Once treated as the absence of knowledge, ignorance today has become a highly influential topic in its own right, commanding growing attention across the natural and social sciences where a wide range of scholars have begun to explore the social life and political issues involved in the distribution and strategic use of not knowing. The field is growing fast and this handbook reflects this inte…
Drawing on a range of approaches from the social sciences and humanities, this handbook explores theoretical and empirical perspectives that address the articulation of law in society, and the social character of the rule of law.The vast field of socio-legal studies provides multiple lenses through which law can be considered. Rather than seeking to define the field of socio-legal studies, this…
This innovative book addresses the question of why increasing numbers of people are being diagnosed with autism since the 1990s. Providing an engaging account of competing and widely debated explanations, it investigates how these have led to differing interpretations of the same data. Crucially, the author argues that the increased use of autism diagnosis is due to medicalisation across the li…
This book explores the changing dynamics and challenges behind the rapid expanse of Africa’s urban population. Africa’s urban age is underway. With the world’s fastest growing urban population, the continent is rapidly transforming from one that is largely rural, to one that is largely urban. Often facing limited budgets, those tasked with managing African cities require empirical evid…
This book focuses on the political participation and grassroots mobilization of immigrants and racialized communities in the European context. Based on extensive data collected in Italy, it explores the role that alliances among pro-immigrant groups play in shaping political participation, asking why and how immigrant activists mobilize in hostile environments, why and how they create alliances…
Unlike almost most other studies of neoliberal universities and academic capitalism this book ethnographically explores and interprets those transformations and their contradictions empirically in the everyday practices of students, faculty members, and administrators at two public universities: NTNU in Norway and UCLA in California.Differently situated in global political economies, both are a…
Professional Emotions in Court examines the paramount role of emotions in the legal professions and in the functioning of the democratic judicial system. Based on extensive interview and observation data in Sweden, the authors highlight the silenced background emotions and the tacitly habituated emotion management in the daily work at courts and prosecution offices. Following participants ‘ba…
This book unveils the significant impact of the European integration process on the political thinking of European citizens. With close attention to the interrelation between social and political divisions, it shows that an integrated Europe promotes consensus but also propagates growing dissent among its citizens, with both objective inequalities and the subjective perception of these inequali…
The book examines some of the dilemmas surrounding Europe’s open borders, migrations, and identities through the prism of the Roma – Europe’s most dispersed and socially marginalised population. The volume challenges some of the myths surrounding the Roma as a ‘problem population’, and places the focus instead on the context of European policy and identity debates. It comes to the con…
Over the last 70 years, Japanese Studies scholarship has gone through several dominant paradigms, from ‘demystifying the Japanese’, to analysis of Japanese economic strength, to discussion of global interest in Japanese popular culture. This book assesses this literature, considering future directions for research into the 2020s and beyond.Shifting the geographical emphasis of Japanese Stud…