Despite a growing literature debating the consequences of neo-liberal political and economic policy in the former Eastern bloc, the idea of neo-liberal personhood has so far received limited attention from scholars of the region. Presenting a range of ethnographic studies, this book lays the groundwork for a new disciplinary agenda by critically examining novel technologies of self-government which have appeared in the wake of political and economic liberalization. Neoliberalism, Personhoo...

Since the onset of the global economic crisis, activists, policy makers, and social scientists have been searching for alternative paradigms through which to re-imagine contemporary modes of thinking and writing about economic orders. These attempts have led to their re-engagement with fundamental anthropological categories of economic analysis, such as barter, debt, and the gift. Focusing on favours, and the paradoxes of action, meaning, and significance they engender, this volume advocat...

Focusing on contexts of accelerated economic and political reform, this volume critically examines the role of slogans in the contemporary projects of populist mobilization, neoliberal governance, and civic subversion. Bringing together a collection of ethnographic studies from Greece, Slovakia, Poland, Abu Dhabi, Peru, and China, the contributors analyze the way in which slogans both convey and contest the values and norms that lie at the core of hegemonic political economic projects and ...

Tax and taxation are conventionally understood as the embodiment of social contract. This ground-breaking collection of essays challenges this truism, examining what tax might tell us about the limits of social-contract thinking. The contributors shed light on contemporary fiscal structures and public debates about the moralities, practices, and imaginaries of tax systems, using tax to explore the nature of citizenship, personal freedom, and moral and economic value. Their ethnographically...

Eliot Freidson has written the first systematic account of professionalism as a method of organizing work. In ideal-typical professionalism, specialized workers control their own work, while in the free market consumers are in command, and in bureaucracy managers dominate. Freidson shows how each method has its own logic requiring different kinds of knowledge, organization, career, education and ideology. He also discusses how historic and national variations in state policy, professional ...

Language and Globalization explores the effects of language in the processes of globalization. Norman Fairclough adopts the approach of combining critical discourse analysis with cultural political economy to develop a new theory of the relationship between discourse and other dimensions of globalization. Using examples from a variety of countries such as the USA, Britain, Romania, Hungary and Thailand, Language and Globalization shows how the analysis of texts can be coh...

The extensively revised and updated second edition combines carefully chosen primary quotes with wide-ranging discussion and everyday illustrative examples to provide an in-depth introduction to classical and contemporary sociological theory.Combines classical and contemporary theory in a single, integrated textShort biographies and historical timelines of significant events provide context to theorists' ideasInnovatively builds on excerpts from original t...

“A good society,“ Michael Lebowitz tells us, “is one that permits the full development of human potential.” In this slim, lucid, and insightful book, he argues persuasively that such a society is possible. That capitalism fails his definition of a good society is evident from even a cursory examination of its main features. What comes first in capitalism is not human development but privately accumulated profits by a tiny minority of the population. When there is a ...

In this major new book, André Gorz expands on the political implications of his prescient and influential Paths to Paradise and Critique of Economic Reason. Against the background of technological developments which have transformed the nature of work and the structure of the workforce, Gorz explores the new political agendas facing both left and right. Each is in disarray: the right, torn between the demands of capital and the ‘traditional values’ of its supporters, can ...

Universities and societies around the world are involved in significant transition. Universities are now invited to expand their central aims and purposes in order to embrace a role in relation to the development of the societies in which they are located. This change of focus has major implications for curricula, modes of teaching and the student body.International contributors to this wideranging text discuss different aspects of the phenomenon of globalisation in relation to hig...

Jean-Louis Rocca's admirably concise A Sociology of Modern China wears its scholarship lightly and paints an intimate and complex portrait of Chinese society, all the while avoiding clichés and simplifications. He delves into China's history and examines the country's many different social strata so as to better understand the enormous challenges and opportunities with which its people are confronted. After discussing the long march toward reform and the crises along the way - amo...

While the decline of communism in the late twentieth century brought democracy, political freedom, and better economic prospects for many people, it also produced massive social dislocation and engendered social problems that were far less pronounced under the old regimes. The fall of state socialism led to enormously complex political, economic, social, and cultural transformations, and while political liberalization was a lofty goal, it was neither uniform in its effects nor unqualified ...