Books in the CRESC series

There is broad acceptance across the Humanities and Social Sciences that our deliberations on the social need to take place through attention to practice, object-mediated relations, non-human agency and the affective dimensions of human sociality. This Companion focuses on the objects and materials found at centre stage, and asks: what matters about objects? Original chapters from over forty international, interdisciplinary contributors address an array of objects and materials to ask what the terms of collaborations with objects and materials are, and to consider how they become integral to our understandings of the complex, relational dynamics that fashion social worlds.

What is it like to work in the media? Are media jobs more 'creative' than those in other sectors? This book explores the creative industries, using a combination of original research and a synthesis of existing studies. It is suitable for both undergraduate and postgraduate students of subjects including business and management studies.

Offers a contribution to international debates regarding the role of cultural capital in relation to modern forms of inequality. Drawing on a national study of the organisation of cultural practices in contemporary Britain, this work reviews Bourdieu's classic study of the relationships between culture and class in the light of subsequent debates.

Media studies needs richer and livelier intellectual resources. This book considers key processes of media change, using a number of critical perspectives. It is suitable for undergraduate and postgraduate students and researchers of cultural studies, media studies and social theory.

Media studies needs richer and livelier intellectual resources. This book considers key processes of media change, using a number of critical perspectives. It is suitable for undergraduate and postgraduate students and researchers of cultural studies, media studies and social theory.

This book gathers some of the most influential international scholarship in an emergent social science of infrastructures. Approaching infrastructures as complex, dynamic and fragile assemblages the volume aims to introduce readers to a new field of analytical approaches that draws attention to how the study of infrastructures can offer politically and theoretically generative perspectives on key areas of contemporary concern.

A collection of essays that explore the achievements and limitations of a Bourdieusian approach to cultural analysis and the implications for future research.

Presents a socio-material analysis of the British milk industry in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This title is suitable for any researcher interested in the hybrid socio-material, economic and political factors underpinning the transformation of the milk industry.

Migrants bring music from the homeland to the metropolis. But music also migrates via the media: `world¿ music, hip hop, bossa nova ... . With case studies from across the world this ground-breaking collection shows how migrating music is key to the construction of a still-emerging, global cosmopolitan imagination.

Plastic has become emblematic of economies of abundance and ecological destruction. If the post-war `plastics age¿ was cleaner and brighter than all that preceded it, this boosterism has now become intertwined with anxiety as the burdens of accumulating plastic wastes register in environments and bodies. This innovative book investigates how plastic accumulates functions, concerns, politics, properties and more.

This book focuses on the emergence and expansion of media markets; high-performance sport¿s transformation by, and effects upon, Cold War dynamics and inter-relations and the implications of the Treaty of Rome for an emerging European identity in sport as in other areas. It traces the connections between the forces of ideological division, economic growth, leisure consumption, European integration and the development of European sport, and examines the role of sport in the changing relationship between Europe and the US. Illuminating a key moment in global cultural history, this book is important reading for any student or scholar working in international studies, modern history or sport.

In 2010 Shanghai hosted the largest, most spectacular and most expensive expo ever. Attracting a staggering 73 million visitors, and costing around US$45 billion dollars, Shanghai Expo broke the records in the history of world's fairs and universal expositions. The thirteen essays in Shanghai Expo, written by a team of interdisciplinary researchers, offer a uniquely detailed analysis of this globally significant event.

Methods texts in social and cultural research have not kept pace with the increasing importance of interdisciplinary work, changing conceptions of the empirical, and the need to communicate with diverse users and audiences. This volume proposes a set of approaches for the empirical investigation of the contemporary world.

Models matter and have material effects on the lives of people. They emerge and change in historical, social and cultural conjunctures that operate at different scales and promote different subjective experiences and conditions of possibility for action. Industry and Work in Contemporary Capitalism engages critically with models of the economy and blueprints of the future, providing an ethnographically rich account of the enactment of models in specific communities. It also addresses the uses of projections into the future as forms of knowledge that are simultaneously powerful instruments of transformation.