Influenced most notably by Émile Durkheim and Zygmunt Bauman, Dawson outlines how this long neglected stream of socialist theory can help us more fully understand, and possibly move beyond, the problems of neoliberalism and our conceptions of political individualism.

Germany, who challenged the British and its allies twice in the first half of the 20th century, began to reemerge as a global political power and to play the “big game” in the wake of the Cold War. As the strongest economy and the most crowded country in the European Union (EU), Germany has decided to lead the EU institutions and the old continent in global platforms. Especially after the reunification of the country, Germany started to dominate European politics. With the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of Cold War politics, Germany prompted the European countries to pursue a more independent foreign policy. Getting rid of the Soviet threat, Germany no longer needs NATO and the U.S. protection. As a result we see a Germany which has initiated a multidimensional and multilateral foreign policy orientation in order to improve its worldwide national interests.

This book puts to the test the prominent claim that social class has declined in importance in an era of affluence, choice and the waning of tradition. Arguing against this view, this study vividly uncovers the multiple ways in which class stubbornly persists.

This book critically engages with a series of provocative questions that ask: Why are contemporary societies so dependent on constructive and destructive effects of individualization? Is this phenomenon only related to the ‘second’ or ‘late’ modernity? Can the concept of individualization be productively used for developing a sociological diagnosis of our time? The innovative answers suggested in this book are focused on two types of challenges accompanying the rise of individualization. First, that it is caused by controversial changes in social structures and action patterns. Second, that the effects of individualization question varieties of the common good. Both challenges have a long history but reached critical intensity in advanced contemporary societies in the context of current globalization.

Socialism has been an influential force for social change for almost two centuries. Its philosophy and ideology have inspired millions while simultaneously arousing fear and revulsion in its enemies. Having emerged after the French Revolution in the effort to build upon and develop the egalitarian ideas of the Enlightenment, socialism has taken many forms. It has, furthermore, sometimes been manipulated and reformulated by opportunists who have built authoritarianism and totalitarian dictatorships in its name. Opponents seize on such examples to frighten away people who may otherwise have found socialism attractive. Socialism has survived such criticism and misrepresentation as its core principles have struck a chord with generations of people concerned with social justice. Historical Dictionary of Socialism, Fourth Edition contains a chronology, an introduction, a glossary, and an extensive bibliography. The dictionary section has over 500 cross-referenced entries on activists, politicians, political thinkers, political parties and organizations, and key topics, concepts, and aspects of socialist theory. This book is an excellent access point for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about socialism.

This major study develops a new account of modernity and its relation to the self. Building upon the ideas set out in The Consequences of Modernity, Giddens argues that 'high' or 'late' modernity is a post traditional order characterised by a developed institutional reflexivity. In the current period, the globalising tendencies of modern institutions are accompanied by a transformation of day-to-day social life having profound implications for personal activities. The self becomes a 'reflexive project', sustained through a revisable narrative of self identity. The reflexive project of the self, the author seeks to show, is a form of control or mastery which parallels the overall orientation of modern institutions towards 'colonising the future'. Yet it also helps promote tendencies which place that orientation radically in question - and which provide the substance of a new political agenda for late modernity. In this book Giddens concerns himself with themes he has often been accused of unduly neglecting, including especially the psychology of self and self-identity. The volumes are a decisive step in the development of his thinking, and will be essential reading for students and professionals in the areas of social and political theory, sociology, human geography and social psychology.

The history of sociology overwhelmingly focuses on 'the winners' from the classical 'canon' - Marx, Durkheim, and Weber - to today's most celebrated sociologists. This book strikingly demonstrates that restricting sociology in this way impoverishes it as a form of historically reflexive knowledge and obscures the processes and struggles of sociology's own making as a form of disciplinary knowledge. 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 as 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. In so doing, the collection offers fresh insights into not only the work of individual sociologists, but also into the discipline of sociology itself - its trajectories, forgotten promises, and dead ends.

In Family and Social Change in Socialist and Post-Socialist Societies, the authors address the social transformations of eight transitional societies in recent decades (Russia, Ukraine, Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, China and Vietnam). Each chapter discusses a different society and reveals their struggles in the reconstruction of the intimate and public spheres amid the post-Cold War period. Making use of a semi-structured analytical framework, the respective chapters address the ambiguous relationship between familism and individualisation seen through change and continuity in demographic behaviour, family values, family solidarity, gender relations, state policy and marketisation. The volume also outlines the possibility of a modified second demographic transition theory as a correction of Western-based interpretations of current social trends. Contributors include: Zsombor Rajkai, Yulia Gradskova, Lyudmyla Males, Tymur Sandrovych, Maƚgorzata Sikorska, Peter Guráň, Jarmila Filadelfiová, Miloš Debnár, Csaba Dupcsik, Olga Tóth, Borbála Kovács, Zhou Weihong, Liu Wenrong, Xue Yali, Nguyen Huu Minh, Chang Kyung-Sup.

This book explores the changing nature of growing-up working-class in post-Soviet Russia in a time of economic reform. Based on extensive research, it analyses the strategies of contemporary vocational education graduates and highlights their significance for wider processes of social change and social stratification in post-Soviet Russia.

In this new book, Bauman examines how we have moved away from a 'heavy' and 'solid', hardware-focused modernity to a 'light' and 'liquid', software-based modernity. This passage, he argues, has brought profound change to all aspects of the human condition. The new remoteness and un-reachability of global systemic structure coupled with the unstructured and under-defined, fluid state of the immediate setting of life-politics and human togetherness, call for the rethinking of the concepts and cognitive frames used to narrate human individual experience and their joint history. This book is dedicated to this task. Bauman selects five of the basic concepts which have served to make sense of shared human life - emancipation, individuality, time/space, work and community - and traces their successive incarnations and changes of meaning. Liquid Modernity concludes the analysis undertaken in Bauman's two previous books Globalization: The Human Consequences and In Search of Politics. Together these volumes form a brilliant analysis of the changing conditions of social and political life by one of the most original thinkers writing today.