Sociology Theory

Do you have a Third Place? Your first place is home, your second place is work, and your third place is where you go to socialize. As more of our lives are spent online and in digital spaces, these often overlooked "Third Places" play a crucial role in keeping our communities vibrant.

By 2016, it was impossible to ignore an international resurgence of xenophobia. What had happened? Looking for clues, psychiatrist and historian George Makari started out in search of the idea’s origins. To his astonishment, he discovered an unfolding series of never-told stories. While a fear and hatred of strangers may be ancient, he found that the notion of a dangerous bias called “xenophobia” arose not so long ago.

Identity Economics bridges a critical gap in the social sciences. It brings identity and norms to economics. People’s notions of what is proper, and what is forbidden, and for whom, are fundamental to how hard they work, and how they learn, spend, and save. Thus people’s identity—their conception of who they are, and of who they choose to be—may be the most important factor affecting their economic lives.

Fuelled by a surge of migration to cities, the country's growth appears to be defined by urbanisation and by its growing, prosperous middle class. It is also defined by progressive and liberal young Indians, who vote beyond the constraints of identity, and paradoxically, by an unchecked population explosion and rising crimes against women. Is it, though?

Hebert Spencer coined the famous expression “survival of the fittest”. Spencer’s theory inspired Andrew Carnegie and William Graham Sumner's visions of unbridled and unrepentant capitalism of the United States in late 19th century. Carnegie interpreted Spencer's social theory as justifying merciless economic competition. Spencer's reputation was not recovered for many years from the interpretative caricatures of many scholars, thus marginalizing him to the hinterlands of intellectual history. Fortunately, recent scholarship has begun restoring and repairing his legacy.

Our world order is under pressure as never before. From new authoritarian regimes in the US, Turkey and Russia to the imminent breakup of the European Union and a social media awash with intolerance, things look set to fall apart just as abruptly as the Soviet Union did some 30 years ago. How did we get here, and what do we do now? In this searching new exploration of our crisis, Paul Mason argues that at its heart lies an attack on the idea of humanity itself.

In this magisterial work, leading cultural critic Mary Eberstadt delivers a powerful new theory about the decline of religion in the Western world. The conventional wisdom is that the West first experienced religious decline, followed by the decline of the family. Eberstadt turns this standard account on its head. Marshalling an impressive array of research, Eberstadt shows that the reverse has also been true: the undermining of the family has further undermined Christianity itself.

Parenting for a Digital Future moves beyond the panicky headlines to offer a deeply researched exploration of what it means to parent in a period of significant social and technological change.

Moisés Naím turns to the trends, conditions, and behaviors that are contributing to the concentration of power, and to the clash between those forces that weaken power and those that strengthen it. He concentrates on the three “P”s - populism, polarization, and post-truths. All of which are as old as time, but are combined by today’s autocrats to undermine democratic life in new and frightening ways. Power has not changed. But the way people go about gaining it and using it has been transformed.

A military expert reveals how science fiction is fast becoming reality on the battlefield, changing not just how wars are fought, but also the politics, economics, laws, and ethics that surround war itself. Singer’s previous books foretold the rise of private military contractors and the advent of child soldiers - predictions that have proved all too accurate. Now he explores the greatest revolution in military affairs since the atom bomb: robotic warfare. We are now seeing a massive shift in military technology....

David Harvey's Companion to Marx's Grundrisse builds upon his widely acclaimed companions to the first and second volumes of Capital in a way that will reach as wide an audience as possible. Marx's stated ambition for this text is to reveal "the exact development of the concept of capital as the fundamental concept of modern economics, just as capital itself is the foundation of bourgeois society."

Engine 40, Ladder 35 was one of the firehouses hardest hit in the aftermath of the terrorist attack on the World Trade towers. On the morning of September 11, 2001, two rigs carrying 13 men set out from this firehouse, located on the West Side of Manhattan near Lincoln Center; 12 of the men would never return. The story of what happens when one small institution gets caught in an apocalyptic day, it is a book that will move readers as few others have in our time.

In Faking It, Lux Alptraum tackles the topic of seemingly dishonest women; investigating whether women actually lie, and what social situations might encourage deceptions both great and small. Using her experience as a sex educator and former CEO of Fleshbot (the foremost blog on sexuality), first-hand interviews with sexuality experts and everyday women, Alptraum raises important questions: Are lying women all that common - or is the idea of the dishonest woman a symptom of male paranoia? Are women trying to please men, or just avoid their anger?

Author Monica Sharma describes how we can source our inner capacities and wisdom to manifest change that embodies universal values such as dignity, compassion, fairness, and courage. Drawing on more than 20 years of work for the United Nations and elsewhere, she presents a radical new approach to transformational leadership, one that creates systems of change where everyone can engage - not just analysts and policy-makers.

Piven and Cloward have updated their classic work on the history and function of welfare to cover the American welfare state's massive erosion during the Reagan, Bush, and Clinton years. The authors present a boldly comprehensive, brilliant new theory to explain the comparative underdevelopment of the US welfare state among advanced industrial nations. Their conceptual framework promises to shape the debate within current and future administrations as they attempt to rethink the welfare system and its role in American society.

This is an audio summary of Braving the Wilderness, a timely reflection of the social and political realities of the world today, and a deeper look into the deep lonesomeness that is pulling us apart from each other.

One of the most unique aspects of anarchism as a political philosophy is that it seeks to abolish the state. But what exactly is “the state”? The State is like a vast operating system for ordering and controlling relations among human society, the economy, and the natural world, analogous to a digital operating system. Anyone concerned with entrenched power, income inequality, lack of digital privacy, climate change, the response to COVID-19, or military-style policing will find eye-opening insights into how states operate and build more power for themselves—at our expense.

Loneliness has become the defining condition of the 21st century. It is damaging our health, our wealth, and our happiness and even threatening our democracy. Never has it been more pervasive or more widespread, but never has there been more that we can do about it.

In the first half of the twentieth century the Keynesian brand of economics, which saw government spending as a necessary spur to economic growth, prevailed. Then in the 1970s, conservatives fought back. Once they got people to believe a few simple ideas instead—that only the free market could produce growth, that taxes and regulation stifle growth—the battle was won.

The Theory of the Leisure Class was written by Thorstein Veblen at the turn of the 20th century. It delves deeply into the nature of economics and the social institutions, exploring the forces that create and maintain class division, how these forces evolved through history, and how they influence the economy. In this work, Veblen presents a critique of capitalism on the basis of "conspicuous consumption", a term that he himself coined. He examines economics as a function of evolution, tracking the division of labor and stratification of class during the development of society.