F"Fundamentals of Sociology is an introduction to the definition, methods and fundamental concepts of sociology. The book prepares the ground for the study of the origins and structures of society and social groups in correlation with other social sciences. In doing so the author looks into the most important facet of social structure—social institutions—which in their varied forms act as agents of socialization and social control. Dwelling upon key issues in sociology this book details: •...

It is not only in our dark hours that scepticism, relativism, hypocrisy, and nihilism dog ethics. Whether it is a matter of giving to charity, or sticking to duty, or insisting on our rights, we can be confused, or be paralysed by the fear that our principles are groundless. Many are afraid that in a Godless world science has unmasked us as creatures fated by our genes to be selfish and tribalistic, or competitive and aggressive. Simon Blackburn, author of the best-selling Think, structure...

The “woman question,” this book asserts, is a Western one, and not a proper lens for viewing African society. A work that rethinks gender as a Western construction, The Invention of Women offers a new way of understanding both Yoruban and Western cultures. Author Oyeronke Oyewumi reveals an ideology of biological determinism at the heart of Western social categories-the idea that biology provides the rationale for organizing the social world. And yet, she writes, the concept of “w...

More than two hundred years after his birth, and 150 years after the publication of his most famous essay On Liberty, John Stuart Mill remains one of the towering intellectual figures of the Western tradition. This book combines an up-to-date assessment of the philosophical legacy of Mill’s arguments, his complex version of liberalism and his account of the relationship between character and ethical and political commitment. Bringing together key international and interdisciplinary scholar...

The Social Animal is a classic investigation of human beings as social animals.The Social Animal is a short, wide-ranging, witty and accessible book that sets out the present extent of our knowledge about how human societies and institutions really work, and what motivates the people who live within them.W. G. Runciman’s superb book is a welcome corrective to the view that there are no societies, only collections of individuals and their families: he shows that wherever the...

Kenneth Minogue offers a brilliant and provocative exploration of liberalism in the Western world today: its roots and its influences, its present state, and its prospects in the new century. The Liberal Mind limns the taxonomy of a way of thinking that constitutes the very consciousness of most people in most Western countries.While few—especially in America—embrace the description of liberal, still, Minogue argues, most Americans and most Europeans behav...

Are the "culture wars" over? When did they begin? What is their relationship to gender struggle and the dynamics of class? In her first full treatment of postcolonial studies, a field that she helped define, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, one of the world's foremost literary theorists, poses these questions from within the postcolonial enclave.

Ranajit Guha is arguably the Indian historian whose writings have had a massive and formative impact on contemporary scholarship in several disciplines throughout the world: on postcolonial studies in literature, in anthropology, in history, in cultural studies, in art history.Guha first became known as the practitioner of a critical Marxism that ran parallel to the work of British and French Marxist historians of the 1960s and 1970s but which, instead of recreating a history from below, soug...

This 1972 book is a collection of Durkheim's writings drawing upon the whole body of his work. Dr Giddens takes his selections from a wide variety of sources and includes a number of items from untranslated writings in the Revue Philosophique, Annee Sociologique and from L'evolution pedagogue en France. Selections from previously translated writings have been checked against the originals and amended or re-translated where necessary. Dr Giddens arranges his selections thematically rather t...

In this volume, some of today's most distinguished philosophers survey the whole field of ethics, from its origins, through the great ethical traditions, to theories of how we ought to live, arguments about specific ethical issues, and the nature of ethics itself. The book can be read straight through from beginning to end; yet the inclusion of a multi-layered index, coupled with a descriptive outline of contents and bibliographies of relevant literature, means that the volume also serves ...

The third edition of Jurisprudence offers a logically structured, comprehensive, well-researched and accessible overview of legal theory and philosophy. Written primarily for undergraduate students, it examines and demystifies the discipline's major ideas, and promotes a richer understanding of the social, moral and economic dimensions of the law. By locating the major traditions of jurisprudence within the history of ideas, the author deepens students' understanding of the perennial debat...

A provocative essay that imagines a truly ecological future based on political transformation rather than the superficialities of “sustainability.”In this provocative call for a new ecological politics, William Ophuls starts from a radical premise: “sustainability” is impossible. We are on an industrial Titanic, fueled by rapidly depleting stocks of fossil hydrocarbons. Making the deck chairs from recyclable materials and feeding the boilers with biofuels ...