Why is the United States the only advanced capitalist country with no labor party? This question is one of the great enduring puzzles of American political development, and it lies at the heart of a fundamental debate about the nature of American society. Tackling this debate head-on, Robin Archer puts forward a new explanation for why there is no American labor party-an explanation that suggests that much of the conventional wisdom about "American exceptionalism" is untenable. Conventional explanations rely on comparison with Europe. Archer challenges these explanations by comparing the United States with its most similar New World counterpart-Australia. This comparison is particularly revealing, not only because the United States and Australia share many fundamental historical, political, and social characteristics, but also because Australian unions established a labor party in the late nineteenth century, just when American unions, against a common backdrop of industrial defeat and depression, came closest to doing something similar. Archer examines each of the factors that could help explain the American outcome, and his systematic comparison yields unexpected conclusions. He argues that prosperity, democracy, liberalism, and racial hostility often promoted the very changes they are said to have obstructed. And he shows that it was not these characteristics that left the United States without a labor party, but, rather, the powerful impact of repression, religion, and political sectarianism.

Education has always been a key instrument of nation-building in new states. National education systems have typically been used to assimilate immigrants; to promote established religious doctrines; to spread the standard form of national languages; and to forge national identities and national cultures. They helped construct the very subjectivities of citizenship, justifying the ways of the state to the people and the duties of the people to the state. In this second edition of his seminal and widely-acclaimed book on the origins of public education in England, France, Prussia, and the USA, Andy Green shows how education has also been used as a tool of successful state formation in the developmental states of East Asia. While human capital theories have focused on how schools and colleges supply the skills for economic growth, Green shows how the forming of citizens and national identities through education has often provided the necessary condition for both economic and social development.

The third edition of Writing History provides students and teachers with a comprehensive overview of how the study of history is informed by a broader intellectual and analytical framework, exploring the emergence and development of history as a discipline and the major theoretical developments that have informed historical writing. Instead of focusing on theory, this book offers succinct explanations of key concepts that illuminate the study of history and practical writing, and demonstrates the ways they have informed practical work. This fully revised new edition comprehensively rewrites and updates original chapters but also includes new features such as: - new chapters on postcolonial, environmental and transnational history; - chapter introductions setting them within the context of historiography; - a new substantive introduction from the editors, providing a useful road-map for students; - an expanded glossary. In its new incarnation Writing History is, more than ever, an invaluable introduction to the central debates that have shaped history.

This title was first published in 2002. This multi-faceted account of the transformation of social democracy in Europe provides a unique critical discussion of the normative claims and the key policy initiatives that characterize Third Way politics. Designed to cover a broad range of aspects, this text provides fresh understanding of the transformation of social democratic politics in a globalizing world. Including accounts of the changes in the socio-political environment in which the New Social Democracy operates, the socio-cultural roots of Third Way politics and the underlying political and ideological shift of the contemporary established left, this text offers comparative insights into national case studies and an interpretative framework for the transformation that this political force has undergone in recent years. The reader will benefit from this book’s expert and easily accessible multi-faceted approach to one of the key political issues in contemporary Western societies.

The contributors apply Marshall's dominant conception of citizenship to key areas of social scientific study such as power, income distribution, work and technology, family responsibilities, the environment and the underclass. The book is intended for undergraduate and postgraduate students on courses in sociological theory, social inequality, social policy and political theory.

First published in English in 1990 as Latin American Politics: A Theoretical Framework, a translation of Torcuato S. Di Tella's original Sociología de los procesos políticos, this new edition also focuses on the prerequisites for democracy in any society and on the role of the popular classes in social change. Di Tella draws on the work of Montesquieu, Burke, Tocqueville, Marx, Weber, and Durkheim in formulating his explanatory theories. These theories are then tested against crucial events in Latin American history—from the rebellions of the eighteenth century to the caudillos of the nineteenth century and the militarism of the twentieth century. This edition is more attuned to an English-speaking audience, with a new chapter addressing the historical process in Argentina from the 1930s to 2000. Latin American Politics is written in a style easily accessible to the general reader or student, while its emphasis on the growth of democracy in Latin America makes it particularly timely.

At a time when so many cracks have emerged within the imagined community of ‘the West', this important new book, by one of the leading social scientists in Europe, examines the intellectual history of comparing Europe and the United States. Claus Offe considers the perspectives adopted by three of Europe’s greatest social scientists – Alexis de Tocqueville, Max Weber and Theodor W. Adorno – in their comparative writings on Europe. While traveling, studying and working in the US, all three constantly looked back to their European origins, trying to decipher from their American experience what the future may hold for Europe, be it for better or worse. Alexis de Tocqueville, the French aristocrat, observed the functioning of American democracy with a mix of admiration, envy and deep concerns about the fate of liberty in the ‘democratic age'. Max Weber, the German sociologist, reported enthusiastically about the youthful energy he found in the United States, which, however, he saw as gradually succumbing to the stifling tendencies of European bureaucratization. Theodor W. Adorno, the critical theorist and refugee from Nazi Germany, observed with a sense of despair the workings of the American ‘culture industry’ which he equated to the totalitarian experience of Europe, only to switch to a much more favorable picture upon his return to Germany. Europe and the US are conventionally assumed to share the same trajectory and develop according to some common pattern of ‘occidental rationalism', with the observed differences resulting from mere lags and relative advances on one side or the other. In this insightful book, Offe questions the relevance of this paradigm to transatlantic relations today.

This book is about the sociologists' analyses of the newness of our time. It discusses five conceptual perspectives: (1) Multiple modernities; (2) Globalization; (3) Multiculturalism; (4) The declining accountability of the State; (5) Postmodernity. The divergent propositions which surface give this discourse its basic coherence.

Click ′Additional Materials′ for downloadable samples The Encyclopedia of Social Theory is an indispensable reference source for anyone interested in the roots of contemporary social theory. It examines the global landscape of all the key theories and the theorists behind them, presenting them in the context needed to understand their strengths and weaknesses. Theories covered include • Critical Theory • Enlightenment • Ethnomethodology • Exchange Theory • Feminism • Marxist Theory • Multiculturalism • Phenomenology • Postmodernism • Rational Choice • Structural Fundamentalism Led by internationally renowned scholar George Ritzer, the Encyclopedia of Social Theory draws together a team of more than 200 international scholars covering the developments, achievements, and prospects of social theory from its inception in the 18th century to the present. Understanding that social theory can both explain and alter the social world, this two-volume set serves as not only a foundation for learning, but also an inspiration for creative and reflexive engagement with the rich range of ideas it contains. Key Themes • American Social Theory • British Social Theory • Comparative and Historical Theory • Cultural Theory • Economic Sociology • Feminist Theory • French Social Theory • German Social Theory • Macrosociological Theories • Marxist and Neo-Marxist Approaches • Method and Metatheory • Network and Exchange Theories • Other/Multiple National Traditions • Politics and Government • Postmodern Theory • Psychoanalytic Theory • Schools and Theoretical Approaches • Symbolic Interaction and Microsociology • Theorists • Topics and Concepts in Social Theory Key Features • More than 300 entries from fourteen countries • Master Bibliography • Reader′s Guide • Extensive biographical coverage of major theorists • Extensive cross-referencing