Social Theory

This collection brings together a diverse range of interpretivist perspectives to find fresh takes on the meanings of religion. Cutting across paradigms and traditions, experts from the UK, US, and India apply different approaches to engagement with beliefs and themes, including identity, ritual, and emotion.

As time banking has received increased attention from policy makers as a means for promoting welfare reform in the wake of austerity, this book is the first to look at the concept of time within social policy to examine time banking theory and practice.

Reclaiming individualism reviews the scope of individualist approaches, and considers how they apply to issues of policy. It argues for a concept of individualism based on rights, human dignity, shared interests and social protection.

Connecting decolonial theory with Bourdieu’s class analysis, this book provides pioneering new insights into the social stratification of EU migrants and the relationships between neoliberalism, coloniality and European whiteness.

As the rise of global right-wing populism and Trumpism creates new interest in psycho-social writing and popular sociology, this timely book tells the story of the rise, fall and contemporary revival of the theories of Erich Fromm, a 1930s influential and creative public intellectual.

This imaginative collection invites readers to explore how a broader view of aesthetics can reshape areas like, medicine, arts and education, challenging how we think about knowledge. It is an agenda-setting contribution to understanding the significance of aesthetics in science and technology studies.

Bringing together philosophical insights with social theory, this book develops a better understanding of the role luck plays in generating and reinforcing inequality. The author offers a political economy of life chances and an analysis of durable and demonstrable social inequalities, revealing how they are sustained and reproduced.

This unique work reveals how the denial of race as a social category maintains and reproduces systematic racism in contemporary France. Léonard offers an in-depth analysis of contentious issues in society, revealing how color-blind racism is at the centre of social inequality in France.

Revisiting philosophical developments, historical figures and events, including Adam Smith, colonialism and modernity, this interdisciplinary book presents a ‘loving critique’ of society. It shows how learning to love better is key to releasing ourselves from the alienating grip of the market.

This volume investigates the relationship between nostalgia and contemporary social issues. From history and political theory to marketing and media, each chapter discusses the way nostalgia has been presented within a specific disciplinary context and shows how nostalgia as a topic of research has evolved over time.

This edited collection offers an original investigation of into the changing landscape of emotion in dark and uncertain times.

Challenging the assumption that emotional experiences are purely personal, the authors showcase how they relate to cultural, economic and political conditions.

This book examines the concept of the pluriverse alongside global ethics and the ethics of care in order to contemplate new ethical horizons for engaging across difference. Offering a challenge to the current state of the field, this book argues for a rethinking of global ethics as it has been conceived thus far.