Sociology and Social Theory
Sociology is a growth area for us and our books in sociology and social theory include exciting work from new authors and well-known academics, as well as undergraduate and postgraduate textbooks.
Our wide range of sociology and social theory books include high quality research and range from textbooks through to specialised monographs. Many also ‘make a difference’ in a tangible way, whether it be informing a key policy or practice debate, or improving the education of students.
Good Times, Bad Times
The Welfare Myth of Them and Us
This revised edition uses extensive updated research and survey evidence to challenge the view of 'skivers versus strivers', showing how much our lives vary not just as we age, but from week-to-week and year-to-year.
Too Much Stuff
Capitalism in Crisis
We now enjoy the highest living standard in history yet spend more of our income on pointless luxury. Instead, we should tax more in order to invest much more in societal needs, which will in turn reinvigorate the economy and reduce economic inequality and environmental degradation.
Practice-Based Research in Children's Play
Offering a fresh look to complement the dominant singular voice of developmental psychology, this unique collection of 12 research projects carried out in the UK and USA is essential reading for anyone studying or working with children at play.
Blinded by Science
The Social Implications of Epigenetics and Neuroscience
This timely book critically examines the capabilities and limitations of new areas of biology, especially epigenetics and neuroscience, that are used as powerful arguments for developing social policy in a particular direction, exploring their implications for policy and practice.
Making Sense of Child Sexual Exploitation
Exchange, Abuse and Young People
Providing fresh insight into child sexual exploitation (CSE), this book uses the voices of children and young people who have experienced sexual exploitation, and the practitioners who have worked with them, to challenge the dominant discourse around CSE.
Protest Camps in International Context
Spaces, Infrastructures and Media of Resistance
Through a series of interdisciplinary case studies, this topical collection is the first to focus on protest camps as unique organisational forms that transcend particular social movements’ contexts. The book offers a critical understanding of current protest events and will help better understanding of new global forms of democracy in action.
Solitary Confinement
Lived Experiences and Ethical Implications
This book is the first to consider the history of solitary confinement and how it is experienced by the individuals undergoing it. It provides first-hand accounts of the inhumane experience of solitary confinement to provide a better appreciation of the relationship between penal strategy and its effect on human beings.
Creative Destruction
How to Start an Economic Renaissance
A new technological revolution is needed, backed by political and cultural change to address Western economic stagnation. This means embracing the major disruption required to our companies and workforce to focus on embryonic technological sectors.
Understanding the Cost of Welfare
A substantial, authoritative, third edition of this important textbook about the impact of economic priorities and pressures on social policies at a time when neo-liberal arguments for reducing the burden of welfare are more dominant than ever before.
Building Better Societies
Promoting Social Justice in a World Falling Apart
This book looks at what is needed to prevent the proliferation of harm and the gradual collapse of civil society. A wide range of expert contributors outline what might help to make better societies and which mechanisms, interventions and evidence are needed when we think about a better society.
Intimacy and Ageing
New Relationships in Later Life
This timely book, part of the Ageing in a Global Context series, addresses the gap in knowledge about late life repartnering and provides a comprehensive map of the changing landscape of late life intimacy.
Reimagining the Nation
Togetherness, Belonging and Mobility
This book develops new ways of thinking beyond the nation as a form of political community by transcending ethnonational categories of ‘us’ and ‘them’. Drawing on scholarship and cases spanning Pacific Asia and Europe, it provides a constructive agenda for critical nationalism studies.