Social Theory

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...

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...

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...

This book examines the crossroads of quantum and critical approaches to International Relations and argues that these approaches share a common project of uncovering complexity and uncertainty. The "quantum turn" in International Relations theory has...

'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...

Outline of a Theory of Practice is recognized as a major theoretical text on the foundations of anthropology and sociology. Pierre Bourdieu, a distinguished French anthropologist, develops a theory of practice which is simultaneously a critique of the...

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...

The architectural historian and critic Kenneth Frampton 'never recovered' from the force of Hannah Arendt's teaching at The New School in New York. The philosopher Richard J. Bernstein considers her the most perceptive political theorist and observer of...

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...

Knowledge in the Age of Digital Capitalism proposes a new critical theory concerning the functioning of capitalism and how we consider knowledge and information. This ambitious book systematically and lucidly introduces contemporary phenomena into the...

This book brings together the work of scholars and writer-practitioners of psychoanalysis to consider the legacy of two of Sigmund Freud's most important metapsychological papers: 'On Narcissism: An Introduction' (1914) and 'Mourning and Melancholia'...

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...

Rules to Win By: Participation and Power in Union Negotiations is a book for anyone who wants to understand how to build the power required to effectively challenge and reverse income inequality and attacks on democracy. Drawing insights from recent...

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...

The world and its politics are becoming ever more polarised, leaving no room for the light and the shade. In The Half of It, Emma and Nicole explore race and identity through the lens of the mixed-race experience, creating a space for discussion and...

Following a remarkable epoch of greater dispersion of wealth and opportunity, we are inexorably returning towards a more feudal era marked by greater concentration of wealth and property, reduced upward mobility, demographic stagnation, and increased...

In Development as Freedom Amartya Sen explains how in a world of unprecedented increase in overall opulence millions of people living in the Third World are still unfree. Even if they are not technically slaves, they are denied elementary freedoms and...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9780807014172Author Herbert MarcuseFormat PaperbackPage Count 320Imprint Beacon PressPublisher Beacon PressWeight(grams) 295gDimensions(mm) 203mm * 136mm *...

Hartmut Rosa advances an account of the temporal structure of society from the perspective of critical theory. He identifies three categories of change in the tempo of modern social life: technological acceleration, evident in transportation,...

What does a good prison look like? More than eleven million people are currently locked up in prisons across the world, but does that mean that prison actually works? The answer usually depends on what people believe and feel about crime, punishment and...

Very Short Introductions: Brilliant, Sharp, Inspiring Social science is the study of human behaviour. It offers the tools to understand and explain people's choices and actions, and how they live together in communities. With insights from social...

THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER 'A sweeping and brilliant portrait' GUARDIAN 'A reportorial tour de force ... Heart-rending, appalling and hard to put down' JANE MAYER 'Visionary in scope, compassionate in procedure ... Definitive' AYAD AKHTAR ...

Race is arguably the single most troublesome and volatile concept of the social sciences in the early 21st century. It is invoked to explain all manner of historical phenomena and current issues, from slavery to police brutality to acute poverty, and it...

In World-Systems Analysis, Immanuel Wallerstein provides a concise and accessible introduction to the comprehensive approach that he pioneered thirty years ago to understanding the history and development of the modern world. Since Wallerstein first...

From the world's leading expert on trust repair, a guide to understanding the most essential foundation of our relationships and communities. When our trust is broken, and when our own trustworthiness is called into question, many of us are left...

LONGLISTED FOR THE 2021 FT / McKinsey BUSINESS BOOK OF THE YEAR AWARDOne of the world's most influential economists sets out the basis for a new social contract fit for the 21st century.'Excellent... Shafik points us toward...a hopeful framework for...

Richard Sennett's The Fall of Public Man examines the growing imbalance between private and public experience, and asks what can bring us to reconnect with our communities. Are we now so self-absorbed that we take little interest in the world beyond our...

The health emergency that broke out in 2020 is a landmark event in the development of capitalism, confirming the underlying change signalled by the Great Crisis of 2007-9. The Pandemic Crisis has catapulted the state to the centre of economic activity...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9781681376820Author Paul LafargueFormat PaperbackPage Count 200Imprint NYRB ClassicsPublisher The New York Review of Books, Inc

Zizek argues that the physical violence we see is often generated by the systemic violence that sustains our political and economic systems. With the help of eminent philosophers like Marx, Engel and Lacan, as well as frequent references to popular...

Over the past few decades, there has been a remarkable rise in the number of people who speak publicly about their experience of crime. These personal accounts used to be confined to the police station and the courtroom, but today bookshops heave with...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9781845409852Author Edward DuttonFormat PaperbackPage Count 180Imprint SocietasPublisher Imprint AcademicWeight(grams) 300gDimensions(mm) 234mm * 156mm * 13mm

The world has been bombarded in recent years with images of the luxurious lives and wealth of corrupt oligarchs and kleptocrats, amassed at the expense of ordinary people. Such images exploit our feelings of injustice, are taken as indicative of moral...

Postcolonial theory has become enormously influential as a framework for understanding the Global South. It is also a school of thought popular because of its rejection of the supposedly universalizing categories of the Enlightenment. In this devastating...

Clare Holdsworth develops an account of everyday busyness by identifying busyness with a relational interpretation of time. She analyses a variety of secondary data sources – one-day diaries, self-help books on busyness and time management, accounts of a...

The thesis of Human Diversity is that advances in genetics and neuroscience are overthrowing an intellectual orthodoxy that has ruled the social sciences for decades. The core of the orthodoxy consists of three dogmas:- Gender is a social construct.-...

One of America's leading political theorists analyzes the nihilism degrading-and confounding-political and academic life today. Through readings of Max Weber's Vocation Lectures, she proposes ways to counter nihilism's devaluations of both knowledge and...