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.
Preventing Intimate Partner Violence
Interdisciplinary Perspectives
This book brings together researchers and practitioners from a range of fields to examine strategies and programs for preventing intimate partner violence (IPV). It provides paths to more efficacious prevention strategies and highlights ways that all stakeholders can work more effectively toward reducing violence.
Research Justice
Methodologies for Social Change
This is the first book to take a radical approach to socially just, community centred research. Challenging traditional models for conducting social science research within marginalized populations, it examines the relationships between research, knowledge construction, and political power/legitimacy in society.
The Harms of Work
An Ultra-Realist Account of the Service Economy
This book discusses workplace harm through an ultra-realist lens and examines the connection between individuals, their working conditions and management culture. It investigates the reorganisation of labour markets and the shift to flexibility and highlights working conditions and organisational practices within which multiple harms occur.
Continuity and Change in Voluntary Action
Patterns, Trends and Understandings
Drawing on extensive survey data and written accounts of citizen engagement, this pioneering book charts change and continuity in voluntary activity since 1981. Part of the Third Sector Research Series.
Science, Belief and Society
International Perspectives on Religion, Non-Religion and the Public Understanding of Science
This wide-ranging book critically reviews the ways in which religious and non-religious belief systems interact with scientific methods, traditions and theories. Moving beyond the traditional focus on the United States, the book shows how debates about science and belief are firmly embedded in political conflict, class, community and culture.
Welfare, Inequality and Social Citizenship
Deprivation and Affluence in Austerity Britain
Offers a rare and vivid insight into the everyday lives, attitudes and behaviours of the rich as well as the poor across the UK, demonstrating how those marginalised and validated by the existing welfare system make sense of the prevailing socio-political settlement and their own position within it.
Trusting on the Edge
Managing Uncertainty and Vulnerability in the Midst of Serious Mental Health Problems
This book explores issues central to contemporary theoretical debates around the nature of trust, linking abstract concerns to empirical analysis with interviews with service-users, practitioners and managers.
Partnerships
Machines of possibility
How did partnerships come to emerge almost everywhere and at almost the same time? What is the inner logic of partnerships? And at what point does that logic begin to break down? This book improves our understanding of the shifting ground on which partnerships and agreements must be reached in today's hyper-complex society.
Researching Happiness
Qualitative, Biographical and Critical Perspectives
This original collection draws on the latest empirical research to explore the practical challenges facing happiness researchers today. By uniquely combining the critical approach of sociology with techniques from other disciplines, the contributors illuminate new qualitative and biographical approaches of the study of happiness and well-being.
Youth, Work and the Post-Fordist Self
Drawing on empirical research, this book provides an innovative exploration of youth and work, showing how youth identities are connected with the dynamics of labour and value in contemporary capitalism.
Pioneering Social Research
Life Stories of a Generation
Presenting the landmark Pioneers life stories project, this one-of-a-kind book documents how modern social research in the UK was shaped. It combines a fascinating history of the generations who built outstanding and influential social research with a valuable resource for future research and teaching on methods.
The Criminalisation of Social Policy in Neoliberal Societies
From anti-terrorism agendas, to the punishment of the poor and the governance of parenting, this book explores how diverse fields of social policy intersect more deeply than ever with crime control and in so doing, deploy troubling strategies.