Books in the Key Issues in Modern Sociology series

Inspired by Max Weber's thesis on the Protestant ethic, 'Overseas Chinese Christian Entrepreneurs in Modern China' sets out to understand the role and influence of Christianity on Overseas Chinese businesspeople working in contemporary China. Through its in-depth interviews and participant observations (involving 60 Overseas Chinese entrepreneurs from Hong Kong, Taiwan, Southeast Asia and the United States), the text discusses how Christianity has come to fulfill an increasingly visible and dynamic function in the country, most notably as a new source of business morality.Recognizing that China's economic transition toward a market-oriented economy was not initiated by Christians (or indeed any other religious group), this volume demonstrates the importance of exploring the impact of religious ethics on economics at micro and organizational levels, via the subjective understandings of individuals and small businesses. Significant but often neglected facets of Weber's thesis arise as a result. Of key importance is the issue of gender differences within the Christian ethos - a crucial aspect of the Protestant ethic that has yet to be systematically studied, but which offers great potential to enhance our understanding of Weber's work. As a result, the text's novel application of Weberian sociology to the context of contemporary China can be seen to offer a double return, elucidating both the theory and its subject.

Drawing on the work of Hegel, this book proposes a framework for understanding modernity in the Muslim world and analyzes the discourse of prominent Muslim thinkers and political leaders with reference to some of the most significant markers of modernity.This study closely examines the works of nine major Islamic thinkers in twentieth and twenty-first centuries: Mohammad Iqbal, Abul Ala Maududi , Sayyid Qutb , Fatima Mernissi, Mehdi Haeri Yazdi, Mohammad Mojtaehd Shabestari, Mohammad Khatami, Seyyed Hussein Nasr and Mohamad Arkoun.By discussing these thinkers, the book traces the genealogy of major strands of consciousness in some crucial parts of the contemporary Islamic world and their relations to significant features of the modernity, such as human and individual subjectivity and agency, freedom, domination, culture of mass democracy, human rights, women's rights, political activism and participation, economic ethos and views on forms of property ownership, as well as social and cultural pluralism.

'Regimes of Happiness' is a comparative and historical analysis of how human societies have articulated and enacted distinctive notions of human fulfillment, determining divergent moral, ethical and religious traditions and incommensurate and conflicting understanding of the meaning of the 'good life'.Presented in two parts, 'Regimes of Happiness' provides a historical view of the way in which Western societies, the descendants of the Latin Roman Empire, created languages and institutions that established specific and occasionally antithetical conceptions of a fulfilled human life or 'happiness' in the first part. The second part explores how non-Western societies and non-Christian religions have conceived and established their own ideals of human perfection. 'Regimes of Happiness' is a critical reflection on modern notions of happiness which are typically focused on individual feelings of pleasure.

Pierre Bourdieu is widely regarded as one of the most influential sociologists of his generation, and yet the reception of his work in different cultural contexts and academic disciplines has been varied and uneven. This volume maps out the legacy of Pierre Bourdieu in contemporary social and political thought from the standpoint of classical European sociology and from the broader perspective of transatlantic social science. It brings together contributions from prominent scholars in the field, providing a range of perspectives on the continuing relevance of Bourdieu's oeuvre to substantive problems in social and political analysis. The first set of essays traces the roots of Bourdieu's thought in classical sociology by closely examining his intellectual connections with the writings of Karl Marx, Max Weber, and Émile Durkheim. The second set of essays is concerned with Bourdieu's relation to modern social philosophy, in particular with regard to the works of Friedrich Nietzsche, Norbert Elias, Theodor W. Adorno, and Axel Honneth. The third set of essays explores the relevance of Bourdieu's writings to key issues in the contemporary social sciences, such as the continuous presence of religion, the transformative power of social movements, the emancipatory potential of language, the political legacy of 1968, the socio-historical significance of the rise of the public sphere, and the social consequences of the recent and ongoing global economic crisis. The volume also contains a major interview with Bourdieu that has not been previously translated into, let alone published in, English. By bringing together contributions from international scholars, the volume aims to initiate a fruitful dialogue across different sociological traditions and thereby stimulate further debate on the legacy of Pierre Bourdieu in social and political thought.

With a clear statement of the theoretical issues in the debates about secularization and post-secularism, 'Religion and the State: A Comparative Sociology' considers a number of major case studies - from China, Europe, Singapore and South Asia - in order to understand the rise of public religions in the modern state. By distinguishing between political secularization - the separation of state and religion - and social secularization - the transformation of the everyday practice of religion - this volume offers an integrating framework within which to analyze these different societies.

In today's liberal democracies, does the political process focus on the people, or on the political leaders representing them? In 'Toward Leader Democracy', Jan Pakulski and Andras Korosenyi argue that there is a trend toward an increasingly pronounced focus on political leaders, or 'leader democracy', which is reinforced by the prominence of electronic media, the decline of major parties, the centrality of electoral competitions, and the frequently aggressive actions taken by our political elites. This trend is compatible with predictions made by elite theorists such as Max Weber and Joseph Schumpeter, and contradicts the notion of a change towards a democracy that is more 'direct', 'participatory' and 'deliberative'. In spite of the concerns voiced by some critics, the model of 'leader democracy' is fulfilling the key normative criteria and expectations of democratic rule.'Toward Leader Democracy' explains the shape and the workings of this new form of political action - that is, how it is motivated by the political will, determination and commitment of top politicians, and how it is exercised through mass elite persuasion that actively shapes the preferences of voters so as to give meaning to political processes. Competitive mass-mediated elections are the key elements of this process, providing voters with a sense of dignity by giving them the status of 'final arbiter' in leadership contests. As the text reveals, this marks a definite evolution within the world's 'advanced democracies': democratic representation is today realized increasingly through active political leadership, as opposed to the former practices of statistically 'mirroring' constituencies, or the deliberative self-adjustment of the executive in accordance with citizen preferences.

This volume explores the sociological legacy of the late Pierre Bourdieu through an examination of the intellectual division between his reception in the world of French social sciences and his reception in the Anglophone world.

This volume explores key issues in the modern tensions between state and religions by exploring a number of case studies from around the world.

This engaging and wide-ranging two-volume study urges a balance between theoretical and practical sociology.

The overarching aim of "e;Structure, Agency, Biotechnology: The Case of the Rothamsted GM Wheat Trials"e; is to propose a way of filling the analytical gap found in the current literature by offering an original theoretical framework. This framework is able to assess both the content and context of the scientific field without resorting either to deterministic or to what theorists refer to as "e;conflationist strategies."e; In order to demonstrate the heuristic value of the framework, the 2012 GM wheat field trials carried out by Rothamsted Research, often associated with the "e;second push"e; of agribiotech firms to bring Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs) to the UK, areassessed, and key aspects of the experiment areunderscored. At the same time, the broader institutional arrangements, key ideological constructs and the social order are examined, and a reframing of the controversy which moves beyond the simplistic conceptualization of it being a case of science versus politics is suggested. The volume also proposes a clear set of guidelines, which stem from the methodological and theoretical deep structure of the suggested framework but do not demand prior theoretical knowledge, which can be used by a wider audience engaged with biotechnology. This audience can draw on the guidelines either for reasons of developing a critical understanding of particular situations or for initiating the process of sustained dialogue between involved parties. These two dimensions are of great significance for practical policy orientations.

The book explores the role of religion in war and peace through nine original contributions that examine a range of case studies from different historical periods. Religion, the volume suggests, is typically not the cause of human conflict, but rather the product of actions by the state and the legal system.

The individual has never been more important in society - in almost every sphere of public and private life, the individual is sovereign. Yet the importance and apparent power assigned to the individual is not all that it seems. As 'Responsible Citizens' investigates via its UK-based case studies, this emphasis on the individual has gone hand in hand with a rise in subtle authoritarianism, which has insinuated itself into the government of the population. Whilst present throughout the public services, this authoritarianism is most conspicuous in the health and social welfare sectors, such that a kind of 'governance through responsibility' is today enforced upon the population.In the twenty-first century, individualism has come to pervade the body politic, especially where health and social care are concerned. Clients who may be at their most abject and vulnerable are urged to take responsibility for themselves rather than further burden the health and social care services. In some British healthcare trusts, prosecutions are mounted against clients who have lost their temper or who act inappropriately as a result of their disorientation, under the guise of 'making them take responsibility for their actions'. Citizens on the street in Britain are likely to have responsibility thrust upon them through mechanisms such as electronic surveillance and the burgeoning new cohorts of community enforcement officers, as well as the police themselves. Thus taking responsibility is never quite as simple as it seems - being responsible demarcates the borderland between autonomy and authority, and often equates to simply 'doing what you're told'.

This engaging and wide-ranging two-volume study urges a balance between theoretical and practical sociology.

Psychoanalytic Mythologies presents a collection of essays on the theme of what it is to be a human subject in a culture permeated by psychoanalytic imagery. The authors attempt to disturb the strongly-held belief of those in thrall to psychoanalysis that it is universally true forms the recurrent motif that binds these essays together.

Nationalizing the Body revisits the history of western medicine in colonial South Asia through the lives, writings and practice of the numerous Bengali daktars who adopted and practised it. Refusing to see western medicine as an alienated appendage of the colonial state, this book explores how western medicine was vernacularised. It argues that a burgeoning medical market and a medical publishing industry together gave daktari medicine a social identity which did not solely derive from its association with the state. Accessing many of the best-known ideas and episodes of colonial South Asian medical history, it seeks to understand how daktari medicine re-positioned the colonized bodies as nationalized bodies.

Ageing, Corporeality and Embodiment outlines and develops an argument about the emergence of a new ageing during the second half of the twentieth century and its realisation through the processes of embodiment. The authors argue that ageing as a unitary social process and agedness as a distinct social location have lost much of their purchase on the social imagination. Instead, this work asserts that later life has become as much a field for not becoming old as of old age. The volume locates the origins of this transformation in the cultural ferment of the 1960s, when new forms of embodiment concerned with identity and the care of the self arose as mass phenomena. Over time, these new forms of embodiment have been extended, changing the traditional relationship between body, age and society by making struggles over the care of the self central to the cultures of later life.

Unlike many partisan accounts of the nineteen sixties this book aims to give a considered explanation of the context in which the sixties radical movements arose and, also, their significance from the standpoint of various nations' actors, often ignored by North American and West European standpoints. Secondly, it examines how the radical decade sowed the seeds of various liberation or 'rights movements' - initially in the West but also globally as movements became increasingly diffused. Contributors' varied international backgrounds and specialities provide expertise in examining the international context. Thirdly, many nineteen sixties' radicals' values and strategies recur in contemporary social movements; albeit in different technological and, post 9/11, political and cultural environments. Unravelling similarities and differences is a key theme. Fourthly, many participants in sixties radicalism saw it as 'cultural' as well as 'political' and in some historical treatments as primarily or 'only' cultural. Detailed examinations of this perspective involve critical discussion - particularly in the light of the allegedly 'mere' (i.e. apolitical) cultural hedonism and escapism of youth in the nineteen eighties and nineties. Contrarily, the contributions here assess resonances between the radical/libertarian emphasis on civil society 'freedoms' in sixties' cultural radicalism and, arguably, today's more self-consciously political global human rights movement. The conclusion suggests that, in some senses, the sixties live on today in discursive and political themes.

Human liberation has become an epochal challenge in todays world, requiring not only emancipation from oppressive structures but also from the oppressive self. It is a multidimensional struggle and aspiration in which knowledge self, social and spiritual can play a transformative role. Knowledge and Human Liberation: Towards Planetary Realizations undertakes such a journey of transformation, and seeks to rethink knowledge vis--vis the familiar themes of human interest, critical theory, enlightenment, ethnography, democracy, pluralism, rationality, secularism and cosmopolitanism.Knowledge today is imprisoned not only in structures of domination but also in varieties of dualisms expert and the lay, cognitive and emotional and thus we are in need of a new art of cultivating non-duality and wholeness. The present book seeks to nurture the garden of liberatory and transformational knowledge by presenting alternative pathways gathered from many different global locations and traditions. Discussing diverse thinkers such as Sri Aurobindo, Jrgen Habermas, Erasmus, Kant, Tocqueville, Gandhi, Foucault, Daya Krishna, Ramachandra Gandhi and Martha Nussbaum, this text seeks to rethink some important themes in the contemporary discourse of knowledge, including: knowledge as power; knowledge as emancipatory interest; evolution; rationality; power; freedom; anthropology; history; law; compassion and confrontation; epistemology; ontology; political consumerism and responsible consumption; civil society and self-development; and rights.Offering a groundbreaking and interdisciplinary exploration of ideas about social transformation, Knowledge and Human Liberation bridges both Eastern and Western philosophy to create a definition of transformative knowledge that defies Eurocentric thinking. Via the discourses of sociology, philosophy, religion and spirituality, the text rethinks the relationship between knowledge production and ideas to offer a unique perspective on the issue of human liberation in todays oppressive world. The volume also features a Foreword by John Clammer (United Nations University, Tokyo) and an Afterword by Fred Dallmayr (University of Notre Dame).

This collection of essays, with special reference to Asia, analyzes religion through lived experience and reveals how religious phenomena are inextricably linked to globalizing processes.

In a series of focused studies related to the event that has generated the richest literature in exile studies the intellectual exiles arising out of Nazi rule this volume reconsiders a number of issues raised by that literature, notably the multiple, complex and changing negotiating processes and bargaining structures constitutive of exile, especially as the question of return interplays with the politics of memory.