Sociology of Culture
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 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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Peer Relationships at School
New Perspectives on Migration and Diversity
Drawing on research from two UK schools, this book reveals how migration, language, ethnicity, religion and precarity shape youth relationships. Using Buber's model, it analyses 'I-It' and 'I-Thou' interactions, showcasing their power to reshape differences. It offers a pragmatic and hopeful view of the dynamics of diversity in everyday life.
A Post-Neoliberal Era in Latin America?
Revisiting cultural paradigms
This book explores neoliberalism in contemporary Latin America as a set of interrelated cultural forms, offering a transnational and comparative perspective on the ways in which neoliberalism has transformed public discourses of self and social relationships, popular cultures and modes of everyday experience.
Prefiguring Utopia
The Auroville Experiment
This book, offering in-depth analysis from a native scholar, is a critical examination of the world-renowned community Auroville located in Tamil Nadu, South India as a site of spiritually prefigurative utopian practice.
Race, Taste, Class and Cars
Cars transmit and modify our identities behind the wheel. As a symbol of independence and freedom, the car projects status, class, taste and, significantly, embeds racialisation. Using fascinating research from drivers, Alam unpicks the ways in which our identity is enhanced and driven.