This volume draws together the work of a diverse range of thinkers and researchers to address the question of happiness critically, using a wide variety of theoretical and empirical methodologies. Broadening the discussion beyond what might be considered highly individual and insular conceptualizations of happiness, often based on purely positivist approaches to the subject, authors raise questions about the nature of individual and collective anxieties that might underpin the current emph...

This cutting-edge edited collection brings together 17 scholarly essays on two of cinema and television’s most enduring and powerful themes: law and crime. With contributions by many of the most prominent scholars in law, sociology, criminology, and film, Framing Law and Crime offers a critical survey of a variety of genres and media, integrating descriptions of technique with critical analysis, and incorporating historical and socio-political critique. The first set of essays brings toget...

Imaginative Methodologies in the Social Sciences develops, expands and challenges conventional social scientific methodology and language by way of literary, poetic and other alternative sources of inspiration, as sociologists, social workers, anthropologists, criminologists and psychologists all rethink, provoke and reignite social scientific methodology. Challenging the mainstream orthodoxy of social scientific methodology, which closely guards the boundaries between the social sciences ...

This book analyses three of the most prevalent illnesses of late modernity: anxiety, depression and Alzheimer’s disease, in terms of their relation to cultural pathologies of the social body. Usually these conditions are interpreted clinically in terms of individualized symptoms and responded to discretely, as though for the most part unrelated to each other. However, these diseases also have a social and cultural profile that transcends their particular symptomologies and etiologies. Anxi...

As modern society’s routine sequestration of death and grief is increasingly replaced by late-modern society’s growing concern with existential issues and emotionality, this book explores grief as a social emotion, bringing together contributions from scholars across the social sciences and humanities to examine its social and cultural aspects. Thematically organised in order to consider the historical changes in our understanding of grief, literary treatments of grief, contemporary forms ...

The Social Pathologies of Contemporary Civilization explores the nature of contemporary malaises, diseases, illnesses and psychosomatic syndromes, examining the manner in which they are related to cultural pathologies of the social body. Multi-disciplinary in approach, the book is concerned with questions of how these conditions are not only manifest at the level of individual patients' bodies, but also how the social 'bodies politic' are related to the hegemony of reductive biomedical and...

Alienation has objective, social-structural determinants, yet is experienced subjectively as a psychological state involving both emotion and cognition. Part I considers conceptualizations of alienation and affect in historical context, emphasizing Rousseau, Hegel, Marx, Simmel, and Weber. Part II develops a theory of the affective bases of Seeman’s original five varieties of alienation – normlessness, meaninglessness, self-estrangement, cultural estrangement, and powerlessness. The book a...

This open access book offers a multidisciplinary dialogue on relational anthropology in contemporary economics. A particular view of the human being is often assumed in economic models, but seldom acknowledged let alone explicated. Addressing this neglected area of research in economic studies, altogether the contributors touch upon the importance and potential of virtues, the notions of freedom and self-love, the potential of simulation models, the dialectics of love, and questions of met...

Loneliness is a difficult subject to address, because it has such negative connotations. But the truth is that wherever there are people, there is loneliness: everyone is lonely at some point in their lives. You can belonely in a crowd or at home, outdoors or in an empty church, and countless songs have been written about the condition. For many people, loneliness can significantly impact their quality of life and their physical and mental health. At the same time, our best moments ...

The book suggests a transition from a relational worldview premised on the socio-political ethos of adaptation towards a transformative worldview premised on the ethos of solidarity and equality. Expansively developing Vygotsky's revolutionary project, the Transformative Activist Stance integrates insights from a vast array of critical and sociocultural theories and pedagogies and moves beyond their impasses to address the crisis of inequality. This captures the dynamics of social transfor...

The past 20 years have seen increasingly bold claims emanating from the field of neuroscience. Advances in medical imaging, brain modelling, and interdisciplinary cognitive science have forced us to reconsider the nature of social, cultural, and political activities. This collection of essays is the first to explore the relationship between neuroscience and political theory, with a view to examining what connections can be made and which claims represent a bridge too far.The book i...

The Neuroscientific Turnbrings together 19 scholars from a variety of fields to reflect on the promises of and challenges facing emergent "neurodisciplines" such as neuroethics, neuroeconomics, and neurohistory. In the aftermath of the Decade of the Brain, neuroscience has become one of the hottest topics of study---not only for scientists but also, increasingly, for scholars from the humanities and social sciences. While the popular press has simultaneously lauded and loathed the...