Publications

January 2009

Journal of Economic and Social Measurement 34(2-3): 105-117

Sheldon Danziger, and Robert Schoeni Publisher Link >> Despite the frequent use of the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) in poverty research, no recent studies have examined how to accurately measure long-term trends in poverty with these data. In this paper, we describe how to...
August 2008
Ronald Eyerman

Duke University Press

Publisher Link >>   In November 2004, the controversial Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh was killed on a busy street in Amsterdam. A twenty-six-year-old Dutch citizen of Moroccan descent shot van Gogh, slit his throat, and pinned a five-page indictment of Western society to his body. The murder...
August 2008
Philip Smith

Malden, MA. Wiley-Blackwell Publishing

Alexander Riley Publisher Link >> This second edition of Cultural Theory provides a concise introduction to cultural theory, placing major figures, traditional concepts, and contemporary themes within a sharp conceptual framework. Provides a student-friendly introduction to what can often...
June 2008
Elijah Anderson

University of Pennsylvania Press

  Publisher Link >> Typically residing in areas of concentrated urban poverty, too many young black men are trapped in a horrific cycle that includes active discrimination, unemployment, violence, crime, prison, and early death. This toxic mixture has given rise to wider stereotypes that...
April 2008
Jeffrey Alexander

Routledge

and Steven Seidman   This is the first anthology to thematize the dramatic upward and downward shifts that have created the new social theory, and to present this new and exciting body of work in a thoroughly trans-disciplinary manner. In this revised second edition readers are provided with a...
March 2008
Philip Smith

University of Chicago Press

Publisher Link >> From the chain gang to the electric chair, the problem of how to deal with criminals has long been debated. What explains this concern with getting punishment right? And why do attitudes toward particular punishments change radically over time? In addressing these questions...
January 2008

The Johns Hopkins University Press

  Today it is not uncommon to find items in department stores that are hand-crafted in countries like Thailand and Costa Rica. These “traditional” crafts now make up an important part of a global market. They support local and sometimes national economies and help create and solidify cultural...
June 2007
Emily Erikson

Publisher Link    
June 2007
Rene Almeling

American Sociological Review 72: 319-340

Publisher Link >> Eggs and sperm are parallel bodily goods in that each contributes half of the reproductive material needed to create life. Yet these cells are produced by differently sexed bodies, allowing for a comparative analysis of how the social process of bodily commodification...
November 2006
Deborah Davis

Routledge-Contemporary China Series

Helen F. Siu   Publisher Link >> SARS (Acute Respiratory Syndrome) first presented itself to the global medical community as a case of atypical pneumonia in one small Chinese village in November 2002. Three months later the mysterious illness rapidly spread and appeared in Vietnam, Hong Kong...
August 2006
Jeffrey Alexander

New York: Oxford University Press

How do real individuals live together in real societies in the real world? Jeffrey Alexander’s masterful work, The Civil Sphere, addresses this central paradox of modern life. Feelings for others–the solidarity that is ignored or underplayed by theories of power or self-interest–...
June 2006
Ronald Eyerman

Paradigm Publishers

Lisa McCormick Publisher Link >> The cultural and performative turns in social theory have enlivened sociology. For the first time these new developments are fully integrated into new approaches to the sociology of the arts in this important new book. Building on the established research...
May 2006
Jeffrey Alexander

Cambridge University Press

Bernhard Giesen Jason L. Mast Publisher Link >> Taking a “cultural pragmatic” approach to meaning, the contributors suggest a new way of looking at the continuum that stretches between ritual and strategic action. They do so by developing, for the first time, a model of “social performance...
May 2006
Jeffrey Alexander

Cambridge: Cambridge University Press

Bernhard Giesen and Jason L. Mast Jeffrey C. Alexander brings together new and leading contributors to make a powerful and coherently argued case for a new direction in cultural sociology, one that focuses on the intersection between performance, ritual and social action. Performance has always...
December 2005
Philip Smith

University of Chicago Press

Publisher Link >> Why did America invade Iraq? Why do nations choose to fight certain wars and not others? How do we bring ourselves to believe that the sacrifice of our troops is acceptable? For most, the answers to these questions are tied to struggles for power or resources and the...