In this comprehensive, stylish and accessible introduction to contemporary social theory, Anthony Elliott and Charles Lemert examine the major theoretical traditions from the Frankfurt School to globalization and beyond. When first published, the book's wide range set new standards for introductory [...]

How should we understand the personal and social impacts of complex mobility systems? Can lifestyles based around intensive travel, transport and tourism be maintained in the 21st century? What possibility post-carbon lifestyles? In this provocative study of 'life on the move', Anthony Elliott and J[...]

Ours is the era of 'reinvention'. From psychotherapy to life coaching, from self-help manuals to cosmetic surgery, and from corporate rebranding to urban redesign: the art of reinvention is inextricably interwoven with the lure of the next frontier, the breakthrough to the next boundary - especially[...]

This new and updated edition of Concepts of the Self remains the most lively, lucid and compelling introduction to contemporary controversies over the self and self-identity in the social sciences. Written by an author of international reputation, the book concentrates mainly on the work of social t[...]

New edition of a successful introduction to a core theme in the social sciences. Offers a clear introduction to complex ideas, written by an internationally renowned author. Has been fully revised and updated, incorporating a new chapter on individualization, and a challenge to emerging 'anti-theori[...]

The revised edition of Subject to Ourselves, a lively and provocative book that was a leader on its topic in England, uses psychoanalytic theory as the basis for a fresh reassessment of the nature of modernity and postmodernism. Analyzing changing experiences of selfhood, desire, interpersonal relat[...]

If today students of social theory read Jurgen Habermas, Michel Foucault and Anthony Giddens, then proper regard to the question of culture means that they should also read Raymond Williams, Stuart Hall and Slavoj Zizek. The Routledge Handbook of Social and Cultural Theory offers a concise, comprehe[...]

The Routledge Handbook of Identity Studies offers an exceptionally clear overview of the analysis of identity in the social sciences, and in so doing seeks to develop a new agenda for identity-studies in the twenty-first century. The key theories of identity, ranging from classical accounts to postm[...]