This argues that many forms of domination today cannot be fitted into traditional theories and shows the applicability of Weber's theory of social closure to the empirical case of language conflict in Quebec.

Laying the foundations of a theory of ‘international social closure’ this book examines how actors compete for a seat at the table in the management of international society and how that competition stratifies the international domain. In a broad historical survey from the ‘Family of Civilised Nations’, through the Great Powers’ club, to the G7 and G20 today, Naylor investigates the politics of membership in the exclusive clubs that manage international society and ensure its survival, providing us with a new way to think about how status competition has changed over time and what this means for international politics today. With its sociologically grounded theory, this book advances English School scholarship and transforms the study of contemporary summitry, providing a ground-breaking approach rooted in archival research, elite interviews, and ethnographic participant observation. This book is of interest to international relations scholars interested in the ‘expansion’ and globalisation of international society, the history of international summits, and transformations in international order, as well as to those examining concepts including stratification, hierarchy, and networked governance. With its emphasis on non-state actors in global governance, scholars and practitioners alike working on/for civil society will also find this research of great value.

In his book On Social Closure, Jürgen Mackert seeks to reinvigorate the idea of social closure and bring it back as a basic sociological concept for understanding the strategies and processes powerful groups use to improve their life chances at the expense of the less powerful. To do this, he puts forward a mechanism-based explanatory approach that makes it possible to empirically study social closure through exclusion in the context of neoliberalism; exploitation within global capitalism; and elimination in the ongoing legacy of settler colonialism. Further, he identifies two critical social mechanisms to explain how human beings are denied access to resources, rights, or critical networks and to bring power dynamics into closure analysis.

Bringing together the classic statements on social stratification, this collection offers the most significant contributions to ongoing debates on the nature of race, class, and gender inequality.

This book summarizes the body of knowledge about sociology of education and cultural studies as it informs educational research and critical pedagogy. It synthesizes the most relevant work in social and cultural reproduction published in the last three decades in English, French, German, Spanish, and Portuguese. The authors document and critique the theoretical discussion in developments in both advanced societies and peripheral ones, and link macro-sociological issues with social psychological ones. The book introduces theories of the state to underscore a political sociology of education, and highlights an agenda for theory building, research, and practice in sociology of education.

Max Weber is one of the world's most important social scientists, but he is also one of the most notoriously difficult to understand. This revised, updated, and expanded edition of The Max Weber Dictionary reflects up-to-the-moment threads of inquiry and introduces the most recent translations and references. Additionally, the authors include new entries designed to help researchers use Weber's ideas in their own work; they illuminate how Weber himself thought theorizing should occur and how he went about constructing a theory. More than an elementary dictionary, however, this work makes a contribution to the general culture and legacy of Weber's work. In addition to entries on broad topics like religion, law, and the West, the completed German definitive edition of Weber's work (Max Weber Gesamtausgabe) necessitated a wealth of new entries and added information on topics like pragmatism and race and racism. Every entry in the dictionary delves into Weber scholarship and acts as a point of departure for discussion and research. As such, this book will be an invaluable resource to general readers, students, and scholars alike.

Social work as a democratically constituted profession committed to human rights is currently facing cross-border encroachments and attacks by right-wing populist movements and governments. With the Bundestag elections in September 2017, the question of the extent to which right-wing populist forces succeed in influencing the discourse with xenophobic and nationalist arguments arises in Germany, too. The authors examine how social work can respond effectively to nationalism, exclusion, de-solidarization and a basic skepticism about science and position itself against this background. The book explores different conditions in Germany, France, Poland, Russia and the US.

The steady expansion of college enrollment rates over the last generation has been heralded as a major step toward reducing chronic economic disparities. But many of the policies that broadened access to higher education—including affirmative action, open admissions, and need-based financial aid—have come under attack in recent years by critics alleging that schools are admitting unqualified students who are unlikely to benefit from a college education. In Passing the Torch, Paul Attewell, David Lavin, Thurston Domina, and Tania Levey follow students admitted under the City University of New York’s “open admissions” policy, tracking its effects on them and their children, to find out whether widening college access can accelerate social mobility across generations. Unlike previous research into the benefits of higher education, Passing the Torch follows the educational achievements of three generations over thirty years. The book focuses on a cohort of women who entered CUNY between 1970 and 1972, when the university began accepting all graduates of New York City high schools and increasing its representation of poor and minority students. The authors survey these women in order to identify how the opportunity to pursue higher education affected not only their long-term educational attainments and family well-being, but also how it affected their children’s educational achievements. Comparing the record of the CUNY alumnae to peers nationwide, the authors find that when women from underprivileged backgrounds go to college, their children are more likely to succeed in school and earn college degrees themselves. Mothers with a college degree are more likely to expect their children to go to college, to have extensive discussions with their children, and to be involved in their children’s schools. All of these parenting behaviors appear to foster higher test scores and college enrollment rates among their children. In addition, college-educated women are more likely to raise their children in stable two-parent households and to earn higher incomes; both factors have been demonstrated to increase children’s educational success. The evidence marshaled in this important book reaffirms the American ideal of upward mobility through education. As the first study to indicate that increasing access to college among today’s disadvantaged students can reduce educational gaps in the next generation, Passing the Torch makes a powerful argument in favor of college for all.

This book provides an introduction to the theories, methods, and applications that constitute the social network perspective. Unlike more general texts, this title is designed for those current and aspiring educational researchers learning how to study, conceptualize, and analyze social networks. The author′s main intent is to encourage you to consider the social network perspective in light of your emerging research interests and evaluate how well this perspective illuminates the social complexities surrounding educational phenomena. Whether your interests lie in examining a peer′s influence on students′ achievement, the relationship between social support and teacher retention, or how the pattern of relations among parents contributes to schools′ norms, the tools introduced in this book will provide you with a slightly different take on these and other phenomena. Unlike other approaches, this perspective accounts for the importance of relationships within formal structures, and the informal patterns of interaction that emerge, sustain, or recede. Relying on diverse examples drawn from the educational research literature, this book makes explicit how the theories and methods associated with social network analysis can be used to better describe and explain the social complexities surrounding varied educational phenomena.

This book examines how social issues shape and influence our engagement with sport, leisure time physical activity, and health-promoting exercise. Connecting the personal with the public, it helps the reader understand how individual exercise, leisure, and sport participation are both facilitated and constrained by their social contexts. Presenting a series of in-depth descriptions of grassroots sport, urban lifestyle sport, physical activity across the life course, sport for children with special needs, and the development of creative climates in sport, this book seeks to encourage what C. Wright Mills described as the “sociological imagination”. Every chapter begins with an individual-level account centred on everyday challenges with accessing sport, partaking in leisure activities, and meeting guidelines for daily exercise before exploring the larger, socially determined patterns in which those experiences are located, establishing a vital template for the social scientific study of sport, leisure, and health. Touching on key contemporary themes including diversity, inclusion, health inequalities, and physical inactivity, as well as selection and intensification in sports, this book offers new case material and theoretical tools for understanding the relationships between sport, leisure, health, and the wider society. This is an indispensable companion for any course on the sociology of sport, exercise, leisure, or physical activity and health.