Recent Books
2024 |
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Chronicles of a Global City: Speculative Lives and Unsettled Futures in Begaluru Over the past two decades, Bengaluru’s exploding real estate sector and massive infrastructure investments have led to land speculation targeting working-class neighborhoods and agricultural land for development. Chronicles of a Global City turns Bengaluru inside out to examine its “world-city” transformation that stimulated rapid urbanization and unbounded growth.
The Social Lives of Land From the shaping of new homelands in the Cherokee Nation to the export of sand from Cambodia to shore up urban expansion in Singapore, The Social Lives of Land reveals the dynamics of contemporary social and political change. The editors of this volume bring together contributions from across multiple disciplines and geographic locations. 
The Minneapolis Reckoning: Race, Violence, and the Politics of Policing in America The eruption of Black Lives Matter protests against police violence in 2014 spurred a wave of police reform. One of the places to embrace this reform was Minneapolis, Minnesota, a city long known for its liberal politics. Yet in May 2020, four of its officers murdered George Floyd. Fiery protests followed, making the city a national emblem for the failures of police reform. In response, members of the Minneapolis City Council pledged to “end” the Minneapolis Police Department. In The Minneapolis Reckoning, Michelle Phelps describes how Minneapolis arrived at the brink of police abolition. |
2023 |
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Social Inequality in China This book provides a comprehensive analysis of the patterns and trends of socio-economic development and social division in contemporary Chinese society. It discusses the determinants, manifestations and consequences of social inequality in the last 40 years with particular regard to social mobility, educational attainment, social capital, health, labor market position, including employment (opportunity), career advancement and earnings, housing, wealth and assets, urbanization, social integration of migrant peasant workers into urban life, social protest and civic engagement, subjective well-being and subjective social status. |
2022 |
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Contemporary Sociological Theory, Fourth Edition The fourth edition of Contemporary Sociological Theory offers a thorough introduction to current perspectives and approaches in sociology and social science. Covering a broad range of essential topics, this comprehensive volume provides students with the foundation necessary for understanding the theoretical underpinnings of present-day debates in the diverse field. In-depth yet accessible readings address micro-sociological analysis, symbolic interactionism, network theory, phenomenology, critical theory, structuralism, feminist theory, and more. This classic text is fully revised to incorporate the most representative and up-to-date material, including new readings addressing debates on gender, power, and inequality. New editorial introductions clarify and contextualize the selected readings, while up-to-date examples highlight connections to today’s theoretical discussions. |
Prisons and Health in the Age of Mass Incarceration Prisons and Health in the Age of Mass Incarceration examines the connection between prisons and health. Based on a decade of empirical research, this book explores the consequences of incarceration on inmates themselves; on the families they leave behind; on the larger communities to which they return; and, ultimately, on entire health care systems at the state and national level. Jason Schnittker, Michael Massoglia, and Christopher Uggen demonstrate that the relationship between incarceration and health is sustained by a combination of social, cultural, and legal forces, and by a failure to recognize that prisons are now squarely in the business of providing care. With an eye to the history that led us to this point, the book investigates these connections and shows how prisons undermine health and well-being. |
Indefinite: Doing Time in Jail Indefinite is an ethnographic study of a California county jail that reflects on what it means to do jail time and what it does to men. Michael L. Walker spent several extended spells in jail, having been arrested while trying to pay parking tickets in graduate school. This book is an intimate account of his experience and in it he shares the routines, rhythms, and subtle meanings that come with being incarcerated. Walker shows how punishment in jail is much more than the deprivation of liberties. It is, he argues, purposefully degrading. Jail creates a racial politics that organizes daily life, moves men from clock time to event time, normalizes trauma, and imbues residents with substantial measures of vulnerability. Deputies used self-centered management styles to address the problems associated with running a jail, some that magnified individual conflicts to potential group conflicts and others that created divisions between residents for the sake of control. And though not every deputy indulged, many gave themselves over to the pleasures of punishment. |
2021 |
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Knowing About Genocide: Armenian Suffering and Epistemic Struggles How do victim and perpetrator peoples generate conflicting knowledge about genocide? Using a sociology of knowledge approach, Joachim J. Savelsberg answers this question in the context of the Armenian genocide committed during the First World War. Focusing on Armenians and Turks, Savelsberg examines strategies of silencing, denial, and acknowledgment in everyday interactions, public rituals, law, and politics. He draws on interviews, ethnographic accounts, documents, and eyewitness testimony to illuminate the social processes that drive dueling versions of history. Ultimately, this study reveals the counterproductive consequences of denial in an age of human rights hegemony, demonstrating the implications for populist disinformation campaigns against overwhelming evidence. |
Multimodal Political Networks Research on social networks has become a significant area of investigation in the social sciences, and social network concepts and tools are widely employed across many subfields within the field. This volume introduces political theorists and researchers to new theoretical, methodological, and substantive tools for extending political network research into new realms and revitalizing established domains. The authors synthesize new understandings of multimodal political networks, consisting of two or more types of social entities - voters, politicians, parties, events, organizations, nations - and the complex relations between them. They discuss ways to theorize about multimodal connections, methods for measuring and analyzing multimodal datasets, and how the results can reveal new insights into political structures and action. Several empirical applications demonstrate in great detail how multimodal analysts can detect and visualize political communities consisting of diverse social entities. |
2020 |
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Religion is Raced Religion Is Raced makes the case that religion in America has generally been understood in ways that center white Christian experiences of religion, and argues that all religion must be acknowledged as a raced phenomenon. When we overlook the role race plays in religious belief and action, and how religion in turn spurs public and political action, we lose sight of a key way in which race influences religiously-based claims-making in the public sphere. With contributions exploring a variety of religious traditions, from Buddhism and Islam to Judaism and Protestantism, as well as pieces on atheists and humanists, Religion Is Raced brings discussions about the racialized nature of religion from the margins of scholarly and religious debate to the center. The volume offers a new model for thinking about religion that emphasizes how racial dynamics interact with religious identity, and how we can in turn better understand the roles religion—and whiteness—play in politics and public life, especially in the United States. |
Overload: How Good Jobs Went Bad and What We Can Do About It Today's ways of working are not working--even for professionals in "good" jobs. Responding to global competition and pressure from financial markets, companies are asking employees to do more with less, even as new technologies normalize 24/7 job expectations. In Overload, Erin Kelly and Phyllis Moen document how this new intensification of work creates chronic stress, leading to burnout, attrition, and underperformance. "Flexible" work policies and corporate lip service about "work-life balance" don't come close to fixing the problem. But this unhealthy and unsustainable situation can be changed--and Overload shows how. Drawing on five years of research, including hundreds of interviews with employees and managers, Kelly and Moen tell the story of a major experiment that they helped design and implement at a Fortune 500 firm. The company adopted creative and practical work redesigns that gave workers more control over how and where they worked and encouraged managers to evaluate performance in new ways. The result? Employees' health, well-being, and ability to manage their personal and work lives improved, while the company benefited from higher job satisfaction and lower turnover. And, as Kelly and Moen show, such changes can--and should--be made on a wide scale. |
The Art and Science of Social Research, Second Edition Written by a team of renowned sociologists with experience in both the field and the classroom, The Art and Science of Social Research offers authoritative, accessible, and balanced coverage of the methods used to study the social world. The authors highlight the challenges of investigating the unpredictable topic of human lives while providing insights into what really happens in the field, the laboratory, and the survey call center. A streamlined Second Edition is now accompanied by three new InQuizitive activities and writing tutorials that help students master the building blocks of research and hone key writing skills. |
2019 |
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Social Network Analysis, Third Edition David Knoke and Song Yang
In the thoroughly updated edition of Social Network Analysis, authors David Knoke and Song Yang take into account the vast number of changes in the field that have occurred in the 25 years since the first edition was published. They cover various issues in basic network concepts, data collection, and network analytical methodology. They succinctly illustrate the concepts and methods related to substantive social network research problems, citing examples ranging from children′s playgroups to organizations, communities, and international systems. Readers can also analyze the real and artificial datasets incorporated throughout the book.
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Guanxi: How China Works How do social relations, or guanxi, matter in China today and how can this distinctive form of personal connection be better understood? In Guanxi: How China Works, Yanjie Bian analyzes the forms, dynamics, and impacts of guanxi relations in reform-era China, and shows them to be a crucial part of the puzzle of how Chinese society operates. Rich in insightful analyses, this concise book offers a critical synthesis of guanxi research, including its empirical controversies and theoretical debates. Bian skillfully illustrates the growing importance of guanxi in diverse areas such as personal network building, employment and labor markets, informal business relationships, and the broader political sphere, highlighting guanxi’s central value in China's contemporary social structure. |
Social Capital, Social Support, and Stratification This insightful book explores the spread of 'social' network imagery in three areas of sociology – social capital, social support, and China – using as its protagonist a man active in all three: Nan Lin. |