Social Theory
Democracy and the Public Sphere
From Dystopia Back to Utopia
Exploring the creative and destructive ways individuals and groups make use of new digital and social media in democratic societies across the world, this book presents a much-needed critical theory of the public sphere as we enter the new digital age.
Exploring New Temporal Horizons
A Conversation between Memories and Futures
This pioneering work explores how in our digital age of connectivity, temporal acceleration and real-time simultaneity impact personal and institutional experience. Bringing memory and future studies into a unique dialogue, the book offers an intervention to the current ‘temporal crisis’ of social life and sociological debates.
Intersectional Socialism
A Utopia for Radical Interdependence
Drawing on theoretical and empirical studies, this book offers a unique and timely reformulation of socialism adapted to current challenges. It makes explicit the ‘silent utopia’ of intersectionality theory and lays the conceptual groundwork for an emancipatory politics.
Interpreting the Body
Between Meaning and Matter
Written by leading social scientists, this ambitious volume asks what individuals’ “handling” of bodies reveal about inequality, social order and cultural change in societies.
Interpreting Contentious Memory
Countermemories and Social Conflicts over the Past
This book illustrates how scholars use different interpretive lenses to study profound conflicts rooted in the past. Addressing issues of racism, genocide, war, nationalism, colonialism and more, it highlights how our interpretations of contentious memories are indispensable to our understandings of contemporary conflicts and identities.
Interpretive Sociology and the Semiotic Imagination
Written by experts in interpretive sociology, this volume examines semiotic models in a sociological context. Contributors offer case studies to demonstrate ‘how to do things’ with semiotics. Synthesizing a diverse and fragmented landscape, this is a key reference work for understanding the connection between semiotics and sociology.
Coloniality and Meritocracy in Unequal EU Migrations
Intersecting Inequalities in Post-2008 Italian Migration
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.
The Political Economy of Fortune and Misfortune
Prospects for Prosperity in Our Times
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.
States and Welfare States
Government for the People
Most governments in the world have taken responsibility for social policy and elected to develop services in health, education and social security. This book explores the role of government and the state in the contemporary world and discusses views about government responsibility for social welfare services.
How Do You Know If You Are Making a Difference?
A Practical Handbook for Public Service Organisations
This book sets out practical and theoretically robust approaches for understanding and tracking change that any organisation can use to evaluate their contribution to social change and become more efficient and effective.
Racial Diversity in Contemporary France
The Case of Colorblindness
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.
Politics of the Gift
Towards a Convivial Society
Drawing on French sociologist Marcel Mauss' influential theory of 'the gift', this book shows that trust is the only glue that holds societies together, and people are giving beings and they who can cooperate for the benefit of all when the logic of maximizing utility personal gain in capitalism is broken.