Society and Culture: Scarcity and Solidarity

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SAGE, Apr 11, 2001 - Social Science - 272 pages
Society and Culture reclaims the classical heritage, provides a clear-eyed assessment of the promise of sociology in the 21st century and asks whether the `cultural turn′ has made the study of society redundant.

Sociologists have objected to the rise of cultural studies on the grounds that it produces cultural relativism and lacks a stable research agenda. This book looks at these criticisms and illustrates the relevance of a sociological perspective in the analysis of human practice. The book argues that the classical tradition must be treated as a living tradition, rather than a period piece. It analyzes the fundamental principles of belonging and conflict in society and provides a detailed critical survey of the principal social theories that offer solutions to the challenges of modernism.

 

Contents

Chapter 1 Discipline
1
Chapter 2 Organisms
24
Chapter 3 Disorder
38
Chapter 4 Solidarity
68
Chapter 5 Scarcity
88
Chapter 6 Norms
100
Chapter 7 Rights
109
Chapter 8 Intimacies
130
Chapter 9 Choice
144
Chapter 10 Solutions
159
Sociology and Cosmopolitian Virtue
197
References
229
Author Index
245
Subject Index
248
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About the author (2001)

Bryan S. Turner is Professor of Sociology in the Asian Research Institute (ARI) at the National University of Singapore. Previously he was Professor of Sociology in the Faculty of Social and Political Sciences at the University of Cambridge from 1998-2005. His research interests include globalization and religion, concentrating on such issues as religious conflict and the modern state, religious authority and electronic information, religious, consumerism and youth cultures, human rights and religion, the human body, medical change, and religious cosmologies. He is Joint Chief Editor of the journal Citizenship Studies and serves on the editorial boards of several prestigious journals.

Chris Rojek is Professor of Sociology and Culture at Brunel University, West London. He is a prolific and influential author in the field of Celebrity, Leisure Studies and Popular Culture. In 2003 he was awarded the Allen V. Sapora prize for outstanding achievement in the field of Leisure and Tourism Studies. Besides lecturing in the UK he has given lectures on leisure in Australia, Canada, the USA and the Netherlands. In 2009 he was Hood Fellow at the University of Auckland, New Zealand. He also writes on celebrity culture, neat capitalism and myths and realities of national identity. His current research is on popular music and popular culture and the meaning of the celetoid in Reality TV.

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