This concise and engaging book presents a critical perspective on the correctional system and the process of incarceration in the United States. Fleury-Steiner and Longazel emphasize the magnitude of mass imprisonment in the United States, especially of people of color, not by objective statistics ...

From Trafficking to Terror Constructing a Global Social Problem

From Trafficking to Terror: Constructing a Global Social Problem

1st Edition

By Pardis Mahdavi
October 07, 2013

A panic surrounds human trafficking and terrorism. The socially constructed 'war on terror’ and ‘war on trafficking’ are linked through discourses that not only combine the two, but help promote an anti-Muslim sentiment. Using ethnographic data and stories, From Trafficking to Terror presents the ...

Unequal Prospects Is Working Longer the Answer?

Unequal Prospects: Is Working Longer the Answer?

1st Edition

By Tay McNamara, John Williamson
March 06, 2013

In light of the recent financial crisis and changing economic landscape, McNamara and Williamson present and analyze the possibility of working longer. Including a range of potential policies (e.g., further increasing the age of eligibility for full Social Security benefits, allocating ...

Beyond the Prison Industrial Complex Crime and Incarceration in the 21st Century

Beyond the Prison Industrial Complex: Crime and Incarceration in the 21st Century

1st Edition

By Kevin Wehr, Elyshia Aseltine
February 25, 2013

This short text, ideal for Social Problems and Criminal Justice courses, examines the American prison system, its conditions, and its impact on society. Wehr and Aseltine define the prison industrial complex and explain how the current prison system is a contemporary social problem. They conclude ...

Girls with Guns Firearms, Feminism, and Militarism

Girls with Guns: Firearms, Feminism, and Militarism

1st Edition

By France Winddance Twine
January 25, 2013

A nuanced understanding of state violence and gender (in)equalities must consider the varied and contradictory experiences of armed civilian women, female soldiers, and opponents of gun possession. How is ‘feminism’ and ‘femininity’ negotiated in the early 21st century by civilian and military ...

Torture A Sociology of Violence and Human Rights

Torture: A Sociology of Violence and Human Rights

1st Edition

By Lisa Hajjar
December 18, 2012

Torture is indisputably abhorrent.  Why, you might ask, would you even want to think or read about torture? That is a very good question, and one this book addresses in a compelling and enlightening way. Torture is a very important issue, not least because millions of people around the world ...

Terror Social, Political, and Economic Perspectives

Terror: Social, Political, and Economic Perspectives

1st Edition

By Mark P. Worrell
December 13, 2012

About the Series The goal of this new, unique Series is to offer readable, teachable "thinking frames" on today’s social problems and social issues by leading scholars, all in short 60-page-or-shorter formats, and available for view on http://routledge.customgateway.com/routledge-social-issues.html...

DIY: The Search for Control and Self-Reliance in the 21st Century

DIY: The Search for Control and Self-Reliance in the 21st Century

1st Edition

By Kevin Wehr
March 23, 2012

From the driveway mechanic to the backyard gardener, many diverse people are "doing it themselves" by building or repairing the stuff of their daily lives without the aid of experts. Do It Yourself uses Habermas’s colonization of the lifeworld as a frame and mobilizes Marx’s concepts of alienation ...

Nuclear Family Values, Extended Family  Lives The Power of Race, Class, and Gender

Nuclear Family Values, Extended Family Lives: The Power of Race, Class, and Gender

1st Edition

By Natalia Sarkisian, Naomi Gerstel
March 08, 2012

Nuclear Family Values, Extended Family Lives shows how the current emphasis on the nuclear family – with its exclusion of the extended family – is narrow, even deleterious, and misses much of family life. This omission is tied to gender, race, and class. This book is broken down into six ...

Disposable Youth: Racialized Memories, and the Culture of Cruelty

Disposable Youth: Racialized Memories, and the Culture of Cruelty

1st Edition

By Henry A. Giroux
February 22, 2012

Facing a crisis unlike that of any other generation, young people are caught between the discourses of consumerism and a powerful crime-control-complex, and are viewed increasingly as commodities or are subjected to the dictates of an ever expanding criminal justice system. Drawing upon critical ...

Foreign Remedies: What the Experience of Other Nations Can Tell Us about Next Steps in Reforming U.S. Health Care

Foreign Remedies: What the Experience of Other Nations Can Tell Us about Next Steps in Reforming U.S. Health Care

1st Edition

By David A. Rochefort, Kevin P Donnelly
February 15, 2012

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act marked a watershed in U.S. health policy, but controversy over its passage rages on, and much uncertainty surrounds the law’s transformation from blueprint into operational program. How can the experience of other nations help us to reconcile the ...

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