Shortcuts
About the Book Series
Shortcuts is a major new series of concise, accessible introductions to some of the major issues of our times. The series is developed as an A to Z coverage of emergent or new social, cultural and political phenomena. Issues and topics covered range from food to fat, from climate change to suicide bombing, from love to zombies. Whilst the principal focus of Shortcuts is the relevance of current issues, topics and debates to the social sciences and humanities, the books will also appeal to a wider audience seeking guidance on how to engage with today’s leading social, political and philosophical debates. Short and concise, the books will include cutting-edge pedagogical features such as a glossary of key terms, one-page argument summaries and a webliography.
Anthony Elliott is Director of the Hawke Research Institute, where he is Research Professor of Sociology at the University of South Australia. He is also Visiting Professor at University College Dublin, Ireland. His contact information is:
Professor Anthony Elliott, FASSA
Director, Hawke Research Institute
Research Professor of Sociology
University of South Australia
GPO Box 2471
Adelaide SA 5001
Australia
Tel.: 61 8 8302 1084
Email: [email protected]
Website: www.unisa.edu.au
VISITING PROFESSOR
UCD School of Sociology
Newman Building
University College Dublin
Belfield, Dublin 4, Ireland
Tel: +353 1 716 8674
Fax: +353 1 716 1125
Freedom: Shortcuts to a Big Idea
2nd Edition
By Nick Stevenson
August 31, 2026
The second edition of Freedom recovers the concept as a fundamental aspect of modern Western ideas and explores its history and how controversial its meaning can be. To what extent does freedom have a ‘social’ component, and how is it being reshaped by our dominant consumer society? Today, the West...
Hope: Shortcuts to a Big Idea
1st Edition
By David Chandler
August 31, 2026
David Chandler’s Hope offers a compelling exploration of the politics of hope against the backdrop of a broken world grappling with global crises, from political disillusionment to catastrophic climate change, where alternative futures seem difficult to imagine in positive terms. Examining hope as ...
Living Futures: Shortcuts to a Big Idea
1st Edition
By Deborah Lupton
August 24, 2026
Living Futures offers a fresh and exciting perspective on how people imagine and make futures as part of their everyday lives. It addresses important questions about who is included in futures thinking and futures making, and who is excluded. Bringing together historical, anthropological, ...
Anti-Science: Shortcuts to a Big Idea
1st Edition
By Dariusz Jemielniak
August 17, 2026
Tackling the critical issue of the growing skepticism towards science, this volume explores the complex forces driving the anti-science movement. It dissects the phenomenon of increasing anti-science advocates using academic research boosted by lived experiences fighting online disinformation. The ...
Food
2nd Edition
By John Coveney
December 18, 2023
In Food, John Coveney examines ‘food as … ’ identity, politics, industry, regulation, the environment, justice and gastronomy. He explores how food helps us understand what it means to be human. The centrality of food in life, and the importance of food as life, is undeniable. As a source of ...
Zombies
1st Edition
By Jennifer Rutherford
September 24, 2013
Not so long ago zombies rarely shuffled out of B-grade horror movies and cult comic books, but today they are everywhere. Zombies are proliferating, demonstrating an extraordinary capacity to transport fluidly from genre to genre, from the apocalyptic future to the already survived past, and in and...
Love
1st Edition
By Tom Inglis
April 16, 2013
Love is a dominant theme in Western popular culture. It has become central to the meaning of everyday life, propagated through the media and the market. Being in love has become idealised. With the demise of institutional religion in the West, romantic love has become the dominant form of ...
Panic
1st Edition
By Keith Tester
January 14, 2013
Impending environmental catastrophe, threat of terrorism, viruses both biological and virtual, disease: there seem to be so many reasons to panic today. But what is panic and why does it happen? This book uses a range of literature from sociology, cultural studies and popular psychology to develop ...
Planet Sport
1st Edition
By Kath Woodward
August 14, 2012
Sport generates some of the most intense feelings and levels of commitment. It is big business globally, but also the source of the most powerful personal identifications and individual and collective pleasures. Sporting events are routine and embodied, whether in the gym, on the field or at the ...
Freedom
1st Edition
By Nick Stevenson
May 07, 2012
Freedom is commonly recognized as the struggle for basic liberties, societies based upon open dialogue, human rights and democracy. The idea of freedom is central to western ideas of modernity, but this engaging, accessible book argues that if we look back at the history of the idea of freedom, ...
Global Finance
1st Edition
By Robert Holton
April 23, 2012
Written under the shadow of the global financial crisis, this book charts the current shape of global finance and tries to explain why the crisis arose – and what can be done about it. Economics alone cannot fully explain how global finance operates, and why it is so crisis prone. Global Finance ...
Web 2.0
1st Edition
By Sam Han
May 24, 2011
Web 2.0 is a highly accessible introductory text examining all the crucial discussions and issues which surround the changing nature of the World Wide Web. It not only contextualises the Web 2.0 within the history of the Web, but also goes on to explore its position within the broader dispositif of...