General

This book offers an original combination of cultural and narrative theory with an empirical study of identity and political action. It is at once a powerful critique of rational choice theories of action and a solution to the historiographical puzzle of...

The ageing of the population is a demographic phenomenon, a social problem and a policy issue. The increase in the numbers of aged and in the costs of supporting and caring for them have also brought increases in family care, in deinstitutionalisation of...

Millions of Americans are using complementary and alternative medicine and spending billions of dollars, out-of-pocket, for it. Why? Do the therapies work? Are they safe? Are any covered by insurance? How is the medical profession responding to the...

This is the first book to examine in detail the roles that the news media can play in an ongoing peace process. Gadi Wolfsfeld explains how the press's role in such processes varies over time and political circumstance. He examines three major cases: the...

This 2003 book is a fascinating and moving portrait of the people who are suffering in a more divided and less egalitarian Australian society. Based on the author's conversations with hundreds of people living in three areas commonly described as...

This 2003 book reports the only national, random sample survey of US children and adolescents' use of all of the various media available to them conducted in at least the past 30 years. In addition to providing the first comprehensive look at how...

War is a highly complex and dynamic form of social conflict. This book demonstrates the importance of using sociological tools to understand the changing character of war and organised violence. The author offers an original analysis of the historical...

There is a growing conflict between modern and postmodern social theorists. The latter reject modern approaches as economistic, essentialist and often leading to authoritarian policies. Modernists criticize postmodern approaches for their rejection of...

Industrialised countries worldwide have for years been confronting the prospect of a steadily ageing population. This book, first published in 1997, reflects the breadth of research into gerontology and analyses the major themes and issues in the area of...

The post-Mao urban reforms of the last decade have physically and psychologically transformed China's cities. These essays explore how the character of city life shifted after the political-economic restructuring intensified in 1984, and how this shift...

In Social Capital, Nan Lin explains the importance of using social connections and social relations in achieving goals. Social capital, or resources accessed through such connections and relations, is critical (along with human capital, or what a person...

In this rich, evocative and challenging 1997 book, Chilla Bulbeck examines the impact of feminism on ordinary Australian women. She argues that the impact of feminism on women's lives has been significant, even though many of the women whose lives have...

This book presents empirical research on the nature and structure of political violence. While most studies of social movements focus on single - nations, Donatella della Porta uses a comparative research design to analyse movements in two countries -...

This text seeks to analyse and explain inequality, challenging traditional conceptions and providing a new critical perspective. The authors provide a comprehensive historical account of inequality, and show how that account no longer adequately explains...

The Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody (1987-1991) focused attention on the behavioural dimension of Aboriginal health and the lack of appropriate services. This book is a systematic analysis of the sociohistorical and intercultural...

In this book, Suzanne Kirschner traces the origins of contemporary psychoanalysis back to the foundations of Judaeo-Christian culture, and challenges the prevailing view that modern theories of the self mark a radical break with religious and cultural...

Sciulli argues that the existing conceptual frameworks of political and social theory restrict both theorists and empirical researchers to a narrow definition of authoritarianism. This 1992 book focuses on government structure and fails to take account...

Social Change in Modern France is concerned with the radical transformations which have taken place within French society since the mid-twentieth century. The authors contended that these changes constitute a revolution in French affairs as important as...

The Methodology of Herbert Blumer is a comprehensive critical account of the contributions of this important American sociologist to the methodology of social research. In a close reading of Blumer's texts, the author charts the development of Blumer's...

Over the last several years worker cooperatives of many kinds have sprung up all around the world. As a result, industrial relations in the workplace have changed dramatically as workers have come to own and run their own enterprises. This book provides...

This book was first published in 1990. In Australia, as in other Western societies, young people are facing a crisis. Structural changes in the economy have fundamentally altered the transition from child to adult. Many young people must choose between...

Commissioned for the Australian Bicentenary by the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia, this 1990 book provides an overview of the structure, nature and trends of Australian society at the time. The 11 essays by leading Australian academics cover...

Over the last two decades soccer has become a major institution within the popular culture of the Arab-Palestinian citizens of Israel. They have attained disproportionate success in this field. Given their marginalisation from many areas of Israeli...

This is a study of the Australian ruling class - the main companies, the leading political groups and the links and conflicts among them. The author also analyses class inequalities in education, the development of children's ideas about class, the role...

How - and why - have children of blacks, American Indians, Mexican-Americans, and Puerto Ricans been deprived by and often excluded from the so-called American educational system? In this classic 1977 study of a problem neglected or undervalued in most...

The works of Emile Durkheim have had an enormous influence on sociology. This book provides, first, a clearly written introduction to Durkheim's major works, looking at each of the major fields to which he contributed. Secondly, it examines the ways in...

Moving back and forth between the history of philosophy and the contributions of philosophers in his own day, Durkheim takes up topics as diverse as philosophical psychology, logic, ethics, and metaphysics, and seeks to articulate a unified philosophical...

Max Weber's The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism is one of the best-known and most enduring texts of classical sociology, continually inspirational and widely read by both scholars and students. In an insightful interpretation, Jack Barbalet...

Originally published in 1990, Polish Journalists: Professionalism and Politics is a study of how, in the face of constant political instructions and restrictions, Polish journalists act as independent forces in their society. Based on a survey of Polish...

A cursory reading of the history of US colleges and universities reveals that campus crime has been part of collegiate life since the Colonial Era, yet it was not until the late 1980s that it suddenly became an issue on the public stage. Drawing from...

Anticipating risks has become an obsession of the early twenty-first century. Private and public sector organisations increasingly devote resources to risk prevention and contingency planning to manage risk events should they occur. This 2010 book shows...

This concise yet comprehensive overview of the political and economic development of the world's cities offers a unique emphasis on its cultural impacts. The book emphasizes the transition from modern (industrial) to post-modern (post-industrial) eras...

The mass entry of women into the labour market, the decline of the male breadwinner norm and the rise of the dual-earner family have all profoundly transformed the societies of the Western industrialised world. This book argues that childcare has become...

In this study of student nurses at Duke University, Professor Simpson challenges earlier research by demonstrating that a professional school does socialise its students. In addition, by constructing a model that brings together competing theories of...

Lost in Transition tells the story of the 'lost generation' that came of age in Japan's deep economic recession in the 1990s. The book argues that Japan is in the midst of profound changes that have had an especially strong impact on the young generation...

Are social structures products of human action, expressions of individual or group power? Or are they essentially external constraints on human action, necessarily analyzed at a different level? How are themes of power and constraint to be joined in a...

Drawing on the kind of historicist perspective encouraged by Quentin Skinner and Richard Rorty, this book explores the development of Durkheim's social realism. Durkheim argued that social facts should be studied as real, concrete things but Professor...

Since the 1940s, there has been an explosion of writings, both scientific and nonscientific, about the question of 'identity' and what it means to be an individual in today's world. This book examines sociological perspectives on identity in order to...

Diverging Pathways follows the careers of a British birth cohort into early adulthood, presenting a detailed picture of the family backgrounds and the school and early labour force achievements of the cohort. The study portrays how the social...

Over the last several decades, functional theory in the social sciences has fallen into disfavour. Alleged to be a static form of theory incapable of explaining social change, methodologically impotent and ideologically tainted, functionalism stands...