Marginal People in Deviant Places revisits early- to mid-twentieth-century ethnographic studies, arguing that their focus on marginal subcultures—ranging from American hobos, to men who have sex with other men in St. Louis bathrooms, to hippies, to taxi dancers in Chicago, to elderly Jews in Venice, California—helped produce new ways of thinking about social difference more broadly in the United States. Irvine demonstrates how the social scientists who told the stories of these marginalized groups represented an early challenge to then-dominant narratives of scientific racism, prefiguring the academic fields of gender, ethnic, sexuality, and queer studies in key ways. In recounting the social histories of certain American outsiders, Irvine identifies an American paradox by which social differences are both despised and desired, and she describes the rise of an outsider capitalism that integrates difference into American society by marketing it.

This book brings together leading international researchers to discuss governmental approaches to analysing social policies. Analysing Social Policy expands the scope of social policy analysis using the insights from post-Foucauldian scholarship on the art of governing in liberal democracies. One of the main conclusions reached is that policy researchers need to pay much greater attention to the minutiae of policy reform, and to the discursive and material ways in which power operates in policy change. The chapters comprising this book are purposefully written in a clear, accessible and reflective manner, with each of the contributions empirically grounded, drawing on social policy problems and practices in many countries, ranging from North America to Europe to Australasia. The editors address key concerns of both policy analysts as well as academic researchers attempting to locate appropriate theoretical frameworks to make sense of welfare state restructuring in the 21st century. This book will appeal to researchers and research students in political science, social policy, social work and sociology through its demonstration of how to apply contemporary social theory to research problems. It will also be of interest to policy scholars around the world who are involved in analysing the intersections of power, politics and policy.

This book addresses wide-ranging dilemmas that social researchers may face as a result of silences, neglected feelings, and blind-spots in their research. In every research endeavour, thoughts, intuitions, biases, feelings or sensations may be left aside as the researcher attempts to come to terms with the complexities of material and figure out what the ‘main issue’ is. Researchers may pay attention to their own emotional responses during the interview, but often only in their field notes. Rarely do feelings of shock, irritation, boredom or, for that matter, amusement, excitement and delight find their way into the analysis itself. In addition, researchers are all susceptible to blind-spots, often unaware of what is being avoided in research or omitted from it. However, reflection about precisely these gaps or silences may prove essential for developing new and interesting questions as well as comprehensive, responsive, and responsible research practices. In this volume, an international, cross-disciplinary cohort of researchers think critically about the silences, neglected feelings, and blind-spots in their own work, and offer insights for enhancing research practices. As such, it will appeal to scholars across the social sciences with interests in research methods and methodology.

Social Change: Movements, Politics, and Technology is a groundbreaking exploration of social transformation from a conflict theory perspective, offering a deep dive into the historical and sociological analysis of leaders within contemporary social movements. This text-reader is an essential guide for those seeking to understand the dynamics of social change and the role of social actors in shaping the future.

Informal yet academically rigorous in style, this fun and attractively laid out textbook continues to provide a comprehensive introduction to Consumer Behaviour, drawing on an accessible writing style, engaging examples and a wealth of learning features throughout. The text is balanced in its coverage of both psychological and sociological aspects of consumer behaviour, and examples of consumer behaviour are selected from around the globe, including many of the world’s most popular brands and also B2B companies. This new edition has been fully updated to cover the impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic on consumer behaviour as well as the ongoing effects of technology, social media, digitalisation and climate change in adapting consumer behaviours. This textbook is essential reading for all students studying Consumer Behaviour. Zubin Sethna is a Professor of Entrepreneurial Marketing and Consumer Behaviour at Regent’s University London.

Begging is widely condemned, but little understood. It is increasingly visible, yet politically controversial. Recent changes in British social security, housing and mental health provision can be seen to have exacerbated the extent of begging in the UK, and its persistence is an indictment of the failures of social policy throughout the Western world. Though begging is intimately linked to issues of street homelessness, mental health, substance abuse and social exclusion, this book specifically focuses on begging as a distinctive form of marginalised economic activity. It looks at: the significance of face-to-face contact between beggars and passers-by; the preoccupation with the classification of beggars; the stigma associated with begging and judgements required by the passer-by; the place of begging in the spectrum of informal economic activity. The book provides a comprehensive overview and will stimulate theoretical, policy and methodological debates, driving forward the research agenda. It is important reading for researchers, academics and students in social policy, social work, sociology, politics and socio-legal studies, and also for social work practitioners and, particularly, policy makers.

Globalization poses new challenges for the modern welfare state and democracies. One controversial issue is how struggles for economic equality are linked with struggles for recognition of difference according to gender, ethnicity and sexuality. The Politics of Inclusion and Empowerment examines the political and academic debates about the inclusion or exclusion of women and marginalized social groups from different policy contexts. The focus is on the different class and gender regimes influencing the interplay of political, civil and social citizenship at different levels of politics.