Böcker i Routledge Advances in Sociology-serien

Irish Insanity 1800-2000 charts and explains the rise and demise of asylums and mental hospitals in Ireland between 1800 and 2000. It definitively demonstrates that Ireland had the highest level of asylum usage internationally, arguing that a combination of social forces, rather than an 'epidemic of Irish insanity', underpinned this pattern of institutionalisation.

This volume critically examines the various dimensions of the flexicurity concept and its uses in both in academics and politics, outlining various alternative and innovative approaches towards conceptualizing and analyzing employment and social policy in contemporary European societies.

Since the 1970s, various sociological approaches have tried to understand and conceptualize "the global," yet few of them have systematically addressed the full spectrum of social relationships. Prominent exponents of the global approach - such as world systems analysis - instead have focused on particular domains such as politics or the economy. Under the label of "world society," however, some authors have suggested alternatives to the predominant equivocation of society and the nation-state. The contributions to this volume share that objective and take their point of departure from the two most ambitious projects of a theory of world society: world polity research and systems theory, mapping out the common ground and assessing their potential to inform empirical analyses of globalization.

This book examines how qualities of place and their sensuous reorganisation elucidate particular sociocultural expressions and practices in urban life.

This book examines the everyday living conditions experienced and also shaped by young people in Europe. Contributors reflect on the current context of economic, social and political change affecting youth in the critical transition from dependence to independence.

Globalization has exacerbated and alleviated inequality over the past twenty-five years. This volume offers analytical and comparative insights from current case studies of social inequality in eleven countries within all the major regions of the world.

Practicing Art/Science contrasts topical positions and insightful case studies, ranging from the detailed investigation of "art at the nanoscale" to the material analysis of Leonardo's Mona Lisa and its cracked smile.

This volume gathers scholars from a range of disciplines - including sociology, philosophy, theology, law, genetics, gender studies, and history - to explore the conceptual fields related to concepts of "identity," as well as empirical aspects of "identities." It demonstrates how "identities," imagined or real, are chall

Transnational Social Policy highlights the changing face of social policy and social work against the background of accelerating transnationalisation of economies, labour markets, education, social services and care. The contributions of this book provide unique case examples on the interplay of social policies, mobile populations and traveling

China is urbanizing at an exceedingly fast pace. China's urbanization process certainly provides opportunities for many individuals, but also presents challenges. This book provides a fascinating account of key challenges that dominate urban China today, including environmental justice, the plight of migrant workers, and housing and health care

Against the assumption that the world is a single universal reality that can only be known by science, this book argues that worlds are worlded - they are socially and materially crafted in multiple forms in everyday practices involving humans, landscapes, animals, plants, fungi, rocks, and others.

Since the end of the Second World War, society has been characterised by rapid and extensive political, economic, scientific, and technological change. Britain, uniquely, has five large-scale life course studies that began at intervals throughout that period, which have shown how lives are shaped by individual characteristics, their past and current experiences and opportunities, and so reflect their times. This book describes those fundamental changes, and examines the innovations in government policy that were made in accordance with them.

Civil society activism around issues of global justice has proliferated in Europe during the past two decades. Has such contestation and advocacy made a difference? This book examines whether and how the organizations, networks and campaigns involved have attained their policy objectives in the areas of debt relief, international trade, international taxation and corporate accountability. The analysis also considers the relationship between national and transnational activism. By comparing variations in the "activism-policy nexus" in France, Italy and the United Kingdom, it seeks to understand how such interaction and policy outcomes vary in different institutional and political contexts.

Bourdieu's theory of social fields is one of his key contributions to social sciences and humanities. However, it has never been subjected to genuine critical examination. This book fills that gap and offers a clear and wide-ranging introduction to the theory. It includes a critical discussion of its methodology and relevance in different subject areas in the social sciences and humanities.

How can we raise the standard of living of the worldΓÇÖs poor and maintain high levels of social health and well-being in the developed world, while simultaneously reducing the environmental damage wrought by human activity? The social dimension of sustainability is becoming recognized as a necessary if not sufficient condition for attaining economic and environmental sustainability. The requisite dialogue requires inclusion at multi-levels. This collection of works is an ambitious and multi-disciplinary effort to indemnify and articulate the design, implementation and implications of inclusion. Included are theoretical and empirical pieces that examine the related issues at the local, national and international levels. Contributors are grounded in Sociology, Economics, Business Administration, Public Administration, Public Health, Psychology, Anthropology, Social Work, Education, and Natural Resource Management.

This volume brings together ethnographers conducting research on children living in crisis situations in both developing and developed regions, taking a cross-cultural approach that spans different cities in the global North and South to provide insight and analyses into the lifeworlds of their young, at-risk inhabitants. Looking at the lived experiences of poverty, drastic inequality, displacement, ecological degradation and war in countries including Haiti, Argentina and Palestine, the book shows how children both respond to and are shaped by their circumstances. Going beyond conventional images of children subjected to starvation, hunger, and disease to build an integrated analysis of what it means to be a child in crisis in the 21st century, the book makes a significant contribution to the nascent field of study concerned with development and childhood. With children now at the forefront of debates on human rights and poverty reduction, there is no better time for scholars, policymakers and the general public to understand the complex social, economic and political dynamics that characterize their present predicaments and future life chances.

This edited book uses migrant marginality to problematize several different aspects of global migration. It examines how many different societies have defined their national identities, cultural values and terms of political membership through (and in opposition to) constructions of migrants and migration. The book includes case studies from Western and Eastern Europe, North America and the Caribbean. It is organized into thematic sections that illustrate how different aspects of migrant marginality have unfolded across several national contexts.  The first section of the book examines the limitations of multicultural policies that have been used to incorporate migrants into the host society. The second section examines anti-immigrant discourses and get-tough enforcement practices that are geared toward excluding and removing criminalized "aliens". The third section examines some of the gendered dimensions of migrant marginality. The fourth section examines the way that racially marginalized populations have engaged the politics of immigration, constructing themselves as either migrants or natives. The book offers researchers, policy makers and students an appreciation for the various policy concerns, ethical dilemmas and political and cultural antagonisms that must be engaged in order to properly understand the problem of migrant marginality.

This book provides a comparative analysis of inequality in the digital sphere. Grounded in sociological theories of inequality, it defines 'the digital divide' as unequal access to Internet communication technologies and explores how it has the potential to replicate existing social inequalities, as well as create new forms of stratification.

The migration of professionals is widely seen as a paradigmatic representation and a driver of globalization. The global elite of highly qualified migrants-managers and scientists, for example-are partly defined by their lives'' mobility. But their everyday lives are based and take place in specific cities. The contributors of this book analyze the relevance of locality for a mobile group and provide a new perspective on migrant professionals by considering the relevance of social identities for local encounters in socially unequal cities. Contributors explore shifting identities, senses of belonging, and spatial and social inequalities and encounters between migrant professionals and ''Others'' within the cities. These qualitative studies widen the understanding of the importance of local aspects for the social identities of those who are in many aspects more privileged than others.

This book suggests that sociology's real value can only be disclosed by replacing its image as a discipline aimed towards disinterested social enlightenment with an image of itself as a practice both dependent upon, and at its best self-consciously aimed towards, human ends and imperatives.

Is social integration in Europe strong enough to overcome the recent European crisis? Based on a sophisticated sociological theory of European integration and on survey data from different European countries, this book argues that solidarity between the people of Europe is much stronger than some scholars and politicians might expect. This lends proof to the existence of the cultural foundations of a democratic Europe.