Books in the Classical and Contemporary Social Theory series

This volume recasts and reintroduces Riesman by presenting newly discovered and unpublished manuscripts of his work, including excerpts from a previously unpublished critical biography of Freud that Riesman began with this assistant at the time, Philip Rieff, an interview in which Riesman describes in detail his early biography and his route into the social sciences, and other research notes and memoranda. With additional chapters analyzing the unpublished works, as well as discussions of Riesman as a public intellectual, his multi-disciplinary method of understanding society and his connections with figures such as Goffman and Fromm, this book will appeal to scholars of sociology, social theory and the history of American social science.

This book is the first full study of Edward Westermarck¿s moral and social theory, focusing on the key elements of his theory of moral emotions as presented in The Origin and Development of the Moral Ideas and summarized in Ethical Relativity.

Sociological Amnesia focuses on singular contributions to sociology that were once considered central to the discipline but are today largely neglected. Chapters explore the work of illustrious predecessors such Raymond Aron, Erich Fromm and G.D.H. Cole as well as examining exceptional cases of reputational revival as in the case of Norbert Elias or Gabriel Tarde. Through understanding the obstacles of recognition faced by female sociologists like Viola Klein and Olive Schreiner, and public intellectuals like Cornelius Castoriadis, the volume considers the reasons why certain kinds of sociology are hailed as central to the discipline, whilst others are forgotten.

Shedding light on the relationship between violence and contemporary society, this volume explores the distinctive but little-known theories of violence in the work of Georges Bataille and Jean Baudrillard.

Exploring his unique and interdisciplinary approach to the critical interpretation of modern metropolitan society and culture, this book emphasises David Frisby's legacy in highlighting the role of the social researcher as a collector, reader, observer, detective and archivist of the phenomena and ideas that exemplify the modern metropolis.

Bringing social theory and philosophy to bear on popular movies, novels, myths, and fairy tales, The Gift and its Paradoxes explores the ambiguity of the gift: it is at once both a relation and a thing, alienable and inalienable, present and poison. Challenging the nature of giving as reciprocal.

This book examines the communication battles of the Bush and Blair political administrations (and those of their successors) over their use of torture to gain intelligence for the War on Terror. Exploring the agenda-building drivers that exposed the torture-intelligence nexus and presenting case studies of key media events from the UK and USA.

Challenging the mainstream orthodoxy of social scientific methodology, which closely guards the boundaries between the social sciences and the arts and humanities, this volume reveals that authors and artists are often engaged in projects parallel to those of the social sciences and vice versa.

The Orient was central to the work of Marx and Weber, both figures building their theories around the question of why modernity appeared to emerge only in the West. Extending recent work comparing the social theories of Marx and Weber, this book examines their approaches to oriental societies, showing how.

Based on a rigorous construction of theoretical categories and on a close scrutiny of the common challenges confronting Europe and its Turkish neighbour long considered 'other' with regard to the accommodation of religious difference.