Key Ideas
About the Book Series
Series Editor: Anthony Elliott, University of South Australia
The Key Ideas series explores major concepts and pressing issues and debates in sociology and the social sciences, from class and sexuality to racism and consumption. The accessible guides offer concise and accessible overviews of core and cutting-edge topics, including class, sexuality, racism and consumption. Each volume is written by a leading expert in the field and uses the latest research findings and cutting-edge approaches from the social sciences to offer critical perspectives and lively, and starkly original interpretations of issues. With new editions redesigned to engage with major global challenges, they offer an assessment of the relevance of ideas for today’s world. Books in the Key Ideas series are perfect primers and pre-course reading for students of sociology, political science, economics, psychology, philosophy, and geography, as well as approachable introductions to contemporary issues for the interested general reader.
To discuss a proposal, please contact the commissioning editor Helen Pritt ([email protected]).
Secularization
1st Edition
By Charles Turner
October 22, 2019
‘Secularization’ sounds simple, a decline in the power of religion. Yet, the history of the term is controversial and multi-faceted; it has been useful to both religious believers and non-believers and has been deployed by scholars to make sense of a variety of aspects of cultural and social change...
The Stranger
1st Edition
By Shaun Best
June 17, 2019
This book explores the concept of the stranger as a ‘modern’ social form, identifying the differing conceptions of strangerhood presented in the literature since the publication of Georg Simmel’s influential essay ‘The Stranger’, questioning the assumptions around what it means to be regarded as ‘...
Welfare Conditionality
1st Edition
By Beth Watts, Suzanne Fitzpatrick
May 10, 2018
Welfare conditionality has become an idea of global significance in recent years. A ‘hot topic’ in North America, Australia, and across Europe, it has been linked to austerity politics, and the rise of foodbanks and destitution. In the Global South, where publicly funded welfare protection systems ...
Community: 3rd edition
3rd Edition
By Gerard Delanty
March 23, 2018
The increasing atomization of modern society has been accompanied by an enduring nostalgia for the idea of community as a source of security and belonging in an increasingly insecure world. Far from disappearing, community has been revived by transnationalism and by new kinds of individualism. ...
Sustainability
1st Edition
By Thomas Pfister, Martin Schweighofer, André Reichel
February 12, 2018
Sustainability as a reference frame for dealing with the interconnection of environmental, economic and social issues on a global scale is not only characterized by complex problems and long-term strategies but also by differences and disagreements with regard to its meanings and how they should be...
Populism: An Introduction
1st Edition
By Manuel Anselmi
August 28, 2017
Populism: An Introduction is the first introduction to the theme of populism. It will introduce the principal theories, definitions, models and contemporary debates. A number of global case studies will be used to illustrate the concept: • Russian populism; • Latin American populism; • Italian ...
Patriarchy
1st Edition
By Pavla Miller
June 14, 2017
Patriarchy, particularly as embedded in the Old and New Testaments, and Roman legal precepts, has been a powerful organising concept with which social order has been understood, maintained, enforced, contested, adjudicated and dreamt about for over two millennia of western history. This brief book ...
Social Capital
3rd Edition
By John Field
October 31, 2016
The term ‘social capital’ is a way of defining the intangible resources of community, shared values and trust upon which we draw in daily life. It has achieved considerable international currency across the social sciences through the very different work of Pierre Bourdieu in France and James ...
Knowledge: Is Knowledge Power?
2nd Edition
By Marian Adolf, Nico Stehr
September 16, 2016
As we move through our modern world, the phenomenon we call knowledge is always involved. Whether we talk of know-how, technology, innovation, politics or education, it is the concept of knowledge that ties them all together. But despite its ubiquity as a modern trope we seldom encounter knowledge ...
Renewable Energies
1st Edition
By Matthias Gross, Rüdiger Mautz
October 12, 2015
Renewable Energy normally refers to usable energy sources that are an alternative to fuel sources, but without the negatively evaluated consequences of the replaced fuels. Although energy issues have a long tradition in sociology and other social sciences, it may now be high time to conceptualize ...
Childhood: Second edition
2nd Edition
By Chris Jenks
February 27, 2015
In this book Chris Jenks looks at what the ways in which we construct our image of childhood can tell us about ourselves. After a general discussion of the social construction of childhood, the book is structured around three examples of the way the image of the child is played out in society: the...
Experts: The Knowledge and Power of Expertise
1st Edition
By Nico Stehr, Reiner Grundmann
November 10, 2014
In this book, Stehr and Grundmann outline the theoretical significance and practical importance of the growing stratum of experts, counsellors and advisors in contemporary society, and claim that the growing spectrum of knowledge-based occupations has led to the pluralisation of expertise. As ...