Social Theory

Erich Fromm sees right to the heart of our contradictory needs for community and for freedom like no other writer before or since. In Fear of Freedom, Fromm warns that the price of community is indeed high, and it is the individual who pays. Fascism and...

In Planetary Longings eminent cultural theorist Mary Louise Pratt posits that the last decade of the twentieth century and the first decades of the twenty-first mark a turning point in the human and planetary condition. Examining the forces of modernity,...

We live in a runaway world. New patterns of risk and uncertainty threaten the stability of our traditional institutions. To make sense of these profound changes in our lives, and invent new politics for the twenty-first century, we must understand the...

This book argues that the psychoanalytic concept of disavowal best renders the structure underlying our contemporary social response to traumatic and disturbing events, from climate change to unsettling tectonic shifts in our social tissue. Unlike...

"The first edition of this book brought difficult questions about selfhood together with equally awkward issues of power and the 'social'. Not since Mead or Goffman, perhaps, had this been attempted in such a useful way, and in such an assured and...

Modern political life is a confusing and disorientating terrain of competing ideologies. Jason Blakely offers readers a lively, fresh and insightful guide through the labyrinth of conflicting and competing ideas in order to better understand why ideology...

TATE BOOK OF THE MONTH 2023 A timely critique of consumer culture which captures this image-obsessed moment in history, perfect for fans of Zadie Smith's Feel Free and Jia Tolentino's Trick Mirror.This book is not a taste, nor an anti-taste, manual. This...

Treating social theory as an exciting intellectual journey in its own right, this new introductory-level textbook presents the key ideas and concepts in social theory together with an account of the intellectual background from which they emerged. Aimed...

'The life of man, solitary, poore, nasty, brutish, and short' Written during the chaos of the English Civil War, Thomas Hobbes' Leviathan asks how, in a world of violence and horror, can we stop ourselves from descending into anarchy? Hobbes' case for a...

Facing global climate crisis, Karl Marx's ecological critique of capitalism more clearly demonstrates its importance than ever. This book explains why Marx's ecology had to be marginalized and even suppressed by Marxists after his death throughout the...

Tales of neoliberalism's death are serially overstated. Following the financial crisis of 2008, neoliberalism was proclaimed a "zombie," a disgraced ideology that staggered on like an undead monster. After the political ruptures of 2016, commentators...

This book, from one of international social work's leading radical educators, provides a richly compelling argument for the profession to become more critical and dissenting. Addressing the troubled times in which we find ourselves, Garrett's book...

We're living in an age of division. From abortion rights to immigration, gun control to climate change, civil debate has gone out the window. Manners, order, and respect are being eroded. Why can't we all be reasonable? The trouble is, what's...

History of the Future presents a set of ideas about where we are in history. It focuses on the great majority of people in each society, and shows that life in the modern world will be almost completely different from all previous human experience. The...

Shortlisted for the Royal Society Science Book Prize Bias affects us all, every day of our lives. It shapes how we see each other, and how we are seen in turn. It fuels discrimination on the basis of sex, gender, race, age, class and appearance. It...

**AN ECONOMIST AND THE TIMES BOOK OF THE YEAR**'Essential and definitive' CATHERINE BELTON, author of PUTIN'S PEOPLEWe are in a new era.From Trump, Putin and Bolsonaro to Erdogan, Xi and Modi, self-styled strongmen have become a central feature of global...

Written in response to the Hawk's Nest Tunnel disaster of 1931 in Gauley Bridge, West Virginia, The Book of the Dead is an important part of West Virginia's cultural heritage and a powerful account of one of the worst industrial catastrophes in American...

This book is the culmination of 15 years of research and travels that have taken the author completely around the world twice, as well as on other travels in the Mediterranean, the Baltic, and around the Pacific rim. Its purpose has been to try to...

A relation of cruel optimism exists when something you desire is actually an obstacle to your flourishing. Offering bold new ways of conceiving the present, Lauren Berlant describes the cruel optimism that has prevailed since the 1980s, as the...

In 1923, a group of young radical German thinkers and intellectuals came together to at Victoria Alle 7, Frankfurt, determined to explain the workings of the modern world. Among the most prominent members of what became the Frankfurt School were the...

In the two decades following the fall of the Berlin Wall, global capitalism became entrenched in its modern, neoliberal form. Its triumph was so complete that the word "capitalism" itself fell out of use in the absence of credible political alternatives...

Few, if any, English-language critics have written as perceptively as Isaiah Berlin about Russian thought and culture. Russian Thinkers is his unique meditation on the impact that Russia's outstanding writers and philosophers had on its culture. In...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9781611046960Author J C RyleFormat PaperbackPage Count 78Imprint Waymark BooksPublisher Waymark BooksWeight(grams) 118gDimensions(mm) 229mm * 152mm * 4mm

Why does happiness get harder in your 40s? Why do you feel in a slump even when you're successful? Where does this malaise come from? And, most importantly, will it ever end? Drawing on cutting-edge research, award-winning journalist Jonathan Rauch...

A BARACK OBAMA AND A BILL GATES SUMMER READING PICK 2022 A NEW YORK TIMES AND WALL STREET JOURNAL BESTSELLER 'This book helped me understand modern politics better' - Bill Gates, Summer Reading Pick 2022 'Superbly researched and written' - ...

'Conspicuous consumption of valuable goods is a means of reputability to the gentleman of leisure.' In The Theory of the Leisure Class Thorstein Veblen sets out 'to discuss the place and value of the leisure class as an economic factor in modern life'...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9781788360753Author Edward DuttonFormat PaperbackImprint Imprint AcademicPublisher Imprint AcademicWeight(grams) 320gDimensions(mm) 235mm * 156mm * 13mm

Fully updated and revised by James Penner and Emmanuel Melissaris, McCoubrey & White's Textbook on Jurisprudence clearly breaks down the complexities of this often daunting yet fascinating subject. Sophisticated ideas are explained concisely and with...

This sequel to Randall Collins' world-influential micro-sociology of violence introduces the question of time-dynamics: what determines how long conflict lasts and how much damage it does. Inequality and hostility are not enough to explain when and where...

Following the publication of the seminal Fear of Freedom, Erich Fromm applied his unique vision to a critique of contemporary capitalism in The Sane Society. Where the former dealt with man's historic inability to come to terms with his sense of...

The past year has seen a resurgence of interest in the political thinker Hannah Arendt, "the theorist of beginnings," whose work probes the logics underlying unexpected transformations-from totalitarianism to revolution. A work of striking...

The first book to offer a comprehensive exploration of Marx's relationship to republicanism, arguing that it is essential to understanding his thoughtIn Citizen Marx, Bruno Leipold argues that, contrary to certain interpretive commonplaces, Karl Marx's...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9781681373898Author Max WeberFormat PaperbackPage Count 104Imprint The New York Review of Books, IncPublisher The New York Review of Books, Inc

Making Social Science Matter presents an exciting new approach to the social and behavioral sciences including theoretical argument, methodological guidelines, and examples of practical application. Why has social science failed in attempts to emulate...

'A beautifully written, eminently readable and uniquely important challenge to conventional wisdom' J. D. Vance, author of Hillbilly Elegy 'A page-turner and revelation, Political Tribes will change the way you think' Tim Wu, author of The Attention...

Michael Young is one of the key figures in British twentieth century history. Focusing on family, community and social change, he has cascaded ideas, in the process coining new words, like 'meritocracy'. He has also initiated or played a major role in...

What's wrong with the world today and how might it become better (or worse)? These are the questions pursued in this book, which explores the hopes and fears, dreams and nightmares of the 21st century. Through architecture, fiction, theory, film and...

As theorists have begun using geographical concepts and metaphors to think about the complex and differentiated world, it is important to reflect on their work, and its impact on our thoughts on space. This revealing book explores the work of a wide...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9780262539401Author Michael HallsworthFormat PaperbackPage Count 248Imprint MIT PressPublisher MIT Press Ltd

Siblings and all the lateral relationships that follow from them are clearly important and their interaction is widely observed, particularly in creative literature. Yet in the social, psychological and political sciences, there is no theoretical...