Since its emergence in the late twentieth century, climate fiction—or cli-fi—has concerned itself as much with economic injustice and popular revolt as with rising seas and soaring temperatures. Indeed, with its insistent focus on redressing social disparities, cli-fi might reasonably be classified as a form of protest literature. As environmental crises escalate and inequality intensifies, literary writers and scholars alike have increasingly scrutinized the dual exploitations of the eart...

Establishing science fiction as its own distinct and increasingly important narrative form, this book explores how the genre challenges pervasive perceptions of society as they appear in the conventional modern novel. Inspired by, and building upon, Georg Lukács's criticism of the orthodox novel for its depiction of life as alienating and disjointed, Milner, Murphy and Roberts demonstrate that science fiction steps beyond this contemporary form to be a more constructive form of literature,...

This book places cultural materialism in relation to earlier paradigms such as literary humanism and Marxism, and explains how the new paradigm has been applied to important areas such as cultural studies, media studies and literary studies.

Ethical Futures and Global Science Fiction explores the ethical concerns and dimensions of representations of the future of global science fiction, focusing on the issues that dominate utopian, dystopian and science fiction literature. The essays examine recent visions of the future in science fiction and re-examine earlier texts through contemporary lenses. Across fourteen chapters, the collection considers authors from Algeria, Australia, Canada, China, Egypt, France, Germany, H...

First Published in 2002. This lucid and concise overview brings a much needed sense and history and theoretical scale to the growth of cultural studies. The authors identify six major paradigms in cultural theory: utilitarianism, cultural materialism, critical theory and postmodernism. They outline social and discursive contexts within each of these has developed and provide the essential grounding to understand current debates in the field. This third edition has been extensively revised ...

This book gives a clear and readable overview of the philosophical work of Jürgen Habermas, the most influential German philosopher alive today, who has commented widely on subjects such as Marxism, the importance and effectiveness of communication, the reunification of Germany, and the European Union. Gordon Finlayson provides readers with a clear and readable overview of Habermas's forbiddingly complex philosophy using concrete examples and accessible language. He then goes on to analyse...

Now in a fully updated second edition The Routledge Companion to Critical and Cultural Theory is an indispensible guide for anyone approaching the field for the first time. Exploring ideas from a diverse range of disciplines through a series of 11 critical essays and a dictionary of key names and terms, this book examines some of the most complex and fundamental theories in modern scholarship including:MarxismTrauma Theory...

An independently minded champion of ‘the project of modernity’ in a supposedly post-modern age, Jurgen Habermas (1929- ) is one of the most widely influential thinkers of our times.An easy-to-use A-Z guide to a body of work that spans philosophy, sociology, politics, law and cultural theory, Habermas: The Key Concepts explores Habermas’ writings on:capitalismgeneticslawneo-conservatismuniversal pragmatics.

This short critical introduction to the sociology of Pierre Bourdieu is a model of clarity and insight. Where Bourdieu's original writings are often densely argued and ambiguous, Richard Jenkins is direct, concise and to the point. He emphasises Bourdieu's contirbutions to the theory and methodology while also dealing in detail with his substantive studies of education, social stratification and culture. His book provides the best short English-language introduction to Bourdieu's work.

While certain aspects of Henri Lefebvre’s writings have been examined extensively within the disciplines of geography, social theory, urban planning and cultural studies, there has been no comprehensive consideration of his work within legal studies. Henri Lefebvre: Spatial Politics, Everyday Life and the Right to the City provides the first serious analysis of the relevance and importance of this significant thinker for the study of law and state power. Introducing Lefebvre to a ...

This book's individual entries introduce, explain and contextualise the key topics within classical social theory. Definitions, summaries and key words are developed throughout with careful cross-referencing allowing students to move effortlessly between core ideas and themes.

In this major new work, Thompson develops an original account of ideology and relates it to the analysis of culture and mass communication in modern Societies.Thompson offers a concise and critical appraisal of major contributions to the theory of ideology, from Marx and Mannheim, to Horkheimer, Adorno and Habermas. He argues that these thinkers - and social and political theorists more generally - have failed to deal adequately with the nature of mass communication and its role in...