Social Theory

Using global case studies and many practical examples, this book explores the innovation challenges that face the public sector today.

A fully updated edition of this bestselling textbook offers a radical approach to community development taking theories of Gramsci and Freire into the current context. The focus is on putting theory into action for those training, working or managing any social justice practice.

This book offers a comprehensive overview of the field of the Sociology of Emotions, incorporating sociological, feminist and cultural perspectives. It will be essential reading for researchers and students seeking a current and interdisciplinary resource covering a wide range of international material in the field of Sociology of Emotions.

This book shapes a new language of social theory that allows people to embody their differences with a sense of dignity and self-worth, enabling them to come to terms with the complexities of their lived identities in a post-modern globalised world.

Demonstrating the relevance of theory to political and policy debates and practice, this dynamic and fully updated second edition helps students to grasp the real-life implications of social policy theory. It includes a new chapter featuring debates around disability, sexuality and the environment.

This book investigates masculinity/ies in relation to world politics. Explaining the gender is both an asymmetrical binary and a hierarchy, the book shows how masculinization works via ‘nested hierarchies’ of domination and subordination and explores the imbrication of masculinities with the nation-state and great power politics.

This lively textbook, part of the successful Understanding Welfare series, helps us to understand policy, politics and practice. It combines an in-depth exploration of selected theoretical perspectives and concepts with a student-friendly format.

This is the first book to make the link between popular culture and social problems. Drawing on historical and topical examples, the authors apply an innovative theoretical framework to examine how facets of popular culture shape how we think about, and respond to, social issues.

This accessible book is structured around six philosophical ideas concerning our relations with others: values, morality, aesthetics, order, rules and respect. Using examples from a range of countries, it provides a platform for engaging with important topical issues.

Aimed at first-year undergraduates studying sociology and related disciplines, this introductory-level textbook presents key ideas and concepts in social theory and an account of their intellectual background.

This book demonstrates how an ethics of care can help researchers work through challenges and solve complex issues. Keeping social justice at the heart of research, the book shows how an ethics of care can provide a systematic approach supporting good judgements about research practices from inception to impact.

Spanning religion, moral philosophy and scientific understanding of the human conditions, this unique book adds to the latest thinking on morality, proposing ways to enhance the capacity of public policy to respond to morality and associated shifts in social mores in different cultural settings.