What would the great founders of modern sociology have to say about happiness, modern capitalism, generation rent or pop music? What were their ideas about? Back For the Future introduces the concept of sociological investigation and describes the theoretical approaches of Emile Durkheim, Karl Marx and Max Weber in the context of their times and through the big challenges in society today. The book discusses world happiness research, the internet and 'glocalisation', sexual freedom and gender, 'collective effervescence', modern capitalism, the ever-present bureaucratic model of management in society, social behaviour and cognitive bias amongst many other topics in today's world. You even get fine art samples, a fun puzzle and a great You Tube link to illustrate the ideas! In reader testing Back for the Future was highly rated as an introductory reader, a teaching and learning aid and as a student text that cuts across disciplinary boundaries.

The landscape of social theory has changed significantly over the three decades since the publication of Anthony Giddens and Jonathan Turner’s seminal Social Theory Today. Sociologists in the twenty-first century desperately need a new agenda centered around central questions of social theory. In Social Theory Now, Claudio E. Benzecry, Monika Krause, and Isaac Ariail Reed set a new course for sociologists, bringing together contributions from the most distinctive?sociological?traditions?in an ambitious survey of where social theory is today and where it might be going. The book?provides a strategic window onto social theory based on current research, examining trends in classical traditions and the cutting edge of more recent approaches. From distinctive theoretical positions, contributors address questions about?how social order is accomplished; the role of materiality, practice, and meaning; as well as the conditions for the knowledge of the social world. The theoretical traditions presented include cultural sociology, microsociologies, world-system theory and post-colonial theory, gender and feminism, actor network and network theory, systems theory, field theory, rational choice, poststructuralism, pragmatism, and the sociology of conventions. Each chapter introduces a tradition and presents an agenda for further theoretical development. Social Theory Now is an essential tool for sociologists. It will be central to the discussion and teaching of contemporary social theory?for years to come.

Examining questions of statehood, biopolitics, sovereignty, neoliberal reason and the economy, Governmentality explores the advantages and limitations of adopting Michel Foucault's concept of governmentality as an analytical framework. Contributors from a wide range of disciplinary backgrounds highlight the differences as well as possible convergences with alternative theoretical frameworks.

Coping with Global Environmental Change, Disasters and Security - Threats, Challenges, Vulnerabilities and Risks reviews conceptual debates and case studies focusing on disasters and security threats, challenges, vulnerabilities and risks in Europe, the Mediterranean and other regions. It discusses social science concepts of vulnerability and risks, global, regional and national security challenges, global warming, floods, desertification and drought as environmental security challenges, water and food security challenges and vulnerabilities, vulnerability mapping of environmental security challenges and risks, contributions of remote sensing to the recognition of security risks, mainstreaming early warning of conflicts and hazards and provides conceptual and policy conclusions.

Social equity is a pillar of public service. Thus, social equity should be a central concern in public management in practice and scholarship. However, widespread incorporation and reflection of social equity practices in government and the anticipated public benefits still seem like an elusive goal. The ability to analytically assess social equity is the first step toward prescribing social equity reforms. Public affairs graduate programs, like a master’s in public administration or public policy, often teach public management separately from social equity. This book empirically and theoretically bridges social equity and public management for use in the public affairs graduate classroom. The book highlights international research that leverages public management theory to build reasonable social equity measures and applications. The research highlighted in the text includes studies from across countries in North and South America, Europe, Southeast Asia, and Australia. This is the first book specifically designed for global public affairs classrooms that connects public management theory and practice with social equity reforms.

"Schiro (Boston College) has written a text that examines curriculum theory for experience and pre-service educators with the purpose of understanding educational philosohpies or ideologies that they are likely to encounter in their teaching." —H.B. Arnold, CHOICE "The book provides readers with a clear, sympathetic and unbiased understanding of the four conflicting visions of curriculum that will enable them to more productively interact with educators who might hold different beliefs. The book stimulates readers to better understand their own beliefs and also to provide them with an understanding of alternate ways of thinking about the fundamental goals of education" —SIRREADALOT.ORG "A much needed, insightful view of alternative curriculum orientations. This is an exceptionally written book that will be useful to teachers, curriculum workers, and school administrators." —Marc Mahlios, University of Kansas "Curriculum Theory: Conflicting Visions and Enduring Concerns is a thought provoking text that invites self-analysis." —Lars J. Helgeson, University of North Dakota Curriculum Theory: Conflicting Visions and Enduring Concerns presents a clear, unbiased, and rigorous description of the major curriculum philosophies that have influenced educators and schooling over the last century. Author Michael Stephen Schiro analyzes four educational visions—Scholar Academic, Social Efficiency, Learner Centered, and Social Reconstruction—to enable readers to reflect on their own educational beliefs and allow them to more productively interact with educators who might hold different beliefs. Key Features Provides a historical perspective on the origins of curriculum ideologies: The book places our current educational debates and issues in a historical context of enduring concerns. Offers a model of how educational movements can be critically analyzed: Using a post-structuralist perspective, this model enables readers to more effectively contribute to the public debate about educational issues. Pays careful attention to the way language is used by educators to give meaning to frequently unspoken assumptions: The text's examination helps readers better understand curricular disagreements that occur in schools. Highlights the complexities of curriculum work in a social context: With an understanding of the ideological pressures exerted on them by society and colleagues, readers can put these pressures in perspective and maintain their own values, beliefs, and practices. Intended Audience This book is designed as a supplemental text for advanced undergraduate and graduate courses such as Curriculum Theory, Introduction to Curriculum and Instruction, Curriculum Philosophy, and Curriculum Theory and Practice in the department of education. Talk to the author! [email protected] To visit the author's web site, please visit: http://www2.bc.edu/~schiro/sage.html.

This Spring 2008 (VI, 2) issue of Human Architecture: Journal of the Sociology of Self-Knowledge includes two symposium papers by Klaus Fischer and Lutz Bornmann who shed significant light on why the taken-for-granted structures of science and peer reviewing have been and need to be problematized in favor of more liberatory scientific and peer reviewing practices more conducive to advancing the sociological imagination. The student papers included (by Jacquelyn Knoblock, Henry Mubiru, David Couras, Dima Khurin, Kathleen O’Brien, Nicole Jones, Nicole [pen name], Eric Reed, Joel Bartlett, Stacey Melchin, Laura Zuzevich, Michelle Tanney, Lora Aurise, and Brian Ahl) make serious efforts at developing their theoretically informed sociological imagination of gender, race, ethnicity, learning, adolescence and work. The volume also includes papers by faculty (Satoshi Ikeda, Karen Gagne, Leila Farsakh) who self-reflectively explore their own life and pedagogical strategies for the cultivation of sociological imaginations regardless of the disciplinary field in which they do research and teach. Two joint student-faculty papers and essays (Khau & Pithouse, and Mason, Powers, & Schaefer) also imaginatively and innovatively explore their own or what seem at first to be “strangers’” lives in order to develop a more empathetic and pedagogically healing sociological imaginations for their authors and subjects. The journal editor Mohammad H. Tamdgidi’s call in his note for sociological re-imaginations of science and peer reviewing draws on the relevance of both the symposium and other student and faculty papers in the volume to one another in terms of fostering in theory and practice liberating peer reviewing strategies in academic publishing. Anna Beckwith was a guest co-editor of this journal issue. Human Architecture: Journal of the Sociology of Self-Knowledge is a publication of OKCIR: The Omar Khayyam Center for Integrative Research in Utopia, Mysticism, and Science (Utopystics). For more information about OKCIR and other issues in its journal’s Edited Collection as well as Monograph and Translation series visit OKCIR’s homepage.

This Handbook provides the hidden common threads that tie sociological inquiry together and featuring eminent scholars, it separates itself from its predecessors in substance and organization. Rather than rehashing old debates or longingly gazing at the past, this book presents sociologists with new ways of conceptualizing the organization and presentation of sociological theory. At the heart of this Handbook’s vision is the twin goals of making theory a viable enterprise by reconceptualizing how we teach theory and keeping theory closely tied to its empirical applications. Three strategies are offered: (1) Elucidating how classic issues like integration or interaction are interrogated today; (2) Presenting a coherent vision of the social levels of reality that theorists work on such as communities, groups, and the self as well as how the coherence of these levels speaks to the macro-micro link; and, (3) Theorizing the social world rather than celebrating theorists or theories; that is, one can look at how theory is used holistically to understand the constraints the social world places on our lived experience or the dynamics of social change. Hence, in the second decade of the 21st century, it has become clear that sociology is at a crossroads as the number of theorists and amount of theory available is increasingly unmanageable and unknowable by the vast majority of professionals and students. As such, this Handbook of Contemporary Sociological Theory presents the novice and the expert with the a roadmap for traversing this crossroad and building a more coherent, robust, and cumulative sociology.