This Festschrift for Irving M. Zeitlin honors a scholar whose work has influenced and continues to influence sociology, particularly classical sociological theory, sociology of religion, and historical sociology. Irving M. Zeitlin's scholarship and mentoring has also influenced and inspired a new generation of sociologists. The essays presented here address a wide range of topics that include classical sociological theory, globalization, bureaucracy, genocide, resistance, ethnic d...

Ukrainian-born Yankev Leshchinsky (1876–1966) was the leading scholarly and journalistic analyst of Eastern European Jewish socioeconomic and political life from the 1920s to the 1950s. Known as “the dean of Jewish sociologists” and “the father of Jewish demography,” Leshchinsky published a series of insightful and moving essays in Yiddish on Polish Jewry between 1927 and 1937. Despite heightened interest in interwar Jewish communities in Poland in recent years, these essays (like most of ...

Ukrainian-born Yankev Leshchinsky (1876-1966) was the leading scholarly and journalistic analyst of Eastern European Jewish socioeconomic and political life from the 1920s to the 1950s. Known as “the dean of Jewish sociologists” and “the father of Jewish demography,” Leshchinsky published a series of insightful and moving essays in Yiddish on Polish Jewry between 1927 and 1937. Despite heightened interest in interwar Jewish communities in Poland in recent years, these essays (like most of ...

This essay, first published in 1980, analyses the relationship between intellectuals’ social locations and their political orientations. Dr Brym provides a critical discussion of the various sociological views of intellectuals and specifies some of the social conditions which encourage intellectuals to follow various directions on the political compass. He also demonstrates that intellectuals are neither socially rootless nor tied to one particular class or group within society, concluding...

Ethnic groups in Canada may be successful, persecuted, cohesive, or endangered; only Canada's Jews appear to embody all of these characteristics simultaneously. Canadian Jewry is enduringly fascinating, worth knowing about because the community is an archetype of multiculturalism as it confronts the difficulties and advantages of ethnicity in the modern world. By examining the achievements of the community, and the challenge of its attempt to survive the exigencies of modern life, The Jews...

Demise by assimilation or antisemitism is often held to be the inevitable future of Jews in Canada and other diaspora countries. The Ever-Dying People? shows that the Jewish diaspora, while often held to be in decline, is influenced by a range of identifiable sociological and historical forces, some of which breathe life into Jewish communities, including Canada’s.Bringing together leading Canadian and international scholars, The Ever-Dying People? provides a land...

In this book Jeffrey C. Alexander develops an original social theory of trauma and uses it to carry out a series of empirical investigations into social suffering around the globe.Alexander argues that traumas are not merely psychological but collective experiences, and that trauma work plays a key role in defining the origins and outcomes of critical social conflicts. He outlines a model of trauma work that relates interests of carrier groups, competing narrative identifications o...

Examining the history of nationalism’s pervasive influence on modern politics and cultural identities, Lloyd Kramer discusses how nationalist ideas gained emotional and cultural power after the revolutionary upheavals in the late eighteenth-century Atlantic world.Nationalism in Europe and America analyzes the multiple historical contexts and intellectual themes that have shaped modern nationalist cultures, including the political claims for national sovereignty, the emerge...

How the fate of the Jews has been shaped by the development of capitalismThe unique historical relationship between capitalism and the Jews is crucial to understanding modern European and Jewish history. But the subject has been addressed less often by mainstream historians than by anti-Semites or apologists. In this book Jerry Muller, a leading historian of capitalism, separates myth from reality to explain why the Jewish experience with capitalism has been so imp...

[Teach Yourself] Marx - the Key Ideas will quickly familiarize you with the revolutionary thinking of this great man. It will take you through all the essential concepts - from class struggle to dialectical materialism. Expressing Marx's sometimes complex ideas in simple terms, and backed up with references to his own texts, this book gives you everything you need to know.NOT GOT MUCH TIME?One, five and ten-minute introductions to key principles to get you started.A...

The theory and practice of history and its relevance to the modern world, by Britains greatest radical historian.

Where are we today and what is to be done? Slavoj Zizek ponders these questions in this unique and timely book. Based on live interviews, the book captures Zizek at his irrepressible best, elucidating such topics as the uprisings of the Arab Spring, the global financial crisis, populism in Latin America, the rise of China and even the riddle of North Korea. Zizek dazzles readers with his analyses of Hollywood films, Venezuelan police reports, Swedish crime fiction and much else. Wherever t...