Sociology of Culture
Narrative Research Now
Critical Perspectives on the Promise of Stories
Supported by the editors’ popular podcast Narrative Now, this interdisciplinary volume explores the capacities and limitations of narrative research. It maps out new directions for the field while honouring its legacy.
Muslims and Humour
Essays on Comedy, Joking, and Mirth in Contemporary Islamic Contexts
In this thought-provoking collection, Muslim and non-Muslim academics take a multi-disciplinary approach to humour in Islam. They draw on examples of comedy practices and styles to scope sociological, cultural, theological and political themes, consider humour’s role in fundamentalism, and correct misconceptions about laughter in the religion.
The Ironic State
British Comedy and the Everyday Politics of Globalization
In this book, James Brassett builds on his prize-winning research to demonstrate how British comedy can provide intimate and vital understandings of the everyday politics of globalization in Britain.
Intimations of Nostalgia
Multidisciplinary Explorations of an Enduring Emotion
This volume investigates the relationship between nostalgia and contemporary social issues. From history and political theory to marketing and media, each chapter discusses the way nostalgia has been presented within a specific disciplinary context and shows how nostalgia as a topic of research has evolved over time.
Interpretive Sociology and the Semiotic Imagination
Written by experts in interpretive sociology, this volume examines semiotic models in a sociological context. Contributors offer case studies to demonstrate ‘how to do things’ with semiotics. Synthesizing a diverse and fragmented landscape, this is a key reference work for understanding the connection between semiotics and sociology.
Interpreting the Body
Between Meaning and Matter
Written by leading social scientists, this ambitious volume asks what individuals’ “handling” of bodies reveal about inequality, social order and cultural change in societies.
Interpreting Subcultures
Approaching, Contextualizing, and Embodying Sense-Making Practices in Alternative Cultures
This book makes an unprecedented contribution to the field by explaining the interpretive processes through which subcultural phenomena are studied. Examining dimensions of interpretivism, it reveals how and why people decide to use specific conceptual frames or methodologies and how they shape their interpretations of everyday realities.
Interpreting Religion
Making Sense of Religious Lives
This collection brings together a diverse range of interpretivist perspectives to find fresh takes on the meanings of religion. Cutting across paradigms and traditions, experts from the UK, US, and India apply different approaches to engagement with beliefs and themes, including identity, ritual, and emotion.
Interpreting Contentious Memory
Countermemories and Social Conflicts over the Past
This book illustrates how scholars use different interpretive lenses to study profound conflicts rooted in the past. Addressing issues of racism, genocide, war, nationalism, colonialism and more, it highlights how our interpretations of contentious memories are indispensable to our understandings of contemporary conflicts and identities.
Feeding the Middle Classes
Taste, Class and Domestic Food Practices
Considering food consumption in a wider social context, this book offers an alternative understanding of class relations, which extends academic, political and public debates about privilege.
Everyday Europe
Social Transnationalism in an Unsettled Continent
This book offers an empirically-based view on Europeans’ interconnections in everyday life. It looks at the ways in which EU residents have been getting closer across national frontiers. The book considers how people reconcile their increasing cross-border interconnections and a politically separating Europe of nation states and national interests.
Everyday Eating
Food, Taste and Trends in Britain since the 1950s
This fascinating book examines continuity and change in food consumption and eating patterns since the 1950s. The culinary landscape of Britain is explored through discussion of commodification, globalisation and diversification enabling an understanding of both developing trends and enduring habits.