Duke University Press
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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...
Malden, MA. Wiley-Blackwell Publishing
Alexander Riley
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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...
University of Pennsylvania Press
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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...
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...
University of Chicago Press
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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...
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...
American Sociological Review 72: 319-340
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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...
Routledge-Contemporary China Series
Helen F. Siu
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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...
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–...
Paradigm Publishers
Lisa McCormick
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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...
Cambridge University Press
Bernhard Giesen
Jason L. Mast
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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...
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...
University of Chicago Press
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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...
Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press
Abstract:
The seventeenth century was called the Dutch Golden Age. Over the course of eighty years, the tiny United Provinces of the Netherlands overthrew Spanish rule and became Europe’s dominant power. Eventually, though, Dutch hegemony collapsed as quickly as it had risen. In The...
