Bücher der Reihe Published in association with Theory, Culture & Society

Examines the train of social theory from the 19th century, through to the 'organization of modernity', in relation to ideas of social planning, and as contributors to the 'rationalistic revolution' of the 'golden age' of capitalism in the 1950s and 60s. This title looks at key concepts in the social sciences.

This study seeks to recast the social dynamic of postmodernity. It argues, in contrast to much contemporary thought defining this dynamic as the contraction of the social into the individual, that it is in fact a retreat into tribalism.

The Symbol Theory draws together three central themes. At the first level the book is concerned with symbols in relation to language, knowing and thinking. Secondly, Elias stresses that symbols are tangible sound-patterns of human communication. Finally, the book addresses theoretical issues about the ontological status of knowledge.

This collection enables the reader to engage with the full range of Georg Simmel's dazzling contributions to the study of culture. It opens with his basic essays on defining culture, its changes and its crisis. These are followed by more specific explorations of culture.

`Friedman has produced a book of importance.... It features many tantalizing insights and observations in the author's attempt to comprehend the global constitution of the world and the "positional identities" - not least the identities of social scientists - within the global arena' - Theory, Culture & Society

Developing a comparative analysis of the UK and US, the new Germany and Japan, Lash and Urry show how restructuration after organized capitalism has its basis in increasingly reflexive social actors and organizations. The consequence is not only the much-vaunted 'postmodern condition' but also a growth in reflexivity.

This challenging volume reasserts the centrality of the body within social theory as a means to understanding the complex interrelations between nature, culture and society. The importance of a theoretical understanding of the body to social and cultural analysis of contemporary societies is demonstrated through specific case studies.

This innovative collection examines the emerging arena of cyberspace and the challenges it presents for the social and cultural forms of the human body. It shows how changing relations between body and technology offer new arenas for cultural representations.

Aims to provide an accessible but challenging introduction to Bourdieu's ideas. The issues developed include the sociology of culture, leisure and taste; the intrinsic reflexivity of social science; and the role of language in society and in social sciences.

A local community study of tense relations between an established group and outsiders becomes a microcosm that illuminates a range of sociological configurations. The Established and the Outsiders examines the mechanisms of stigmatization, monopolization of power, collective fantasy and `we' and `they' images which support and reinforce divisions in society.

This text considers Bakhtin as a social theorist, discussing him as a major intellectual figure and relating his ideas to theoretical trends and developments. The book is organized around the four main themes of Bakhtin's work: dialogics, carnivals, conversations and ethics and everyday life.

Shilling offers the most comprehensive overview of the field to date and an innovative framework for the analysis of embodiment, founded on a revised view of the relation of classical works to the body. Shilling believes the body should be read as a multi-dimensional medium for the constitution of society.

Ranging over a rich variety of material from film and film literature, and encompassing a critical interrogation of traditional realist ethnographic and cinematic texts, this book highlights the extent to which the cinema has contributed to the rise of voyeurism throughout society.

This work explains what is understood by the term "new social movements", and provides a critical assessment of identity politics. It examines a range of issues including neo-tribalism associated with identity politics and alternative lifestyles.

An engaged and impassioned exploration of the extent to which neoliberalism has succeeded in replacing politics with economics. Can economics continue to provide government legitimacy?

This book investigates the aesthetic nature and purposes of computer culture in the contemporary world. It casts a cool eye on the claims of cybertopians, tracing the globalization of the new medium and enquiring into its effects on subjectivity and sociality.

In this discussion of the aesthetic in everyday life the aesthetic codes of advertising, architecture, the Internet and everyday images are used as examples of the disorientation which a multiplication of codes creates. Welsch proposes untangling the `aestheticization of everyday life' and replacing it by more meaningful and durable categories.

Intends to theorize shopping as an autonomous realm. This title avoids the reductionist characteristics of economics and marketing. It also contains an appendix which gives a brief history and selected literature of shopping.

This book is a unique and agenda-setting interpretation of nature and ecology.

`It is illuminating, it may be persuasive, it ought to be read... the reader is introduced to a wealth of recent literature covering disparate areas of debate. Yet the main value lies in the challenge presented by the novel synthesis as a whole.' - Journal of Contemporary Religion

Drawing on the work of Derrida, Foucault, Levinas and Ricouer, this book proposes that the question of postmodernity is inseparable from that of postcolonialism. It maps out a new geneaology of the birth of the modern and suggests a new way of grounding the idea of an emancipation of being.

Analyzes the role of religion as a global cultural force in the tension between tradition and modernity. Social theories of religion are explored through a comparative and historical analysis of the Abrahamic faiths and theoretical approaches to the social function of religion are assessed.

Demonstrating that all notions of nature are entangled in different forms of social life, the text elaborates the ways in which the apparently natural world has been produced from within particular social practices. These are analyzed in terms of different senses, different times and the production of distinct spaces.

Presents a multidimensional, complex approach to sociological theory that focuses on culture. This title develops the theme of globalization in relation to the cultural turn, world-systems theory, the civilizing process, modernity and postmodernity, nostalgia politics and fundamentalism.

Underpinning this examination of Western societies is the notion of the `risk society'. The changing nature of society's relation to production and distribution is related to the environmental impact as a totalizing, globalizing economy based on scientific and technical knowledge becomes more central to social organization and social conflict.

In this second edition of this classic text the authors develop an analysis of education. They show how education carries an essentially arbitrary cultural scheme based on power. More widely, the reproduction of culture through education is shown to play a key part in the reproduction of the social system.

A fully revised edition of a seminal text from a world class authority in tourism. Each chapter has been significantly updated to include fresh data, examples and critical theory and three entirely new chapters have been added. A modern classic.

This book frames speculation on what postcapitalist societies could be, with regimes of private accumulation replaced by a politics and ethics of a democratic and ecologically-grounded Commons.