Classical and Contemporary Social Theory publishes rigorous scholarly work that re-discovers the relevance of social theory for contemporary times, demonstrating the enduring importance of theory for modern social issues. The series covers social theory in a broad sense, inviting contributions on both 'classical' and modern theory, thus encompassing sociology, without being confined to a single discipline. As such, work from across the social sciences is welcome, provided that volumes address the social context of particular issues, subjects, or figures and offer new understandings of social reality and the contribution of a theorist or school to our understanding of it. The series considers significant new appraisals of established thinkers or schools, comparative works or contributions that discuss a particular social issue or phenomenon in relation to the work of specific theorists or theoretical approaches. Contributions are welcome that assess broad strands of thought within certain schools or across the work of a number of thinkers, but always with an eye toward contributing to contemporary understandings of social issues and contexts.
Edited
By Michael Hviid Jacobsen
August 16, 2024
Dark Emotions is a book about a range of emotional experiences that are often regarded or characterized as ’negative’, ’disturbing’ or ’dark’ as contrasted with emotions that are ’positive’, pleasant’ or ’light’. Each chapter in the book is devoted to introducing different ‘dark emotions’ such as ...
Edited
By Grażyna Kubica, Dariusz Brzeziński
June 14, 2024
As one of the most renowned figures in the history of anthropology, Bronisław Malinowski is recognised as having been central to the development of the discipline, with interpretations of his thought usually drawing attention to his work in founding the approach of functionalism and his innovative ...
By Michael Symonds
June 03, 2024
This book extends Max Weber’s theory of the value-spheres of modernity into wholly new areas, showing that the addition of home, nature and sport to Weber’s own list of five spheres (economic, scientific/intellectual, political/legal, erotic and aesthetic) yields original insights into these ...
By Rowena Slope
May 27, 2024
This book explores two public sector scandals in the UK, drawing on Max Weber’s thought on ‘the iron cage’ to understand how these cases of patient-neglect in NHS hospitals and failures by police and social workers to address the organised sexual exploitation of young girls occurred. Through ...
Edited
By Michael Hviid Jacobsen
May 27, 2024
This volume describes and analyses a series of emotions prevalent in everyday life and culture, with each chapter exploring the main facets of a particular emotion and considering the ways in which it manifests itself in and informs our culture and lives. Considering our expression, conception, ...
By André Oliveira Costa
December 05, 2023
This book explores the influence of Freudian psychoanalysis on Norbert Elias’ theory of the civilizing process – an influence acknowledged by Elias himself – conducting a dialogue with a view to analyzing points of contact and distance between them. Examining the development of Elias’ work, it ...
Edited
By Christopher Adair-Toteff
October 02, 2023
This volume seeks to restore Vilfredo Pareto to his rightful place in the history of social and economic thought, bringing together studies by leading scholars to mark the centenary of his death in 1923. Assessing Pareto’s many contributions to the social sciences and his unique integration of the ...
Edited
By Jack Palmer, Dariusz Brzeziński
September 25, 2023
Zygmunt Bauman’s Modernity and the Holocaust is a decisive text of intellectual reflection after Auschwitz, in which Bauman rejected the idea that the Holocaust represented the polar opposite of modernity and saw it instead as its dark potentiality. Bringing together leading scholars from across ...
Edited
By Pedro Caetano, Maria Manuela Mendes
September 25, 2023
Bringing together the work of scholars from across Europe, this book shows how Simmel's categories can be used to explore contemporary issues and further shed light on trends characteristic of global modernity. Thematically organised around the major societal challenges currently faced by developed...
By Peter Conlin
September 25, 2023
This book addresses the absence of a strong alignment with the future in contemporary social life and explores anomalous temporal experience as a way to expand political imaginations. In the aftermath of the modern myth of progress, it argues we have entered into a kind of dystopia—brutal or ...
Edited
By Michael Hviid Jacobsen
August 18, 2023
This volume presents a broad range of studies on a variety of emotions from social scientific perspectives. Bringing together scholars from disciplines including sociology, psychology, anthropology and philosophy, it examines emotions including desire, empathy, freedom, happiness, hate, disgust, ...
By Richard Kilminster
July 31, 2023
In a hyper-individualistic age and in the face of the narrowly focused, policy-oriented research ubiquitous in the social sciences, this book revisits the humanistic world-view that is integral to Norbert Elias’s pre-eminent figurational-process sociology, with the aim of increasing the fund of ...