The study of sociology has long served as a mirror reflecting the complexity of human communities. However, the area needs to be reimagined in the 21st century in order to embrace the diversity of perspectives and approaches that define the contemporary intellectual scene. This book aims to address this difficulty by presenting a selection of chapters that explore a range of subjects, each viewed from a distinct sociological viewpoint. This volume's chapters are not just isolated fragments; rather, they combine to create a seamless mosaic that perfectly conveys sociology's complex nature. Through a complex debate spanning from ancient ideas to contemporary perspectives, macro-level analyses to micro-level discoveries, the contributors inspire readers to think critically and broadly about society.

This book maps the intersections between sociology and feminism in the Indian context. It retrieves the lives and work of women pioneers of and in sociology, asking crucial questions of their feminisms and their sociologies. The chapters address the experiential realities of women in the field, pedagogical issues, methodological frameworks, mentoring processes and artistic engagements with academic work. The volume’s strength lies in bringing together Indian scholars from diverse social backgrounds and regions, reflecting on the specificity of the Indian social sciences. The chapters cover a range of key areas, including sexuality, law, environment, science and medicine. This volume will greatly interest students, teachers, researchers and practitioners of sociology, women’s studies, gender studies and feminism, politics and postcolonial studies.

This book critically examines the concept of “embeddedness”: the core concept of an economic sociology of law (ESL). It suggests that our ways of doing, talking, and thinking about law, economy, and society, reproduce and re-entrench mainstream approaches, shaping our thoughts and actions such that we perform according to the model. Taking a deep dive into one example – the concept of embeddedness – this book combines insights from law, sociology, economics, and psychology to show that while we use metaphor to talk about law and economy, our metaphors in turn use us, moulding us into their fictionalized caricatures of homo juridicus and homo economicus. The result is a groundbreaking study into the prioritization throughout society of interests and voices that align with doctrinal understandings of law and neoclassical understandings of economics: approaches that led us into the dilemmas currently facing society. Zooming out from a detailed exploration of embeddedness in economic sociology and ESL literature, the book unpacks the fashionable post-2008 claim that the economy should be re-embedded in society and proposes two conceptual shifts in response. The book draws on personas and vignettes throughout, both to imagine and to realize shifting an ESL beyond embeddedness. This timely engagement with the emerging field of economic sociology of law will appeal to socio-legal scholars and others with interests in the intersection of law, economics, and sociology. The Open Access versions of Chapter 1 and Chapter 6, available at www.taylorfrancis.com, have been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.

Winner of the American Sociological Association’s Distinguished Book Award in 2012, Chandra Mukerji offers with this remarkable new book an explanation of the birth and subsequent proliferation of the many strands in the braid of modernity. The journey she takes us on is dedicated to teasing those strands apart, using forms of cultural analysis from the social sciences to approach history with fresh eyes. Faced with the problem of trying to understand what is hardest to see: the familiar, she gains analytic distance and clarity by juxtaposing cultural analysis with history, asking how modernity began and how people conjured into existence the world we now recognize as modern. Part I describes the genesis of key modern social forms: the modern self, communities of strangers, the modern state, and the industrial world economy. Part II focuses on modern social types: races, genders, and childhood. Part III focuses on some of the cultural artifacts and activities of the contemporary world that people have invented and used to cope with the burdens of self-making and to react against the broken promises of modern discourse and the silent injuries of material modernism. Beautifully illustrated with over 100 color photographs in its 10 chapters, MODERNITY REIMAGINED is not just an explanation, an analysis of how modern life came to be, it is also a model for how to do cultural thinking about today’s world.

The social scientific study of social movements remains largely shaped by categories, concepts and debates that emerged in North Atlantic societies in the late 1960s and early 1970s, namely resource mobilization, framing, collective identity, and new social movements. It is now, however, increasingly clear that we are experiencing a profound period of social transformation associated with online interactivity, informationalization and globalization. Written by leading experts from around the world, the chapters in this book explore emerging forms of movement and action not only in terms of the industrialized countries of the North Atlantic, but recognizes the importance of globalizing forms of action and culture emerging from other continents and societies. This is the first book to bring together key authors exploring this transformation in terms of action, culture and movements. It not only engages with critical transformations in the nature of collective action, but also makes a significant contribution to the globalizing of sociology.

A dynamic and inspiring exploration of the new science that is redrawing the future for people in their forties, fifties, and sixties for the better—and for good. There’s no such thing as an inevitable midlife crisis, Barbara Bradley Hagerty writes in this provocative, hopeful book. It’s a myth, an illusion. New scientific research explodes the fable that midlife is a time when things start to go downhill for everybody. In fact, midlife can be a great new adventure, when you can embrace fresh possibilities, purposes, and pleasures. In Life Reimagined, Hagerty explains that midlife is about renewal: It’s the time to renegotiate your purpose, refocus your relationships, and transform the way you think about the world and yourself. Drawing from emerging information in neurology, psychology, biology, genetics, and sociology—as well as her own story of midlife transformation—Hagerty redraws the map for people in midlife and plots a new course forward in understanding our health, our relationships, even our futures.

'Madness Reimagined: Envisioning a Better System of Mental Health in America' provides a comprehensive analysis of the current mental health system in the United States. Presented from a sociological rather than a psychological perspective, this book seeks to provide readers with an extensive but accessible look at its history, the current mental health treatment modalities, the various mental health practitioners, the different conditions known as mental health disorders, as well as strategies for improving the system. Trained both in clinical and applied therapy and sociology, the author aims to provide a balance to the work that other books on mental health often lack. As a result, this book proposes a dual approach to the study of mental health. Dr. Steverson acknowledges that while disorders and treatment modalities require a micro-level (intrapsychic) approach, the overall analysis of the mental health system demands a macro-level (sociological) approach. Due to the recent changes in the American healthcare system and the concerns this has raised, this book is a necessary and important contribution to its field. It also reflects a growing desire from the public to better understand this subject as mental health issues continue to gain visibility in the public eye. Free of psychological jargon and in an accessible format, this book will not only appeal to academics and students, but also to mental health consumers, their families, and people who are interested in advocacy.