Social Science

Why does injustice often deepen during moments of rapid urban growth? And what does the pursuit of more just urban futures looks like when the realization of alternatives seems impossible?

African cities have boomed over the last two decades. Large-scale infrastructure projects, high-rises, and real estate ventures have transformed urban landscapes. While urban poverty levels have declined, rising housing costs, stagnant wages, and forced evictions—twinned with political authoritarianism—have intensified precarity and injustice.

Drawing on more than a decade of ethnographic research in construction sites, design offices, and new developments, anthropologist Marco Di Nunzio narrates the tensions animating the urban transformation that has reshaped Addis Ababa, Ethiopia’s capital, beyond recognition.

Unjust Developments reminds us that city building in Addis Ababa, as elsewhere, is not only about economic accumulation. It is a moral project, rooted in the belief that modern infrastructure will generate opportunity and uplift the poor. These promises have often failed the poor. Commitments to infrastructure have given political leaders, investors, planners, developers and architects the leverage to prioritize their own visions of development and dismiss demands for better wages and affordable housing as politically irrelevant or economically unviable. Government and corporate investments in the built environment have helped entrench unequal hierarchies of entitlement and rights.

Yet city building remains a fragile achievement. It is marked by struggles not only between developers and displaced communities, or companies and workers, but also among the city builders themselves. Demands for a more just city and frictions within the building industry open space for rearticulating what counts as political necessity, moral action, expertise, and the future of development.

In conversation with critical urbanism, anthropology, and moral philosophy, Unjust Developments offers a powerful account of city building as both a site of injustice and a terrain of struggle—where justice is not guaranteed, but persistently demanded.

Climate change is not only an environmental crisis but also a catalyst for worsening socioeconomic inequalities, leading to widespread calls for “climate justice.” Even though this term has become increasingly common, there remains no universally accepted definition. This challenge is compounded by the limitations of traditional scholarly frameworks, which struggle to encompass the dynamic and pervasive impact of the climate crisis across global, national, and local levels. The scope of the crisis requires ethical, social, and political considerations alongside scientific and environmental insights in order to shape equitable responses by states and societies.

This multidisciplinary book offers a comprehensive exploration of debates on climate justice across the natural sciences, social sciences, and humanities. Synthesizing these divergent approaches, it develops a new conceptual framework that transcends disciplinary divides, providing a deeper and richer understanding of climate justice. Contributors make an urgent case that climate justice must be centered within and across disciplines, creating a roadmap for multidisciplinary research and pedagogy on the climate crisis. Featuring a wide range of voices and actionable recommendations, this timely book illuminates how scholarship on climate change can become a call to action.

A powerful contribution to ongoing debates on refugees, borders, and camps and the politics of waiting

The Lebanese–Syrian borderscape is predominantly porous and ambiguous, without an actual border control, and is incessantly contested. Repeated internal displacement and refugee crises have been a pervading political condition in Lebanon since the early twentieth century, but the most destabilizing refugee and displacement crisis stems from the regional influx into the country in 2011 of thousands of Syrian refugees.

In Waiting on Borders, Paul Moawad focuses on informal tented settlements (ITSs) inhabited by Syrian refugees on this border, to offer a compelling conceptualization of the politics of time and waiting, especially in relation to how temporal strategies are used as deterrence mechanisms in border regimes and informal spaces. Here, waiting is not just an active political instrument used by authorities to manage and control mobility, nor is it just a passive state refugees find themselves in. Waiting also becomes a tool of defiance, resilience, and self-governance. He further integrates rhythm analysis in his approach to understand the daily coping mechanisms that refugees develop with local actors, host-communities, and their own communities, to alleviate uncertainty and anxiety due to place detachment and home rupture.

Rooted in border studies and urban studies, and drawing on rich empirical cases, Waiting on Borders demonstrates how states weaponize time and waiting modalities—through prolonged uncertainty, bureaucratic delays, and forced stagnation—to discipline, control, and exclude refugees.

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

Our lives depend on digital systems that are powerful—and dangerously exposed. This book uncovers how managing cyber threats shapes politics, influences policy, and quietly steers the way we live and work.

This book traces the colonial foundations of modernity as it emerged in non-Western contexts, offering new theories and challenging Eurocentric accounts.

Focusing on Muslim societies, the book maps the entanglements of empire, secularism, capitalism and the nation-state within global power structures. The chapters reveal how modern political, economic, and social orders have been shaped—and often distorted—by imperial legacies.

From legal renewal to postcolonial governance and global finance, this is a unique study that explores the ways in which states and societies in the Global South continue to grapple with, adapt to and resist the pressures of a hegemonic modernity.

How can sociological thinking help us make sense of today’s biggest global challenges? Climate change, migration, radicalisation and inequality dominate headlines and shape everyday life, yet the insights of sociology are often absent from public debate—drowned out by technological optimism, economic rhetoric or polarising politics.

This accessible, jargon-free textbook brings the sociological voice to the forefront. It demonstrates how evidence-based, critical perspectives can illuminate the causes, interconnections and possible solutions to some of the most urgent issues of our time.

Each chapter is crafted to support students new to sociology, offering tools to think critically and make connections between complex global problems. Key pedagogical and distinctive features include:

· Clear statements of key messages at the start of each chapter;

· Bold-highlighted definitions of sociological terms with minimal jargon;

· ‘Snapshot’ boxes with data, case studies or visual insights;

· Suggested sources for further exploration, including videos and online media.

Essential reading for undergraduate students and anyone working in policy, advocacy or social change—offering the tools to think critically, act thoughtfully and engage with today’s most pressing global challenges.

Is food porn a vibrant and democratic new expression of modern food culture or a superficial addition to an image-saturated world? Tracing its origins from the 1970s to today, this timely book examines the evolution of food porn as a desire-inducing aesthetic practice and a visually extravagant food spectacle.

Through discussions on class, gender, sexuality and national identities, it questions whether food porn reinforces social hierarchies or empowers individuals. Also exploring anti-food porn aesthetics, this book is essential reading for anyone seeking to understand the deeper social implications of food’s digital allure.

What is life really like for LGBTQIA+ people behind bars?

This book offers the most up-to-date global research on the experiences of LGBTQIA+ individuals in prison, cutting through layers of secrecy and stigma to reveal the harsh realities of incarceration. Drawing on evidence from the UK, US, Brazil and beyond, it highlights how protective segregation, institutionalised homophobia and identity-based violence compound trauma and social harm. Through a compelling conversational narrative, the authors explore institutionalised homophobia and offer evidence-based recommendations for policy makers.

This essential resource challenges punitive prison norms and advocates for trauma-informed, inclusive approaches to justice and rehabilitation worldwide.

What is the true cost of Britain’s housing emergency?

This is the shocking story of Britain’s appalling housing crisis as it has never been told before – through the people stuck in its grip, living in barely believable and totally unliveable conditions, from children brought up in hostels and bedsits to working people sleeping in tents and even their own cars.

Delving into the investigative work that began in a council tower block in Croydon and ended in the Houses of Parliament with changes to the law, Left to Rot exposes who is heard and who is ignored, where money is spent, where it is cut and what it tells us about Britain today.

This book exposes the long-term damage of short-term political thinking at the heart of British government, and lays bare the human cost of the catastrophic and ultimately counterproductive policy of rolling back the state in crucial areas of public life that matter most to people.

Centred on creative writing workshops in UK women’s prisons, this book explores what happens when imprisoned women begin to tell their own stories which are shaped by disempowerment and social exclusion.

Blending creative practice with critical analysis, it positions prison writing as both a mode of resistance and a means of reimagining the self. It brings long-overdue attention to the voices of incarcerated women, so often marginalised within the wider prison estate and overlooked in criminological research. This is an urgent, compelling contribution to prison studies, creative criminology and feminist approaches to writing and pedagogy.

What does it mean to grieve a child lost to an act of terrorism?

This book offers a powerful and deeply human exploration of traumatic bereavement, grounded in parents’ first-hand accounts of losing a child to political violence. Drawing on research in France, the book explores how such loss disrupts meaning, time and self. Through a phenomenological lens, it challenges clinical views of grief and trauma, revealing how parents resist closure and seek enduring bonds with the deceased.

This is a compelling interdisciplinary study of love, memory and making meaning in the wake of unthinkable tragedy.

What if utopia wasn't a distant dream, but already unfolding around us?

Focusing on South Africa, this compelling book rethinks utopia not as a fictional un-reachable future, but as a lived practice—emerging in social movements and intentional communities.

Rejecting capitalism, it explores how people create alternative ways of living social orders or economies, imagining and organising the world. Blending decolonial sociology, political sociology, utopian studies and real-world experiences, the book offers a fresh and original approach to understanding social transformation in times of crisis.

A powerful read for scholars, students and activists interested in resistance and hope for alternative futures.

As racial boundaries are constantly negotiated in Europe and across the globe, this book explores how Russian migrant workers navigate racial capitalism in the Nordic region.

Challenging the idea of a ‘race-neutral’ Eastern Europe, the book reveals how Russian migrants actively claim whiteness, often finding themselves on the margins of acceptability. Uniquely combining postsocialist and postcolonial perspectives, the author examines how these migrants, seeking recognition as European, reinforce economic and racial divides shaped by global capitalism.

This timely work offers fresh insights into race, migration and the boundaries of whiteness across Europe’s borders.

Beginning with the forced deportation of refugee women from Rome to Lagos in 2015, this book builds a compelling case for an intersectional rethinking of migration and refugee law. Grounded in women’s lived experiences of borders, it exposes the deep interconnections between mobility, labour and social reproduction. Drawing on feminist theory, Rigo challenges binary legal categories—forced versus economic migration, free versus paid labour—while making a radical claim for freedom of movement.

By foregrounding gender as a critical lens, this book offers fresh insights into global migration regimes and reimagines hospitality as a space of resistance and decolonial praxis.

Conventional research methods often marginalise the voices of those most affected by the issues being studied, limiting the potential for meaningful, transformative change. In education, health, social care, community development and many other fields, there is a growing need for research that is inclusive, accessible and responsive to real-world complexity.

This textbook offers a comprehensive introduction to co-operative inquiry: a participatory research methodology grounded in collaboration, reflection and shared knowledge creation. Acting as a how-to guide and companion text, it supports readers in designing and conducting ethical, practice-based research that draws on lived experience as much as professional expertise. The authors demonstrate how co-operative inquiry can integrate action research and mixed methods to produce both nuanced and authentic insights.

With guidance from leading experts and emerging voices in the field, this book is an essential resource for ethical researchers at every career stage. It equips readers with the confidence, tools and inspiration to generate impactful, equity-driven knowledge.

This book offers a vivid, critical exploration of young adults’ experiences of the contemporary night-time economy, drawing on rich ethnographic research from Stoke-on-Trent. Adopting recent conceptual advancements in ultra-realism, critical criminology and psychoanalytic theory, it examines how young people navigate relationships, substance use, violence and consumer culture through their night-time leisure rituals.

Advancing our understanding of social harm, the book also exposes the deeper political-economic forces that shape youth behaviours, identity and the many corrosive subjectivities that have flourished under late neoliberal capitalism. Engaging with timely concerns around mental health, individualism, and the nature of desire, the book provides a powerful theoretical and empirical contribution to contemporary criminology and sociology.

This powerful and reflective book explores the losses encountered during social research—of people, communities and environments—collectively referred to as The Lost. Drawing on the contributors’ varied research experiences, it gives voice to lives marked by marginalisation, trauma or quiet disappearance. Stories emerge from women who didn’t survive domestic abuse to those displaced by ‘natural’ disasters, or affected by homelessness. Through deeply personal and ethical reflections, each chapter considers how these losses shape both research and researcher.

Offering new insights into harm, reflexivity and the emotional toll of fieldwork, this is an essential contribution to critical criminology and social research methodology.

This innovative book examines how videogames engage with crime and its control. It treats games as ideological representations, in which ideas about policing, justice, and criminality are formed and reproduced. Covering over fifty videogames and blending insights from criminology, game studies, affect and social theory, the book explores how games reproduce injustice and inequality.

Central to the book is the idea of the ‘ludic unconscious’—the notion that in videogames the convergence of gameplay mechanics and narrative sensibilities are affectively and politically meaningful. It is an essential read for students and academics interested in the intersections of crime, ideology, and play.

What if we reimagined ageing, illness and disability not as barriers to sexuality—but as starting points for new forms of desire, intimacy and pleasure?

This groundbreaking book challenges the silence and stigma surrounding the sexuality of older, ill and disabled people. Drawing from sociology, health studies, cultural theory and lived experience, the authors explore diverse expressions of sexuality that defy long-established views.

From queer ageing to sex work and legal rights, this collection offers bold, inclusive perspectives and policy ideas that centre pleasure, agency and dignity. A vital resource for academics, practitioners and anyone invested in social inclusion and justice.

How might vulnerability be rethought beyond its traditional associations with weakness and reimagined as the basis of solidarity?

Across the world, there are unprecedented numbers of dispossessed people; rights and resources are increasingly inaccessible to those who need them most, and the responsibilities we have to one another are continually undermined and exploited.

Referencing three sets of social relations – breathing, grieving and appearing, this book examines how recognition of our shared but always socially situated vulnerability could be the basis for organizing our lives in ways that better support relationality, solidarity and care, now and for the future.

Popular media is a powerful mirror and maker of meaning around suicide.

This book brings together scholars from across disciplines to examine how suicide is mythologised, politicised and challenged across film, TV, young adult literature, digital platforms, online communities, and more. From news coverage of celebrity suicide to social media interventions with at-risk youth, this wide-ranging collection explores suicide’s intersections with class, gender, chronic illness and cultural identity.

Bridging academic analysis and lived realities, this volume offers vital tools for understanding, teaching and reimagining how suicide circulates in the stories we consume and create.

This powerful volume brings together scholars, activists, artists and experts-by-experience offering a radical critique of immigration detention and border carceral regimes more broadly, testifying to their inherent harms.

The contributors critically examine how COVID-19 intensified state control, abandonment, and marginalisation while highlighting inspiring acts of resistance and solidarity. Combining abolitionist and no-border perspectives alongside critical scholarly analysis, the book offers urgent insights into dismantling oppressive detention infrastructures and building caring communities.

Essential reading for academics, practitioners and activists committed to social justice, human rights and imagining abolitionist futures beyond borders and systems of incarceration.

This book exposes how policing and licensing practices shape UK nightlife as a racialised space, with harmful consequences for Black and Gypsy and Traveller communities. Drawing on extensive fieldwork and interviews with key nightlife stakeholders, it reveals how governance structures – from police-led meetings to licensing decisions – work to suppress racialized night-time events and Black male performers.

Through critical analysis of police diversity training, the discriminatory actions of door staff and security teams as well as street-level policing practices, this study offers a timely intervention into debates on race, surveillance and nightlife. It is essential reading for scholars of policing, racial justice and night-time economy studies in the UK and beyond.

This book exposes the strategies that make migrants’ lives unliveable and explores their resistance to this violence. Drawing on years of research across Europe, the author captures the lived reality of asylum seekers, refugees and other marginalised migrants, including their struggles with constant evictions, detention, push-backs, deportations and violence.

Blending feminist, intersectional and decolonial perspectives, the book reframes exhaustion as both a tool of governance and a site of struggle. By amplifying neglected voices and envisioning politics grounded in solidarity, care and friendship, this is a powerful call to rethink how movement, borders and resistance are understood.

This groundbreaking book offers a powerful sociological and criminological exploration of disability, autism and mental health within the criminal justice system (CJS). Through life stories and critical analysis, it exposes the stigmatisation, miscommunication and injustices faced by neurodivergent individuals and their families. Drawing on care ethics and the concept of ‘careless’ and ‘careful’ spaces, the book reveals how structural inequalities shape everyday experiences and responses to difference.

With a focus on the emotional, practical and socio-political landscape, it addresses an overlooked area of research into the CJS. It offers new insights for policy, practice and research—insights that respect complexity, encourage empathy and make the invisible visible.

For millions living on the African continent, the experience of poverty is a facet of life. While many scholars, activists, and policy experts work in African communities to mitigate poverty, they often miss a crucial dimension of contemporary African life—religion and religious practice. In Sacred Economies, scholar Nicolette Manglos-Weber with her colleague Josephine Nabakooza investigate how and why religion matters to the ways in which people take care of their material needs. Using interviews, focus groups, and sociological portraits of four local leaders in Uganda, Manglos-Weber and Nabakooza show how Uganda’s vibrant religious infrastructure supports local and interfaith community care efforts. Manglos-Weber ultimately argues that participation in Christian and Islamic congregations, as a model of religious life, generates a robust infrastructure of economic patronage and support. She also finds that this shared dynamic drives interfaith cooperation between local faith groups.

In telling this story, Sacred Economies drives the study of congregations in new directions, demonstrating how religious congregations function differently around the world. Manglos-Weber’s analysis prompts a closer look at the grassroots and unofficial religious aspects that emerge from congregational life and are often missed in scholarly studies of global religion and politics. She also challenges the de facto secularism of neoliberal development—revealing how economic activity and faith are intertwined in a postcolonial context. Sacred Economies challenges both scholars and development practitioners to understand the sacred dimensions of community care as a force for social good.

Unravels the complexity of pervasive mistrust across the primary medical sectors of Niger

Negotiating Mistrust examines a wide diversity of patients and healers—and interactions between them—in Niamey, Niger through the analytical prism of mistrust. It offers a holistic study of the medical landscape in Niamey by focusing on the intersections between three medical sectors: traditional, Islamic, and biomedical.

Scott M. Youngstedt asserts that nuanced analysis of the interplay between mistrust and trust is key to understanding the decisions that health-seeking Nigériens make among the multiple options available to them, while recognizing that in one of the world’s very poorest countries, many forms of biomedical care—and some traditional and Islamic medicine—are unaffordable to most people. He demonstrates that mistrust and trust are not mutually exclusive, usually not absolute but exist on a fluid continuum, involve cognitive and affective dimensions, and are shaped by shifting historical, contemporary, and personal contexts. Medical mistrust often functions as a pragmatic, defensive attitude of engagement with uncertainty and risk. Mistrust complicates medical decision-making, but Nigériens are not paralyzed by it. Despite pervasive mistrust of medical systems and institutions, medicines, and healers of all sectors for diverse historical reasons, tens of thousands of Nigériens consult with and purchase medicines from healers daily on the streets of Niamey because their determination to get well helps them overcome their skepticism. Since people in Niamey are often mistrustful of medical care of all three sectors, practitioners must exert enormous energy earning potential patients’ trust. Negotiating Mistrust focuses on the careers of generalist practitioners—healers who treat thirty or more conditions ranging from everyday annoyances to life-threatening problems—of all three sectors who work on the street and in roadside boutiques.

Medical mistrust in various forms is widespread, possibly even universal. This focused study of the medical mistrust-trust dynamic in Niger yields important insights into health care interactions and medical decision-making worldwide.

Explores the complex and underappreciated role of civilian self-defense groups in northeastern Nigeria during the Boko Haram insurgency

People as Protection is a groundbreaking exploration of the complex and underappreciated role of civilian self-defense groups in northeastern Nigeria during the Boko Haram insurgency, particularly the Civilian Joint Task Force (CJTF). Emerging in 2013, the CJTF was a grassroots initiative led by civilian populations, especially youth, to protect their communities from Boko Haram terror and the brutality of military forces. Caught between insurgents and the state, young volunteers patrolled their neighborhoods and risked their lives to prevent attacks while working alongside security forces many considered complicit in civilian harm.

Focusing on the deep motivations of these civilians, Daniel E. Agbiboa reveals how young Nigerians, when they chose to protect their communities, were driven by a desperate hope for security, a profound sense of patriotism, and personal courage. He shows how political emotions, such as a desire for recognition, dignity, and belonging, fueled civilians’ willingness to act, even as they grappled with, and sometimes contributed to, the deeply fraught nature of the Nigerian state. These civilians, he argues, remain emotionally tethered to the dream of a safer future, despite systemic betrayals.

People as Protection further reveals how civilians actively reshape security and governance in conflict zones, often through acts of profound political and emotional significance. Challenging the view of civilians as victims or pawns, and through extensive interviews and ethnographic fieldwork, Agbiboa uncovers the grit, courage, and emotional investments that drive the CJTF’s efforts. By foregrounding the roles of patriotism, political emotions, and grassroots values, he brings civilian agency into focus within the boundaries of security, governance, and citizenship in one of the world’s most volatile regions.

In recent decades, Latin America has grappled with crises, conflicts, and inherent contradictions deeply rooted in the capitalist fabric of social relations. In his groundbreaking research, author Daniel Felipe López Pérez delves into the historical foundations of enduring capitalist hegemonies across the region.

Central to López Pérez’s exploration is the notion of “hegemonic vehicles”—a powerful lens for comprehending global politics. He redirects the focus of hegemony strategy, emphasizing how local bourgeoisies skilfully create, adapt, and perpetuate social institutions to mold social interactions in their favor. These institutions, often arising from significant historical, political, economic, and cultural milestones, underpin the current social order. Drawing on a class analysis spanning Colombia, Chile, Peru, and Mexico, López Pérez sheds light on the resilience of capitalist systems even amidst conflicts and crises. By tracing the historical trajectory of capitalist dominance, his work equips critics, scholars, activists, and the working class with tools to scrutinize the existing social system and strategically strive for a more equitable society.

Through an exploration of historiographies, a contextual class analysis, and critiques of underlying ideologies, López Pérez challenges conventional interpretations of Latin American history. His deep dive into the nuanced relationships between power, social orders, and capitalism is essential reading for scholars in the fields of Latin American studies, political economy, and sociology.

Mental health struggles affect millions, yet personal stories of resilience and recovery often go unheard. In a world that still stigmatises mental health challenges, first-person narratives offer powerful insights into the realities of trauma, healing, and hope. These stories not only illuminate the lived experiences of individuals navigating mental distress but also challenge dominant societal perceptions, fostering empathy, connection, and a deeper understanding of the human condition.

Stories of Mental Health, Resilience and Recovery is a compelling exploration of personal strength in the face of adversity. This volume brings together seven deeply moving first-person accounts, highlighting the resilience of individuals who have faced trauma, discrimination, and profound psychological struggles. Taking an autoethnographic approach, these narratives are gathered with empathy, ethical sensitivity, and a commitment to amplifying voices too often marginalised. By weaving together these powerful testimonies, this work not only provides insight into personal journeys of recovery but also challenges societal norms, encourages self-reflection, and advocates for greater inclusion and justice for those experiencing mental health difficulties.

Offering invaluable perspectives for individuals with similar experiences, as well as educators, policymakers, and mental health professionals, Stories of Mental Health, Resilience and Recovery is an essential read for anyone seeking to deepen their understanding of resilience, recovery, and the transformative power of storytelling.

Framing the Opioid Crisis in Canada empirically examines public debates about the opioid crisis by politicians, journalists, and the general public, focusing on who they blame for the crisis and their proposed solutions.

Delving into the complex public discourse surrounding one of the most pressing health crises in Canada, the research investigates how politicians, journalists, and the general public attribute responsibility for the opioid crisis and the solutions they propose. By employing a mixed method approach including the use of various digital tools, this book addresses critical gaps in understanding the opioid crisis. Who do these actors blame for the opioid crisis, and what are the differences and similarities in their perspectives? How have their sources and narratives evolved over time? What solutions do they propose, and how have these solutions changed?

Revealing a polarized discussion and crisis communication that often overlooks the urgent needs of drug users, this is essential reading not only for Canada but also for international audiences facing similar challenges. The multidisciplinary approach provides valuable insights for different academics, health professionals, and policymakers for a better understanding of public health crises worldwide.

Nineteenth-century Germany invented the way we eat. Women experimenting in households, French chefs fleeing guillotines, and one of the most rapidly evolving food industries in the world forged recognizably modern eating practices between 1780 and 1910. While central Europeans merely aimed to survive long winters, experiment with translated recipes and curious ingredients from abroad, and embrace the conveniences of industrial life, their consumption habits and cooking practices created a new product landscape. Throughout this transitional era of history, individuals visibly communicated their self-understandings through food. This study of central European food modernity and middle-class identity aims to provide fresh footing for discussions in our own changing global era.

The lives of Georgian women who migrated to Thessaloniki, in Greece from the mid-1900s onwards remain largely invisible. Georgian Migrant Women on the Move seeks to bridge this gap by examining how this convergence of life worlds offered both challenges and turning points for Greek communities and Georgian migrants alike. Ranging from the historical Greek migrant experience of unregulated care work and uncertain political status to the potent sense of home and motherhood in Georgian culture, this study tracks how divergent ideas of gender and class are reshaped by transnational mobility. Consequently, it illuminates the methods Georgian women used to reforge their identities in the face of rupture and change.

Practice Theory and the Biosocial - Microbes, Matter and Milieu shows what recent developments in social theory bring to questions about how bacteria, viruses, microscopic materials and societies develop in tandem. The examples discussed – from urban infrastructures to the medieval plague and from antibiotic resistance to epigenetics –develop an account of how previous and present arrangements make some futures more likely than others and how unequal patterns of exposure and entanglement arise. This book aims to demonstrate the relevance of social and practice theories by overcoming classic distinctions between the very small and the very large, between agency and structure, and between nature and culture.

Lampedusa evokes the crossings made by migrants and refugees and its name is associated with the sad sequence of shipwrecks and deaths in the central Mediterranean. For several centuries, Lampedusa has been an uninhabited land at the frontier of two conflicting worlds: between Africa and Europe and between Christianity and Islam. It was a stopover for sailors and a zone of religious truce. This book follows an ethnographic account of the social life on this small island, exploring its history articulated with the present where thousands of migrants and tourists cohabit both well and poorly in a few square miles.

The exchange of important commodities like fish, sago, and pots between communities speaking dozens of different languages was not a focus of anthropological research in Papua New Guinea until the 1990s. This book explores how more than 100 communities who speak nearly fifty languages from five unrelated language phyla interact by developing persistent relations known as “hereditary friendship.” These relations provide everyone along the coast with fish, sago, and earthenware pots as well as many other useful commodities. By minimizing hostilities between and among different groups without invoking marriage, which is so important elsewhere in Papua, friendship relations brought harmony, peace, and basic commodities.

Where Saints Show Respect reveals the penetration of mafia values in Sicilian society. Instead of focusing on sensational criminality, this study considers rituals through which local society learns deep respect – sometimes fearful, but often playful or pious – for those values and their enforcers. State and Church misconstrue these values as vestiges of a society morally damned and left behind in a pagan past. This study draws on three decades of ethnographic research to explore a strikingly different Sicily from the self-congratulatory version of government and religious leaders, where a seemingly obscure set of rural practices offers a critical perspective on modernity itself.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, residents of Alma, a village in Kyrgyzstan, were faced with many challenges. Economic crisis and the elimination of welfare support forced an entire generation to become labour migrants in Russia. Those ‘left behind’ were sustained by migrants’ remittances and charitable activities, but at a cost. As villagers built upon existing kinship structures to create new practices of mutual aid on the lines of Islamic teaching, they suffered from the ‘dark side of kinship.’ This book shares experiences of people in Alma and its Moscow-based diaspora and how they created a ‘moral economy of migration’ that became territorialised as kindship was de-territorialised.

What does it mean for the social sciences to take colonialism seriously – not just as an issue of the past, but in terms of its continuing consequences in the present? While calls to decolonize the curriculum are increasing, few resources show what this means in terms of the everyday categories and concepts of the social sciences. This textbook addresses that gap by rethinking key themes—migration, citizenship, inequality, and the environment—through a critical engagement with colonial histories.

Developed from the Connected Sociologies Curriculum Project (CSCP) and written by scholars committed to transforming their teaching and research, the book challenges long-standing assumptions and provides practical, classroom-ready resources. It enables teachers and students to approach familiar topics from new angles, opening space for more rigorous and inclusive debates.

Pedagogical and distinctive features include:

• Structured chapters with learning objectives, summaries, discussion questions and reading lists;

• Thematic case studies that complement conceptual chapters;

• Links to rich digital resources, including videos and teaching tools from CSCP, Global Social Theory and Discover Society;

• Ready-made materials adaptable for undergraduate and sixth-form teaching.

Together, it makes an essential guide for anyone seeking to broaden the scope and depth of social science education.

Reassesses Henri Lefebvre’s enduring relevance to sociology, examining themes from Marxism to urban life and proposing new directions for Lefebvrian research on rhythm, embodiment and utopian thought

Henri Lefebvre’s work, particularly his theory of the production of space, has been remarkably influential historically within geographical research. While this extensive research has shown the continuing relevance of Lefebvre’s oeuvre for urban geographical research, Lefebvre’s contributions to sociology have been less explored. This is surprising and a missed opportunity, not least because Lefebvre’s writings on the urban, space and everyday life were fundamentally informed by and connected to his sociology. This volume responds to this lacuna in sociological engagements with Lefebvre’s work, bringing together leading scholars on Lefebvre’s sociological work who discuss elements from across his sociological oeuvre. This includes topics for which Lefebvre is well known such as space, rhythm-analysis and Marxism, through to lesser-known topics such as the rural, autogestion, the state and violence and finally to studies which push Lefebvre into new areas such as time, phenomenology and the environment. Therefore, this volume not only achieves a breadth of coverage but also provides fresh insights for those familiar with Lefebvre and new points of interest for those encountering his sociology for the first time. Our volume makes a critical addition to the long list of established and influential Anthem Companions to Sociology by adding a new volume on one of the most influential Marxist sociologists and philosophers of the twentieth century. An engagement with the work of Henri Lefebvre remains indispensable for sociology as this volume shows.

Since the 1970s, the recurring discourse of a ‘refugee crisis’ in Europe has affected border strategies that create a context of suspicion and criminalise asylum applicants. This book examines how the Netherlands engages with the arrival of certain (often illegalised) travellers and the asylum procedure, a tense liminal space and time that ensures decisions of in- and exclusion. Dutch asylum procedure is a peculiar legal procedure that gathers different people and sensitivities together to make swift, life-altering decisions for those applying for protection. Based on an extensive ethnography, this book reveals the ways in which suspicious compassion in Dutch asylum pervades an objective decision-making practice.  

Since the 1970s, the transformation of Pakhtun areas has brought far-reaching changes to all aspects of society. This book investigates evolving patterns of social relations among Pakhtuns, focusing on the practice of gham khadee (participation in sorrows and joys) as a key mode of social and political engagement. Given that political standing among Pakhtuns is tied to honour, the book also explores how gham khadee and the doing of favours enable leaders to build profiles and political followings. Offering a faithful account of Pakhtun reality, this study contests the stereotypical representation of Pakhtunwali and considers gham khadee to be a manifestation of the code of life.

Approaching European transitional politics from an ethnographic perspective, The Give and Take of Wind focuses on the practices, frameworks and alternative strategies of those who resist the EU Green Deal. The book examines identity constructs related to territorial sovereignty, public participation and the (consequent) redefinition of the political sphere. By examining Sardinia and the meta-island San Pietro, this book analyses if energy transitions represent a horizon of possible change for communities or whether it is experienced as the imposition of development models. The political and identity-driven nature of such opposition challenges anthropology and other social sciences to elucidate a phenomenon that affects Europe and beyond.

Adolescence is a critical period of the life course, encapsulating biological and social changes as individuals transition from childhood to adulthood. While the archaeology of childhood is a rapidly growing field, there has been little formal discussion on how adolescence may be biologically or socially defined and the spatial and temporal variability within these definitions. This book explores the meaning of adolescence through the analysis of material culture, historical documents, skeletal remains, isotope analysis, and other lines of evidence. Considering the implications for archaeologists and biological anthropologists, this book investigates the lived experiences of adolescents in the past to further our understanding of past societies.

Exploring Zora Neale Hurston’s life and work through a decolonial lens, this book traces Hurston’s journey from her early life (1891–1919) and struggles at the margins (1920–1930) to her peak as a pioneering ethnographer and writer (1931–1956) and her later years (1957–1960). Examining her navigation of a hostile academic environment, it highlights her redefinition of Black autonomy and diasporic identity. Through personal and political narratives, including Barracoon, it underscores Hurston’s enduring influence on Anthropology and contemporary Black thought.

In recent decades, self-proclaimed “independent bookstores” have arisen across China. In the West, such retailers represent an alternative to corporations and chains. In China, by contrast, they differentiate themselves from not only the state-owned Xinhua Bookstore but also other privately owned shops through an emphasis on intellectual independence and the free exchange of ideas.

Cultural Mavericks takes readers inside the world of independent bookselling in China, showing how a wide range of figures navigate the challenges of book retailing in the digital age amid rapidly shifting social, political, and economic dynamics. Drawing on more than a decade of immersive research—including interviews, observations, and extensive documentary analysis—Zheng Liu unveils how these bookstores carve out a unique identity and market position. She develops the concept of “culturally adapted strategy” to explain how independent bookstores—as both dedicated cultural institutions and resilient business enterprises—balance economic imperatives with a deep commitment to intellectual autonomy. Liu challenges the tendency to understand nonstate cultural institutions in China in terms of resistance, arguing that independent bookstores engage with politics as a strategic means of differentiation from the competition.

Richly detailed and compellingly written, Cultural Mavericks sheds new light on the interplay among culture, commerce, and politics in China, offering timely insights into the evolving dynamics of China’s book industry and wider cultural economy.

As a cultural artifact, memorials have been a part of funerary traditions for centuries and have continued to evolve as human culture has changed over time. This volume draws from a diverse, international group of academics to offer an overview of grieving and memorialization, ranging from traditional modes of expression to contemporary modes that revolve around the digital world. The editorial team is devoted to the death studies milieu and is interested in exploring relevant and timely issues that demonstrate historical persistence and continued growth. This collection of short, accessible essays examines issues related to memorialization, providing a broad overview of contemporary scholarship and an introduction to topics relevant to both established death studies scholars and a broader audience. 

What role does journalism play in shaping how we understand climate change and the planet we live on?

This thought-provoking book explores how media systems have helped construct our idea of the “human” Earth, from early nature reporting to today’s digital climate dashboards. Drawing on insights from the humanities and social sciences, it offers a fresh look at how news, data and storytelling influence public thinking in the age of the Anthropocene.

Building on the work of influential thinkers, the book asks how journalism can evolve to meet the demands of a rapidly changing world.

How can we make the digital performing arts truly accessible?

Written by experts at Harvard’s Berkman Klein Center and metaLAB, this pioneering study explores the urgent need to rethink digital access in the performing arts. Drawing on comparative research across the US, UK, EU and Australia, it examines how the COVID-19 pandemic exposed both the potential and the shortcomings of digital programming, particularly for disabled and marginalized audiences. Through rich case studies and critical legal analysis, it advocates for a new global framework that balances copyright protection with the human right to culture.

This is an essential resource for policy makers, arts leaders, disability rights advocates and legal scholars seeking a more inclusive digital future.

Many rail against “woke” ideology. Others dismiss the backlash as a rebranding of conservative concerns. Taking a third way, this book argues that social justice ideology centres identity and direct action and expands concepts of harm, distinguishing it from liberalism. Drawing on the latest datasets, the book offers a sober, evidence-based account of the ideology’s emergence.

As women and minorities have gained visibility and new generations have come of age, progressive ideologies have shifted under pressure. Post-2008 economic crises weakened liberalism, giving social justice ideology mass appeal.

Amid polarized debates over “woke” culture, this is a vital resource for scholars and students seeking an objective study of social justice ideology beyond the usual culture-war framing.

Uncovers the network of Spanish-language writers and editors in 19th-century New York, whose media innovations fueled anticolonial struggles and democratic ideals

At the end of the nineteenth century, New York City was a vital hub for writers from Latin America, providing a haven of press freedom and the latest printing technology. In Printing Nueva York, Kelley Kreitz reexamines the development of mass media in the United States by highlighting the significant contributions of Spanish-language newspapers and magazines created by US-based Latinx writers, editors, and their allies. This dynamic, hemispheric network of collaborators used a mix of storytelling and strategic media engagement to model democratic principles centered on equality and collective action.

Kreitz's work offers a fresh look at U.S. media and literary history, challenging established narratives that have primarily focused on English-language publications. Through a vivid analysis of innovative figures such as José Martí, Rafael Serra, and Sotero Figueroa, the book uncovers a rich intellectual exchange that crossed national and linguistic borders. Unlike many Anglophone outlets that emphasized passive consumption, these trans-American media networks promoted active participation, cultural exchange, and collective mobilization to address pressing issues of the time, including colonialism, anarchism, and the pursuit of economic, gender, and racial equality.

Printing Nueva York demonstrates how early Latinx writers and editors redefined what democracy could be, offering insights that are highly relevant to our current digital age. The book encourages readers to consider how storytelling, participation, and the transformative power of technology can continue to drive the potential of contemporary media to build a more democratic future.

Uncovers a haunting yet vital record of bodies commodified, archived, and performed

Currencies of Cruelty is a bold and incisive reconsideration of the relationship between enslavement, disability, and performance in 19th- and early 20th-century America. Danielle Bainbridge traces how the transition from slavery to legal freedom became entangled with the spectacle of the freak show stage, where disabled and racialized performers—often denied traditional labor opportunities—became highly lucrative attractions.

At the heart of this powerful study are conjoined twins Millie Christine McKoy, born into slavery and later emancipated, and the so-called “original Siamese Twins,” Chang and Eng Bunker, who navigated the freak show circuit not only as performers but also as enslavers. Their stories reveal how archival practices surrounding enslavement and performance labor worked in tandem, creating a system where unfree and newly freed bodies were simultaneously valued and devalued—exploited for their spectacle yet rendered abject within traditional labor economies.

Blending historical analysis with innovative archival theory, Currencies of Cruelty challenges conventional narratives of labor, freedom, and human worth. Bainbridge introduces the concept of the “future perfect” archive—one that anticipates what will have been rather than merely recording the past—offering a radical new way to engage with histories of enslavement, disability, and performance. A gripping exploration of race, commerce, and bodily spectacle, this book sheds crucial light on how histories of subjugation continue to shape our understanding of value and visibility today.

As national governments and global institutions fail to address climate change, an increasing number of cities have committed to major sustainability and climate strategies. Why do some cities take bold action while others remain on the sidelines?

Christof Brandtner shows that city climate action is not simply a matter of political will: It is an organizational problem. Cities do not act alone. They are embedded within both a broad institutional superstructure of professional networks and peer cities as well as a deep organizational infrastructure of civil society organizations, public agencies, and socially responsible firms. This dual embeddedness shapes cities’ capacity to plan, learn, lead, and scale sustainability solutions. Drawing on comparative research spanning fifteen years and thousands of cities around the world, Brandtner traces how environmental strategies, sustainability practices, and green building initiatives emerge, diffuse, and take hold. He uncovers the structural conditions that enable and inhibit meaningful climate action, revealing why it varies so widely across cities.

By combining lenses from urban theory and organizational sociology, Cities in Action sheds light on how cities navigate their social and institutional environments to meet the climate challenge. This book offers a novel perspective for scholars, policy makers, and practitioners seeking not just to explain but also to empower city action.

Despite global advances in children’s rights, young people are routinely disregarded, overpowered and excluded. This persistent discrimination – known as adultism – permeates family life, education, urban design, legal systems and political discourse.

In this groundbreaking book, the authors provide a comprehensive introduction to adultism from an academic perspective while also emphasising its practical implications. Drawing on rich, real-world examples and research, they analyse it as a systemic form of discrimination, exploring how it evolved and is reproduced through language, institutions and everyday practices.

Timely, accessible and urgent, this book offers a vision for resistance and transformation, outlining how adultism can be challenged – by both adults and young people – to co-create a more equitable future.

A visionary exploration of what the city might be in a postcapitalist world.

In a world dominated by capitalism, where urban landscapes suffer from inequality, environmental degradation and social strife, a vision for what comes next is vital. Postcapitalist cities guides readers through contemporary urban life, presenting a transformative urban blueprint for a future of equity, sustainability and communal well-being.

Combining vivid case studies with historical analysis and theoretical exploration, the book reveals how capitalism has shaped our cities and uncovers the revolutionary post-capitalist potential within them. From the urban protests of 1968 and the fare strikes in Santiago to urban commoning and the solarpunk movement, this book reveals how communities are planting seeds of radical transformation.

Postcapitalist cities is a poignant critique but also a celebration of emerging urban practices that prioritise human dignity, democracy and social justice. It invites readers to dream, analyse and act. Whether you're an urban planner, activist, scholar or concerned citizen, this book provides the tools and inspiration to build cities where humanity can truly flourish.

Education after October 7: Essays about Teaching and Learning in the Jewish Diaspora is the first book dedicated to exploring how the October 7, 2023, terror attacks affected teaching and learning about Israel in the Jewish diaspora. The first three sections of the edited volume bring together quantitative, qualitative, and ethnographic research conducted at schools and camps by scholars from a diverse set of disciplines. These studies consider the perspectives and experiences of learners, parents, teachers (North American and Israeli), and camp directors and counsellors to reveal how terror and war necessitated changes in teaching and learning. The concluding section of the volume contains three chapters that offer educational models that chart new directions for the future of Jewish and Israel education.

In today’s America, a disturbing surge in anti-Semitism is making alarming inroads into the national mainstream. This book explores the many factors fueling this hostility while also questioning why the American Jewish community has been largely reticent in its response. The author offers a fresh perspective by linking this reticence to the psychological challenges faced by minority groups under constant attack, showing how these pressures have led to historically ineffective responses.

Drawing on historical research and psychological analysis, the work highlights a recurring pattern of vulnerability within the Jewish Diaspora and suggests new ways to build a more proactive and resilient community. Whether you’re an academic, a community leader, or simply someone who cares about social justice, this book provides an essential look at how anti-Semitism takes root and points the way forward for a stronger collective response.

Builds on Norton’s work on investment to contest pervasive deficit perspectives that portray refugees as helpless victims or a public burden.

Set in Turkey, the country with the largest number of refugees in the world, this book expands the limited literature on higher education for refugees, particularly the gap in research in displacement settings.

It examines the experiences of Syrian young adult refugees studying in Turkish universities, highlighting the intersections between linguistic, social, economic and structural challenges and the students’ resourceful approaches to overcoming these barriers. Their stories depict both unique and common experiences of accessing higher education during displacement and underscore the importance of quality language instruction, interpersonal relationships, and supportive faculty members.

It contests pervasive deficit perspectives that portray refugees as helpless victims or a public burden and calls into question assumptions about integration in the nation of asylum being the ideal long-term outcome for refugees. The book also lays a methodological foundation for future decolonizing work in applied linguistics, centering the experiences of refugees and disrupting Northern dominance of forced migration scholarship.

How college students in mixed-status families are affected by immigration policies

Focusing on Latinx students attending the University of California, Family Legal Vulnerability exposes how their educational experiences and social mobility are shaped not only by their own immigration status, but also by their family members’ undocumented immigration status. The authors introduce the concept of "family legal vulnerability" as a novel framework that captures how undocumented and mixed-status immigrant families collectively experience deportability, economic insecurity, discrimination, social exclusion, and legal uncertainty.

The authors show how the adverse effects of family legal vulnerability are similar for both college students who are undocumented and U.S. citizens with undocumented parents. Cascading consequences emerge among immigration-impacted students as family legal vulnerability compromises their mental and emotional health, academic success, and political engagement.

The book also illustrates how students demonstrate agency as they negotiate family legal vulnerability, seeking out ways to bolster their individual and collective flourishing. Ultimately, this book calls on scholars, policy makers, and university administrators to account for family legal vulnerability when considering how immigration policies undermine students’ college experiences and to identify actionable practices to advance greater equity and inclusion.

Examines the aftermath of the Fukushima nuclear disaster

The 2011 Fukushima Dai’ichi nuclear disaster was the worst industrial nuclear catastrophe to hit Japan. It was a major event, rated at the highest severity, which released radioactive elements into the power plant’s surrounding environment when back-up systems failed and could not sufficiently cool the nuclear reactors. At least 164,000 people were permanently or temporarily displaced.

Radioactive Governance offers an ethnographic look at how the disaster was handled by Japan. Unlike prior nuclear-related narratives, such as those surrounding Chernobyl or Hiroshima, which focused on themes of harm, trauma, and victimization, the Japanese government consistently put forward a discourse of minimal or no radiation-related dangers, a gradual bringing home of former evacuees, a restarting of nuclear power plants, and the promotion of a resilient mindset in the face of adversity. This narrative worked to counter other understandings of recovery, such as those of worried citizens unsuccessfully fighting for permanent evacuation because they were afraid to go back to their homes.

Providing a rich theorization of how both governments and citizens shape narratives about catastrophic events, Radioactive Governance not only displays how Fukushima became a story of hope and resilience rather than of victimization, but also how radioactive governance shifted from the nuclear secrecy that characterized the Cold War era to relying on international organizations and domestic citizens to co-manage the aftermath of disasters.

Argues that self-management approaches for depressive disorders ask the most from those with the least

Therapeutic Inequalities offers a powerful and timely critique of the U.S. mental healthcare system, uncovering how structural disparities are maintained—and often hidden—through the widespread promotion of “self-management.” Drawing on two years of ethnographic fieldwork and community-engaged research, the volume traces how “self-management”—a treatment model that encourages patients to regulate their own conditions—has gained prominence in the care of mood disorders like depression.

As mood disorders have become leading causes of disability in the United States, public health officials have embraced a biomedical framing that casts them as brain diseases. While this medicalized approach has helped to reduce stigma, it has also justified shifting responsibility for care onto individuals, especially those already disadvantaged by systemic racism, poverty, and the erosion of public mental health infrastructure.

Weiner shows how the logic of self-management aligns with neoliberal ideals of personal responsibility, while obscuring the broader conditions that shape mental health outcomes. Far from simply diagnosing the failures of the current system, Therapeutic Inequalities asks what a more humane, interconnected model of care might look like. It calls for a radical reimagining of both mental health and personhood—one that values empathy, community, and the recognition of our shared vulnerabilities.

Forgiveness is necessary in the long fight for a just world—but it is only possible after the oppressed are victorious.

For too long, revolutionary social movements have reconciled to defeat. We must start winning again. Forgiveness is a crucial strategy for remaking the world, to secure and sustain victories, to turn one-time enemies into friends.

With deep political commitment and lucid moral clarity, D.K. Renton makes the case for forgiveness, but of a particularly unruly sort. Tracing the tragic abuse of Eleanor Marx and Jane Wells, the mistakes of the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission, the courage of the Bolshevik Revolution, and the redemption of televangelist Tammy Faye, Renton urges us to forgive, but only after tearing down the citadels of the rich.

Revolutionary Forgiveness merges history with philosophy, infuses politics with ethics, and connects collective struggle with the individual’s search for justice to demand a future for all—when the oppressed will be magnanimous in power, and even former oppressors will be free.

What happens when death becomes part of the journey of international migrants?

This book examines how mortality is woven into the experience of displacement and migration. From perilous border crossings to the business of repatriation and contested burial grounds, it reveals the hidden geographies and politics that underpin the death of migrants in transit or abroad. Drawing together diverse research across disciplines, it offers a cohesive framework for understanding the industries, rituals and emotional labour surrounding migrant death.

Whether through bureaucratic processes, artistic productions, activist mobilisations or collective mourning, death becomes not an endpoint, but a powerful force shaping how migration is lived, governed and remembered.

What happens when your personal information is weaponised against you online?

This groundbreaking book offers a novel examination of doxxing—the malicious sharing of private, identifiable and sensitive information—through a feminist and post-humanist lens. Drawing on in-depth interviews with 18 victim-survivors, it reveals the deeply gendered harms of privacy abuse, from public shaming and reputational damage to the erosion of informational autonomy.

Challenging conventional understandings of digital abuse, the book foregrounds the lived experiences of those affected and calls for urgent, victim-centred reforms. A vital resource for scholars and advocates, it reimagines data rights in a digital world increasingly shaped by surveillance and control.

Against the backdrop of transformations which have reconfigured access to information, communication, and collective discourse, The Political Economy of the Public Sphere critically examines the evolution of the public sphere from its origins in the 18th century to its contemporary digital transformation across Europe and the United States.

Adopting a political economy lens, the book analyzes how this crucial space for public communication and opinion formation is intrinsically linked to capitalism. It is shaped by market dynamics, the concentration of media ownership, and the commodification of audiences and their attention. Author Nikos Smyrnaios delves into the material and immaterial resources—like infrastructure, technology, influence, and agenda-setting—that affect the public sphere's functioning. Identifying key turning points—from the rise of mass media and deregulation to the dominance of digital platforms—the chapters demonstrate the impact of theory, civic engagement, state interventions, and corporate influence. In doing so, the work navigates the tension between the ideal of a democratic public sphere and its reality as a space embedded in power relations and contributing to the reproduction of inequalities.

Offering a comprehensive theoretical and historical overview of the transformations shaping today’s media environment, the book provides a rigorous foundation for critically understanding the possibilities and limitations of mediated discourse in the 21st century. Ideal for scholars and students of media studies, political science, sociology and communication theory, it invites readers to reflect on historical precedents, confront current inequalities, and imagine alternative pathways for collective expression and democratic participation.

The mental health effects of climate change and other ecological crises have become the object of intense public concern, giving rise to wide-ranging academic and popular debates over “eco-anxiety” and “climate anxiety.” This book offers the first extended sociological analysis of the phenomenon of eco-anxiety, engaging critically with the varied and ongoing claims-making activities through which it has been constructed as an urgent social problem.

Arguing that a critical sociological perspective can shed new light upon the complex social and cultural influences feeding into the alleged “epidemic” of eco-anxiety, Soron adopts a constructionist approach to eco-anxiety that highlights the processes by which this putative condition has come to be framed as a crisis demanding a concerted collective response. Addressing key gaps and tensions within eco-anxiety discourse, this book addresses the ways in which expressions of distress over mounting environmental crises, and the various political claims that flow from them, are being shaped though the highly specific idiom of therapeutic culture.

Without disputing the legitimacy of popular concerns over an environmentally uncertain future, Eco-Anxiety Rising brings debates over eco-anxiety and climate anxiety into an extended dialogue with the emergent literature on therapeutic culture and the sociology of social problems, seeking to contextualize and engage critically with a problem that has been discussed primarily from a psychological or medical vantage point.

In Sub-Sahara Africa, digital innovation and emerging technologies are reshaping the landscape of sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR). As digital solutions gain ground, they offer hope for improved access to services, enhanced health outcomes, and community empowerment. However, these advancements also present privacy, regulation, and equity concerns, particularly where healthcare access is uneven and digital literacy varies widely.

Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights in Sub-Saharan Africa: The Role of Digital Innovation and Emerging Technologies explores the intersection of digital innovation and SRHR within the African context. Edited by renowned experts, this work explores how digital tools can improve the accessibility, quality, and reach of SRHR services, while also addressing legal, ethical, and human rights considerations. Authors highlight both the promise and pitfalls of digital health solutions, offering insights into how policies can be shaped to protect rights and promote the responsible use of technology.

Transportation, Post-Penal Identity and the Life Course explores the life-courses of convicts who, after being transported to Van Diemen’s Land, now Tasmania, and released from servitude, died in pauper establishments.

Presenting new case studies that look at the whole lives of former convicts dying in poverty to understand the long-term effects of the convict transportation system, Watkins facilitates an exploration of a broader view of the charitable institutions and its connections with the penal system. Delving into the path dependency and the criminalization of poverty the author uses criminal justice records, civil records, and newspapers for life-course analysis, along with colonial statistical returns and correspondence of officials to contextualize those life-courses. Exploring the Vandemonian charitable system within its post-penal identity and socio-economic context, this book looks at the social mobility of pauper emancipists to disrupt the enduring belief that all convicts who were transported to Australia were ‘better-off’ and that Australia was a ‘working man’s paradise’ in the context of a re-emerging glorification of empire.

An interdisciplinary work exploring historical documentation and using criminological methodologies to uncover the lives of working-class people, this is insightful reading for researchers interested in the histories of charitable and criminal justice institutions, working class lives, life-course methodology, and criminalization.

The 2006 United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities differs markedly from other forms of international human rights law: it not only protects the rights of individuals but also addresses interpersonal relations and social structures. How did the convention attain this broad reach, and what does it tell us about the histories of human rights and disability law?

Progress from the Margins is an international history of the struggle for recognition of disability rights at the global level. Paul van Trigt chronicles how people with disabilities and their allies developed their own understanding of human rights, from the emergence of disability activism in the late 1960s through the negotiation of the convention. He traces the unexpected paths by which international recognition of disability human rights emerged, showing that it is not a story of linear progress but rather one of a decades-long series of discontinuous advances. Challenging accounts that criticize the limited scope of human rights in recent decades, van Trigt highlights how disabled people and their allies transformed human rights law by emphasizing social dimensions. He foregrounds the agency of disabled people from the Global South as well as the Global North, demonstrating how they shaped their own human rights. A groundbreaking account of disability internationalism, Progress from the Margins also reflects on the prospects for a world that embraces disability.

Increasing bacterial resistance to antibiotics is one of today’s greatest threats to public health. Yet a possible solution has emerged from a surprising source. Phage therapy deploys viruses called bacteriophages, “bacteria eaters,” to treat bacterial infections. What concerns—both biological and social—arise from using viruses in this way? What does phage therapy reveal about the links between humans and microbes?

In Our Viral Futures, Charlotte Brives examines the development and implications of this therapy, providing new ways to understand our interconnections with the microbial world. Considering patients seeking treatment for chronic infections, the establishment of new regulatory frameworks, and the complex processes of laboratory research and clinical trials, she highlights the complexity and variety of the relationships among humans, phages, and bacteria. Brives places phage therapy in the context of the widespread use of antibiotics under industrial capitalism, which has deployed these treatments in order to enable ecologically devastating forms of mass production and consumption. She argues that the connections between human societies and microbial communities defy the usual categories through which science and medicine understand the world, giving rise to new moral and political questions. Interdisciplinary and nuanced, Our Viral Futures poses a provocative challenge: Instead of continuing to assert that we can control and master microbes, we must learn to coexist with them.

Becoming an Anti-racist Educator honours the profound influence of Dr. Timothy J. Stanley, a trailblazing historian whose work has transformed how we understand racism, racialization, and historical consciousness in Canada. This timely volume brings together scholars, educators, and activists to reflect on how Stanley’s scholarship and mentorship have shaped their own commitments to antiracist education.

Spanning generations and disciplinary backgrounds, the contributors offer deeply personal and politically grounded reflections that connect Stanley’s insights to the pressing realities of our time—from the toppling of colonial statues to the resurgence of anti-Asian racism and the uncovering of unmarked graves at residential school sites. Together, they demonstrate that antiracist teaching is not just about critiquing systems, but about reimagining relationships to land, history, and each other.

Organized into three thematic sections—Shaping Anti-racist Approaches, Doing History Differently, and Mentorship—the collection culminates in a powerful epilogue by Dr. Stanley, whose voice continues to guide conversations on justice, equity, and historical accountability.

This book is an essential resource for educators, scholars, and community members committed to interrupting racism in schools, museums, universities, and beyond. It offers not only an archive of Stanley’s impact but a roadmap for those seeking to carry his work forward in urgent and transformative ways.

Sociocultural environments prompt us to notice and mark certain differences over others. This book investigates five paradoxes in the discourses and practices around such differences: the paradox of mixing, standardization, narrative, proximity, and tolerance. Drawing on the notion of unit thinking, it explores how perceived differences emerge fluidly in specific contexts. Through critical analyses of race studies, language education, global education/study abroad, and volunteer/service work, the book examines how these fields build on or capitalize on pre-conceived differences. It opens up discussions for new understandings of differences that challenge essentialist framings and inform alternative practices.

This book tells the story of Walmart's expansion in China, making the case that it is the story of a major shift in the structure of global capitalism. Walmart, argues Eileen Otis, is a leading actor in the rise of merchant capitalism, wherein the role of the merchant has changed from operating at the whim of industrialists, to leveraging control over large consumer markets. As Walmart's retail business grew at unprecedented rates across the globe, so too did this business model.

Walmart: Made in China documents the business's expansion into China not as a tale of seamless market entry, but as a case of frictions, improvisations, and labor struggles that reveal deeper transformations in global economic power. Drawing on years of fieldwork in Walmart stores across China, Otis traces an internal supply chain—from warehouse to checkout—where workers stock, promote, explain, and process goods under varying regimes of control. These labor regimes, structured by gender, migration, surveillance, and corporate rules and culture, as well as managerial oversight, reveal how capitalist value is realized, and how it can be contested.

At the heart of her analysis is the rise of a new system — merchant capitalism — in which control over consumer markets, rather than production, drives profit. Thus, Walmart: Made in Chinaoffers a compelling account of this shift in global capitalism, as it gets made and remade, on the retail floor.

Machine learning is fundamentally transforming financial markets. Where trading strategies were once crafted by human experts—executed manually or through pre-coded rules—firms now build models that generate the strategies themselves. These are not just tools but trading automatons: semi-independent systems designed to learn from markets and act on their own. Drawing on over a decade of fieldwork in financial markets, Christian Borch offers a rare inside look at how these systems are built, the risks they pose, and how they challenge our understanding of markets and decision-making. As trading automatons grow more complex and opaque—even to their designers—new sociological questions emerge: What happens when machines become the primary agents in markets? And how should we understand economic action when human judgment is no longer at the center? Trading Beyond Understanding is a powerful investigation of machine agency, market transformation, and the shifting boundaries between technological systems and social life.

In the wake of Greece’s 2008 economic collapse, African women in Athens navigated intensified discrimination shaped by the intersecting forces of gender, race and migration status. This feminist ethnography investigates how processes of racialization intersect with gender and migration status to produce complex forms of disadvantage. This book argues that gendered racialization renders these women not only invisible but also hyper-visible in stereotypical ways that heighten their exposure to discrimination and precarity. Through everyday survival tactics, home-making practices and collective mobilization, these women resist exclusion and marginalization. Acting individually and collectively, they work to improve material conditions and gain social intelligibility, ultimately challenging normative boundaries of belonging in contemporary Greece.

Set in Tel Aviv’s Bitcoin Embassy between 2017 and 2019, Community in a Crowd explores the everyday activities and social dynamics of Israeli Bitcoin enthusiasts. It examines how participants promoted Libertarian narratives and ritualized practices to challenge the moral authority of the ‘centralized’ political-economic order. Revisiting Bitcoin’s popular association with radical individualism, the book contrasts the sprawling, impersonal crowds of online trading with the formation of an intimate, egalitarian community through in-person encounters. Advancing a new theoretical framework, it offers insights into contemporary mass movements grounded in techno-utopian visions of society and reconsiders how decentralized technologies foster both anonymity and solidarity.

Exploring the entangled relationships between food, culture and society in India, this edited collection brings together empirically grounded research across diverse regions and contexts. Organised into four sections – Food, Culture and Identity; Food, Memory and Migration; Food, Livelihood and Nutrition; and Food, Consumption and Media – it highlights the complex roles food plays in shaping identity, mobility, labour and representation. Drawing from a range of disciplinary perspectives, the volume contributes to broader conversations in sociology, social anthropology, international development, geography, cultural studies and food studies, offering a textured account of contemporary foodways and their significance in everyday Indian life.

From the author of Enemy Feminisms and Abolish the Family, a fierce critique of femmephobia within feminism, and a vision of a life-giving femme feminism for all.

For two centuries, feminists have tried to be respectable and serious. In Femmephilia, Sophie Lewis makes the case for the vital political importance of “femmeness”: a femininity that is self-consciously artificial, a femininity whose erotic and political appetites are considered unacceptable and unnatural. Being femme is a kind of work that merits love and respect—but femmes instead face criticism from antagonists and feminist allies alike. 

Where neoliberal women’s empowerment has failed to combat the eruption of right-wing, anti-trans, and anti-feminist attacks, Lewis argues that femmephilia can help us imagine a radical future. In essays on the high femme genius of Marilyn Monroe and trans yearning in the myth of Apollo and Daphne; on tradwives and girlbosses, reluctant heterosexuals, lesbian separatists, and anti-work cats; and on a mother on strike from maternity and a poet who mothered against motherhood, Femmephilia offers a new logic of liberation for all feminized people. 

Informed by over 150 surveys and 14 interviews with military personnel, NATO elites, and force generators, this book provides a necessary challenge to the policies, processes, and assumptions that are often taken for granted in military organizational cultures of NATO and its member states.

NATO’s buy-in to gender-sensitive policies and programming at the policy level was only formalized in 2007 with the NATO/EAPC Policy for the Implementation of the Women, Peace, and Security Agenda. The policy reiterates the importance of women’s participation across NATO, its member states and partners in order to enhance operational effectiveness.

Determining what factors influence women’s deployment and participation in the military is essential to meet NATO’ and member states’ ongoing commitments to gender equality and gender mainstreaming. This book exposes hidden resistances that hinder women’s deployment on NATO operations through critical appraisal of NATO’s gender architecture and policies, and comparing the perspectives of force generators and policy makers with the experiences of military personnel.

The birth of the newspapers, radio and television in the 19th century brought various interconnected social, behavioral and cultural changes in the lives of the colonizer and the colonized in the economically ‘developing’ nations. Then in the 20th century and now the 21st century, the birth of digital media for political, social, cultural, and economic communications have witnessed divergent results in the West and the non-Western countries.

The Global South is currently facing digital divides and issues related to media illiteracy that tend to impact people’s lives more than those in the North. Furthermore, a significant shift in online and offline communicative behavior has had various effects in the way the young and the old, male and female, the haves and the have-nots interact in the media space.

This handbook brings together a multidisciplinary group of authors from the Global South and the diaspora to document, examine, expose and critically assess the nature, role and impact of the social changes brought by the emergence of the mediated forms of communication in the Global South. This remarkable volume is a must-have resource for anyone interested in communication and social change, and development and social change in the Global South.