Sociology: Starting out

"The culmination of more than two decades of work on the spatiality of economic forms, worlds, and lives, Variegated economies tackles the question of how to approach, conceptualize, and analyze economies as geographically differentiated and unevenly developed phenomena. Staged from the loosely bounded field known as economic geography, the book seeks to build bridges to complementary work in critical political economy and heterodox economic studies by way of a substantive theoretical and methodological program. The book advances a series of arguments concerning the inherent-and highly consequential-spatiality of economic forms, worlds, and lives, engaging a range of issues from the diversity of capitalism(s) to the dynamics of late-stage neoliberalization, and from the problematic uneven geographical development to the challenges-cum-opportunities of conjunctural modes of analysis

"Translated into English for the first time after its publication in 1967, Ghassan Kanafani's On Zionist Literature makes an incisive analysis of the body of literary fiction written in support of the Zionist colonization of Palestine. Interweaving his literary criticism of works by George Eliot, Arthur Koestler, and many others with a historical materialist narrative, Kanafani identifies the political intent and ideology of Zionist literature, demonstrating how the myths used to justify the Zionist-imperialist domination of Palestine first emerged and were repeatedly propagated in popular literary works in order to generate support for Zionism and shape the Western public's understanding of it. The new preface by Anni Kanafani and an introduction by Steven Salaita place On Zionist Literature in its broader historical context and make a compelling case for its ongoing signficance more than five decades since its original publication, illustrating the extent to which 'Kanafani was a searing and incisive critic, at once generous in his understanding of emotion and form and unsparing in his assessment of politics and myth.'"

"With this book Henry A. Giroux argues that insurrection has become a dominant motif for the USA and other countries torn between the promises and ideals of democracy and an emergent authoritarianism. He argues that education is central to the idea of insurrection, showing how on the one hand it contributes to an insurrectional authoritarianism, wedded to a fascist legacy that calls for racial purity, militarism, ultra-nationalism, and state terrorism. On the other hand he presents the idea of insurrectional democracy which has a long legacy in the battle for racial justice, economic equality, and a politics of inclusion. The book explores how both positions are motivated by specific visions, values, and particular understandings of education and agency. He also shows how powerful images, social media, and the internet are in merging political education, power, and cultural politics. Giroux makes an impassioned call for an insurrectional democracy that makes education central to politics and produces an anti-capitalist consciousness as the basis for developing a mass movement in defence of a radical democracy"

Based on critical theory and ethnographic research, this book explores how intensifying geographies of extractive capitalism shape human lives and transformative politics in marginal areas of the global economy. Engaging the work of Judith Butler, Henri Lefebvre, and Jacques Rancière with ethnographic research on social and political effects of mining-induced dispossession in Mozambique, in the book, Lesutis theorises how precarity unfolds as a spatially constituted condition of everyday life given over to the violence of capital. Going beyond labour relations, or governance of life in liberal democracies, that are typically explored in the literature on precarity, the book shows how dispossessed people are subjected to structural, symbolic, and direct modalities of violence; this simultaneously constitutes their suffering and ceaseless desire, however implausible, to be included into abstract space of extractivism. As a result, despite the multifarious violence that it engenders, extractive capital accumulation is sustained even in the margins, historically excluded from contingently lived imaginaries of a "good life" promised by capitalism....

Black Feminist Sociology offers new writings by established and emerging scholars working in a Black feminist tradition. The book centers Black feminist sociology (BFS) within the sociology canon and widens is to feature Black feminist sociologists both outside the US and the academy. Inspired by a BFS lens, the essays are critical, personal, political and oriented toward social justice. Key themes include the origins of BFS, expositions of BFS orientations to research that extend disciplinary norms, and contradictions of the pleasures and costs of such an approach both academically and personally. Authors explore their own sociological legacy of intellectual development to raise critical questions of intellectual thought and self-reflexivity. The book highlights the dynamism of BFS so future generations of scholars can expand upon and beyond the book's key themes.

"In the third volume of Milton Shain’s history of antisemitism in South Africa, he traces and unpacks hostile attitudes towards Jews and irrational fantasies that accompany them in apartheid and post-apartheid South Africa."

"This third edition of An Introduction to Sociology: Feminist Perspectives reaffirms the contribution of feminist perspectives and research to sociology and introduces students and readers to the wide range of feminist contributions to key areas of sociological concern. This completely revised edition includes updated and expanded theoretical and empirical materials as well as two new chapters on sexuality and media culture."

This revised and updated second edition of The Globalization and Development Reader builds on the considerable success of a first edition that has been used around the world. It combines selected readings and editorial material to provide a coherent text with global coverage, reflecting new theoretical and empirical developments.

Part of the Critical Perspectives on Work and Employment series, this edited collection brings together contributions from leading international scholars to initiate an important dialogue between labour process analysis and scholarship on work in the Global South. This book characterises the forms of work and labour process that characterise globalising capitalism today and addresses core analytical concerns within Labour Process Theory and research on work in the South

"Family relations are undergoing dramatic changes globally and locally. At the same time, certain features of family life endure. This popular book, now in a fully updated second edition, presents a comprehensive assessment of recent research on 'family', parenting, childhood and interpersonal ties.A Sociology of Family Life queries assumptions about a disintegration of 'the family' by revealing a remarkable persistence of commitment and reciprocity across cultures, within new as well as traditional family forms.....