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Vulnerability theory offers an alternative to social-contract and rights-based paradigms. Beginning with the corporeal body, the theory argues we are inevitably and constantly dependent on social institutions that are generated (and ideally monitored) through law. Accordingly, vulnerability theory argues for a state attentive to the needs of the universally 'vulnerable subject'.

Based on lectures at Trinity College Dublin that focused on four foundational concepts, this book highlights how vulnerability theory differs from individualistic liberal frameworks.

Calling for a reorientation of law toward a collective responsibility-based approach, it is essential reading for anyone interested in political theory, social justice, and sociolegal scholarship.

This book explores the relationship between the state and war within the context of seismic technological change.

As we experience a fourth industrial revolution, technology already exerts a huge impact on the character of war and military strategies in the form of drones and other types of ‘remote’ warfare. However, technological developments are not confined to the defence sector, and the diffusion of military technology inevitably also affects the wider economy and society.

This book investigates these possible developments and speculates on their ramifications for the future. Through its analysis, the book questions what will happen to war and the state and whether we will reach a point where war leads to the unmaking of the state itself.

The concept of transhumanism emerged in the middle of the 20th century, and has influenced discussions around AI, brain–computer interfaces, genetic technologies and life extension. Despite its enduring influence in the public imagination, a fully developed philosophy of transhumanism has not yet been presented.

In this new book, leading philosopher Stefan Lorenz Sorgner explores the critical issues that link transhumanism with digitalization, gene technologies and ethics. He examines the history and meaning of transhumanism and asks bold questions about human perfection, cyborgs, genetically enhanced entities, and uploaded minds.

Offering insightful reflections on values, norms and utopia, this will be an important guide for readers interested in contemporary digital culture, gene ethics, and policy making.

The Bar has a long-standing reputation for being the preserve of public-school educated, white men. Power and privilege can create abuses of power. from discrimination and disadvantage in entering the profession, to toxic work practices, sexual harassment, judicial bullying and more.

In her trademark outspoken style, Jo Delahunty K.C. reveals what life at the legal aid Bar involves and identifies what can be done to change its culture and image for the better, reshaping the traditional image of a barrister in terms of the diverse profession it should be.

By celebrating the highs, but not concealing the lows, of a life in law, Jo’s love letter to her profession ‘sets the bar’ for action: what we can learn from the past and what needs to be done in future to galvanise it into a united, egalitarian, healthy environment for all.

In this enlightening study, Ian Cummins traces changing attitudes to penal and welfare systems.

From Margaret Thatcher’s first cabinet, to austerity politics via New Labour, the book reveals the ideological shifts that have led successive governments to reinforce their penal powers. It shows how ‘tough on crime’ messages have spread to other areas of social policy, fostering the neoliberal political economy, encouraging hostile approaches to the social state and creating stigma for those living in poverty.

This is an important addition to the debate around the complex and interconnected issues of welfare and punishment.

How should we treat animals? The long-held belief that other animals exist solely for human use has undergone radical challenge in the past half century. How much further do we need to go to minimize, and even eliminate, animal suffering?

The field of animal rights raises big questions about how humans treat the other animals with which we share the planet. These questions are becoming more pressing as livestock farming exerts an ever-greater toll on the planet and the animals themselves, and we learn more about their capacity to think and experience pain. This book shows why animals ought to have greater rights and what the world might look like if they did.

The days when museums were dusty, stuffy institutions displaying their wealth and wisdom to a reverential public are over. Museums today are a cultural battleground. Who should decide what is put on display and how it is presented? Who gets to set the narrative?

In this passionately argued book, Jon Sleigh maintains that museums must be for all people and inclusion must be at the heart of everything they do. But what does good inclusion look like in practice? Cleverly structured like a museum tour, Sleigh uses seven illustrative museum objects from seven very different museums to explore such wide-ranging issues as trust-building, representation, digital access, conflicting narratives, removal from display and restitution.

Peacekeepers, effective deterrent or potential cause of ultimate disaster? Understanding what nuclear weapons are for has never been more essential.

Dr Patricia Shamai traces the history of nuclear weapons from their first use in 1945 when they brought the Second World War to an end, through the Cold War when they gave rise to peace movements and disarmament efforts to the ominous nuclear landscape today.

Shamai shows how nuclear weapons have, to date, been a deterrent by raising the stakes of war and thereby reducing the chances of certain kinds of conflict. But, she warns, this is not a permanent situation – its continuation depends on the world’s reaction to this threat and ongoing vigilance.

What does a good prison look like? More than eleven million people are currently locked up in prisons across the world, but does that mean that prison actually works? The answer usually depends on what people believe and feel about crime, punishment and what happens inside prisons. The deep social and personal impact of prisons demands that we try to search for a better understanding of the evidence and ideas that have made prisons so ubiquitous.

Hindpal Singh Bhui, with 25 years’ experience of visiting and working in prisons worldwide, argues that we need to look at who is sent there and why, to disentangle reality from ideology and myth. Introducing the competing histories of prisons and allowing the voices of prisoners, prison staff and victims to be heard, he asks whether there is a better way to achieve what society wants from its prisons.

‘Athletes first’ is a slogan the International Olympic Committee often touts, but the reality is very different, as pre-eminent Olympics expert Jules Boykoff shows in this book. While the world’s attention is riveted by the triumphs and tribulations on their screens, there is much that goes on behind the scenes that is deeply troubling: athletes are increasingly voicing concerns over physical, mental, and sexual abuse, and they are collectively expressing grievances around equity and human rights.

Outside the stadiums, problems range from the democratic deficit and corruption surrounding the awarding of the Games, to displacement of people and gentrification of neighbourhoods to make way for Olympic venues, to the environmental damage that Olympic construction inflicts and then tries to greenwash away.

Boykoff tells us that radical steps are required if the Games are to be fixed and only then will they be truly ‘athletes first’.

Are zoos an anachronism in the 21st century when we can watch animals in their natural habitat, close-up from our couches without worrying about cruelty? Should they go the way of other bygone era ‘spectacles’ and ‘attractions’ that we now regard as barbaric? There are vocal campaigners and activists who believe so.

Heather Browning and Walter Veit disagree, but they acknowledge there is a case to be answered. In What are Zoos for? they test the common justifications for zoos (entertainment, education, research, conservation) against the evidence and suggest what the best zoos of the future should look like to ensure that they are primarily for animals and not just for people.

'Corporate purpose' has become a battleground for stakeholders’ competing desires. Some argue that corporations must simply generate profit; others suggest that we must make them create social change.

Leading organization studies scholar Timothy Kuhn argues that this 'either/or' thinking dramatically oversimplifies matters: today’s corporations must be many things, all at once.

Kuhn offers a bold new Communicative Theory of the Firm to highlight the authority that creates corporations’ identities and activities. The theory provides a roadmap for navigating that battleground of competing desires to produce more responsive corporations.

Drawing on communicative and new materialist theorizing, along with three insightful case studies, this book thoroughly redefines our understandings of what corporations are 'for'.

Analysing social change has too often been characterized by parochialism, either a Eurocentrism that projects European experience outwards or a disciplinary narrowness that ignores insights from other academic disciplines. This book moves beyond these limits to develop a global perspective on social change.

The book provincializes Europe in order to analyse European modernity as the product of global developments and brings together renowned scholars from international relations, history and sociology in the search for common understandings. In so doing, it provides a range of promising theoretical approaches, analytical takes and substantive research areas that offer new vistas for understanding change on a global scale.

Terrorism will always be frontpage news – counterterrorism is often discussed as an afterthought, yet it is vitally important to understand what is done in the name of our safety.

Since 9/11, there has been a huge ramping up of the state’s special powers in the name of security, such as indefinite detention, the assassination of suspected terrorists, the use of extraordinary rendition, torture, and changes to due process. However, these powers are often shadowy, they are rarely rolled back, and they can be counterproductive.

This book focuses on understanding the costs of counterterrorism and asking how they can be reduced; global in scope, it looks not just at Western liberal democracies, but at numerous examples from across the world.

How will protecting our digital infrastructure shape our future?

Cybersecurity is one of the key practical and political challenges of our time. It is at the heart of how modern societies survive and thrive, yet public understanding is still rudimentary: media portrayals of hoodie-wearing hackers accessing the Pentagon don’t convey its complexity or significance to contemporary life.

This book addresses this gap, showing that the political dimension is as important as the technological one. It accessibly explains the complexities of global information systems, the challenges of providing security to users, societies, states and the international system, and the multitude of competing players and ambitions in this arena.

Making the case for understanding it not only as a technical project, but as a crucial political one that links competing visions of what cybersecurity is for, it tackles the ultimate question: how can we do it better?

The production, sale and possession of some drugs is criminalized – but why? And why, despite vast resources and budgets, have international efforts to control them so consistently failed?

Julia Buxton looks at how our current drug control regime came about from the first US-driven international meeting on drug control in the early 20th century and the ideologies behind it. She also charts the evolution of today's drugs market, looking at where drugs are produced and consumed, giving voice to those who get caught up in this world.

Ultimately she asks, if the current strategy isn't working, how could it be better managed?

“History”, suggests Robert Gildea, “is a battlefield.” Questions of power, rights, identity and nationhood always have an ancient and modern historical dimension and countries still go to war over their interpretation of history. Yet accounts of history are just as prone to fabrication as fake news, so how can we tell good history from bad? How can history be critical, learning from the past and righting wrongs, rather than divisive, such as riding roughshod over the rights of others?

In this passionately argued book, Gildea suggests that the more people who really understand what good history entails, the more likely history is to triumph over myth. He sees positive signs in public history, citizen historians and community projects, among other developments. And he debunks claims that ‘you cannot rewrite history’, arguing that good history that’s attuned to its times must be rewritten time and again.

Religious belief is declining in many parts of the world, yet people still seek purpose in their lives and guidance on how to navigate life’s challenges. Humanism is a broad tradition of thought and action which encourages thinking for yourself about what to believe and accommodating diversity. What is the purpose of humanism in an increasingly secular world?

Written by a pre-eminent authority in this field, this book shows how humanism’s purpose is to help people to meet their need to understand the world around them. Given the growing demand for humanist funerals, weddings and baby naming ceremonies, it will help both existing adherents and the “humanism-curious” to contextualise its potential role in making sense of their lives.

As International Relations enters its second century as an academic discipline, leading expert Knud Erik Jørgensen provides a provocative assessment of its past, present and future.

In this book, Jørgensen traces International Relations scholarship, from its formative interwar years through to rapid growth in students and researchers in the wake of globalization. He examines the resultant widening of scholarship in the field, and the effects that this has had on the global discipline. The result is a concise and challenging appraisal of International Relations, one which both celebrates its value and maps possible future directions.

What is at stake when journalism is threatened? Does society still need journalists?

Journalism faces multiple threats today all over the world: economic decline, online disinformation, the rise of AI, authoritarian curbs on freedom of the press, and violence against journalists. In such a climate, it’s more urgent than ever to ask what journalism is for.

Drawing on his experience as a journalist and media commentator, and on interviews with journalists from the US to Myanmar, Jon Allsop examines key concepts that constitute journalism’s role: good judgement, concern for truth and critical scrutiny of one or more communities.

Along the way, he also considers the relationship between journalism and activism; whether journalists should aspire to change the world and whether they can be seen as champions of democracy.

Does charitable giving still matter but need to change?

Philanthropy, the use of private assets for public good, has been much criticised in recent years. Do elite philanthropists wield too much power? Is big-money philanthropy unaccountable and therefore anti-democratic? And what about so-called “tainted donations” and “dark money” funding pseudo-philanthropic political projects? The COVID-19 pandemic has amplified many of these criticisms, leading some to conclude that philanthropy needs to be fundamentally reshaped if it is to play a positive role in our future.

Rhodri Davies, drawing on his deep knowledge of the past and present landscape of philanthropy, explains why it’s important to ask what philanthropy is for because it has for centuries played a major role in shaping our world. Considering the alternatives, including charity, justice, taxation, the state, democracy and the market, he examines the pressing questions that philanthropy must tackle if it is to be equal to the challenges of the 21st century.

Does the British monarchy still have a place in today’s society? Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s ‘exit’ cast light on institutional racism, multiple allegations around Prince Andrew highlighted troubling attitudes to gender and power, while the abolition of monarchy in Barbados accentuated its relationship to colonialism.

But what is the monarchy actually for? Does it benefit the UK, or cause more harm than good? The death of Queen Elizabeth II and the dawn of the Carolean age makes these questions more pertinent than ever.

Breaking longstanding myths around the monarchy, Clancy demystifies and evaluates the monarchy, showing why republicanism is nothing to be scared of.

Most states in the world make some provision for the welfare of their citizens. Every state engages with health care provision, almost all provide education services, and, after an explosion of interest in recent years, a substantial majority now have national schemes in place for cash assistance.

Welfare states matter for people’s lives – but there is little agreement about what one is. What are these states trying to do, and why? The book discusses the institutions and methods that characterise welfare states around the world. It focuses on the aims, purposes and justifications for social welfare services in order to explain what the welfare state is for.

Truth is for striving at, for the sake of good collective action.

With new media technologies, it seems that falsehoods can spread faster and further than ever. And with new norms of public discourse, while being caught in a lie would once end a politician’s career, today it is shrugged off, which has profound implications for democracy. Does the truth no longer matter?

This optimist’s guide to truth argues that the problem of truth is an ancient one. It contends that truth is the best device we have for coordinating collective decisions and actions, and that, while the truth itself is perpetually elusive, the concept of truth as a target ideal to strive for is supremely useful. If we do not strive for truth, our decisions will be risky at best, often foolish and sometimes disastrous. This longstanding problem will not be solved with modern technology or regulations, but with measures we must all apply: mindfulness, humility, cooperation and optimism.

Across the world, an increasing number of people are turning to veganism, changing not just their diets, but completely removing animal products from their lives. For some, this is prompted by concerns over animal ethics; for others, it’s a response to the part played by animal agriculture in the climate crisis or an attempt to improve their own health.

Catherine Oliver shows why the veganism movement has become a powerful social, political and environmental force, taking an honest look at how we live and eat. She discusses the health and environmental benefits of veganism, explores the practical and social impacts of the shift to eating plants, and explains why veganism is not just a diet, but a way of life.

How does armed conflict shape global politics? And, critically, can it ever be regulated, a necessary first step to achieving a more peaceful world?

This book examines the factors that define and shape war in the contemporary world, and how changes to technology and society are transforming warfare.

Focusing on efforts to regulate and eliminate war, it provides a guide to the complex problems it poses now – and threatens in the future.

We all have to work to pay the bills – but what influence do we really have over our pay and working conditions? The emergence of the global economy, digital technologies, mass migration, gig work and zero hours contracts have thrust this question to the forefront of HRM. So how can we keep the ‘human’ in human resource management faced by these pressures?

This book adopts a critical approach to today’s major workplace challenges. It turns traditional HRM on its head by placing workers’ perspectives towards the workplace alongside those of managers to create an HRM textbook for the 21st century. Written by two experienced and research-active authors, the book:

• locates control of labour costs and productivity at the heart of HRM policy and practice;

• covers key issues that are overlooked in many textbooks, including conflict and resistance, the ‘new’ unitarism, migration and the challenges of Artificial Intelligence;

• adopts a critical approach that will appeal more to students who don’t wish to become traditional managers;

• includes current examples and case studies from the international world of work and business that will bring the subject to life.

This is a comprehensive one-stop resource for students and lecturers alike.

Since the ‘migration crisis’ of 2016, long-simmering tensions between the Western members of the European Union and its ‘new’ Eastern members – Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Hungary – have proven to be fertile ground for rebellion against liberal values and policies.

In this startling and original book Ivan Kalmar argues that Central European illiberalism is a misguided response to the devastating effects of global neoliberalism, which arose from the area’s brutal transition to capitalism in the 1990s.

Kalmar argues that dismissive attitudes towards ‘Eastern Europeans’ are a form of racism and explores the close relation between racism towards Central Europeans and racism by Central Europeans: a people white but not quite.

Available open access digitally under CC-BY-NC-ND licence.

‘White-collar’ and organizational crimes such as fraud and corruption receive relatively little attention from researchers. This edited collection redresses the balance with groundbreaking research and fresh perspectives on these crimes. A new generation of scholars investigate both new and old forms of crime such as the little-studied areas of sports fraud and the deviant subcultures within organizations that can lead to wrongdoing.

Recognising the profound harms stemming from these illicit activities, this book provides a state-of-the-art handbook for researchers and policy-makers in understanding and controlling these ever-evolving crimes.

The university system is no longer fit for purpose. UK higher education was designed for much smaller numbers of students and a very different labour market. Students display worrying levels of mental health issues, exacerbated by unprecedented levels of debt, and the dubious privilege of competing for poorly-paid graduate internships. Meanwhile who goes to university is still too often determined by place of birth, gender, class or ethnicity.

Who are universities for? argues for a large-scale shake up of how we organise higher education, how we combine it with work, and how it fits into our lives. It includes radical proposals for reform of the curriculum and how we admit students to higher education, with part-time study (currently in crisis in England) becoming the norm.

A short, polemical but also deeply practical book, Who are universities for? offers concrete solutions to the problems facing UK higher education and a way forward for universities to become more inclusive and more responsive to local and global challenges.

This book brings together leading figures in democratic reform and civic engagement to show why and how better state-citizen cooperation is necessary for achieving positive social change. Their contributions demonstrate that, while protest and non-state action may have their place, citizens must also work effectively with public bodies to secure sustainable improvements.

The authors explain why the problem of civic disengagement poses a major threat, highlight what actions can be taken, and suggest how the underlying obstacles to democratic cooperation between citizens and state institutions can be overcome across a range of policy areas and in varied national contexts.

The return of the Taliban has undermined EU external action, reversed twenty years of state-building efforts and represents the most significant failure of EU foreign policy to date.

Drawing on over 100 hours of interviews with key actors and an in-depth examination of the EU’s state-building efforts, this book offers unparalleled insights into the complex interplay between transatlantic relations and the resurgence of the Taliban. It critically evaluates the EU's strategies, advocating for a nuanced, historically informed approach to international relations.

Indispensable for academics, policy makers and anyone vested in the intricacies of foreign interventions in an ever-complex global environment.

Supported by the Independent Transport Commission (ITC): a registered charity

Why travel? What motivations underpin the journeys we make? And how can we make decisions that improve our travel experiences?

Arguing that the desire to move is a purpose in itself, this book brings together leading experts to provide insights from multiple viewpoints across the sciences, arts and humanities. Together, they examine key travel motivations, including the importance of travel for human wellbeing, and how these can be reconciled with challenges such as reducing our carbon footprint, adapting new mobility technologies, and improving the quality of our journeys.

The book shows how our travel choices are shaped by a wide range of social, physical, psychological and cultural factors, which have profound implications for the design of future transport policies.

Offering thought-provoking and practical new perspectives, this fascinating book will be essential for all those who have ever wondered why we travel and how it relates to our fundamental needs.

This illuminating study explores crimes against, and involving, wildlife and the resultant social harms.

The authors go well beyond basic conceptions of animal-related crime, such as illicit trade, for a deeper exploration of wildlife criminology, using a novel approach that combines philosophical, legal and criminological perspectives. They shed light on both legal and illegal harms, including blood sports, wildlife as food and abuse in zoos, and consider the potential connections with inter-human crimes.

This is a unique treatment of wildlife as victims of crime and a consideration of their rights as sentient beings that sets new horizons for the concept of wildlife criminology.

SHORTLISTED FOR THE BUSINESS BOOK AWARDS 2022

Does ‘woke capitalism’ improve capitalism’s image or does it threaten the future of democracy?

From Nike’s support for Colin Kaepernick, to Gillette’s engagement with the toxic masculinity debate, the 21st century has seen a sharp increase in corporations taking over public morality, a phenomenon which has come to be known as ‘woke capitalism’.

Carl Rhodes takes us on a lively and fascinating history of woke capitalism – from 1950s corporate social responsibility, through 1980s neoliberalism, tracing it alongside the adoption and mutation of the term ‘woke’ from Black American culture – and brings us right up to current-day debates.

By examining the political causes that woke capitalism has co-opted, and the social causes that it has not, he argues that this surreptitious extension of capitalism has serious implications for us all.

Shortlisted for the BSA Philip Abrams Memorial Prize 2019.

What’s it really like to be a mother with a career working flexibly?

Drawing on over 100 hours of interview data, this book is the first to go inside women’s work and family lives in a year of working flexibly.

The private labours of going part-time, job sharing, and home working are brought to life with vivid personal stories.

Taking a sociological and feminist perspective, it explores contemporary motherhood, work-life balance, emotional work in families, couples and housework, maternity transitions, interactions with employers, work design and workplace cultures, and employment policies.

It concludes that there is an opportunity to make employment and family life work better together and offers unique insights from women’s lived experiences on how to do it.

Most workers on temporary, zero hours and involuntary part-time contracts in the UK are women. Many are also carers. Yet employment law tends to exclude such women from family-friendly rights.

Drawing on interviews with women in precarious work, this book exposes the everyday problems that these workers face balancing work and care. It argues for stronger and more extensive rights that address precarious workers’ distinctive experiences.

Introducing complex legal issues in an accessible way, this crucial text exposes the failures of family-friendly rights and explains how to grant these women effective rights in the wake of COVID-19.

Once hidden behind the veils of entrepreneurship, it is now clear that platforms are reshaping the world of work, and Amazon has been a forerunner in setting the trend.

This book examines two key and contrasting Amazon platforms that differ in how they organize workers: its e-commerce platform and digital labor platform (Mechanical Turk). With access to the people who are working at the heart of these platforms, it explores how different working conditions alienate workers, and how, despite these conditions, workers organize within their political-economic contexts to express their agency in traditional and alternative ways.

Written for social scientists studying and researching the platform economy, this is a timely and important analysis of work and workers on the (digital) shop floor.

This agenda-setting book shows how freedom of movement has made the integration of Europe’s labour markets a contentious issue, for example in the aftermath of the eurocrisis, where workers had to make great sacrifices to enable the currency area to function.

It argues that the process of market integration in Europe has undermined the power and influence of European workers and generated significant human costs. In starting from the position of labour, this book offers an alternative approach which balances the needs of justice and efficiency.

With appeal across a wide range of readers interested in economic integration, it provides lessons for policymakers in how to integrate Europe’s member states to better protect workers and citizens.

Growing up and older at work is something we all experience, yet it remains surprisingly overlooked and under theorized in management and organization studies.

In this groundbreaking book, Kathleen Riach draws on a 10 year longitudinal study to offer fresh theoretical and empirical insights into how ageing is experienced in the workplace.

Introducing a new phenomenological theory of ageing at work, the book examines how individuals negotiate age-biased workplace cultures and adapt to their changing bodies within the context of financial capitalism. It reveals that ageing at work is not simply about demographic change or ageist stereotypes, but is an ongoing process that involves balancing professional expectations, the life course, and the self.

Recent years have seen the rapid spread of far-right movements across the globe. Far beyond Donald Trump, these movements are reshaping the physical world in ways that pose danger to everyone, regardless of their politics.

But how is this happening, and why with such speed? The shocking answer turns out to be aggrieved manhood gone viral, disguised as right-wing populism.

Taking a fresh approach to global politics, Wronged and Dangerous refocuses divisions towards shared human interests. If you care about our common future, discover new ways to engage with the challenges of our time.

In the age of AI, where personal data fuels corporate profits and state surveillance, what are the implications for democracy?

This incisive book explores the unspoken agreement we have with tech companies. In exchange for reducing the anxiety of an increasingly complex online world, we submit to algorithmic classification and predictability. This reduces incentives for us to become “algorithmic problems” with dire consequences for liberal democracy. He calls for a movement to demand that algorithms promote play, creativity and potentiality rather than conformity.

This is a must-read for anyone navigating the intersection of technology, politics and identity in an increasingly data-driven world.

This book examines the factors affecting the health and wellbeing of young people as they transition to adulthood under the shadow of migration control. Drawing on unique longitudinal data, it illuminates how they conceptualize wellbeing for themselves and others in contexts of prolonged and politically induced uncertainty.

The authors offer an in-depth analysis of the experiences of over one hundred unaccompanied young migrants, primarily from Afghanistan, Albania and Eritrea. They show the lengths these young people will go to in pursuit of safety, security and the futures they aspire to.

Interdisciplinary in nature, the book champions a new political economy analysis of wellbeing in the context of migration and demonstrates the urgent need for policy reform.

How do young people participate in democratic societies? This book introduces the concept of ‘doing society’ as a new theory of political action. Focused on Finnish youth, it innovatively blends cutting-edge empirical research with agenda-setting theoretical development. Redefining political action, the authors expand beyond traditional public-sphere, scaling from formal to informal and unconventional modes of engaging.

The book captures diverse engagement from memes to social movements, from participatory budgeting to street parties and from sleek politicians to detached people in the margins. In doing so, it provides a holistic view of the ways in which young people participate (or do not participate) in society, and their role in cultural change.

In the past, youth has been seen as a transition into the labour market, but today young people’s identities are increasingly wrapped up in their value as workers.

In this book, young people describe the meaning of work in their own words. Drawing on these narratives, the author reveals how their identities are intertwined with the dynamics of labour and value in post-Fordist capitalism and how social inequalities are manifested through the practices and ethics that young people draw upon to cultivate an economically productive self.

Illuminating the rapidly changing social conditions that mould youth identities, this book represents a paradigm shift in our understanding of youth and work.