The German sociologist and philosopher Georg Simmel (1858-1918) is recognized as a leading early twentieth-century European social theorist. This collection enables the reader to engage with the full range of Simmel's dazzling contributions to the study of culture. It opens with Simmel's basic essay[...]

Developing a theory of political culture as consisting of two dimensions, discourse and practice, the book explains how political culture can both inhibit political change and be a source of it. It explores the nature and dynamics of political culture systematically and comprehensively, and suggest[...]

The contributors to this study confront both recent, startling upheavals in international politics and the reorganization of foundations in the humanities and social sciences in order to re-examine Western political thought.[...]

Agency is a central psychological phenomenon that must be accounted for in any explanatory framework for human action. According to the diverse group of scholars, researchers, and clinicians who have contributed chapters to this book, psychological agency is not a fixed entity that conforms to tradi[...]

Published, posthumously, this volume is both a summing up and a reformulation of Malinowski's functional theory of culture.[...]

Despite its importance in understanding the social relations of labour little attention has been paid by Western Marxists to evolutionary theory. Taking as a starting point an unfinished essay by Engels, the author argues that the human species must be seen as discontinuous with its nearest biologic[...]

In this eighth edition of his award-winning Cultural Theory and Popular Culture: An Introduction, John Storey presents a clear and critical survey of competing theories of and various approaches to popular culture. Its breadth and theoretical unity, exemplified through popular culture, means that it[...]

What is cultural about vision - or visual about culture? In this ambitious book, Whitney Davis provides new answers to these difficult and important questions by presenting an original framework for understanding visual culture. Grounded in the theoretical traditions of art history, "A General Theor[...]

A stimulating appraisal of a crucial contemporary theme, this comprehensive analysis of globalizaton offers a distinctively cultural perspective on the social theory of the contemporary world. This perspective considers the world as a whole, going beyond conventional distinctions between the global [...]

Whether used on its own or in conjunction with "Cultural Theory and Popular Culture: An Introduction," this reader is a theoretical, analytical, and historical introduction to the study of popular culture within cultural studies. The readings cover the culture and civilization tradition, culturalism[...]