Social Science

Pierre Bourdieu is widely regarded as one of the most influential sociologists of his generation, and yet the reception of his work in different cultural contexts and academic disciplines has been varied and uneven. This volume maps out the legacy of Pierre Bourdieu in contemporary social and political thought from the standpoint of classical European sociology and from the broader perspective of transatlantic social science. It brings together contributions from prominent scholars in the field, providing a range of perspectives on the continuing relevance of Bourdieu’s oeuvre to substantive problems in social and political analysis.

The first set of essays traces the roots of Bourdieu’s thought in classical sociology by closely examining his intellectual connections with the writings of Karl Marx, Max Weber, and Émile Durkheim. The second set of essays is concerned with Bourdieu’s relation to modern social philosophy, in particular with regard to the works of Friedrich Nietzsche, Norbert Elias, Theodor W. Adorno, and Axel Honneth. The third set of essays explores the relevance of Bourdieu’s writings to key issues in the contemporary social sciences, such as the continuous presence of religion, the transformative power of social movements, the emancipatory potential of language, the political legacy of 1968, the socio-historical significance of the rise of the public sphere, and the social consequences of the recent and ongoing global economic crisis. The volume also contains a major interview with Bourdieu that has not been previously translated into, let alone published in, English.

By bringing together contributions from international scholars, the volume aims to initiate a fruitful dialogue across different sociological traditions and thereby stimulate further debate on the legacy of Pierre Bourdieu in social and political thought.

Why is Robert K. Merton important? Many treatments of his work focus only on particular components whereas, in fact, his work is far wider and can be summarised for each of his decades of life and work: 1920s (childhood), 1930s (anomie, science, unanticipated consequences), 1940s (housing studies, mass communications, structural-functional analysis, professions, focus groups), 1950s (reference groups), 1960s (ambivalence), and later decades (structural analysis, sociological semantics, cultural sociology). 

Merton particularly contributed to sociology during a period when several specialties were being set up and yet his work spans both general and specialist sociologies. He is recognised as the father of anomie/strain theory; focus groups; sociology of science; role-set theory; analytical sociology; structural-functional analysis; ambivalence studies; and sociological semantics. Many commentaries on sociology lament the ways it has slumped into a wide range of threads with not much of a core holding it together. Merton’s work always endeavoured to keep the multifarious threads of sociology together, and we might usefully learn some of the ways he accomplished this. 

Merton stood at the junction of many other crossroads in sociology and moreover endeavoured to create bridges between these, but more importantly to help launch research programmes along some of these paths. His work links classical and modern sociology; American and European sociology; theory and research; philosophy of social science and applied sociology; pure academic sociology and applied sociology; cognitive and social; social sciences and humanities; and social sciences and science. This book examines and relates to each other. Because Merton’s work spanned so many paths not many sociologists were alert to the overall architecture of his work and perhaps its visibility thereby waned. His viability is relatively less because of an astute writing style. Several of the programmes he helped launch have continued since: for example, media studies, criminology, and science studies.  

Merton had a major effect on the baby boomer generation of sociology who joined the ranks of sociology at a time of great expansion of university positions across many developed countries. While other generations since have been less exposed to his work reading the book will provide many valuable insights.

Syria’s massive displacement (from 2012 onwards) is one of the largest, most complex and intractable humanitarian emergencies of today. More than 5.7 million Syrian refugees live mainly in cities and urban areas throughout the Middle East. Urban Displacement examines multiple dimensions of this crisis from political and socioeconomic predicaments to questions of social belonging, the complexity of the international, regional and national responses and how they affect urban spaces. The volume brings together experts in the field of forced migration studies and displacement in the Middle East and presents a range of in-depth ethnographic data, cross-sectional surveys and policy analyses.

The Anthem Companion to Max Weber is a study of the ideas and career of the German sociologist and founder of classical social theory. Including contributions by accomplished Weber scholars, this companion provides the latest scholarly interpretations of the sociologist’s vast body of socioeconomic and political writings which continue to inspire new scholarship and debate on global politics, comparative religion, social class relationships, social science methods and law and society. This book serves as a handy introduction for beginners and a tidy commentary for advanced scholars.

Half a century ago, deindustrialization gutted blue-collar jobs in the American Midwest. But today, these places are not ghost towns. People still call these communities home, even as they struggle with unemployment, poverty, and other social and economic crises. Why do people remain in declining areas through difficult circumstances? What do their choices tell us about rootedness in a time of flux?

Through the cases of the former steel manufacturing hub of southeast Chicago and a shuttered mining community in Iron County, Wisconsin, Amanda McMillan Lequieu traces the power and shifting meanings of the notion of home for people who live in troubled places. Building from on-the-ground observations of community life, archival research, and interviews with long-term residents, she shows how inhabitants of deindustrialized communities balance material constraints with deeply felt identities. McMillan Lequieu maps how the concept of home has been constructed and the ways it has been reshaped as these communities have changed. She considers how long-term residents navigate the tensions around belonging and making ends meet long after the departure of their community’s founding industry.

Who We Are Is Where We Are links the past and the present, rural and urban, to shed new light on life in postindustrial communities. Beyond a story of Midwestern deindustrialization, this timely book provides broader insight into the capacious idea of home—how and where it is made, threatened, and renegotiated in a world fraught with change.

Policy development and implementation has a pivotal role in the youth justice system, profoundly impacting professionals and the children they work with. This imaginative book challenges limited explanations of policy-making as linear and government-dominated through original research into the practices, identities and relationships of a wide range of stakeholders working in multiple policy- making contexts in England and Wales.

The result is a detailed expert analysis of the contexts and mechanisms of youth justice policy-making. This book is key reading for researchers, professionals and students seeking effective understandings and responses to the long term social problem of youth offending.

Disability justice and prison abolition are two increasingly popular theories that overlap but whose intersection has rarely been explored in depth.

A People’s Guide to Abolition and Disability Justice explains the history and theories behind abolition and disability justice in a way that is easy to understand for those new to these concepts yet also gives insights that will be useful to seasoned activists. The book uses extensive research and professional and lived experience to illuminate the way the State uses disability and its power to disable to incarcerate multiply marginalized disabled people, especially those who are queer, trans, Black, or Indigenous.

Because disabled people are much more likely than nondisabled people to be locked up in prisons, jails, and other sites of incarceration, abolitionists, and others critical of carceral systems must incorporate a disability justice perspective into our work. A People’s Guide to Abolition and Disability Justice gives personal and policy examples of how and why disabled people are disproportionately caught up in the carceral net, and how we can use this information to work toward prison and police abolition more effectively. This book includes practical tools and strategies that will be useful for anyone who cares about disability justice or abolition and explains why we can’t have one without the other.

Gender diversity and non-conformity are becoming increasingly visible within society. As more trans and non-binary service users ‘come out’ and trans populations age, practitioners and service providers working in health care, social care, welfare services and housing, will begin to see a growing number of older gender-diverse service users.

With contributions from trans and non-binary scholars and practitioners and those with lived experience, this book outlines what good care and support looks like for older trans and non-binary people. This book provides a range of reflective learning activities that can be used by educators, policy makers and practitioners in healthcare, social care, public and community services to develop their knowledge and skills to ensure their practice is affirmative and inclusive.

Rediscovering, valuing, and embracing Indigenous spirituality and wisdom is critical for humanity to survive in the future.

Civilization is a western, Eurocentric construct borne from a distrust of nature, a desire to endlessly exploit it and profit from it. Despite being a relatively recent development, civilization’s inherent logic has resulted in over-population, inequality, poverty, misery, war, and climate change and now threatens humanity’s very survival. How can humanity expect to survive if it continues to look for solutions from the very structures and ideologies that have brought it to the brink of extinction?

In this final book of his trilogy, Dr. Blair Stonechild deftly illustrates how Indigenous spirituality, wisdom, and land-based knowledge is critical to human survival in the face of environmental destruction and human-induced climate change. Reinterpreting world history from an Indigenous perspective, Stonechild’s solution to this unfolding catastrophe is “ecolization,” a state in which humans recognize they are not the central purpose of creation and a way of existing harmoniously with the natural and spiritual worlds.

Beautifully written, urgent, and critical, Challenge to Civilization reminds us that it is not Earth that is in danger of extinction, but ourselves, and Indigenous spiritual wisdom can be the guiding light through what will otherwise be humanity’s final, ever-darkening days.

As the age of social media progresses, the Asia Pacific, like the rest of the world, is experiencing an increase in cultural diversity and global connection. Those within the region are witnessing rapid social and cultural changes. As individuals and groups navigate through an increasingly mobile, transnational and multicultural ethnographic landscape, social media provides a sense of belonging for these networked communities.

Social media allows individuals and groups to map and redefine their evolving communal and national identities and thus form sometimes new, vibrant and necessary communities to help create individual and group belonging and agency. While creating a sense of belonging and agency in their respective homeland(s), individuals and groups are also able to connect to global networks. Recognising these layered and intertwined complexities governing societal and cultural cohesion, the authors in this collection each discuss the innate challenges of the social media era on culture, identity and social interaction. This original empirical work documents social media as a user platform for the expression of individual and collective identities.

A motley group’s long trek across the prairies, witnessing the land, reflecting on the past, and creating new paths for the future

The Good Walk is a memoir, travelogue, and manifesto, recounting how a growing group of dreamers instigated prairie pilgrimages on foot, starting in 2015 and continuing almost every year since. The story is steeped in Treaty Four and Treaty Six history and edged with Canadian, nêhiyaw, and Métis stories and poetry. It braids Indigenous perspectives together with rural Saskatchewan characters along routes increasingly emptied of the family farms and small towns that once defined a province. It doesn’t shy away from the clearing of the plains in the 1870s and 1880s nor the 2016 killing of Colton Boushie that again separated the rural communities from the Indigenous communities. Travel with the author through prairie storms, family histories, and humorous encounters, and bear difficult witness to the evolving politics of ownership and of racialized land access.

Readers will share the real-life adventures of a group of Indigenous and settler walkers, trekking thousands of kilometres on swollen feet along the Traders’ Road, the Battleford Trail, the Frenchman and the Fort Qu’Appelle Trails—prairie paths that haven’t been walked in over a century.

Accessing abortion services in rural areas under conditions of liberal abortion legislation is neither straightforward nor simple. As the South African example shows, the liberalisation of abortion legislation was the first step in granting pregnant persons access to abortion care. Despite this and some progress in implementation, many challenges persist resulting in a lack of services, especially in areas where distances and transport costs are a factor.

Drawing on the findings of a study conducted in three rural districts of the Eastern Cape, the authors highlight the complexities involved in understanding problematic or unwanted pregnancies and abortion services within these communities; the reported barriers to, and facilitators of, access to abortion services among rural populations; and preferences for types of abortion services.

A key finding is the conundrum of costs versus confidentiality: lack of confidentiality involves additional costs to access services outside the area; high costs mean that confidentiality may have to be foregone, which leads to stigma. The authors place the findings within a reparative reproductive justice framework and present a comprehensive set of recommendations.

Abortion Services and Reproductive Justice in Rural South Africa is an insightful and informative resource – the first of its kind – for scholars in health and sociology, reproductive health policy makers, national planners, health facility managers and providers, and activists.

The human body is both the site of lived experiences and a means of communicating those experiences to a diverse audience. Hominins have been culturing their bodies, that is adding social and cultural meaning through the use pigments and objects, for over 100,000 years. There is archaeological evidence for practices of adornment of the body by late Pleistocene and early Holocene hominins, including personal ornaments, clothing, hairstyles, body painting, and tattoos. These practices have been variously interpreted to reflect differences such as gender, status, and ethnicity, to attract or intimidate others, and as indices of a symbolically mediated self and personal identity. These studies contribute to a novel and growing body of evidence for diversity of cultural expression in the past, something that is a hallmark of human cultures today.

In Collected Studies (Volume 1): The Jews of Provence, Joseph Shatzmiller, the foremost expert on Provençal Judaism, offers a comprehensive overview of the medieval history of the Jews in Provence. Through an analysis of community regulations, tax distribution, rabbinic leadership, and everyday life, Shatzmiller provides a rich and powerful mosaic of Jewish society in Provence. This masterful work sheds light on the diverse experiences of Jews in the region, from their interactions with Christian neighbors to their internal conflicts and struggles. With its insightful analysis and meticulous research, The Jews of Provence is an essential read for anyone interested in the history of Jewish communities in medieval Europe.

“The collection of studies that these four volumes offer is the result of more than sixty years of commitment to scholarship. Like many colleagues, I relied in the beginning on printed material in books that dealt with law, religion, and secular literature. Then, as a disciple of George Duby, I discovered the world of archives and hand-written Latin manuscripts. The present collection relies, to a great extent, on previously unknown information discovered during years of search in the archives of Southern France, mostly on those of the county of Provence. They are situated in the cities of Marseille and Aix-en-Provence as well as the town of Digne. The legal registers of the High Middle Ages (1250-1350) as well as those produced by the counties’ administration introduce us to the ordinary people of the region, to their daily life and to their preoccupations; their names are spelled out, the dates are recorded and the localities in which they were active are designated. At times these documents encourage us to endorse information found in contemporary literary sources and to overcome our hesitation and excessive caution concerning their value as historical evidence.”

— Joseph Shatzmiller

A motley group’s long trek across the prairies, witnessing the land, reflecting on the past, and creating new paths for the future

The Good Walk is a memoir, travelogue, and manifesto, recounting how a growing group of dreamers instigated prairie pilgrimages on foot, starting in 2015 and continuing almost every year since. The story is steeped in Treaty Four and Treaty Six history and edged with Canadian, nêhiyaw, and Métis stories and poetry. It braids Indigenous perspectives together with rural Saskatchewan characters along routes increasingly emptied of the family farms and small towns that once defined a province. It doesn’t shy away from the clearing of the plains in the 1870s and 1880s nor the 2016 killing of Colton Boushie that again separated the rural communities from the Indigenous communities. Travel with the author through prairie storms, family histories, and humorous encounters, and bear difficult witness to the evolving politics of ownership and of racialized land access.

Readers will share the real-life adventures of a group of Indigenous and settler walkers, trekking thousands of kilometres on swollen feet along the Traders’ Road, the Battleford Trail, the Frenchman and the Fort Qu’Appelle Trails—prairie paths that haven’t been walked in over a century.

The United States has by far the world’s largest population of incarcerated people. More than a million Americans are imprisoned; hundreds of thousands more are held in jails. This vast system has doled out punishment—particularly to people from marginalized groups—on an unfathomable scale. At the same time, it has manifestly failed to secure public safety, instead perpetuating inequalities and recidivism. Why does the United States see punishment as the main response to social harm, and what are the alternatives?

This book brings together essays by scholars, practitioners, activists, and writers, including incarcerated and formerly incarcerated people, to explore the harms of this punitive approach. The chapters address a range of issues, from policing to prosecution, and from how people are treated in prison to the consequences of a criminal conviction. Together, they consider a common theme: We cannot reduce our dependence on mass incarceration until we confront our impulse to punish in ways that are excessive, often wildly disproportionate to the harm caused. Essays trace how a maze of local, state, and federal agencies have contributed to mass incarceration and deterred attempts at reform. They shed light on how the excesses of America’s criminal legal system are entwined with poverty, racism, and the legacy of slavery. A wide-ranging and powerful look at the failures of the status quo, Excessive Punishment also considers how to reimagine the justice system to support restoration instead of retribution.

A history of the establishment and role of the National Institute for Communicable Diseases (NICD), the public health organization in South Africa

Fighting an Invisible Enemy narrates the founding in 2002 and growth of the internationally renowned centre of excellence for communicable diseases, the National Institute for Communicable Diseases (NICD) in South Africa. In a continent riven with a panoply of formidable contagious pathogens, the book describes how the nascent NICD travelled a rocky road to maturity. Starting humbly, as did many of its sister public health institutions around the world, the road was strewn with daunting obstacles of financial restrictions, bureaucratic straitjacketing, international isolation during the apartheid era and, in later years, the calumny of governmental AIDS denial. Following the triumph of the eradication of the once-dreaded smallpox, the NICD now plays a crucial role in the global effort to eradicate poliomyelitis. While the country has the misfortune of the largest HIV/AIDS pandemic in the world, the Institute’s HIV research unit has become a world leader. More remote from public notice are the laboratories and support epidemiologists carry out for ongoing surveillance of communicable diseases and the alerts they provide for any signal of an impending outbreak or pandemic. The Institute’s value to public health was clearly shown in the recent Covid-19 pandemic. The maxim that we are only safe when everyone everywhere is safe, underlines the importance of international partnerships and the key role the NICD plays, not only for the country but also for global health. This is a flagship organization in public health in South Africa and this book paints a vivid portrait of its incredible accomplishments.

We have many histories of social theory—what different authors attempted to do as they responded to previous theories. But we know precious little about how they did this in structural terms—what scaffolding they adopted and adapted to make their claims. Yet today’s social thoughts largely employ structures passed down from previous generations, structures that were developed to solve problems that are no longer ours.

In The True, the Good, and the Beautiful, John Levi Martin explores these structures, the resulting tensions, and their broader significance for sociological thought. By examining how thinkers mapped interpersonal to intrapersonal structures, he traces the development of the underlying architectonics of theory, focusing on one that was inherited from eighteenth-century philosophy and brought into social science in the nineteenth century. He shows that the structural tensions inherent in these theories paralleled those being worked out in practical terms by constitutional theorists as thinkers attempted to return to their most fundamental understandings of the nature of the human, the social, and the political to recraft their societies. A magisterial new interpretation of the foundations of sociological thought, The True, the Good, and the Beautiful is as ambitious a work of social theory as we have seen in generations.

An examination of the barriers facing Indigenous people within the healthcare system from the perspective of an empathetic settler physician

After leaving her medical practice in Pennsylvania in 2011, Jarol Boan returned to her childhood home in Saskatchewan, Canada to practise medicine. There she found a healthcare system struggling with preventable chronic diseases and institutional racism. Shocked by the high rate of preventable diseases in her patients, Boan realized that a paternalistic deficit model does not support Indigenous communities. Through working to provide medical services in Indigenous communities and learning first-hand from her Indigenous patients, Boan embarked on a road to enlightenment and reconciliation.

In The Medicine Chest, Boan exposes the healthcare disparities in a country that prides itself on an equitable healthcare system and examines the devastating effects of diabetes, the myth of “the drunken Indian,” the inner workings of hospitals, Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls, epidemics on reserves, and residential school trauma. Exploring the intersectionality of common diseases and social determinants of health gained from her experience of caring for Indigenous patients, Boan weaves historical data, comments on health policy, and jurisdictional gaps into the narrative while investigating how Canada’s healthcare system is failing those most in need.

AI, robots, algorithms, and data/metrics are pervasive throughout the media industry, increasingly dictating and rapidly changing journalistic and newsroom practices, cultures, and norms - from editorial agenda setting to news production processes, to audience and advertiser targeting. Social media platforms in particular have been at the core of the AI and algorithmic turn, offering real-time consumer analytics and newsfeeds for insatiable and borderless digital citizens. The algorithms within these platforms make them powerful news aggregators, redirecting consumer habits and advertisers, making them vital in the journalism practice and media viability across the globe.

Despite this, there is a shortage of scholarship on AI, algorithms and data-driven journalism from the global South, and especially in Sub-Saharan African contexts. Digitisation, AI and Algorithms in African Journalism and Media Contexts moves the focus from the West, addressing the significant knowledge gaps relating to the current state of AI, algorithms and data-driven journalism, as well as the implications for political, social, cultural, markets, media viability and journalism education.

This timely collection offers new knowledge on key issues surrounding automation and data-driven media and journalism practice in post-truth, post-human and post-Covid African contexts. It is a vital resource for researchers, educators, media students, academics, advocacy groups, media practitioners, developers and policy makers, both in African countries and internationally.

Breaks the deafening silence of Indigenous women’s voices in academic leadership positions.

Since the 2015 release of the report on the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, new Indigenous policies have been enacted in universities and a variety of interconnecting Indigenous senior administrative roles have been created. Many of these newly created roles have been filled by Indigenous women. But what does it mean for Indigenous women to be recruited to Indigenize Western institutions that have not undergone introspective, structural change?

Informed by her own experiences and the stories of other Indigenous women working in senior administrative roles in Canadian universities, Candace Brunette-Debassige explores the triple-binding position Indigenous women often find themselves trapped in when trying to implement reconciliation in institutions that remain colonial, Eurocentric, and male-dominated. The author considers too the gendered, emotional labour Indigenous women are tasked with when universities rush to Indigenize without the necessary preparatory work of decolonization.

Drawing on an Indigenous feminist decolonial theoretical lens and positioning Indigenous story as theory, Brunette-Debassige illustrates how Indigenous women can and do preserve and enact their agency through resistance, and help lead deeper transformative changes in Canadian universities. Ultimately, her work provides a model for how reconciliation and Indigenization can be done at an institutional level.

In many countries, community-based penalties such as probation, electronic monitoring and parole are the most common sanctions used in the punishment of criminalized individuals. Despite the widespread use of community-based penalties, these forms of penalization or punishment remain a less studied feature of punishment research today.

Punishment, Probation and Parole maps this lacuna in knowledge and scholarship while charting a path to fill it. Bringing together a series of key conceptual papers by leading scholars, the chapters explore the various dimensions and forms of community-based penalties as they are constructed and experienced in different times and places, producing different socio-penal effects. Addressing pressing debates and emerging concepts, this much-needed collection serves to chart directions for future researchers to explore in the field of community-based penalties.

For decades, teachers and practitioners have turned to Frederic G. Reamer’s Social Work Values and Ethics as the leading introduction to ethical decision making, dilemmas, and professional conduct in practice. A case-driven, concise, and comprehensive textbook for undergraduate and graduate social work programs, this book surveys the most critical issues for social work practitioners.

This sixth edition incorporates significant updates to the National Association of Social Workers Code of Ethics and discussion of challenging issues related to cultural competency, antiracism, moral injury, human rights, environmental justice, ethical humility, non-Western perspectives on ethics, and practitioner self-care. Reamer also focuses on how social workers should navigate the digital world through discussion of the ethical issues that arise from practitioner use of online services and social networking sites to deliver services, communicate with clients, and provide information to the public, and he examines the standards that protect confidential information transmitted electronically. He highlights potential conflicts between professional ethics and legal guidelines and expands discussions of informed consent, confidentiality and privileged communication, boundaries and dual relationships, documentation, conflicts of interest, and risk management. Conceptually rich and attuned to the complexities of ethical decision making, Social Work Values and Ethics is unique in striking the right balance among history, theory, and practical application.

Until the middle of the twentieth century, few thought of science as a social system, instead seeing scientific discovery as the work of individual geniuses. Columbia University’s Department of Sociology played a pivotal role in advancing the social study of science. Researchers of the “Columbia Program” analyzed how science works as a social institution, exploring its norms, values, and structure.

Smoother Pebbles presents a collection of essays authored or coauthored by Jonathan R. Cole, a leading Columbia Program figure, that trace the development and institutionalization of the sociology of science. Spanning from the 1960s to the 2020s and including both empirical and theoretical studies of science, the book is at once wide-ranging and united by core questions. Are scientists rewarded for the merits of their work or for other reasons? How does the system of social stratification in science operate? Has the funding of scientists been the result of an “old boys’ network”? How fair is the peer review process? In what ways does science fall short of its universalistic ideals? What factors have constrained opportunities for women in science? How has science fared amid attacks on academic freedom and free inquiry at universities? Cole’s introduction contextualizes both individual essays and the major concerns of the Columbia Program. Smoother Pebbles is essential reading for those interested in the growth and crucial questions of the sociology and social studies of science.

Breaks the deafening silence of Indigenous women’s voices in academic leadership positions.

Since the 2015 release of the report on the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, new Indigenous policies have been enacted in universities and a variety of interconnecting Indigenous senior administrative roles have been created. Many of these newly created roles have been filled by Indigenous women. But what does it mean for Indigenous women to be recruited to Indigenize Western institutions that have not undergone introspective, structural change?

Informed by her own experiences and the stories of other Indigenous women working in senior administrative roles in Canadian universities, Candace Brunette-Debassige explores the triple-binding position Indigenous women often find themselves trapped in when trying to implement reconciliation in institutions that remain colonial, Eurocentric, and male-dominated. The author considers too the gendered, emotional labour Indigenous women are tasked with when universities rush to Indigenize without the necessary preparatory work of decolonization.

Drawing on an Indigenous feminist decolonial theoretical lens and positioning Indigenous story as theory, Brunette-Debassige illustrates how Indigenous women can and do preserve and enact their agency through resistance, and help lead deeper transformative changes in Canadian universities. Ultimately, her work provides a model for how reconciliation and Indigenization can be done at an institutional level.

The Chinese experience in Hawai‘i has long been told as a story of inclusion and success. During the Cold War, the United States touted the Chinese community in Hawai‘i as an example of racial harmony and American opportunity, claiming that all ethnic groups had the possibility to attain middle-class lives. Today, Honolulu’s Chinatown is not only a destination for tourism and consumption but also a celebration of Chinese accomplishments, memorializing past discrimination and present prominence within a framework of multiculturalism. This narrative, however, conceals many other histories and processes that played crucial roles in shaping Chinatown.

This book offers a critical account of the history of Chinese in Hawai‘i from the mid-nineteenth century to the present in this context of U.S. empire, settler colonialism, and racialization. Nancy E. Riley foregrounds elements that are often left out of narratives of Chinese history in Hawai‘i, particularly the place of Native Hawaiians, geopolitics and U.S. empire building, and the ongoing construction of race and whiteness. Tracing how Chinatown became a site of historical remembrance, she argues that it is also used to reinforce the ideology of neoliberal multiculturalism, which upholds racial hierarchy by lauding certain ethnic groups while excluding others. An insightful and in-depth analysis of the story of Honolulu’s Chinatown, this book offers new perspectives on the making of the racial landscape of Hawai‘i and the United States more broadly.

The first book published in Tsuut’ina—a critically endangered language—in over a century

With fewer than 150 speakers, Tsuut’ina is a critically endangered language. Isúh Áníi / As Grandmother Said brings together nine traditional narratives and historical accounts in the Tsuut’ina language, originally narrated by Elders Dátł’ìshí Ts’ìká Bessie Meguinis (1883–1987) and Ninàghá Tsìtł’á Willie Little Bear (1912–1989). At once an act of language preservation and a learning resource, each story is retold in Tsuut’ina by Dit’óní Didlíshí Dr. Bruce Starlight and is presented with English translations and a Tsuut’ina-to-English glossary.

The narratives included in this collection cover considerable ground, ranging from the creation of the world in the caring hands of Xàlítsa-tsii and his animal helpers, to accounts of separation, migration, and cross-cultural contact that mark major turning points in Tsuut’ina history, and to important cultural and ceremonial items and practices that the Tsuut’ina Nation maintains to this day.

These stories will be of lasting value to Tsuut’ina language learners and teachers, and will share the legacy of Elders Bessie Meguinis and Willie Little Bear with generations of Tsuut’ina to come.

From the 1960s until his death in 2013, Robert N. Bellah was the preeminent figure in the study of religion and society. He broke new ground in mapping the religious dimensions of human experience, from the great breakthroughs of the first millennium BCE to the paradoxes of American civic life. In three final essays, published here for the first time, Bellah grapples with the contradictions of modernity, and seven leading thinkers respond with profound, exhilarating new perspectives on our present predicament.

Challenging Modernity critically assesses the modern project to shed light on the tensions between its transcendent aspirations and the perils we now face. Its contributors analyze the roots of the collapse of the political, economic, and cultural institutions that promised perpetual progress but now threaten global catastrophe. Reflecting the range of Bellah’s scholarship, they span the disciplines of history, sociology, anthropology, and philosophy. They extend Bellah’s insight that only deep historical, cultural, and religious understanding can help us meet modernity’s harrowing challenges by sharing responsibility for the global interdependence of our common fate.

Introduction and Chapter 10 available open access under CC-BY-NC-ND licence.

This book examines the contemporary social care realities and practices of Finland, a small nation with a history enmeshed in social relations as both coloniser and colonised.

Decolonising Social Work in Finland:

· Interrogates coloniality, racialisation and diversity in the context of Finnish social work and social care.

· Brings together racialised and mainstream White Finnish researchers, activists and community members to challenge relations of epistemic violence on racialised populations in Finland.

· Critically unpacks colonial views of care and wellbeing.

It will be essential reading for international scholars and students in the fields of Social Work, Sociology, Indigenous Studies, Health Sciences, Social Sciences and Education.

Gay neighborhoods are disappearing—or so the conventional story goes. In this narrative, political gains and mainstream social acceptance, combined with the popularity of dating apps like Grindr, have reduced the need for LGBTQ+ people to seek refuges or build expressly queer places. Yet even though residential patterns have shifted, traditionally gay neighborhoods remain centers of queer public life.

Exploring “gayborhoods” in Washington, DC, Theodore Greene investigates how neighborhoods retain their cultural identities even as their inhabitants change. He argues that the success and survival of gay neighborhoods have always depended on participation from nonresidents in the life of the community, which he terms “vicarious citizenship.” Vicarious citizens are diverse self-identified community members, sometimes former or displaced locals, who make symbolic claims to the neighborhood. They defend their vision of community by temporarily reviving the traditions and cultures associated with the gay neighborhood and challenging the presence of straight families and other newcomers, the displacement of local institutions, or the taming of sexual culture. Greene pays careful attention to the significance of race and racism, highlighting the important role of Black LGBTQ+ culture in shaping gay neighborhoods past and present. Examining the diverse placemaking strategies that queer people deploy to foster and preserve LGBTQ+ geographies, Not in My Gayborhood illuminates different ways of imagining urban neighborhoods and communities.

Unsettling Colonial Automobilities explores the vehicle's role in imposing colonialism on Indigenous people and proposes an Indigenous automobility that reclaims sovereignty over place and centricity.

Based on extensive fieldwork within First Nations communities, accounts from Indigenous scholars and activists in Australia, New Zealand/Aotearoa, Canada and the United States, and cinematic/literary representations, this contribution challenges unrestricted mobility in modernity and highlights the vehicle's impact on Indigenous communities. Chapters examine how Indigenous people are criminalized for non-compliance with vehicle regulations, explores the vehicle as a tool of racial violence, and discusses how Indigenous communities utilize vehicles for protection, cultural expression, and reconnection with their land.

By demonstrating the vehicle's involvement in colonial violence and its potential for empowering Indigenous cultures, Unsettling Colonial Automobilities acknowledges the significance of human movement, migration, and boundary-transcendence in modern life while acknowledging the dark history associated with these phenomena.

Half a century ago, deindustrialization gutted blue-collar jobs in the American Midwest. But today, these places are not ghost towns. People still call these communities home, even as they struggle with unemployment, poverty, and other social and economic crises. Why do people remain in declining areas through difficult circumstances? What do their choices tell us about rootedness in a time of flux?

Through the cases of the former steel manufacturing hub of southeast Chicago and a shuttered mining community in Iron County, Wisconsin, Amanda McMillan Lequieu traces the power and shifting meanings of the notion of home for people who live in troubled places. Building from on-the-ground observations of community life, archival research, and interviews with long-term residents, she shows how inhabitants of deindustrialized communities balance material constraints with deeply felt identities. McMillan Lequieu maps how the concept of home has been constructed and the ways it has been reshaped as these communities have changed. She considers how long-term residents navigate the tensions around belonging and making ends meet long after the departure of their community’s founding industry.

Who We Are Is Where We Are links the past and the present, rural and urban, to shed new light on life in postindustrial communities. Beyond a story of Midwestern deindustrialization, this timely book provides broader insight into the capacious idea of home—how and where it is made, threatened, and renegotiated in a world fraught with change.

From the 1960s until his death in 2013, Robert N. Bellah was the preeminent figure in the study of religion and society. He broke new ground in mapping the religious dimensions of human experience, from the great breakthroughs of the first millennium BCE to the paradoxes of American civic life. In three final essays, published here for the first time, Bellah grapples with the contradictions of modernity, and seven leading thinkers respond with profound, exhilarating new perspectives on our present predicament.

Challenging Modernity critically assesses the modern project to shed light on the tensions between its transcendent aspirations and the perils we now face. Its contributors analyze the roots of the collapse of the political, economic, and cultural institutions that promised perpetual progress but now threaten global catastrophe. Reflecting the range of Bellah’s scholarship, they span the disciplines of history, sociology, anthropology, and philosophy. They extend Bellah’s insight that only deep historical, cultural, and religious understanding can help us meet modernity’s harrowing challenges by sharing responsibility for the global interdependence of our common fate.

For decades, teachers and practitioners have turned to Frederic G. Reamer’s Social Work Values and Ethics as the leading introduction to ethical decision making, dilemmas, and professional conduct in practice. A case-driven, concise, and comprehensive textbook for undergraduate and graduate social work programs, this book surveys the most critical issues for social work practitioners.

This sixth edition incorporates significant updates to the National Association of Social Workers Code of Ethics and discussion of challenging issues related to cultural competency, antiracism, moral injury, human rights, environmental justice, ethical humility, non-Western perspectives on ethics, and practitioner self-care. Reamer also focuses on how social workers should navigate the digital world through discussion of the ethical issues that arise from practitioner use of online services and social networking sites to deliver services, communicate with clients, and provide information to the public, and he examines the standards that protect confidential information transmitted electronically. He highlights potential conflicts between professional ethics and legal guidelines and expands discussions of informed consent, confidentiality and privileged communication, boundaries and dual relationships, documentation, conflicts of interest, and risk management. Conceptually rich and attuned to the complexities of ethical decision making, Social Work Values and Ethics is unique in striking the right balance among history, theory, and practical application.

Research has established that men are unlikely to report being victimised by sexual assault, often out of feelings of embarrassment, shame, fear, and emasculation. Critically examining how the rape of men and boys is represented in television and film, Male Rape Victimisation on Screen argues how presentations of male sexual assault in popular culture have reinforced rape myths associated with male victimisation, as well as the barriers of toxic masculinity that seethe beneath its surface.

Employing a feminist and popular criminology framework, Victoria M. Nagy conducts a comprehensive analysis of a range of both adult and child television programmes and films from the past several decades to reveal how rape myths have pervaded popular culture. Turning to reality and the broader implications this has for men who are and are not victims of sexual violence, Nagy explores how knowledge gained from this research can feed into sexual violence prevention efforts and inform a necessary shift in our cultural mindset.

Focusing on the under-researched area of male sexual assault, this book broaches cultural, criminology, gender, film, and media studies to reveal how seemingly harmless humour can infiltrate how we think about violent and victimising behaviours.

An examination of the barriers facing Indigenous people within the healthcare system from the perspective of an empathetic settler physician

After leaving her medical practice in Pennsylvania in 2011, Jarol Boan returned to her childhood home in Saskatchewan, Canada to practise medicine. There she found a healthcare system struggling with preventable chronic diseases and institutional racism. Shocked by the high rate of preventable diseases in her patients, Boan realized that a paternalistic deficit model does not support Indigenous communities. Through working to provide medical services in Indigenous communities and learning first-hand from her Indigenous patients, Boan embarked on a road to enlightenment and reconciliation.

In The Medicine Chest, Boan exposes the healthcare disparities in a country that prides itself on an equitable healthcare system and examines the devastating effects of diabetes, the myth of “the drunken Indian,” the inner workings of hospitals, Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls, epidemics on reserves, and residential school trauma. Exploring the intersectionality of common diseases and social determinants of health gained from her experience of caring for Indigenous patients, Boan weaves historical data, comments on health policy, and jurisdictional gaps into the narrative while investigating how Canada’s healthcare system is failing those most in need.

The Berlin book burning and the raiding of Magnus Hirschfeld’s Institute for sexual science ("Institut für Sexualwissenschaft") in May 1933 is part and parcel of German memorial culture. Due to a rehabilitation and revival of Magnus Hirschfeld (1868–1935), noticeable in Germany in recent years, many Germans now know that the pivotal LGBT-rights precursor activist died in 1935 in exile in Nice (France), heavily traumatized by the destruction of his life work by the Nazis in Germany.

This is the very first book reporting in detail on what happened in the years 1932–1935 before Hirschfeld’s death and, especially, during the seven years that followed his death.



Besides reporting on Hirschfeld’s last years in France, this volume is the very first biography on Karl Giese and Karl Fein, the main players in the afterlife of Magnus Hirschfeld in France and Czechoslovakia.

This seminal book takes up the thread where Rainer Herrn’s 2023 book, on the history of Hirschfeld’s Institute and the life work of Magnus Hirschfeld ended, in 1932–1933. It can also be read as an extensive contextualizing guide to the facsimile edition of the surviving Hirschfeld guestbook that was published in 2019 (Bergemann, Dose, Keilson-Lauritz & Dubout).

The ebook edition of this title is Open Access and freely available to read online.

The higher education and research system faces a constant dilemma. On the one hand, research and higher education are run by autonomous, interrelated academic communities, often described as collegial governance. On the other hand, they are an instrument for the fulfillment of goals that are often external to the academic community. What, then, is the role of academics and academic knowledge in governance of higher education and research, and how does this reflect on and impact their aims and overall place in society?

Fostered through joint workshops and an open dialogue, this double volume of Research in the Sociology of Organizations develops a deeper understanding of collegiality, examining through a unique comparative perspective how it is translated and practiced in different settings across the world. Considering ways in which collegiality can be revitalized, this second installment argues for reintroducing collegiality both in analyzing the development of higher education systems and research and in the actual governing of universities.

Revealing the globalization, homogenization and variation that have come to characterize the collegiate system, Revitalizing Collegiality critically considers the state of and future of the higher education system, and how we can consciously shape it moving forward.

Nearly 1.6 billion people worldwide are living in inadequate conditions, according to a recent United Nations report. Local authorities are running out of ways to tackle the increasing challenges of affordable housing. In South Africa, this issue is compounded by historical apartheid and spatial segregation. However, mixed-income housing has proven an effective strategy for alleviating the concentrated poverty that marginalizes certain communities.

Functioning as a toolkit for inclusive urban planning, Mixed-Income Housing Development Planning Strategies and Frameworks in the Global South evaluates how this framework meets specific socio-economic goals as opposed taking a broad overview of development. Exploring the relevant policies, planning, and legislation that have guided human settlements in South Africa, the authors consider how best to combat residential segregation, informal settlements, and the exclusive allocation of public housing units to the poorest of the poor. Additional case studies from the USA, Australia, Netherlands, Brazil, Nigeria, Botswana, and Ghana compare emerging building strategies and their benefits, including spatial integration, improved access to social services and other infrastructure, and the promotion of local economic development (LED).

Mixed-income housing development has been described as the only way to confront increasing urban poverty and segregation in our built environment. Analysing past projects and focusing on future trends and trajectories, this book acts as both a model for understanding the planning and management of this framework, and a foundation for future research.

An old man learns how to die from a poet facing death

For the entire six months that Mark Dowie became friends with Judith Tannenbaum, they both knew she was going to die. In fact, for most of that time they knew the exact hour she would go: sometime between 11:00 AM and noon, December 5, 2019, which she did.

Judith was a poet, writer, activist, and artist who worked for decades teaching and collaborating with imprisoned lifers. Beloved by her community, Judith told almost no one when she was diagnosed with an incurable disease that would cause her immeasurable pain. Instead she chose to end life on her own terms.

When they met, Mark Dowie had already been working for years to advocate for physician assistance in dying for terminally ill people in his home state of California. He helped many friends along this path, but it wasn't until he was introduced to Judith through a mutual friend that he came to a profound new understanding of death. Mark and Judith created a two-person "death café," a group devoted to discussions of death.

They talked about many things during Judith's final months, but the rapidly approaching moment of her death came to inform and shape their entire conversation. Death was, as she said, “the undercurrent and the overstory of our relationship.”

Judith Letting Go supports the right to plan one’s death, but it is ultimately about the lost human art of releasing everything that matters to the living in preparation for the inevitable.

Convict criminology (CC) is based on the belief that the convict’s voice has been traditionally ignored or marginalized in scholarship and policy debates, and that its inclusion can positively impact the fields of corrections, criminology, criminal justice, and policy making.

Designed for students, scholars, and activists worldwide this is the first sole-authored book to comprehensively explain the CC approach to scholarship, teaching, mentorship, and prison and criminal justice activism. It reviews the history and scholarship on this engaging field and the challenges that the approach has encountered. It features:

• exhibit boxes

• keywords

• test questions - including multiple choice, short answer and essay format.

The institution of sport has pervasive roots that are steeped in patriarchy. Despite this tradition, sport is at the forefront in making us aware of personal and social issues in global societies. However, sociological attention to family and sport is long overdue and sorely needed. Providing timely knowledge and long-awaited insights into pressing issues, this volume of Research in the Sociology of Sport establishes family and sport as a clearly identified field of study within sociology.

Focusing on how families participate in sport in global societies where traditional norms are rapidly evolving, this edited collection presents unique contributions to an under researched area of sociological inquiry. Offering a wide range of perspectives and a multidisciplinary approach, contributors provide applicable solutions to this sociological oversight, and nuanced scholarship that invites future consideration. Divided into three major sections, chapters explore traditional values that are actively challenged by both children and adults, examine the effects of cultural shifts on family relationships, and assess the patriarchal structure of sport participation in global societies.

Highlighting the microlevel of the family to grapple with contemporary social issues at the macrolevel of society, Family and Sport: Notable Contributions to Sociology charts new territory to advance a valuable understanding of family and sport issues.

What is the value of comparison for research in historical sociology? Today, social scientists regularly express doubt about the positivist premises that have long justified comparison’s use: that cases can be unproblematically compared as though they are independent of one another, that comparison can reliably yield valid causal inference, and that comparative methods can grapple with questions of meaning, sequence, and process that are central to historical explanation. Yet they remain reluctant to abandon comparison altogether, not least because comparisons are still manifestly useful in the research process.

After Positivism presents a bold new set of warrants and methodologies for comparison that takes these criticisms fully into account. The contributors to this book marshal a wide array of postpositivist approaches to knowledge to reconstruct the analytic potential of comparison for a new generation of social scientists. In addition to providing fresh answers to classic questions about case selection and causal inference, authors ponder the role comparison plays in a world where social phenomena are demonstrably time-, space-, and concept-dependent; where causation is typically conjunctural; where social structures and groups emerge and die; and where important objects of inquiry can be understood only in terms of relationships, emergent properties, or contingent and irregular effects. Engaging and timely, this book will be of interest to all those who seek to improve our explanations of historical change in social-scientific research.

“As a citizen of Tennessee, I can attest to the fact that there is a great migration happening from blue to red states. When people have had enough tyranny, they search for freedom elsewhere. This book captures a pivotal moment in time for our nation.”
-John Rich, country music superstar and owner of Redneck Riviera Brand 

“Roger’s analysis in American Refugees provides great evidence that America isn’t in some inevitable national decline, we’re just young. We’re going through our own version of adolescence as a nation.”
-Vivek Ramaswamy,  Republican Presidential Candidate

The conventional wisdom, or fear, among red state locals is that these newcomers, despite having “voted with their feet,” will continue to vote for the same policies that ruined the states from which they are fleeing. Roger Simon argues that the reverse may be more accurate: blue-to-red migrants tend to be serious constitutional conservatives, and they might be the cavalry that rescues the red states from their own problems.

With the possible exception of Florida, the red states, too, are in trouble. Like California, long-term one-party rule has corrupted them, but in a different way. Their political leaders have become disconnected from the conservative values of their constituents. Migrants from blue states, however, are likely to be highly invested in saving the red states into which they are moving.

American Refugees is the story of how a culture clash precipitated a great blue state exodus, and what it means for the rest of America. Focusing particularly on Tennessee, Simon contends that only the red states can preserve the constitutional republic envisioned by the Founders. Only they can save America for our children and grandchildren. The struggle will be great, but the story will ultimately have a happy ending.

Since at least the high point of the civil rights movement, African American Christianity has been widely recognized as a potent force for social change. Most attention to the political significance of Black churches, however, focuses on domestic protest and electoral politics. Yet some Black churches take a deep interest in the global issue of Israel and Palestine. Why would African American Christians get involved—and even take sides—in Palestine and Israel, and what does that reveal about the political significance of “the Black Church” today?

This book examines African American Christian involvement in Israel and Palestine to show how competing visions of “the Black Church” are changing through transnational political engagement. Considering cases ranging from African American Christian Zionists to Palestinian solidarity activists, Roger Baumann traces how Black religious politics transcend domestic arenas and enter global spaces. These cases, he argues, illuminate how the meaning of the ostensibly singular and unifying category of “the Black Church”—spanning its history, identity, culture, and mission—is deeply contested at every turn. Black Visions of the Holy Land offers new insights into how Black churches understand their political role and social significance; the ways race, religion, and politics both converge and diverge; and why the meaning of overlapping racial and religious identities shifts when moving from national to global contexts.

What are hybrid media events? Who creates them and what kind of purpose do they serve in contemporary societies? This book addresses these questions by re-thinking media events in the contemporary digital media environment saturated by intensified circulation of radical violence. The empirical analyses draw on the investigation of the Charlie Hebdo attacks in Paris, in 2015 and the global responses those attacks stirred in the media audience.

This book provides a new way of thinking about the idea of the hybrid in global media events. The authors give special emphasis to the hybrid dynamics between the different actors, platforms and messages in such events, explaining how global news media, terrorists and political elites interact with ordinary media users in social media. It demonstrates how tweets such as "Je suis Charlie" circulate from one digital media platform to another and what kind of belongings are created in those circulations during the times of distraction. In addition, the book examines how emotions, speed of communication and fight for attention become hybridized in the digital media. All these aspects, the authors argue, shape the ways in which we make sense of global media events in the present digital age.

The authors invite readers to critically reflect the technological, economical, political and socio-cultural challenges connected with today's global media events and the ethical encounters they may entail.

Throughout their careers, social scientists must come up with compelling research topics, decide when and where to publish, and revise their manuscripts for publication. Despite the importance of these skills, they are seldom if ever addressed in the course of graduate training. Heavy emphasis is placed on conducting research, and other core activities such as teaching also receive attention, yet fundamental academic practices are left almost entirely in the shadows.

Practicing Sociology brings together a range of leading sociologists to reflect on their work and demystify this tacit knowledge. In conversational and engaging essays, they provide practical guidance and hard-won wisdom for readers at any stage of their scholarly careers. The book’s three sections explore the art of finding new research questions, best practices in publishing, and how to make the most out of the peer review process. Contributors’ distinctive voices come through as they recount their frustrations and failures as well as the joys of the sociological craft. They provide a range of perspectives, underscoring that there is no one “right” way to practice sociology but a constellation of different approaches that together give the field its vitality.

Practicing Sociology features a team of skilled scholars including Peter Bearman, Paul J. DiMaggio, Wendy Espeland, Marion Fourcade, Shamus Rahman Khan, Eric Klinenberg, Michèle Lamont, Jennifer Lee, Mignon Moore, Mario Small, Duncan Watts, and many more.

Sponsored by the Brazil-U.S.Colloquium on Communication Studies of the Brazilian Society for Interdisciplinary Studies in Communication and the Communication, Information Technologies, and Media Sociology Section of the American Sociological Association (CITAMS), this volume of Emerald Studies in Media and Communications is entitled Creating Culture Through Media and Communication.

The volume is a vibrant collaboration of global voices addressing the media and communications challenges of our time. Contributors ask us to reconsider the ethical implications of media and technology from historical, contemporary, and future perspectives. In addition, case studies show the diverse ways that cultural media production has ripple effects throughout larger society.

Authors ask important questions about how digitalization is shaping our everyday lives, as well as how the ethics of tech is needed now more than ever with the sea change occasioned by AI.

This book is the first to provide an introductory overview to the concept of ‘urban informality’, taking an international perspective across the global North and South. It explores theoretical understandings of the term, and looks at how it affects ways of living, such as land use, housing and basic services, working lives and politics.

Using a broad range of material to bring the topic to life, including non-conventional sources – such as fiction, poetry, photography, interviews and other media – the book helps students, practitioners and scholars develop learning and research on this topic. The book also includes interjections from diverse voices of practitioners, community activists and regional experts.

Ecofeminism is defined as a unique academic discipline, theoretical framework, and political and philosophical movement centred around both environmental and feminist concerns. With a special focus on education and underrepresented geographical locations, Ecofeminism on the Edge: Theory and Practice is an inclusive collection of theories, discourses, art, identities, and practices related to this discipline.

Expert contributors collaborate with junior scholars and early-stage researchers to demonstrate the compatibilities between different generations, academic backgrounds, political views, and gender perspectives for a holistic, globally conscious approach to ecofeminism and ecofeminist studies. Chapters focus on regions not yet represented in this discipline as well as emerging educational practices to provide a truly inclusive approach to the many creative solutions ecofeminism offers. Topics explored include promoting ecofeminisms plural as potential solutions for environmental and social crises, gender inequality, labour issues, and capitalism.

An interdisciplinary approach to an interdisciplinary field, Ecofeminism on the Edge: Theory and Practice understands ecofeminism as a connective point between issues of gender and the environment, one with strong solutional potential for two distinct, yet often interconnected, fields.

Until the middle of the twentieth century, few thought of science as a social system, instead seeing scientific discovery as the work of individual geniuses. Columbia University’s Department of Sociology played a pivotal role in advancing the social study of science. Researchers of the “Columbia Program” analyzed how science works as a social institution, exploring its norms, values, and structure.

Smoother Pebbles presents a collection of essays authored or coauthored by Jonathan R. Cole, a leading Columbia Program figure, that trace the development and institutionalization of the sociology of science. Spanning from the 1960s to the 2020s and including both empirical and theoretical studies of science, the book is at once wide-ranging and united by core questions. Are scientists rewarded for the merits of their work or for other reasons? How does the system of social stratification in science operate? Has the funding of scientists been the result of an “old boys’ network”? How fair is the peer review process? In what ways does science fall short of its universalistic ideals? What factors have constrained opportunities for women in science? How has science fared amid attacks on academic freedom and free inquiry at universities? Cole’s introduction contextualizes both individual essays and the major concerns of the Columbia Program. Smoother Pebbles is essential reading for those interested in the growth and crucial questions of the sociology and social studies of science.

What are the Seven Deadly Sins? Are they still acknowledged breaches of morality and ethical norms in our Western societies in the Third Millennium? The Seven Deadly Sins present an ethical catalog, a moral mirror for princes and rulers that originates in Catholic Christianity. This little book, however, is not primarily about religion, on the contrary: It respects the Greek origins of Western thought that have survived beyond Christian faith, praises the scientific achievements of the Enlightenment, and looks at our contemporary world with critical eyes. It is a unique blend of scientific analysis, analysis of Western contemporary culture and, lastly, satire.

The authors, a group of friends living in Europe, present diverse views on a wide range of topics. Their principal intention is to open a debate about ethics, science, scepticism, and hypocrisy.

A thought-provoking and inspiring read—about the present as well as the future.

Presenting cutting-edge ethnographic research on contemporary worlds of work and the experiences of workers from a range of contexts, Volume 35 of Research in the Sociology of Work offers fine-grained, exploratory ethnographic data to provide insights unmatched by other research methods.

Conscious of the social and economic upheaval that continues to transform the contemporary workplace and the wider landscape for workers across the globe, Ethnographies of Work, the first of two parts, features analyses of working from home, the gig economy, the food delivery sector, digital nomadism, workplace inequalities, the hospitality industry, and an alternative community. Rooted in ethnographic research, chapters also include ethnographers’ reflections on their experiences in careers outside of academia, as well as their personal feelings of precarity both within and beyond the field to create an enriched volume that makes the most of ethnographic through its representation in a variety of written forms.

Joint Winner of the 2023 ASSAf Humanities Book Award in the Emerging Researcher Category

Gang violence is a concern being debated by academics, politicians, and communities around the world. Yet effective solutions are still in short supply, partly because too little research concentrates on understanding how people can escape the trap of violent street culture. Responding to that need, this book provides a detailed qualitative account of what it is like to join and then disengage from gangs in Africa’s deadliest city.

Through the life histories of twenty-four former Capetonian gang members, alongside hundreds of hours of additional interviews and observation from five years of ethnographic research, Dariusz Dziewanski reimagines gangsterism in a way that pays heed to the overwhelming force of street culture, but also confirms the possibility of overcoming crime and violence amid disenfranchisement and disadvantage.

Rather than simply reproducing the poverty-crime-violence narrative, this book demonstrates how gang members can – and have – transformed their lives, challenging the pessimistic conclusions commonly associated with gang entry; even gang scholars studying street culture usually portray the end point to gang life as either prison or a body bag. By presenting evidence about successful gang exit, Dziewanski showcases a practical starting point for changing how criminologists think about gangs and street culture – offering hope to those trying exit gang life, as well as those trying to help them do so.