Brought to you by Penguin.London is a plutocrat's paradise, with more resident billionaires than New York, Hong Kong or Moscow. Far from trickling down, their wealth is burning up the environment and swallowing up the city. But what do we really know about London's super rich, and the lives they lead?To find out more about this secretive, security-heavy elite, sociologist Caroline Knowles walks the streets of London from the City to suburban Surrey, via Ken...

In 1997 the United Kingdom returned control of Hong Kong to China, ending the city’s status as one of the last remnants of the British Empire and initiating a new phase for it as both a modern city and a hub for global migrations. Hong Kong is a tour of the city’s postcolonial urban landscape, innovatively told through fieldwork and photography.Caroline Knowles and Douglas Harper’s point of entry into Hong Kong is the unusual position of the British expatriates who chose t...

Rethinking American Disasters is a pathbreaking collection of essays on hurricanes, earthquakes, fires, and other calamities in the United States and British colonial America over four centuries. Proceeding from the premise that there is no such thing as a “natural” disaster, the collection invites readers to consider disasters and their aftermaths as artifacts of and vantage points onto their historical contexts.

We live in a visual culture, and visual evidence is increasingly central to social research. In this collection an international range of experts explain how they have used visual methods in their own research, examine their advantages and limitations, and show how they have been used alongside other research techniques. Contributors explore the following ideas: * self and identity * visualizing domestic space * visualizing urban landscapes * visualizing social change. The collection showc...

*Shortlisted for the BBC Radio 4 Thinking Allowed Award for Ethnography 2015*This book follows the global trail of one of the world's most unremarkable and ubiquitous objects - flip-flops. Through this unique lens, Caroline Knowles takes a ground level view of the lives and places of globalisation's back roads, providing new insights that challenge contemporary accounts of globalisation.Rather than orderly product chains, the book shows that globalisation along the flip-flo...

At the high tide of UK-China relations, Chinese investors pumped billions into British property and projects each year, promising urban renewal and economic prosperity. But as political tides turned in both countries, the money dried up. A decade on, we live in the ruins of this "golden era." Caroline Knowles explores China's global influence from the bottom up. Focusing on London and Manchester, she contrasts Beijing's grand claims with the ramshackle physical evidence she finds at street...

What happens when the mad are let out of the asylum and there is nowhere for them to go?This hard-hitting and controversial new book traces the terms on which the mad occupy the city's streets, homeless shelters, shopping centres and fast food outlets. This social geography of madness is situated within the broader parameters of systems of social welfare and globalization, arguing that the 'community mental health care' system is actually a system of neglect.Bedlam on t...

Race, Discourse and Labourism argues that the commonwealth of socialism is founded upon a well-concealed history of brutality and repression. Caroline Knowles details the historical conditions of the emergence of race through Labour's dealings with Indian independence negotiations and anti-semitism in the thirties, and the effects of this on the conceptions of black citizenship, multi-racialism and black representation in labour politics.

′This book is well researched and highly accessible. It is both a useful and much needed addition to the literature on race and social research′ - Ethnic and Racial Studies′The book is well laid out with glossaries of significant new terms and summaries of key points at the end of each chapter, extensive notes and a very useful bibliography. Knowle′s book is a welcome contribution to our understanding, and its emphasis on social analysis helps to bridge what sometimes appears to be...

An innovative introduction to Human Geography, exploring different ways of studying the relationships between people and place, and putting people at the centre of human geography. The book covers behavioural, humanistic and cultural traditions, showing how these can lead to a nuanced understanding of how we relate to our surroundings on a day-to-day basis. The authors also explore how human geography is currently influenced by 'postmodern' ideas stressing difference and diversity. While t...

WINNER of the 2015 ICA Outstanding Book AwardThis path-breaking book explores how solidarity towards vulnerable others is performed in our media environment. It argues that stories where famine is described through our own experience of dieting or or where solidarity with Africa translates into wearing a cool armband tell us about much more than the cause that they attempt to communicate. They tell us something about the ways in which we imagine the world outside o...

Now in its Fourth Edition, Visual Methodologies: An Introduction to Researching with Visual Materials is a bestselling critical guide to the study and analysis of visual culture. Existing chapters have been fully updated to offer a rigorous examination and demonstration of an individual methodology in a clear and structured style.Reflecting changes in the way society consumes and creates its visual content, new features include:Brand new chapters deal...