Product Description: This book is an introduction to the logic and analytics of group choice. To understand how political institutions work, it is important to isolate what citizens - as individuals and as members of society - actually want. This book develops a means of "representing" the preferences of citizens so that institutions can be studied more carefully...read more

Product Description: This engaging collection of essays discusses the complexities of “being” indigenous in public spaces. Laura R. Graham and H. Glenn Penny bring together a set of highly recognized junior and senior scholars, including indigenous scholars, from a variety of fields to provoke critical thinking about the many ways in which individuals and social groups construct and display unique identities around the world...read more

Product Description: A term of antique provenance, ‘identity’ has developed and cohered into a critical concept in contemporary social and cultural analysis. However, the daunting quantity (and variable quality) of the available research exploring the many, often controversial, issues attendant upon identity―and the breadth and complexity of the canon on which it draws―makes it difficult to discriminate the useful from the tendentious, superficial, and otiose...read more

Product Description: In the current historical moment borders have taken on heightened material and symbolic significance, shaping identities and the social and political landscape. “Borders”—defined broadly to include territorial dividing lines as well as sociocultural boundaries—have become increasingly salient sites of struggle over social belonging and cultural and material resources...read more

What are the psychological factors in operation when we form groups or crowds, and how are these affected by socio-historical circumstances? History offers endless examples of different forms of human collectivity, both private and public, small-scale and large: from the primal horde to the modern nuclear family, from the Athenian polis to virtual internet communities. Within the context of shifting social bonds in global culture, this book brings together debates on the left from political philosophy, psychoanalysis, social psychology and media and cultural studies to explore the logic of the formation of collective identities from a new theoretical perspective. Challenging liberal-capitalist models of individualism, as well as postmodern identity politics, analysts here turn to Continental philosophy (Lacan, Derrida, Agamben, Laclau, Badiou, among others) in order to re-think collectivity in relation to questions of agency, alterity, affect, sovereignty, the national imaginary and the biopolitical. In the aftermath of the great mass movements of the twentieth century (Marxist-Leninism, Mao), which resulted in bureaucratic submission and the cult of the State, the fate of our collective identity today raises urgent questions about the future of collaborative activity, the role of mediating institutions in shaping mass psychology, what is at stake in a radical democracy, and what happens in a crowd.

Product Description: Essential reading for scholars and students interested in sociology and biblical studies In this collection scholars of biblical texts and rabbinics engage the work of Barry Schwartz, Professor Emeritus in the Department of Sociology at the University of Georgia...read more

Product Description: Adopting a multidisciplinary approach, this book examines the intersection of race and ethnic relations and the life course. The essays in the volume thus reflect varieties of qualitative and quantitative methods in order to look at how these variables shape social organization and the experiences of those who live within the boundaries of society...read more

Product Description: What makes us divide the world into ‘us’ and ‘them’? How can we exert social influence over others? When does a peaceful protest turn into a riot? Why are some politicians heroes one day and villains the next? Where do we find the resources to resist authoritarian regimes? Taking these questions as a starting point, the book examines political conduct from a social identity perspective...read more

The concepts of power and identity are vital to many areas of social research. In this edited collection, a prominent set of contributors explore the double relationship between power and group identity, focusing on two complementary lines of enquiry: In what ways can the powerful dictate the identities of the powerless? How can the powerless redefine their identity to challenge the powerful? Each chapter is written by leading authorities in the field, and investigates a particular aspect of the interplay of identity and power via a range of empirical contexts such as colonialism, nationalism, collective action, and electoral politics. The case studies include early modern Goa under Portuguese rule, the tribes of modern-day Jordan, the use of sexual stereotyping and objectification by female activists seeking to transform social systems, and a revisiting of the classic Stanford Prison Experiment. The chapters include contributions from a variety of social disciplines and research methodologies, and together provide a comprehensive overview of a subject at the cutting-edge of social and political psychology. Power and Identity will be of great interest to researchers, graduates and upper-level undergraduate students from across the social sciences.

Product Description: Social Identity explains how identification, seen as a social process, works: individually, interactionally and institutionally. Building on the international success of previous editions, this fourth edition offers a concise, comprehensive and readable critical introduction to social science theories of identity for advanced undergraduates and postgraduates...read more

In the mid-nineteenth-century United States, as it became increasingly difficult to distinguish between bodies understood as black, white, or Indian; able-bodied or disabled; and male or female, intense efforts emerged to define these identities as biologically distinct and scientifically verifiable in a literally marked body. Combining literary analysis, legal history, and visual culture, Ellen Samuels traces the evolution of the “fantasy of identification”—the powerful belief that embodied social identities are fixed, verifiable, and visible through modern science. From birthmarks and fingerprints to blood quantum and DNA, she examines how this fantasy has circulated between cultural representations, law, science, and policy to become one of the most powerfully institutionalized ideologies of modern society. Yet, as Samuels demonstrates, in every case, the fantasy distorts its claimed scientific basis, substituting subjective language for claimed objective fact. From its early emergence in discourses about disability fakery and fugitive slaves in the nineteenth century to its most recent manifestation in the question of sex testing at the 2012 Olympic Games, Fantasies of Identification explores the roots of modern understandings of bodily identity.

Product Description: What challenges do researchers face when surveying immigrant populations and ethnic minorities? What are the best ways to ensure that general population surveys adequately represent minority groups?  The first book to systematically address these questions, this volume analyzes more than a dozen surveys conducted in eight Western countries on topics ranging from politics to health...read more

Product Description: After the Last Ship illustrates the author’s own history, as well as its connection to the history of other women and children who left India and made the journey across the Kala Pani, the Indian Ocean, and lived as migrants in other countries...read more

Product Description: We live in an ever-changing social world, which constantly demands adjustment to our identities and actions. Advances in science, technology and medicine, political upheaval, and economic development are just some examples of social change that can impact upon how we live our lives, how we view ourselves and each other, and how we communicate...read more

Product Description: The presence and ubiquity of the internet continues to transform the way in which we identify ourselves and others both online and offline. The development of virtual communities permits users to create an online identity to interact with and influence one another in ways that vary greatly from face-to-face interaction...read more