Second homes are once again a source of political and social contention in rural areas. The British government's decision to reduce Council Tax discounts on second homes in England in April 2004 has caused wide debate in local communities, local authorities, and the media. The debate has not only focused on the vexed Council Tax issue, but on wider rural housing concerns. Questions have been raised as to whether second homes are a major cause of housing affordability problems in rural area...

The majority of the world’s population is now urban, and for most this will mean a life lived in the suburbs. City Suburbs considers contemporary Anglo-American suburbia, drawing on research in outer London it looks at life on the edge of a world city from the perspective of residents.Interpreted through Bourdieu’s theory of practice it argues that the contemporary suburban life is one where place and participation are, in combination, strong determinants of the suburban e...

In Human Rights from Below, Jim Ife shows how human rights and community development are problematic terms but powerful ideals, and that each is essential for understanding and practising the other. Ife contests that practitioners - advocates, activists, workers and volunteers - can better empower and protect communities when human rights are treated as more than just a specialist branch of law or international relations, and that human rights can be better realised when community developm...

This innovative book marks a significant departure from tradition anlayses of the evolution of cultural landscapes and the interpretation of past environments. Maps of Meaning proposes a new agenda for cultural geography, one set squarely in the context of contemporary social and cultural theory.Notions of place and space are explored through the study of elite and popular cultures, gender and sexuality, race, language and ideology. Questioning the ways in which we invest ...

Politicians, financiers and bureaucrats claim to believe in free competitive markets, yet they have built the most unfree market system ever created. In this Gilded Age, income is funnelled to the owners of property – financial, physical and intellectual – at the expense of society. Wages stagnate as labour markets are transformed by outsourcing, automation and the on-demand economy, generating more rental income while broadening the precariat.Now fully updated with an introduction...

This textbook on the sociology of law is organised according to the theoretical traditions of sociology, and oriented towards providing an accessible, but sophisticated, introduction to, and overview of, the central themes, problems and debates in this field. The book employs an international range of examples - including the state, minority rights, terrorism, family violence, the legal profession, pornography, mediation, religious tolerance, and euthanasia - in order to distinguish a soci...

Since the Great Recession hit in 2008, the 1% has only grown richer while the rest find life increasingly tough. The gap between the haves and the have-nots has turned into a chasm. While the rich have found new ways of protecting their wealth, everyone else has suffered the penalties of austerity.But inequality is more than just economics. Being born outside the 1% has a dramatic impact on a person's potential: reducing life expectancy, limiting educational and work prospects, and ...

In investigating the mutual and dynamic relationship between urban development and consumption, this book asks: how are cities moulded by consumption, and how is consumption moulded by cities?Consumption stands at the intersection of different spheres of everyday life: between the public and the private, the political and the personal, the individual and the social. It is considered to be a means and motor of social change; as an active ingredient in the construction of space and p...

Why are so many adult children living still living with mum and dad? Why do young people seem so disinterested in politics? And what are the hidden threats to Britain's long-term prosperity lurking in the next few decades?First published in 2010, Ed Howker and Shiv Mailk's Jilted Generation answers fundamental questions about the society you thought you knew. It identified, for the first time, the perilous position of Britain's young adults and, with a title brandished by e...

"This ambitious volume reviews the best recent work in historical geography... It demonstrates how a dual sense of history and geography is necessary to understand such key areas of contemporary debate as the inter-relationship between class, race and gender; the character of nations and nationalism; the nature and challenges of urban life; the legacies of colonialism; and the meaning and values attributed to places, landscapes and environments."- Mike Heffernan, Univers...

Jim Sillars argues convincingly that the referendum gives the Scottish people the power to create a better country, helps renew our belief in socialism as the answer to the economic and social crisis facing the country, and challenges the idea in the Yes campaign that independence means “change but no change” and that a Yes voter endorses Alex Salmond and the SNP. There is a far more radical road, with better policies than those Salmond is offering in the first independence elections in 20...

Arguing that policy has become an increasingly central concept and instrument in the organisation of contemporary societies and that it now impinges on all areas of life so that it is virtually impossible to ignore or escape its influence, this book argues that the study of policy leads straight into issues at the heart of anthropology.