The question 'what is a human being?' remains one of the most vexing intellectual tasks. Debating Humanity reconstructs how contemporary sociologists and philosophers – among others, Arendt, Taylor, Archer and Boltanski – understand the key anthropological skills that define our shared membership to the human species.
The volume entails a collection of contributions by leading scholars (Raymond Bryant, Michael K. Goodman, Benjamin Huybrechts, Andrew E.G. Jonas, Roger Lee, Peter North, and Katinka Weber) concerned with alternative modes of economic and social exchange. The cases addressed in these contributions – including credit unions, alternative currencies, sustainable consumption, and social enter…
The booming increase of the senior population has become a social phenomenon and a challenge to our societies, and technological advances have undoubtedly contributed to improve the lives of elderly citizens in numerous aspects. In current debates on technology, however, the »human factor« is often largely ignored. The ageing individual is rather seen as a malfunctioning machine whose def…
Filled with new elements that challenge common scholarly theses, this book acquaints the reader with the “Jewish problem” of sociology and provides what this academic discipline urgently needs: a one-volume history of the Sociology of the Holocaust. The story of why and how sociologists as well as the schools of sociological thought came to confront the Holocaust has never been entirely tol…
In this book Jo Littler argues that meritocracy is the key cultural means of legitimation for contemporary neoliberal culture – and that whilst it promises opportunity, it in fact creates new forms of social division. Against Meritocracy is split into two parts. Part I explores the genealogies of meritocracy within social theory, political discourse and working cultures. It traces the dramati…
In this topical book older people's volunteering is studied in eight European countries at the structural, macro, meso and micro levels. Overall it highlights how different interactions between the levels facilitate or hinder older people's inclusion in voluntary work and makes policy suggestions for an integrated strategy.
The failure of a number of programmes and ongoing conflicts between neoliberal and post-neoliberal forces have resulted in growing social instability in Latin America. This book examines cultural responses to this instability. It looks at a wide range of cultural forms, such as literature, underground cinema, street fairs and self-help books to explore how Latin Americans construct subjectiviti…
The essays in this stimulating collection attest to the scope and variety of Russia’s influence on British culture. They move from the early nineteenth century—when Byron sent his hero Don Juan to meet Catherine the Great, and an English critic sought to come to terms with the challenge of Pushkin—to a series of Russian-themed exhibitions at venues including the Crystal Palace and Earls C…
The Best of Technology Writing 2006 brings together some of the most important, timely, and just plain readable writing in the fast-paced, high-stakes field of technology. The first annual collection to target this vibrant and versatile area, The Best of Technology Writing 2006 features innovative work from an unusually diverse array of writers: best-selling authors, noted academics, and ind…
Not all charms fly at the touch of cold philosophy. Vital Reenchantments examines so-called cold philosophy, or science, that does precisely the opposite — rather than mercilessly emptying out and unweaving, it operates as a philosophy that animates. More specifically, Greyson closely examines how a specific group of “poet-in-scientists” of the late 1970s and 1980s directed attention to t…