Product Description: This book addresses the relationship between the body and society in a fast-food society. Agger focuses on issues of food, exercise, work, dieting and eating disorders, fashion, bariatric and cosmetic surgery, and health. He addresses the dilemma that we have ample access to abundant calories but lead lifestyles and have jobs that for the most part do not enable us to expend those calories...read more

Schools, theatres and malls used to be safe havens. Marathons were triumphal, not tragic. Today, public life is risky. Citizens are on edge, either calling for gun control or purchasing personal weapons of self-defense. In this timely book, prominent US and international authors examine gun violence in public life. They offer the latest data and analysis on topics such as comparative gun homicide rates, the efficacy of gun control, risks associated with gun ownership, concealed-carry data and policy, media and gaming violence, gender and guns, and school shootings. New insights are developed from a comparative case study of Canada, a country in which gun ownership is common but with a much lower rate of gun violence. Neither demonising nor mythologising guns, the contributors provide evidence-based analyses that shed light on policy directions and personal conduct.

Product Description: This book examines the contemporary era where parents complain that children today don't do their homework because they are distracted by the Internet, texting, and video games. Texting Toward Utopia presents the writings of todays children and develops the argument that this is actually a time of mass literary, in which young people write furiously, albeit often below the adult radar...read more

Product Description: This thoroughly updated edition of Critical Social Theories presents a comprehensive analysis of leading social and cultural theories today. Ben Agger covers a diverse range of perspectives, from feminism and cultural studies to postmodernism and critical theory...read more

Product Description: In 1968, a young SUNY-Buffalo philosophy graduate student named Paul Piccone started a journal called Telos. No one then could have reasonably expected for it to become an intellectual institution. Originally conceived as the self-consciousness of the American New Left, the journal soon ranged more widely as its authors introduced European social theory and philosophy to a largely American audience unaware of these traditions...read more

Product Description: This book addresses the relationship between the body and society in a fast-food society. Agger focuses on issues of food, exercise, work, dieting and eating disorders, fashion, bariatric and cosmetic surgery, and health. He addresses the dilemma that we have ample access to abundant calories but lead lifestyles and have jobs that for the most part do not enable us to expend those calories...read more

Based on recent interviews, this unique sixties book brings together the voices of the Left leaders who spawned the sixties movements. Many remain activists today, and experience and the passage of time allow them to transcend nostalgia to form more realistic perspectives on past, present, and future. They discuss the civil rights and antiwar movements, the political outcome of the sixties, patriotism, terror, and the role of young people in the future. Important gains were made during the sixties, but there were many setbacks, too, that influence today's voters, leaders, candidates, and our day-to-day realities. The sixties of this book are not simply a sweet memory of marijuana and album rock; there were many casualties, including innocence and youthful idealism. Agger concludes with reflections on the possibilities of a next Left, which was already faintly visible in young people's massive support of Obama's presidential candidacy.

Product Description: In our media-saturated culture, momentous events occur quickly, as news and images are broadcast around the country and the world. We are often riveted by the news and our everyday reality is suddenly changed. Yet, almost as quickly, that critical event is replaced by a new story...read more

The Virtual Self is an engaging and exciting text that addresses issues relating to our rapidly changing society, social structure, and communication needs. In doing so, it addresses major issues in sociology that inform virtually all of a student’s course work. Introduces students to concepts of the self and society in an age of rapid technology and high speed communication Examines the relationship between everyday life and social structure in key domains of communication, personality, work/family, leisure and entertainment, and economics Written in a lively, engaging style for readers without a sociological background

Product Description: The Internet, cell phones, and other technologies have changed the ways in which people conduct their family lives, raise children, and navigate the blurry boundary between work and home. Private life is colonized by employers, teachers, corporations; family time is taken up by work, homework, and shopping...read more

This pathbreaking book offers a fundamental enriching of method far beyond the scope of research methodology textbooks. It looks at sociology as a social act_as writing_in arguing for a public sociology that can more fully embrace and address crucial public issues. Building on the philosophy of science and recent postmodernist critiques, Agger shows how the social science text reproduces the existing social world, suppressing science's author in order to position itself as simply a mirror of nature, not a deliberate human version replete with ontology, theory, values, and politics. As such, method is an argument that polemicizes quietly for a certain view of the world. Agger peruses how science could be crafted differently, acknowledging, even embracing its authoriality while opening it to crosscurrents of other humanistic writing. Only by liberating sociology from the 'secret writing' of science can its ineradicable humanity be realized. But rather than dwelling on recent critiques, this, more than any other book, looks ahead to a new way of doing science_one that is simultaneously more scientific and humanistic. Its prescient view of how social science can take the lead in building a more democratic public sphere will make it a must-read for every student and researcher.

Praised for its clarity and accessibility, this fully updated edition of Critical Social Theories presents a comprehensive analysis of leading social and cultural theories today. Diverse perspectives are addressed, from feminism and cultural studies to postmodernism and critical theory. Written accessibly for students and faculty, the second edition includes new chapters on the need for a new public sociology in the post-9/11 era—one that moves beyond both positivism and postmodernism. Agger updates and develops for today's world a model for this engaged sociology rooted in 1960s activism, when C. Wright Mills and Tom Hayden framed the New Left as a vehicle for the sociological imagination.

In his 1989 book, Fast Capitalism, Ben Agger presented a framework for understanding late-20th century social problems. Speeding Up Fast Capitalism, a sequel to his earlier book, assesses social changes since the end of the 1980s brought about by information technologies like the Internet, which have quickened the pace of everyday life. In Speeding Up Fast Capitalism, Agger assesses the impact of the Internet on consciousness, communication, culture and community, and evaluates the prospects of democratic social change. Where the earlier book was largely theoretical, Speeding Up applies critical theory to specific topics such as Internet culture, work, families, childhood, schooling, food, the body and fitness. Although indebted to Fast Capitalism, the sequel appeals to an audience wider than theorists, including empirical sociologists, social scientists and scholars in cultural disciplines.

We are not yet at a moment that could be called postmodernity, and may never be, says leading sociologist Ben Agger in his newest book. Modernity is still our history, our framework. Nevertheless, Agger shows how postmodern theory can enhance understanding of the self, everyday life, and culture in the early 21st century. Changes in culture, commerce, and communications, such as the internet, require 'postmodern' modes of knowing. Agger borrows from French postmodern theory and from the Frankfurt School's critical theory in addressing the utility and shortcomings of postmodern theory for understanding identity, culture, race, gender, and power. He explains postmodern theory clearly, borrowing creatively from postmodernism in order to theorize about daily life and social structures heavily reliant on information technologies like the internet and the Web. (view table of contents)

(view table of contents)

Product Description: This text, written expressly for upper-level undergraduates and graduate students in sociology, political science, English, and humanities courses provides a cogent and accessible explanation of critical social theory. Ben Agger introduces students to the Frankfurt School, postmodernism, theories of multiculturalism and difference, feminist theory, and cultural studies...read more

Product Description: This is the 16th volume in the series discussing a variety of topics in the field of current perspectives in social theory.

Product Description: "Recent Developments in the Theory of Social Structure" is an integrated collection of essays reviewing and assessing progress in social structural analysis since 1970. Organizationally, the book is divided into six parts corresponding to six analytical levels of social structure: social relationships, social networks, intraorganizational relations, interorganizational relations, societal stratification and the world system...read more

Product Description: Agger develops a critical theory which confronts the challenges of feminism and postmodernism in order to address postmodernity adequately. Drawing on first-generation critical theory of Horkheimer, Adorno, and Marcuse and second-generation critical theory of Habermas, Agger argues for the priority of critical theory over the antitotality perspectives of postmodernism and feminism...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

Product Description: "Recent Developments in the Theory of Social Structure" is an integrated collection of essays reviewing and assessing progress in social structural analysis since 1970. Organizationally, the book is divided into six parts corresponding to six analytical levels of social structure: social relationships, social networks, intraorganizational relations, interorganizational relations, societal stratification and the world system...read more

Product Description: The Discourse of Domination tackles nothing less than the challenge of giving critical theory a new grip on current problems, and restoring the left's faith in the possibility of enlightened social change. Agger steers a course between orthodox Marxism and orthodox anti-Marxism, bringing the concepts of ideology, dialectic, and domination out of the academy and making them into "a living medium of political self-expression...read more