Sociology

The health and fitness industry has experienced a meteoric rise over the past two decades, yet its slick exterior conceals a darker side. Using ethnographic data from gyms, interviews and social media platforms, this book investigates the growing use of image and performance-enhancing drugs (IPEDs) and their role in masculine body image.

Setting out big public policy ideas, enhanced by contributions from academic and campaigning experts, as well as those with lived experience, Raising the Nation shows why we must prioritise child-centred policies to ensure the future strength of our communities, environment and economy.

This book presents a critical history of criminological thought from the Enlightenment to the present day. Mehozay contends that Western criminological approaches are based upon ‘otherness’ which validate projects of control and exclusion, modernization and care, and even eugenics.

In this powerful book, Kinouani uniquely examines the psychological and psychic factors involved in the reproduction of ‘whiteness’ and reveals how these intersect with race dynamics, race inequality and racial violence.

Drawing from a range of disciplines and case studies, this volume examines the latest health and genetic technologies, explores the representation, communication, and internalization of health knowledge and reveals the economic and cultural inequalities that result from these technologies.

Giving voice to the experiences of Syrian refuges who sought asylum in Germany, this ethnography puts a spotlight on how the binary notions of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ refugees produced by the regime strained the relationship between refugees and the state, revealing the inconsistencies and failings of a universal approach to integration.

This pioneering work explores how in our digital age of connectivity, temporal acceleration and real-time simultaneity impact personal and institutional experience. Bringing memory and future studies into a unique dialogue, the book offers an intervention to the current ‘temporal crisis’ of social life and sociological debates.

Exploring the impact of climate change and the pandemic on people’s decisions to form families and their experience of having children, this book makes a valuable contribution to debates on contemporary planetary crises.

Drawing on ethnographic research in urban growing projects in Glasgow, this book explores community dynamics and asks who benefits from such projects. A timely consideration of localism and community empowerment, the book sheds light on key issues of light on key issues of urban land use, the right to the city and the value of social connection.

An invaluable resource to help understand the role of scientific knowledge in governance, societal developments and democracy, this accessible book introduces students to perspectives from the field of science and technology studies.

This book examines the evolution of digital platform economies through the lens of online gaming with a unique economic sociology perspective.

Paying particular attention to Valve’s ‘Steam’ platform, the book examines the architecture of this online videogame marketplace and the way it enables new markets and economic transactions.

Drawing from longitudinal research, this book shows how the perspectives of people who have been in care can help us redefine the concept of family. Through a narrative analysis of the complexity of family lives, the author challenges the idea that some families are ‘ordinary’, while others are troubled, problematic and ‘other’.