This series establishes the importance of innovative contemporary, comparative and historical work on the relations between social, cultural and economic change. It publishes empirically-based research that is theoretically informed, that critically examines the ways in which social, cultural and economic change is framed and made visible, and that is attentive to perspectives that tend to be ignored or side-lined by grand theorising or epochal accounts of social change. The series addresses the diverse manifestations of contemporary capitalism, and considers the various ways in which the `social', `the cultural' and `the economic' are apprehended as tangible sites of value and practice. It is explicitly comparative, publishing books that work across disciplinary perspectives, cross-culturally, or across different historical periods.
We are particularly focused on publishing books in the following areas that fit with the broad remit of the series:
The series is actively engaged in the analysis of the different theoretical traditions that have contributed to critiques of the `cultural turn'. We are particularly interested in perspectives that engage with Bourdieu, Foucauldian approaches to knowledge and cultural practices, Actor-network approaches, and with those that are associated with issues arising from Deleuze's work around complexity, affect or topology. The series is equally concerned to explore the new agendas emerging from current critiques of the cultural turn: those associated with the descriptive turn for example. Our commitment to interdisciplinarity thus aims at enriching theoretical and methodological discussion, building awareness of the common ground has emerged in the past decade, and thinking through what is at stake in those approaches that resist integration to a common analytical model.
Edited
By Tony Bennett, Ben Dibley, Gay Hawkins, Greg Noble
January 09, 2023
The increasing significance of managing or changing habits is evident across a range of pressing contemporary issues: climate change, waste management, travel practices, and crowd control. Assembling and Governing Habits engages with the diverse ways in which habits are governed through the ...
By Paul Du Gay, Thomas Lopdrup-Hjorth
September 29, 2022
This book develops a particular stance on the subject of public service. It does so in large part by indicating how early modern political concepts and theories of state, sovereignty, government, office and reason of state can shed light on current problems, failings and ethical dilemmas in ...
Edited
By Tony Bennett, David Carter, Modesto Gayo, Michelle Kelly, Greg Noble
July 22, 2020
Fields, Capitals, Habitus provides an insightful analysis of the relations between culture and society in contemporary Australia. Presenting the findings of a detailed national survey of Australian cultural tastes and practices, it demonstrates the pivotal significance of the role culture plays at ...
Edited
By Alex Wilkie, Martin Savransky, Marsha Rosengarten
December 20, 2019
Is another future possible? So called ‘late modernity’ is marked by the escalating rise in and proliferation of uncertainties and unforeseen events brought about by the interplay between and patterning of social–natural, techno–scientific and political-economic developments. The future has indeed ...
Edited
By Christian Borch
January 17, 2019
Terrorist attacks seem to mimic other terrorist attacks. Mass shootings appear to mimic previous mass shootings. Financial traders seem to mimic other traders. It is not a novel observation that people often imitate others. Some might even suggest that mimesis is at the core of human interaction. ...
By Semi Purhonen, Riie Heikkilä, Irmak Karademir Hazir, Tina Lauronen, Carlos Fernández Rodríguez, Jukka Gronow
October 02, 2018
Key debates of contemporary cultural sociology – the rise of the ‘cultural omnivore’, the fate of classical ‘highbrow’ culture, the popularization, commercialization and globalization of culture – deal with temporal changes. Yet, systematic research about these processes is scarce due to the lack ...
Edited
By Malcolm Quinn, Dave Beech, Michael Lehnert, Carol Tulloch, Stephen Wilson
May 10, 2018
This book offers an interdisciplinary analysis of the social practice of taste in the wake of Pierre Bourdieu’s sociology of taste. For the first time, this book unites sociologists and other social scientists with artists and curators, art theorists and art educators, and art, design and cultural ...
By Dieter Vandebroeck
April 25, 2018
The past decades have witnessed a surge of sociological interest in the body. From the focal point of aesthetic investment, political regulation and moral anxiety, to a means of redefining traditional conceptions of agency and identity, the body has been cast in a wide variety of sociological roles...
Edited
By Ignacio Farías, Alex Wilkie
April 25, 2018
Consider the vast array of things around you, from the building you are in, the lights illuminating the interior, the computational devices mediating your life, the music in the background, even the crockery, furniture and glassware you are in the presence of. Common to all these objects is that ...
By Huw Walmsley-Evans
April 06, 2018
At the beginning of the 21st century film criticism was described as in crisis. The decline of print journalism, a series of lay-offs of prominent critics, and the rise of "amateur" reviewing online spurred a conversation about the decline, even death, of film criticism. This discourse flourished ...
Edited
By Francis Dodsworth, Antonia Walford
March 07, 2018
Globalisation and neo-liberalism have seen the rise of new international powers, increasingly interlinked economies, and mass urbanisation. The internet, mobile communications and mass migration have transformed lives around the planet. For some, this has been positive and liberating, but it has ...
By Pauline Garvey
November 23, 2017
This book represents the first anthropological ethnography of Ikea consumption and goes to the heart of understanding the unique and at times frantic popularity of this one iconic transnational store. Based on a year of participant observation in Stockholm’s Kungens Kurva store – the largest in the...