Princeton Studies in Cultural Sociology

David John Frank is professor of sociology at the University of California, Irvine, and the coauthor of Reconstructing the University. John W. Meyer is professor emeritus of sociology at Stanford University and the coauthor of Hyper-Organization and Science in the Modern World Polity. How the university went global and became the heart of the information age The university is experiencing an unprecedented level of success today, as more universities in more countries educate more students in more fields. At the same time, the university has become central to a knowledge society based on the belief that everyone can, through higher education, access universal truths and apply them in the name of progress. This book traces the university's rise over the past hundred years to become the cultural linchpin of contemporary society, revealing how the so-called ivory tower has become profoundly interlinked with almost every area of human endeavor. David John Frank and John Meyer describe how, as the university expanded, student and faculty bodies became larger, more diverse, and more empowered to turn knowledge into action. Their contributions to society underscored the public importance of scholarship, and as the cultural authority of universities grew they increased the scope of their research and teaching interests. As a result, the university has become the bedrock of today's information-based society, an institution that is now implicated in the solution to every conceivable problem. But, as Frank and Meyer also show, the conditions that helped spur the university's recent ascendance are not immutable: eruptions of nationalism, authoritarianism, and illiberalism undercut the university's universalistic and rationalistic premises, and may threaten the centrality of the university itself. "Frank and Meyer provide a unique and thorough assessment of the university as an institution and how it has persisted through the centuries, largely in the same form and despite numerous external challenges. . . . This book makes a useful contribution to the institutional analysis of universities and will certainly find a prominent place on reading lists for students and scholars of organizational sociology, higher education, and globalization."---Rebecca Natow, Teachers College Record "In this fascinating study, Frank and Meyer develop an original vision of the university as a sacred institution dotted with a 'universalized quality.' At the center of knowledge societies, this cultural canopy has diffused around the planet, structuring our worlds culturally and organizationally through multiple ramifications-at the level of actorhood, identities, professions, expertise, and more. Thus, it has gained 'supra-local and supra-temporal standing,' and has come to be dotted with a 'quasi-religious' authority. Mustering ample illustrative empirical data, the authors slowly but surely convince the reader of their argument, and thus deliver a crucial contribution to neoinstitutional scholarship, and to our broader understanding of modern universities. Their book is an absolute must-read for anyone wishing to understand the making of contemporary societies."-Michèle Lamont, author of How Professors Think "In this remarkable book, David John Frank and John Meyer provide a new interpretation of the rise of universities worldwide, based not on their contributions to practical affairs but instead on their role as ideological instruments and cultural canopies capturing global aspirations to rationality and universalism. The university emerges in their account as closer to a religious institution than to a commercial enterprise. Their analysis of worldwide data over nearly a millennium is impressive and it supports their thesis that the contemporary university plays a role analogous to the high church in the medieval period by providing authoritative answers to life's ultimate questions and practical concerns."-Steven Brint, author of Two Cheers f

"Winner of the 2011 Robert K. Merton Book Award, Science, Knowledge, and Technology Section of the American Sociological Association" "Honorable Mention for the 2009 Charles Tilly Best Book Award, Collective Behavior and Social Movements Section of the American Sociological Association" Kelly Moore is assistant professor of sociology at the University of Cincinnati. In the decades following World War II, American scientists were celebrated for their contributions to social and technological progress. They were also widely criticized for their increasingly close ties to military and governmental power--not only by outside activists but from among the ranks of scientists themselves. Disrupting Science tells the story of how scientists formed new protest organizations that democratized science and made its pursuit more transparent. The book explores how scientists weakened their own authority even as they invented new forms of political action. Drawing extensively from archival sources and in-depth interviews, Kelly Moore examines the features of American science that made it an attractive target for protesters in the early cold war and Vietnam eras, including scientists' work in military research and activities perceived as environmentally harmful. She describes the intellectual traditions that protesters drew from--liberalism, moral individualism, and the New Left--and traces the rise and influence of scientist-led protest organizations such as Science for the People and the Union of Concerned Scientists. Moore shows how scientist protest activities disrupted basic assumptions about science and the ways scientific knowledge should be produced, and recast scientists' relationships to political and military institutions. Disrupting Science reveals how the scientific community cumulatively worked to unbind its own scientific authority and change how science and scientists are perceived. In doing so, the book redefines our understanding of social movements and the power of insider-led protest. "In Disrupting Science, Kelly Moore attempts to explain how scientists' attitudes about the proper role of science and scientists in public life changed so dramatically within two generations....Moore's well-researched account introduces the pacifists, petition writers, newsletter publishers, and protestors--who doggedly drew attention to the ways that militarism was infiltrating the practice of science in the United States."---Audra J. Wolfe, Science "Disrupting Science is an important scholarly addition to the literature in the sociology of science and history of science. The book's examination of archival sources shows a complex relationship between scientists and the military from 1945 to 1975."---G.D. Oberle, Choice "The book prompts intriguing questions about the professional role, the boundaries by which it is constituted, and the potential consequences of overstepping those boundaries."---Joseph C. Hermanowicz, American Journal of Sociology "As the U.S. government's budget for national and homeland security approaches three-quarters of a trillion dollars in fiscal year 2009, and the roles of science and technology continue to expand in our daily lives, our collective need for nuanced studies of the relations between the military and science is ever more pressing. Moore's thoughtful study points the way."---William J. Astore, H-Net Reviews "Disrupting Science is first rate work. . . . Moore's account serves as an exemplary case study in what she and Scott Frickel have billed in their 2006 book as 'the new political sociology of science.' I expect her new book to be read widely across the discipline."---Steven Epstein, Mobilization "Moore's book is very well-written, scholarly, and impeccably organized, making it a useful reference tool. It is relevant to those interested in political sociology, the 'fact-value' debate in the philosophy of science, questions of science and ideology, and science studies."---Ronjon Paul D

"Winner of the 2003 Best Book Award, American Sociology Association" "Winner of the Distinguished Scholarship Award, Pacific Sociological Association" "Winner of the Outstanding Book Award, American Educational Research Association" Amy J. Binder is Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of Southern California. This book compares two challenges made to American public school curricula in the 1980s and 1990s. It identifies striking similarities between proponents of Afrocentrism and creationism, accounts for their differential outcomes, and draws important conclusions for the study of culture, organizations, and social movements. Amy Binder gives a brief history of both movements and then describes how their challenges played out in seven school districts. Despite their very different constituencies--inner-city African American cultural essentialists and predominately white suburban Christian conservatives--Afrocentrists and creationists had much in common. Both made similar arguments about oppression and their children's well-being, both faced skepticism from educators about their factual claims, and both mounted their challenges through bureaucratic channels. In each case, challenged school systems were ultimately able to minimize or reject challengers' demands, but the process varied by case and type of challenge. Binder finds that Afrocentrists were more successful in advancing their cause than were creationists because they appeared to offer a solution to the real problem of urban school failure, met with more administrative sympathy toward their complaints of historic exclusion, sought to alter lower-prestige curricula (history, not science), and faced opponents who lacked a legal remedy comparable to the rule of church-state separation invoked by creationism's opponents. Binder's analysis yields several lessons for social movements research, suggesting that researchers need to pay greater attention to how movements seek to influence bureaucratic decision making, often from within. It also demonstrates the benefits of examining discursive, structural, and institutional factors in concert. "[A] provocative and engaging book. . . . As different as the two movements and their constituents were, Binder astutely shows that both used the rhetoric of pluralism, among other shared tactics, to make their cases." "A useful addition to the corpus of social movement studies. Amy Binder presents a valuable analysis of attempts to change an institution."---Joseph R. Gusfield, Contemporary Sociology "Definitely worth reading, both as a good introduction to the literature on social movements and to what such analyses can bring to scholarship on the politics of educational reforms. It also has significant things to say both to those of us who are concerned about how the extension of democracy can function in paradoxical ways in education and to those readers who have a commitment to understanding the complexities of cultural pluralism and multiculturalism."---Michael Apple, Educational Policy "Binder carefully considers the scholarly literature of social movements and makes a contribution to it by examining social movements focusing on the impact of these movements on subnational governmental units." "The genius of this study is the comparison between two social movements that are ostensibly quite different in their constituencies but are structurally nearly identical. The author leverages this comparison to produce insights about each movement that would otherwise be elusive. Enjoyably written and always clear, it is a significant contribution to the study of culture and to the field of social movements research."-Paul DiMaggio, Princeton University "Rarely have I so thoroughly endorsed a book, nor found so little to quarrel with in its focus, organization, or even textual detail. What makes Binder's book so important is that, while borrowing much from mainstream social movements theory, it also broadens the

"Co-Winner of the 2018 Mary Douglas Prize for Best Book, Sociology of Culture Section of the American Sociological Association" Clayton Childress is assistant professor of sociology at the University of Toronto. Under the Cover follows the life trajectory of a single work of fiction from its initial inspiration to its reception by reviewers and readers. The subject is Jarrettsville, a historical novel by Cornelia Nixon, which was published in 2009 and based on an actual murder committed by an ancestor of Nixon's in the postbellum South. Clayton Childress takes you behind the scenes to examine how Jarrettsville was shepherded across three interdependent fields-authoring, publishing, and reading-and how it was transformed by its journey. Along the way, he covers all aspects of the life of a book, including the author's creative process, the role of the literary agent, how editors decide which books to acquire, how publishers build lists and distinguish themselves from other publishers, how they sell a book to stores and publicize it, and how authors choose their next projects. Childress looks at how books get selected for the front tables in bookstores, why reviewers and readers can draw such different meanings from the same novel, and how book groups across the country make sense of a novel and what it means to them. Drawing on original survey data, in-depth interviews, and groundbreaking ethnographic fieldwork, Under the Cover reveals how decisions are made, inequalities are reproduced, and novels are built to travel in the creation, production, and consumption of culture. "Under the Cover is well-plotted, making use of the kind of narrative device--a three-act structure, revealing details, even cliff-hangers--one might find in an actual novel, all of which is underpinned by insightful observations of the many writers, agents, editors, publishers, booksellers, readers and others Childress studies. . . . An engaging story about the interface of the word and the world."---Megan Marz, Times Literary Supplement "Written with great love, accuracy, attention for every little detail, it is extremely clear in the exposition of the various steps of the creation of a book it's a great reading, captivating and interesting! Intriguing from the beginning to the end, this book can't be put down for a second."---Anna Maria Polidori, Alfemminile "In this excellent contribution to the study of literature and of the sociology of culture, Childress situates a specific cultural object--Cornelia Nixon's novel Jarrettsville (2009)--within the many contexts responsible for its birth and integration into the social fabric. In so doing, he reasserts the social nature of cultural products, a claim at the cornerstone of sociology as a discipline. . . . This work is interesting as a study of the evolving role of literature in modern life, and sociologists will learn from its unique approach to analyzing cultural products." "Even someone who is part of the publishing system as an author is unaware of how the soup is made, and there can be no more fascinating, enjoyable, insightful, and well-written a guide to what goes on in the publishing kitchen than Clayton Childress' wonderful Under the Cover."---Mitchell Abidor, Jewish Currents "Under the Cover is a significant contribution to work on cultural objects. Readers, prepared to be bowled over by the wealth of data Childress collected and the depth of his analyses. I certainly was. If you know you've read a good book when you're jealous that you didn't write it yourself, then color me green. To sum up, permit me to poach the words of Ayelet Waldman: 'This is a fucking AWESOME book.'"---Terence E. McDonnell, Social Forces "It is to Childress's credit that Under the Cover does not announce itself as a program for the study of culture; such claims are more persuasive as demonstrations rather than pronouncements. Those who are open to the demonstration will note that in the guise of a luci

Mauro F. Guillén is director of the Lauder Institute and the Dr. Felix Zandman Professor of International Management and Sociology at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. He is the author of TThe Limits of Convergence: Globalization and Organizational Change in Argentina, South Korea, and Spain (Princeton), The Rise of Spanish Multinationals, and the coauthor of Building a Global Bank (Princeton). The dream of scientific management was a rationalized machine world where life would approach the perfection of an assembly line. But since its early twentieth-century peak this dream has come to seem a dehumanizing nightmare. Henry Ford's assembly lines turned out a quarter of a million cars in 1914, but all of them were black. Forgotten has been the unparalleled new aesthetic beauty once seen in the ideas of Ford and scientific management pioneer Frederick Winslow Taylor. In The Taylorized Beauty of the Mechanical, Mauro Guillén recovers this history and retells the story of the emergence of modernist architecture as a romance with the ideas of scientific management--one that permanently reshaped the profession of architecture. Modernist architecture's pioneers, Guillén shows, found in scientific management the promise of a new, functional, machine-like--and beautiful--architecture, and the prospect of a new role for the architect as technical professional and social reformer. Taylor and Ford had a signal influence on Bauhaus founder Walter Gropius and on Le Corbusier and his Towards a New Architecture, the most important manifesto of modernist architecture. Architects were so enamored with the ideas of scientific management that they adopted them even when there was no functional advantage to do so. Not a traditional architectural history but rather a sociological study of the profession of architecture during its early modernist period, The Taylorized Beauty of the Mechanical provides a new understanding of the degree to which modernist architecture emerged from a tradition of engineering and industrial management. "The Taylorized Beauty of the Mechanical is an ambitious work. Mauro Guillen draws from an abundance of sources, both contemporary and recent, to support his hypothesis that there was a connection between the rise of scientific management and the development of modernist architecture.... Guillen has written an excellent comparative study that will appeal both to business historians and to architectural and design historians."---Per H. Hansen, Business History Review "Guillén . . . offers a unique and bold explanation of the differential development of modern architecture internationally. . . . Guillén's analysis of modern architecture is impressive and inventive. If his answers are not definitive, he certainly asks the right questions and, consequently, greatly advances the sociological study of architecture."---David Gartman, American Journal of Sociology "Mauro F. Guillén contributes to the scholarship on architectural Modernism with an interesting twist with approaching the architectural history literature from a joint managerial and sociological viewpoint. . . . [T]his survey will be of interest to specialists and non-specialists alike."---Guillaume Evrard, European Legacy "Deeply historical and comparative, Mauro Guillén shows how a neo-institutionalist and social movement analysis complement each other as he explains the emergence and rise to prominence of modernist architecture. Systematic in its use of data, the book is nuanced in its analysis. He examines the several strains of modernism and subtly explains why modernism takes hold in some countries, but not others. An excellent analysis of aesthetics and the transformation of the profession of architecture."-Mayer Zald, University of Michigan "When Frederick Winslow Taylor was hectoring the workers of the Bethlehem Iron Works to greater productivity, who would have guessed that this stolid, obsessive Philadelphian wo

Riva Kastoryano is a Senior Research Fellow at the National Center for Scientific Research and teaches at the Institute for Political Science, both in Paris. The author of several books in French, her work has focused on community formation and the construction of collective identities in different political settings. Immigration is even more hotly debated in Europe than in the United States. In this pivotal work of action and discourse analysis, Riva Kastoryano draws on extensive fieldwork--including interviews with politicians, immigrant leaders, and militants--to analyze interactions between states and immigrants in France and Germany. Making frequent comparisons to the United States, she delineates the role of states in constructing group identities and measures the impact of immigrant organization and mobilization on national identity. Kastoryano argues that states contribute directly and indirectly to the elaboration of immigrants' identity, in part by articulating the grounds on which their groups are granted legitimacy. Conversely, immigrant organizations demanding recognition often redefine national identity by reinforcing or modifying traditional sentiments. They use culture--national references in Germany and religion in France--to negotiate new political identities in ways that alter state composition and lead the state to negotiate its identity as well. Despite their different histories, Kastoryano finds that Germany, France, and the United States are converging in their policies toward immigration control and integration. All three have adopted similar tactics and made similar institutional adjustments in their efforts to reconcile differences while tending national integrity. The author builds her observations into a model of ''negotiations of identities'' useful to a broad cross-section of social scientists and policy specialists. She extends her analysis to consider how the European Union and transnational networks affect identities still negotiated at the national level. The result is a forward-thinking book that illuminates immigration from a new angle. "[A] fascinating book."---Stanley Hoffmann, Foreign Affairs Magazine "This is an important book that contributes to our understanding of why European states have found it so difficult to fully include migrants into their political communities."---Rainer Baubock, International Migration Review "Negotiating Identities is a useful book for stimulating reflection on when, how, and why immigrants and states interact in ethnically diverse societies. It contains several important insights that should be reckoned with. It also opens up additional lines of inquiry into pressing concerns, and thus may prove to be an important building block for further theoretical and empirical studies of France, Germany, and beyond."---Eric Bleich, Perspectives on Politics "Riva Kastoryano has studied the two largest Muslim immigrant groups in Europe, the North Africans of France and the Turkish population of Germany, in depth and with sophistication. How and whether these groups assimilate to Western civilization is clearly a matter of the greatest urgency and this book is invaluable in giving us some sense of how this process is working."-Nathan Glazer, Professor of Sociology and Education, Harvard University "Few issues are more important than the ways in which cultural identities are politicized. As Riva Kastoryano shows in this excellent book, neither religious nor national communities are stable, and immigration challenges the ability of state to control and integrate identities. This is a crucial issue for Europe and for the world."-Craig Calhoun, New York University, President of the Social Science Research Council "An important and incisive study. . . . American readers will gain from this book a fresh perspective on their own multicultural experience."-George M. Fredrickson, author of Racism and The Comparative Imagination "Riva Kastoryano's subtle account of

David Zaret is Executive Associate Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences and Professor of Sociology at Indiana University. He is the author of The Heavenly Contract: Ideology and Organization in Pre-Revolutionary Puritanism. This innovative work of historical sociology locates the origins of modern democratic discourse in the emergent culture of printing in early modern England. For David Zaret, the key to the rise of a democratic public sphere was the impact of this culture of printing on the secrecy and privilege that shrouded political decisions in seventeenth-century England. Zaret explores the unanticipated liberating effects of printing and printed communication in transforming the world of political secrecy into a culture of open discourse and eventually a politics of public opinion. Contrary to those who locate the origins of the public sphere in the philosophical tracts of the French Enlightenment, Zaret claims that it originated as a practical accomplishment, propelled by economic and technical aspects of printing--in particular heightened commercialism and increased capacity to produce texts. Zaret writes that this accomplishment gained impetus when competing elites--Royalists and Parliamentarians, Presbyterians and Independents--used printed material to reach the masses, whose leaders in turn invoked the authority of public opinion to lobby those elites. Zaret further shows how the earlier traditions of communication in England, from ballads and broadsides to inn and alehouse conversation, merged with the new culture of print to upset prevailing norms of secrecy and privilege. He points as well to the paradox for today's critics, who attribute the impoverishment of the public sphere to the very technological and economic forces that brought about the means of democratic discourse in the first place. "In this thoughtful and innovative work of historical sociology, Zaret challenges the prevailing view that democratic discourse and the politics of public opinion emerged from the culture of the Enlightenment." "Zaret has provocative and challenging things to say, and even those who disagree with his conclusion will find this a powerful work. . . . This book itself is full of telling evidential details, cited without fanfare, that cumulatively show how an unusually perceptive author can use such nuances to fine-tune our larger stories about the past. Both sociologists and historians can read it with immense profit."---Adrian Johns, American Historical Review "Origins of Democratic Culture is an invigorating, well-researched and powerfully argued book."---Andrew Hadfield, Times Literary Supplement "David Zaret's Origins of Democratic Culture is an elegant, lucid, impeccably researched monograph that presents a cogent analysis of how a vibrant public sphere contributes to democratic practice. . . . [It] advances our understanding of how political cultures operate. It marks Zaret as one of the major cultural historical sociologists in contemporary American sociology and will be 'must' reading for scholars of democracy and culture from all social science disciplines as well as for graduate seminars in comparative historical social science."---Mabel Berezin, Social Forces "This is a compelling interdisciplinary study that synthesizes recent historical scholarship on early modern politics and news culture with detailed archival research, and places its findings in a broad sociological perspective that offers a powerful corrective to prevailing conceptions of the origins, nature, and social composition of the early modern public sphere."---Alastair Bellany, Journal of Interdisciplinary History "Historically well informed, lucidly and persuasively written, and making a skillful synthesis of the general and the particular, Zaret's book deserves to be widely read by historians and sociologists alike."---Peter Burke, American Journal of Sociology "A major contribution the the substantive debate about the origins

"Winner of the 2011 Ludwik Fleck Prize, Society for the Social Studies of Science" "Winner of the 2011 Distinguished Scholarly Publication Award, American Sociological Association" "Winner of the 2010 Mary Douglas Prize for Best Book, Sociology of Culture Section of the American Sociological Association" "Honorable Mention for the 2010 Robert K. Merton Book Award for Best Book in the Science, Knowledge and Technology (SKAT) section category by the American Sociological Association" "One of Choice's Outstanding Academic Titles for 2009" "Honorable Mention for the 2010 Barrington Moore Award for Best Book in the Comparative and Historical Sociology Section of the American Sociological Association" Marion Fourcade is associate professor of sociology at the University of California, Berkeley. Economists and Societies is the first book to systematically compare the profession of economics in the United States, Britain, and France, and to explain why economics, far from being a uniform science, differs in important ways among these three countries. Drawing on in-depth interviews with economists, institutional analysis, and a wealth of scholarly evidence, Marion Fourcade traces the history of economics in each country from the late nineteenth century to the present, demonstrating how each political, cultural, and institutional context gave rise to a distinct professional and disciplinary configuration. She argues that because the substance of political life varied from country to country, people's experience and understanding of the economy, and their political and intellectual battles over it, crystallized in different ways--through scientific and mercantile professionalism in the United States, public-minded elitism in Britain, and statist divisions in France. Fourcade moves past old debates about the relationship between culture and institutions in the production of expert knowledge to show that scientific and practical claims over the economy in these three societies arose from different elites with different intellectual orientations, institutional entanglements, and social purposes. Much more than a history of the economics profession, Economists and Societies is a revealing exploration of American, French, and British society and culture as seen through the lens of their respective economic institutions and the distinctive character of their economic experts. "[O]ne of my favorite history of economic thought books, period. It skips textual exegesis and looks at what the economics profession actually did. . . . Definitely recommended.""---Tyler Cowen, Marginal Revolution "Fourcade has produced a remarkable book. . . . Her 52-page bibliography should be evidence enough of the remarkable effort that went into this book."---M. Perelman, Choice "In-depth and well-informed comparative analyses of cross-country differences in the practice and conceptualization of economics are few in number; hence, Fourcade's book is a welcome and valuable addition to the literature. Certainly it is an impressive product for a young scholar."---Bruce E. Kaufman, Comparative Labor Law & Policy Journal "[T]his excellent book is a major contribution to the literatures on the professions, sociology of knowledge, economic and political sociology, and comparative political economy insofar as it offers a penetrating look into the relationship between ideas and institutions."---Andrew Roberts, American Journal of Sociology "Fourcade's detailed argumentation, and her use of a clear and direct language far removed from what economists like to trivialize as 'sociologisms,' makes this work an important one for both economists and historians of economics. Historians of the social sciences, and of science more generally, will find this work to be invaluable in their own attempts to contextualize post-World War II scientific practice. I note, finally, the excellent typography and production values exhibited in this work. Princeton University Press has don

Luc Boltanski is Professor at L'École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, Paris. He is the author of Distant Suffering: Morality, Media and Politics, Le Nouvel Esprit du Capitalisme, and (with Laurent Thévenot) Les Économies de la Grandeur. Laurent Thévenot is Professor at L'École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales. He is the author of L'action au pluriel: Sociologie des régimes d'engagement, coauthor of Les Économies de la Grandeur, and coeditor of Les Objets dans L'Action, Cognition et Information en Société, and (with Michèle Lamont) Rethinking Comparative Cultural Sociology: Repertoires of Evaluation in France and the United States A vital and underappreciated dimension of social interaction is the way individuals justify their actions to others, instinctively drawing on their experience to appeal to principles they hope will command respect. Individuals, however, often misread situations, and many disagreements can be explained by people appealing, knowingly and unknowingly, to different principles. On Justification is the first English translation of Luc Boltanski and Laurent Thévenot's ambitious theoretical examination of these phenomena, a book that has already had a huge impact on French sociology and is likely to have a similar influence in the English-speaking world. In this foundational work of post-Bourdieu sociology, the authors examine a wide range of situations where people justify their actions. The authors argue that justifications fall into six main logics exemplified by six authors: civic (Rousseau), market (Adam Smith), industrial (Saint-Simon), domestic (Bossuet), inspiration (Augustine), and fame (Hobbes). The authors show how these justifications conflict, as people compete to legitimize their views of a situation. On Justification is likely to spark important debates across the social sciences. "Boltanski and Thévenot's On Justification is one of the most important contributions to the field of economic sociology in the past decade. It does not fit neatly into any of the major theoretical perspectives that currently dominate the field-institutionalism, organizational ecology, network analysis, rational choice, or transaction-cost economics. But precisely because it is so original, it has great potential to chart new territory and enliven debates. The book has already had an enormous impact in France, where it is one of the founding documents of the 'economics of conventions' school. It is sure to have a big impact in sociology in the United States and Britain too. I could list at least twenty major sociologists who have asked me when the book will be translated."-David Stark, Columbia University

Cynthia Miller-Idriss is professor of education and sociology at American University. Her books include Blood and Culture: Youth, Right-Wing Extremism, and National Belonging in Contemporary Germany. How extremism is going mainstream in Germany through clothing brands laced with racist and nationalist symbols The past decade has witnessed a steady increase in far right politics, social movements, and extremist violence in Europe. Scholars and policymakers have struggled to understand the causes and dynamics that have made the far right so appealing to so many people-in other words, that have made the extreme more mainstream. In this book, Cynthia Miller-Idriss examines how extremist ideologies have entered mainstream German culture through commercialized products and clothing laced with extremist, anti-Semitic, racist, and nationalist coded symbols and references. Drawing on a unique digital archive of thousands of historical and contemporary images, as well as scores of interviews with young people and their teachers in two German vocational schools with histories of extremist youth presence, Miller-Idriss shows how this commercialization is part of a radical transformation happening today in German far right youth subculture. She describes how these young people have gravitated away from the singular, hard-edged skinhead style in favor of sophisticated and fashionable commercial brands that deploy coded extremist symbols. Virtually indistinguishable in style from other popular clothing, the new brands desensitize far right consumers to extremist ideas and dehumanize victims. Required reading for anyone concerned about the global resurgence of the far right, The Extreme Gone Mainstream reveals how style and aesthetic representation serve as one gateway into extremist scenes and subcultures by helping to strengthen racist and nationalist identification and by acting as conduits of resistance to mainstream society. "This is a necessary book for anyone wanting to better understand the rituals and strategies being used in far-right cultures as they attempt to bring xenophobic, fascistic ideologies to the mainstream."---Louie Dean Valencia-Garcia, EuropeNow "Highly original."---Cas Mudde, FiveBooks "This book comes at a time that could hardly be more important. Miller-Idriss opens up a completely new approach to understanding the processes of violent radicalization through subcultural products. The Extreme Gone Mainstream will surely become a standard work in the study of right-wing extremism."-Daniel Koehler, founder and director of the German Institute on Radicalization and De-Radicalization Studies "Miller-Idriss attacks the burning question of the rise of the far right in Europe from a particularly original angle-the mobilization of everyday consumption by disenfranchised German youth to signal their allegiance with the neo-Nazi movement. The Extreme Gone Mainstream is a brilliant and ambitious contribution to the study of symbolic iconography and youth interpretation of political symbols."-Michèle Lamont, coauthor of Getting Respect: Responding to Stigma and Discrimination in the United States, Brazil, and Israel "A highly original and innovative work. Miller-Idriss has written an extraordinarily rich, well-argued, and compelling book that breaks new ground both in theories of culture and scholarship on the far right. The Extreme Gone Mainstream is a model for future research in the social scientific study of material culture."-Kathleen M. Blee, author of Inside Organized Racism: Women in the Hate Movement "This book is unique in its scope, original in its focus, and magisterial in its execution-a tour de force of research that tells us how the right inserts itself into the fabric of everyday life. Miller-Idriss writes clearly and with verve."-Mabel Berezin, author of Illiberal Politics in Neoliberal Times: Culture, Security, and Populism in the New Europe

An in-depth look at why non-Jewish Poles are trying to bring Jewish culture back to life in Poland today. Since the early 2000s, Poland has experienced a remarkable Jewish revival, largely driven by non-Jewish Poles with a passionate new interest in all things Jewish. Klezmer music, Jewish-style restaurants, kosher vodka, and festivals of Jewish culture have become popular, while new museums, memorials, Jewish studies programs, and Holocaust research centers reflect soul-searching about Polish-Jewish relations before, during, and after the Holocaust. In Resurrecting the Jew, Geneviève Zubrzycki examines this revival and asks what it means to try to bring Jewish culture back to life in a country where 3 million Jews were murdered and where only about 10,000 Jews now live. Drawing on a decade of participant-observation in Jewish and Jewish-related organizations in Poland, a Birthright trip to Israel with young Polish Jews, and more than a hundred interviews with Jewish and non-Jewish Poles engaged in the Jewish revival, Resurrecting the Jew presents an in-depth look at Jewish life in Poland today. The book shows how the revival has been spurred by progressive Poles who want to break the association between Polishness and Catholicism, promote the idea of a multicultural Poland, and resist the Far Right government. The book also raises urgent questions, relevant far beyond Poland, about the limits of performative solidarity and empathetic forms of cultural appropriation.

Andrei S. Markovits is Professor of Politics in the Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures and Adjunct Professor of Sociology at the University of Michigan. He is the author of numerous books, including The German Left: Red, Green and Beyond and The German Predicament: Memory and Power in the New Europe. Steven L. Hellerman is a sports journalist and a doctoral candidate at Claremont University's School of Politics and Economics. Soccer is the world's favorite pastime, a passion for billions around the globe. In the United States, however, the sport is a distant also-ran behind football, baseball, basketball, and hockey. Why is America an exception? And why, despite America's leading role in popular culture, does most of the world ignore American sports in return? Offside is the first book to explain these peculiarities, taking us on a thoughtful and engaging tour of America's sports culture and connecting it with other fundamental American exceptionalisms. In so doing, it offers a comparative analysis of sports cultures in the industrial societies of North America and Europe. The authors argue that when sports culture developed in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, nativism and nationalism were shaping a distinctly American self-image that clashed with the non-American sport of soccer. Baseball and football crowded out the game. Then poor leadership, among other factors, prevented soccer from competing with basketball and hockey as they grew. By the 1920s, the United States was contentedly isolated from what was fast becoming an international obsession. The book compares soccer's American history to that of the major sports that did catch on. It covers recent developments, including the hoopla surrounding the 1994 soccer World Cup in America, the creation of yet another professional soccer league, and American women's global preeminence in the sport. It concludes by considering the impact of soccer's growing popularity as a recreation, and what the future of sports culture in the country might say about U.S. exceptionalism in general. "Warmly recommended to all those who want to understand and appreciate . . . popular culture in the United States."---Roman Horak, Der Standard "The text is well referenced, historically grounded, and offers excellent insight into US soccer and its past, present, and future potential as a major sport. Highly recommended for both the general population and those interested in sports studies and sociology of sport." "This is the first adequate sociocultural history of the sport in the United States. . . . Sports sociologists will look to this book for soccer material and also for the author's fresh conceptualization of sports culture. Sociologists with more general interests in culture and institutional analysis might also find it useful and informative as a case study."---John Wilson, American Journal of Sociology "The vexing question of why soccer struggles to establish itself firmly on the American sports landscape is brilliantly and persuasively answered in this groundbreaking work. Sociology scholars and soccer aficionados alike should be intrigued by this painstakingly comprehensive analysis, made especially accessible by the lively and enthusiastic style of the authors. It is remarkable as a happy marriage of the scholar's methods with the fan's passion for the world's game. A must read for lovers and observers of the game in America and in the totally converted soccer community occupying the rest of our planet."-Seamus Malin, Soccer Commentator, ESPN and ABC

Alford A. Young, Jr., is Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology and in the Center for Afroamerican and African Studies at the University of Michigan. While we hear much about the "culture of poverty" that keeps poor black men poor, we know little about how such men understand their social position and relationship to the American dream. Moving beyond stereotypes, this book examines how twenty-six poverty-stricken African American men from Chicago view their prospects for getting ahead. It documents their definitions of good jobs and the good life--and their beliefs about whether and how these can be attained. In its pages, we meet men who think seriously about work, family, and community and whose differing experiences shape their views of their social world. Based on intensive interviews, the book reveals how these men have experienced varying degrees of exposure to more-privileged Americans--differences that ground their understandings of how racism and socioeconomic inequality determine their life chances. The poorest and most socially isolated are, perhaps surprisingly, most likely to believe that individuals can improve their own lot. By contrast, men who regularly leave their neighborhood tend to have a wider range of opportunities but also have met with more racism, hostility, and institutional obstacles--making them less likely to believe in the American Dream. Demonstrating how these men interpret their social world, this book seeks to de-pathologize them without ignoring their experiences with chronic unemployment, prison, and substance abuse. It shows how the men draw upon such experiences as they make meaning of the complex circumstances in which they strive to succeed. "This is a book that has stayed with me. It profoundly enriches the reader's understanding of the world inhabited by marginalized black men. Al Young succeeds in moving well beyond common assumptions about the underclass and the often-decried 'culture of poverty' argument to discover how young poor black men understand their social position, the determinants of social mobility (and immobility), and their relationship with the American dream."-Michèle Lamont, Harvard University, author of The Dignity of Working Men "There are few studies written with such power of voice and ethnographic and theoretical verisimilitude. Young has captured the essence of these men. His elegant and erudite book will add immeasurably to the debate on urban poverty, race, representation, and the ethnography of so-called hard-to-reach populations."-Terry Williams, The New School

Mitchell L. Stevens is Associate Professor of Sociology at Hamilton College. More than one million American children are schooled by their parents. As their ranks grow, home schoolers are making headlines by winning national spelling bees and excelling at elite universities. The few studies conducted suggest that homeschooled children are academically successful and remarkably well socialized. Yet we still know little about this alternative to one of society's most fundamental institutions. Beyond a vague notion of children reading around the kitchen table, we don't know what home schooling looks like from the inside. Sociologist Mitchell Stevens goes behind the scenes of the homeschool movement and into the homes and meetings of home schoolers. What he finds are two very different kinds of home education--one rooted in the liberal alternative school movement of the 1960s and 1970s and one stemming from the Christian day school movement of the same era. Stevens explains how this dual history shapes the meaning and practice of home schooling today. In the process, he introduces us to an unlikely mix of parents (including fundamentalist Protestants, pagans, naturalists, and educational radicals) and notes the core values on which they agree: the sanctity of childhood and the primacy of family in the face of a highly competitive, bureaucratized society. Kingdom of Children aptly places home schoolers within longer traditions of American social activism. It reveals that home schooling is not a random collection of individuals but an elaborate social movement with its own celebrities, networks, and characteristic lifeways. Stevens shows how home schoolers have built their philosophical and religious convictions into the practical structure of the cause, and documents the political consequences of their success at doing so. Ultimately, the history of home schooling serves as a parable about the organizational strategies of the progressive left and the religious right since the 1960s.Kingdom of Children shows what happens when progressive ideals meet conventional politics, demonstrates the extraordinary political capacity of conservative Protestantism, and explains the subtle ways in which cultural sensibility shapes social movement outcomes more generally. "Stevens spent ten years interviewing home-schooling families, watching them teach, pitching tents at their summer camps, hanging out at their conferences, and reading their publications. He has written a careful, intelligent book"---Margaret Talbot, Atlantic Monthly "In the press and on television, home-schoolers are portrayed mainly as white Americans of strong Christian background, most of whom are right-wing fundamentalists. Stevens's study confirms this generic picture, yet his study helps us go beyond it. . . [T]he intellectual origins of home-schooling are surprisingly nonsectarian."---Howard Gardner, New York Review of Books "Kingdom of Children is about the grown-ups behind the not-so peaceful movement. . . . As Stevens makes clear, those drawn to home schooling tend to be a stronger-willed, contentious lot, and removing them from the public school system doesn't make them less so."---Rebecca Jones, American School Board Journal "For anyone interested in home schooling, this is the book to read." "This book is extremely well written and thought provoking.... Kingdom of Children will no doubt play an important role in the much-needed sociological dialogue surrounding home schooling."---Ed Collom, American Journal of Sociology "This is a definitive study. For anyone interested in home schooling, this is the book to read. It musters an impressive array of evidence to explain why parents decide to home school their children, and it carefully considers the consequences of home schooling for these children. In the process, the book dispels many of the criticisms that have emerged around the homeschooling movement. Read sympathetically, the book also poses

Amy J. Binder is professor of sociology at the University of California, San Diego. She is the author of Contentious Curricula: Afrocentrism and Creationism in American Public Schools (Princeton). Kate Wood is an independent scholar. How divergent campus cultures affect conservative college students Conservative pundits allege that the pervasive liberalism of America's colleges and universities has detrimental effects on undergraduates, most particularly right-leaning ones. Yet not enough attention has actually been paid to young conservatives to test these claims-until now. In Becoming Right, Amy Binder and Kate Wood carefully explore who conservative students are, and how their beliefs and political activism relate to their university experiences. Rich in interviews and insight, Becoming Right illustrates that the diverse conservative movement evolving among today's college students holds important implications for the direction of American politics. "[G]roundbreaking." "A deep dive into the under-examined world of campus conservatives, Amy J. Binder and Kate Wood's book can feel like an anthropological account of a disappearing tribe. . . . Binder and Wood's findings add an important dimension to our understanding of the right. The last two decades have seen historians and political scientists extensively study the rise of conservatism. A trenchant addition to that literature, Becoming Right offers a thick description of the state of college conservatism and explains the factors that shape the student--and, it follows, the citizen. The authors' interrogations leave the promise of a better politics hanging in the air: if Binder and Wood are accurate in their depictions, campus cultures that seek to build a stronger sense of community and ideological tolerance could be one key to a more civil national discourse. The book also enriches our understanding of the right's mentality. . . . Becoming Right yields many valuable insights about the possible future of conservatism. But the vision this illuminating book most vividly conjures is the depressing present of conservatism: ugly, unyielding, and provocative to the point of nihilism."---Elbert Ventura, New Republic "In Becoming Right, Amy Binder and Kate Wood provide an in-depth and informative examination of who the conservatives are, the impact of campus culture on the formation of their identities and activist styles, and the implications for the direction of U.S. politics."---Glenn Altschuler, Boston Globe "[I]f the intellectual interest of this book is the demonstration of how much influence the kind of university has on its students' political culture, a pleasure for the reader is the revelation of the sheer good nature of so many of the study's interviewees; they come across as pretty muddled on many issues but astonishingly rarely as nasty."---Alan Ryan, Times Higher Education "[A] nice discussion of the larger field of conservative politics and how that affects campus protest. Overall, a solid book and one that's essential to studies of campus politics."---Fabio Rojas, Orgtheory.net "Their book [is an] excellent, engaging, well written, and carefully researched study of the ways culture works in and through schools."---Lisa M. Stulberg, Contexts "In their important contribution to the scholarship on modern American conservative movement politics, Binder and Wood analyze the varying experiences of conservative student activists on university campuses. The book succeeds on multiple levels." "[T]he book is masterfully constructed and extensive in its articulation of the styles of young conservatives and how these diverge into political classes that may share many political beliefs but nevertheless seem worlds apart."---Jeremy Freese, American Journal of Sociology "[T]his study offers as . . . insight . . . and permits . . . questions to reemerge [that] make this book an important and exciting contribution."---Gregory Smulewicz-Zucker, Critical Sociology "Becoming

Gary Alan Fine is Professor of Sociology at Northwestern University. He is the author of Morel Tales: The Culture of Mushrooming, Kitchens: The Culture of Restaurant Work, and With the Boys: Little League Baseball and Preadolescent Culture. Learning to argue and persuade in a highly competitive environment is only one aspect of life on a high-school debate team. Teenage debaters also participate in a distinct cultural world--complete with its own jargon and status system--in which they must negotiate complicated relationships with teammates, competitors, coaches, and parents as well as classmates outside the debating circuit. In Gifted Tongues, Gary Alan Fine offers a rich description of this world as a testing ground for both intellectual and emotional development, while seeking to understand adolescents as social actors. Considering the benefits and drawbacks of the debating experience, he also recommends ways of reshaping programs so that more high schools can use them to boost academic performance and foster specific skills in citizenship. Fine analyzes the training of debaters in rapid-fire speech, rules of logical argumentation, and the strategic use of evidence, and how this training instills the core values of such American institutions as law and politics. Debates, however, sometimes veer quickly from fine displays of logic to acts of immaturity--a reflection of the tensions experienced by young people learning to think as adults. Fine contributes to our understanding of teenage years by encouraging us not to view them as a distinct stage of development but rather a time in which young people draw from a toolkit of both childlike and adult behaviors. A well-designed debate program, he concludes, nurtures the intellect while providing a setting in which teens learn to make better behavioral choices, ones that will shape relationships in their personal, professional, and civic lives. "A well documented portrait of high school debate, exploring its culture and offering theoretical insight about argumentation and adolescence. . . . The clarity, readability, and insight of Fine's writing make the book important and accessible for those who work with adolescents, whether in activities such as debate in a classroom, or in a community setting."---Erik W. Larson, Contemporary Sociology "Fine very accurately pinpoints the specific task the high school debates take on within the whole range of discourse, but never lets its cultural aspects move far out of sight. It is this combination of keen observations, interpretation and cultural reflection that makes the book a very useful piece of information for anyone interested in American adolescent culture."---Anouk van Aanholt, American Studies International "An illuminating and considered look into the world of competitive high school policy debate that reveal--all at once--the good, the bad, the peculiar, the ugly, and the truly remarkable about high school debate."---Timothy M. O'Donnell, Argumentation and Advocacy "Gifted Tongues is a judicious, clear, and entertaining read. Fine's story is well prepared with rich anecdotes and tidbits from a youthfully passionate community with intellectual resources beyond their years. . . . Fine exposes the world of high school policy debate with an outsider's fascination and an insider's precision."---Eli Brennan, Controversia "Gifted Tongues offers a subtle, nuanced examination of a previously unstudied social world. It is well written, persuasively argued, and absolutely fascinating. This book will be of value to social psychologists, sociologists of culture, and to readers concerned about adolescence and education. There are also many debate coaches and legions of former debaters who, like myself, will find it interesting to discover what has happened to high school debate."-Joel Best, University of Delaware "Alan Fine describes in rich, sociological detail the 'adolescent social world' of the high-school debater in the United

"Winner of a 2014 Phi Kappa Phi Faculty Recognition Award" Nina Eliasoph is associate professor of sociology at the University of Southern California. She is the author of Avoiding Politics. An inside look at how community service organizations really work Volunteering improves inner character, builds community, cures poverty, and prevents crime. We've all heard this kind of empowerment talk from nonprofit and government-sponsored civic programs. But what do these programs really accomplish? In Making Volunteers, Nina Eliasoph offers an in-depth, humorous, wrenching, and at times uplifting look inside youth and adult civic programs. She reveals an urgent need for policy reforms in order to improve these organizations and shows that while volunteers learn important lessons, they are not always the lessons that empowerment programs aim to teach. With short-term funding and a dizzy mix of mandates from multiple sponsors, community programs develop a complex web of intimacy, governance, and civic life. Eliasoph describes the at-risk youth served by such programs, the college-bound volunteers who hope to feel selfless inspiration and plump up their resumés, and what happens when the two groups are expected to bond instantly through short-term projects. She looks at adult "plug-in" volunteers who, working in after-school programs and limited by time, hope to become like beloved aunties to youth. Eliasoph indicates that adult volunteers can provide grassroots support but they can also undermine the family-like warmth created by paid organizers. Exploring contradictions between the democratic rhetoric of empowerment programs and the bureaucratic hurdles that volunteers learn to navigate, the book demonstrates that empowerment projects work best with less precarious funding, more careful planning, and mandatory training, reflection, and long-term commitments from volunteers. Based on participant research inside civic and community organizations, Making Volunteers illustrates what these programs can and cannot achieve, and how to make them more effective. "Sociologist Eliasoph reports on her participant-as-observer study focusing on the use of volunteers in empowerment programs for disadvantaged youth. The work is a critical analysis of government and privately funded empowerment programs. . . . Eliasoph writes well, and the text is within the reach of most adult readers." "The book is written to appeal to a general audience but should be of particular interest to many organizational scholars and practitioners. It is especially relevant to those studying or leading organizations that seek to blend multiple missions, to integrate participants across racial, ethnic, or class boundaries, or to empower their participants in some way. For these readers, the book provides many valuable interpretive nuggets, as well as exhibiting a keen eye for detecting empty talk and gesture."---Tim Bartley, Administrative Science Quarterly "I find a lot to recommend in Making Volunteers. The writing is engaging, and Eliasoph makes several valuable contributions to the study of non-profits, organizations, volunteering, and civic culture. Beyond scholars in these and related areas, faculty whose courses include service learning projects, as well as funders, paid organizers, and potential volunteers for Empowerment Programs would be well served to read Making Volunteers and heed its lessons."---Jennifer L. Glanville, Political Science Quarterly "Ethnographic research on volunteering is thin on the ground. This is surprising considering that the nature of charitable work, which is the lifeblood of so many communities, has proved so elusive to pin down in official statistics. Nina Eliasoph's new book, Making Volunteers: Civic Life after Welfare's End, therefore, is an important addition to the canon of literature which explains how people live the experience of voluntary action."---Jon Dean, Voluntas "Eliasoph . . . concludes the book with an excellent

"Winner of the 2016 Distinguished Scholarly Publication Award, Consumers and Consumption Section of the American Sociological Association" "Winner of the 2017 Mary Douglas Prize for Best Book, Sociology of Culture Section of the American Sociological Association" "Winner of a 2017 Gourmand World Cookbook Award, National Winner in "Culinary History"" Michaela DeSoucey is assistant professor of sociology at North Carolina State University. An inside look at the complex and controversial debates surrounding foie gras Who cares about foie gras? As it turns out, many do. In the last decade, this French delicacy-the fattened liver of ducks or geese that have been force-fed through a tube-has been at the center of contentious battles between animal rights activists, artisanal farmers, industry groups, politicians, chefs, and foodies. In Contested Tastes, Michaela DeSoucey takes us to farms, restaurants, protests, and political hearings in both the United States and France to reveal why people care so passionately about foie gras––and why we should care too. Bringing together fieldwork, interviews, and materials from archives and the media on both sides of the Atlantic, DeSoucey offers a compelling look at the moral arguments and provocative actions of pro- and anti-foie gras forces. She combines personal stories with fair-minded analysis of the social contexts within which foie gras is loved and loathed. From the barns of rural southwest France and the headquarters of the European Union in Brussels, to exclusive New York City kitchens and the government offices of Chicago, DeSoucey demonstrates that the debates over foie gras involve heated and controversial politics. Her rich and nuanced account draws our attention to the cultural dynamics of markets, the multivocal nature of "gastropolitics," and the complexities of what it means to identify as a "moral" eater in today's food world. Investigating the causes and consequences of the foie gras wars, Contested Tastes illuminates the social significance of food and taste in the twenty-first century. "In Contested Tastes, we find not just detailed case studies, but an overview of contemporary food politics which challenges assertions about what we have on our plates and why it matters."---George Berridge, Times Literary Supplement "The analysis is as rich as the food that it describes. . . . An illuminating account. . . . Contested Tastes stands not only as one of the best accounts of food politics but also as an example of how to blend together multiple sources of data into a compelling analysis of how identities are made and moral arguments are fought."---Stefan Bargheer, American Journal of Sociology "An illuminating study of the moral and political dynamics of taste. . . . This multi-faceted, detailed comparative study of the discourses surrounding foie gras production, sale, and consumption in two national contexts provides a rich analysis of how culture, politics, and commerce interact."---Gillian Gualtieri, European Journal of Sociology "Contested Tastes takes a deep dive into the gastropolitics of foie gras. Whether or not you approve of eating it, you will want to read this riveting case study of how fights among stakeholders-producers and eaters of fatty duck liver, of course, but also animal welfare advocates, chefs, and government officials-reflect larger issues of national identity, class, economic markets, and who decides what we have for dinner."-Marion Nestle, author of Soda Politics: Taking on Big Soda (and Winning) "Michaela DeSoucey may know more than anyone on the planet does not just about the traditional French delicacy foie gras, but also about the sociological and political forces that shape how we interact with food. Contested Tastes is a fascinating read with implications that go far beyond the ethics of fat duck livers."-Mark Caro, author of The Foie Gras Wars: How a 5,000-Year-Old Delicacy Inspired the World's Fiercest Food Fight "

"One of Foreign Affairs Best of Books 2017 – Africa / Malawi" "Winner of the 2018 Best Scholarly Book Award, Global and Transnational Section of the American Sociological Association" "Honorable Mention for the 2018 Outstanding Published Book Award, Altruism, Morality and Social Solidarity Section of the American Sociological Association" "Finalist for the 2018 Melville J. Herskovits Prize, African Studies Association" Ann Swidler is professor of sociology at the University of California, Berkeley. She is the author of Organization Without Authority and Talk of Love, and the coauthor of Habits of the Heart and Inequality by Design. Susan Cotts Watkins is professor emerita of sociology at the University of Pennsylvania and a Visiting Scholar at UCLA. She is the author of From Provinces into Nations and the coeditor of The Decline of Fertility in Europe. The complex relationships between altruists, beneficiaries, and brokers in the global effort to fight AIDS in Africa In the wake of the AIDS pandemic, legions of organizations and compassionate individuals descended on Africa from faraway places to offer their help and save lives. A Fraught Embrace shows how the dreams of these altruists became entangled with complex institutional and human relationships. Ann Swidler and Susan Cotts Watkins vividly describe the often mismatched expectations and fantasies of those who seek to help, of the villagers who desperately seek help, and of the brokers on whom both Western altruists and impoverished villagers must rely. Based on years of fieldwork in the heavily AIDS-affected country of Malawi, this powerful book digs into the sprawling AIDS enterprise and unravels the paradoxes of AIDS policy and practice. All who want to do good-from idealistic volunteers to world-weary development professionals-depend on brokers as guides, fixers, and cultural translators. These irreplaceable but frequently unseen local middlemen are the human connection between altruists' dreams and the realities of global philanthropy. The mutual misunderstandings among donors, brokers, and villagers-each with their own desires and moral imaginations-create all the drama of a romance: longing, exhilaration, disappointment, heartache, and sometimes an enduring connection. Personal stories, public scandals, and intersecting, sometimes clashing fantasies bring the lofty intentions of AIDS altruism firmly down to earth. Swidler and Watkins ultimately argue that altruists could accomplish more good, not by seeking to transform African lives but by helping Africans achieve their own goals. A Fraught Embrace unveils the tangled relations of those involved in the collective struggle to contain an epidemic. "Few books can claim to address a social problem involving billions of dollars with millions of lives hanging in the balance, but Swidler and Watkins's A Fraught Embrace does just that. Dissecting the role of foreign altruists and local brokers in aid efforts to stem the HIV/AIDS epidemic in sub-Saharan Africa generally, and Malawi more specifically, this book makes a compelling sociological contribution to the study of foreign aid-a field of research more often reserved for economists and international development studies scholars."---Liam Swiss, American Journal of Sociology "A concise, insightful work, and its contribution extends well beyond its immediate context of AIDS altruism in Malawi."---Brad Crofford, African Studies Quarterly "A Fraught Embrace is both an important piece of transnational public sociology and one of the most important works in cultural sociology to have been published in a long while."---Iddo Tavory, European Journal of Sociology "A Fraught Embrace presents an extraordinarily informative depiction of the links, intermediaries, and inconsistencies between the international development system and local Malawian villages, with the AIDS industry as the focal example. This book will greatly interest anyone concerned with the

Paul Lichterman is professor of sociology and religion at the University of Southern California. He is author of the award-winning books Elusive Togetherness (Princeton) and The Search for Political Community, and the coeditor of The Civic Life of American Religion. The ways that social advocates organize to fight unaffordable housing and homelessness in Los Angeles, illuminated by a new conceptual framework for studying collective action How Civic Action Works renews the tradition of inquiry into collective, social problem solving. Paul Lichterman follows grassroots activists, nonprofit organization staff, and community service volunteers in three coalitions and twelve organizations in Los Angeles as they campaign for affordable housing, develop new housing, or address homelessness. Lichterman shows that to understand how social advocates build their campaigns, craft claims, and choose goals, we need to move beyond well-established thinking about what is strategic. Lichterman presents a pragmatist-inspired sociological framework that illuminates core tasks of social problem solving, both contentious and noncontentious, by grassroots and professional advocates alike. He reveals that advocates' distinct styles of collective action produce different understandings of what is strategic, and generate different dilemmas for advocates because each style accommodates varying social and institutional pressures. We see, too, how patterns of interaction create a cultural filter that welcomes some claims about housing problems while subordinating or delegitimating others. These cultural patterns help solve conceptual and practical puzzles, such as why coalitions fragment when members agree on many things, and what makes advocacy campaigns separate housing from homelessness or affordability from environmental sustainability. Lichterman concludes by turning this action-centered framework toward improving dialogue between social advocates and researchers. Using extensive ethnography enriched by archival evidence, How Civic Action Works explains how advocates meet the relational and rhetorical challenges of collective action. "Few topics are as central to sociological theorizing as collective problem solving and few policy problems are as pressing as fair and affordable housing. In addressing these important issues, Paul Lichterman does not disappoint. How Civic Action Works is a masterfully crafted, intensively researched, and impressively argued ethnographic study, deeply grounded in practice theory that forces its readers to reconsider what they thought they knew about claims making and relationship building in social advocacy. I heartily recommend it."-Robert Wuthnow, Princeton University "In this impressive original study, Paul Lichterman shows how styles of action and discursive fields shape coalitions, and moral and spatial boundaries, in campaigns for affordable housing. By illuminating trade-offs and dilemmas in collective mobilization, this deeply theoretical book will profoundly impact how urban and cultural sociologists think about strategy, social movements, and advocacy. A must-read!"-Michèle Lamont, past president of the American Sociological Association "Using his exceptional fieldwork skills to take us inside the world of housing advocates in Los Angeles, Paul Lichterman examines the cultural constraints on claims making and relationship building. He makes a major theoretical contribution in developing the concept of civic action to broaden our understanding of social movements, nonprofit organizations, and volunteering."-Suzanne Staggenborg, University of Pittsburgh "How Civic Action Works is a much-anticipated book from an author who, in the last two decades, has come up with some of the most careful and innovative thinking on social movements. Making complex issues easily digestible, this exquisitely written, well-cooked, and super-solid piece of scholarship will be admired and referred to, and have a

"Co-Winner of the 2012 Distinguished Scholarly Publication Award, American Sociological Association" "Honorable Mention for the 2010 Mary Douglas Prize for Best Book in the Sociology of Culture Section category, American Sociological Association" Chandra Mukerji is professor of communication and science studies at the University of California, San Diego. She is the author of Territorial Ambitions and the Gardens of Versailles, A Fragile Power: Scientists and the State (Princeton), and From Graven Images: Patterns of Modern Materialism. The Canal du Midi, which threads through southwestern France and links the Atlantic to the Mediterranean, was an astonishing feat of seventeenth-century engineering--in fact, it was technically impossible according to the standards of its day. Impossible Engineering takes an insightful and entertaining look at the mystery of its success as well as the canal's surprising political significance. The waterway was a marvel that connected modern state power to human control of nature just as surely as it linked the ocean to the sea. The Canal du Midi is typically characterized as the achievement of Pierre-Paul Riquet, a tax farmer and entrepreneur for the canal. Yet Chandra Mukerji argues that it was a product of collective intelligence, depending on peasant women and artisans--unrecognized heirs to Roman traditions of engineering--who came to labor on the waterway in collaboration with military and academic supervisors. Ironically, while Louis XIV and his treasury minister Jean-Baptiste Colbert used propaganda to present France as a new Rome, the Canal du Midi was being constructed with unrecognized classical methods. Still, the result was politically potent. As Mukerji shows, the project took land and power from local nobles, using water itself as a silent agent of the state to disrupt traditions of local life that had served regional elites. Impossible Engineering opens a surprising window into the world of seventeenth-century France and illuminates a singular work of engineering undertaken to empower the state through technical conquest of nature. "[T]his is a scintillating blend of cultural, political, and technological history." "Mukerji opens a new chapter in the history of the Canal du Midi, aiming to deepen understanding of its design and construction, and also of the related social and gender patterns. Furthermore, this important book also both stresses the concept of distributed knowledge/collective intelligence, and provides a deeper understanding of the impersonal power of structures. Mukeji demonstrates the necessity to pursue studies such as this with an open mind and a critical attitude."---Michel Cotte, Reviews in History "Impossible Engineering is an insightful meditation on the nature of stewardship, the sociology of knowledge, and the role of accountability in seventeenth-century France, and an extraordinary proof of how rich and challenging the history of material constructions can be."---Sophus A. Reinert, Economic History Review "Mukerji's analysis of the building of the canal is a tour de force of both historical and sociological research. Based on extensive and imaginative archival research and also on astute observation of the built landscape, it is written in vigorous prose and illustrated by the author's beautiful and informative photographs. It ranks as a significant and highly original contribution to historical and cultural sociology."---William H. Sewell, Jr., American Journal of Sociology "Chandra Mukerji crosses intellectual and disciplinary boundaries with incredible ease, mobilizing a vast array of scholarship to tackle historical cases in a new way."---Frederic Graber, Technology and Culture "Impossible Engineering is a masterful work. Mukerji gives us a convincing, original explanation of the baffling technological feat of the construction of the Canal du Midi. She elegantly combines science and technology studies, cultural history, cognitive science, and

Mitchell L. Stevens is associate professor of education at Stanford University. Cynthia Miller-Idriss is associate professor of education and sociology at American University. Seteney Shami is a program director at the Social Science Research Council and founding director of the Arab Council for the Social Sciences. An in-depth look at why American universities continue to favor U.S.-focused social science research despite efforts to make scholarship more cosmopolitan U.S. research universities have long endeavored to be cosmopolitan places, yet the disciplines of economics, political science, and sociology have remained stubbornly parochial. Despite decades of government and philanthropic investment in international scholarship, the most prestigious academic departments still favor research and expertise on the United States. Why? Seeing the World answers this question by examining university research centers that focus on the Middle East and related regional area studies. Drawing on candid interviews with scores of top scholars and university leaders to understand how international inquiry is perceived and valued inside the academy, Seeing the World explains how intense competition for tenure-line appointments encourages faculty to pursue "American" projects that are most likely to garner professional advancement. At the same time, constrained by tight budgets at home, university leaders eagerly court patrons and clients worldwide but have a hard time getting departmental faculty to join the program. Together these dynamics shape how scholarship about the rest of the world evolves. At once a work-and-occupations study of scholarly disciplines, an essay on the formal organization of knowledge, and an inquiry into the fate of area studies, Seeing the World is a must-read for anyone who cares about the future of knowledge in a global era. "Seeing the World addresses an interesting and weighty question: Why are the social sciences so poorly represented in area studies? The authors and their collaborators conducted and analyzed a treasure trove of interviews with leading academics in area studies, particularly Middle East studies, and the book provides both empirical and theoretical advances."-Jerry A. Jacobs, University of Pennsylvania "This is a vital book. The debate about the role of universities in global understanding starts here. This short book is full of insights about how the world has shaped American universities and how universities have shaped what we think about the world."-Jeremy Adelman, Princeton University "With extensive interviews and other data, Seeing the World explains critical variations in understanding area studies and the mechanisms that enable their interdisciplinary reproduction in leading US universities. This book should not only clarify thinking about the international missions of US universities, but also improve how their globalizing knowledge networks function in practice."-Michael D. Kennedy, Brown University "Seeing the World combines impressive ambition and empirical depth with a powerful comparative approach to make a significant contribution to our understanding of area studies."-Jason Owen-Smith, University of Michigan

"Honorable Mention for the 2016 Robert E. Park Award, Community and Urban Sociology Section of the American Sociological Association" "Selected for the 2015 Over the Rainbow Project book list, American Library Association" Amin Ghaziani is associate professor of sociology at the University of British Columbia. He is the author of The Dividends of Dissent: How Conflict and Culture Work in Lesbian and Gay Marches on Washington. An in-depth look at America's changing gay neighborhoods Gay neighborhoods, like the legendary Castro District in San Francisco and New York's Greenwich Village, have long provided sexual minorities with safe havens in an often unsafe world. But as our society increasingly accepts gays and lesbians into the mainstream, are "gayborhoods" destined to disappear? Amin Ghaziani provides an incisive look at the origins of these unique cultural enclaves, the reasons why they are changing today, and their prospects for the future. Drawing on a wealth of evidence-including census data, opinion polls, hundreds of newspaper reports from across the United States, and more than one hundred original interviews with residents in Chicago, one of the most paradigmatic cities in America-There Goes the Gayborhood? argues that political gains and societal acceptance are allowing gays and lesbians to imagine expansive possibilities for a life beyond the gayborhood. The dawn of a new post-gay era is altering the character and composition of existing enclaves across the country, but the spirit of integration can coexist alongside the celebration of differences in subtle and sometimes surprising ways. Exploring the intimate relationship between sexuality and the city, this cutting-edge book reveals how gayborhoods, like the cities that surround them, are organic and continually evolving places. Gayborhoods have nurtured sexual minorities throughout the twentieth century and, despite the unstoppable forces of flux, will remain resonant and revelatory features of urban life. "[T]he rise of post-gay culture has introduced a new turmoil in gay neighborhoods: more gay men and women are leaving for suburbs and smaller cities, and more straight people are moving in. . . . Ghaziani doesn't think that this has wiped gayborhoods off the map--hence the question mark in his book's title. . . . Ghaziani's most interesting findings document what is happening beyond the gayborhood, in the new places to which gay men and women are relocating. . . . It's the sort of contradiction that Ghaziani argues lies at the heart of contemporary gay life."---Elizabeth Greenspan, New Yorker "Ghaziani offers passionate and refreshing insights on a politically charged issue. Taking the 'gayborhood' as his subject, Ghaziani analyzes the phenomenon of 'gay ghettos' using rich statistical data, historical analysis, a comprehensive review of news reports, and in-depth interviews with gays and heterosexuals. The result is a panoramic view of both the dimensions and cultural evolution of the gay neighborhood, and a response to the titular question: are gayborhoods and their once rich cultural vibrancy in decline? Ghaziani's answers refuse easy scapegoats or facile conclusions, and suggest that the cultural evolution of gayborhoods need not entail their demise. He brings much needed nuance to heated debates about the role of gay neighborhoods in wider patterns of gentrification. . . . The findings are not to be missed." "In an attempt to understand a contemporary, hot-button issue facing iconic gay neighborhoods in flux, Ghaziani mines the roots of 'gayborhoods' to understand where and why they began and the challenges they face. As homosexuality gains wider societal acceptance, are the 'gay ghettos,' once considered bastions of organized solidarity, sexual freedom, and safety from anti-gay bigotry and violence, feeling the pinch? In a book rich with demographical statistics of same-sex-couple households, useful charts and personal interviews, Ghaziani d

"Winner of the 2016 Outstanding Published Book Award, Altruism, Morality and Social Solidarity Section of the American Sociological Association" "One of Choice's Outstanding Academic Titles for 2015" Justin Farrell is assistant professor of sociology in the School of Forestry and Environmental Studies at Yale University. Yellowstone holds a special place in America's heart. As the world's first national park, it is globally recognized as the crown jewel of modern environmental preservation. But the park and its surrounding regions have recently become a lightning rod for environmental conflict, plagued by intense and intractable political struggles among the federal government, National Park Service, environmentalists, industry, local residents, and elected officials. The Battle for Yellowstone asks why it is that, with the flood of expert scientific, economic, and legal efforts to resolve disagreements over Yellowstone, there is no improvement? Why do even seemingly minor issues erupt into impassioned disputes? What can Yellowstone teach us about the worsening environmental conflicts worldwide? Justin Farrell argues that the battle for Yellowstone has deep moral, cultural, and spiritual roots that until now have been obscured by the supposedly rational and technical nature of the conflict. Tracing in unprecedented detail the moral causes and consequences of large-scale social change in the American West, he describes how a "new-west" social order has emerged that has devalued traditional American beliefs about manifest destiny and rugged individualism, and how morality and spirituality have influenced the most polarizing and techno-centric conflicts in Yellowstone's history. This groundbreaking book shows how the unprecedented conflict over Yellowstone is not all about science, law, or economic interests, but more surprisingly, is about cultural upheaval and the construction of new moral and spiritual boundaries in the American West. "The most original political book of early 2015 is not formally about politics at all. Instead The Battle for Yellowstone by Justin Farrell, a young scholar at Yale University, ponders venomous rows that have shaken Yellowstone National Park in recent decades, and why they are so intractable." "In a refreshingly honest and balanced treatment, Farrell (sociology, Yale Univ.) addresses the spiritual elephant in the environmental room: the most perplexing environmental questions, the answers to which 'are only possible and made meaningful in the context of larger moral orders and spiritual narratives that shared human cultures are built upon.' With great insight and careful analysis, he examines the various reasons deep moral and spiritual meanings are often ignored, muted, and misunderstood. His scholarly diagnosis is well documented and thoroughly researched." "Written in a highly accessiblemanner and will be of interest to many, including environmental sociologists, sociologists of culture and cognition, and sociologists of religion. . . . This book offers a rich analysis of the irascible conflicts over the human/nature relationship in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem and the moral and cultural embeddedness of scientific and economic discourse."---Rebecca R. Scott, American Journal of Sociology "The book rests on awe-inspiring research. . . . A deeply informed and balanced discussion emerges. . . . An engaging narrative and insightful, provocative analysis. The book deserves and will reward a wide audience, but those interested in environmental, western, and twentieth-century U.S. topics will find it particularly useful."---Todd M. Kerstetter, Journal of American History "Farrell presents an original and compelling view of what constitutes the relevant aspects of a moral framework for understanding environmental conflicts. The scholarship is impressive."-Robert Wuthnow, author of Rough Country: How Texas Became America's Most Powerful Bible-Belt State "Building his case on one of the mo

"Co-Winner of the 2016 Viviana Zelizer Award for Best Book, Economic Sociology Section of the American Sociological Association" "Co-Winner of the 2015 Outstanding Published Book Award, Altruism, Morality and Social Solidarity Section of the American Sociological Association" "Honorable Mention for the 2015 Mary Douglas Prize for Best Book, Sociology of Culture Section of the American Sociological Association" "Co-Winner of the 2018 Theory Prize, Theory Section of the American Sociological Association" Gabriel Abend is assistant professor of sociology at New York University. In recent years, many disciplines have become interested in the scientific study of morality. However, a conceptual framework for this work is still lacking. In The Moral Background, Gabriel Abend develops just such a framework and uses it to investigate the history of business ethics in the United States from the 1850s to the 1930s. According to Abend, morality consists of three levels: moral and immoral behavior, or the behavioral level; moral understandings and norms, or the normative level; and the moral background, which includes what moral concepts exist in a society, what moral methods can be used, what reasons can be given, and what objects can be morally evaluated at all. This background underlies the behavioral and normative levels; it supports, facilitates, and enables them. Through this perspective, Abend historically examines the work of numerous business ethicists and organizations-such as Protestant ministers, business associations, and business schools-and identifies two types of moral background. "Standards of Practice" is characterized by its scientific worldview, moral relativism, and emphasis on individuals' actions and decisions. The "Christian Merchant" type is characterized by its Christian worldview, moral objectivism, and conception of a person's life as a unity. The Moral Background offers both an original account of the history of business ethics and a novel framework for understanding and investigating morality in general. "The most incisive and theoretically sophisticated entry into the 'new sociology of morality' movement that has consolidated in recent years."---Omar Lizardo, Contemporary Sociology "The Moral Background is an ambitious, deeply researched, and engaging book. . . . Abend's account is both thorough and broad, and the erudition he displays is astounding. . . . [A] masterful book."---Simone Polillo, Social Forces "Abend combines history, philosophy, and social science to suggest a comprehensive base for understanding moral behavior. While the book's focus is on business ethics, the insights presented have many applications." "[A] stimulating book, essential to understand the place of the business world . . . in the moral landscape of America today, but also . . . to grasp the contemporary trends in corporate social responsibility."---Michel Anteby, Sociologie du Travail "This is an enormously ambitious book packed with history, ethics, and philosophy of science as well as sociology. It is more historical than much history of philosophy and takes business ethics more seriously than most ethicists do. It is an important contribution to creating a field in which researchers in a variety of traditions mutually inform each other about morality."---Dale Jamieson, European Journal of Sociology "The Moral Background discerns and details moral patterns in the echo chamber where business protagonists talk, mostly to each other, about ethical motives, obligations, and opportunities. Abend has done a yeoman's job in excavating, analyzing, and systematizing the discursive surrounds of business ethics, pushing us all to think about who can and cannot be seen in the moral background."---Robin Wagner-Pacifici, European Journal of Sociology "Especially important among the virtues of Abend's research is his ability to work through a huge body of historical material . . . and to find meaning in these disparate sources t

"Shortlisted for the Philip Abrams Memorial Prize, British Sociological Association" Kusha Sefat is assistant professor of sociology at the University of Tehran. An exploration of the ways that shifting relations between materiality and language bring about different forms of politics in Tehran In Revolution of Things, Kusha Sefat traces a dynamism between materiality and language that sheds light on how the merger of the two permeates politics. To show how shifting relations between things and terms form the grounds for different modes of action, Sefat reconstructs the political history of postrevolutionary Iran at the intersection of everyday objects and words. Just as Islamism fashioned its own objects in Tehran during the 1980s, he explains, tyrannical objects generated a distinct form of Islamism by means of their material properties; everyday things from walls to shoes to foods were active political players that helped consolidate the Islamic Republic. Moreover, President Rafsanjani's "liberalization" in the 1990s was based not merely on state policies and post-Islamist ideologies but also on the unlikely things-including consumer products from the West-that engendered and sustained "liberalism" in Tehran. Sefat shows how provincial vocabularies transformed into Islamist and post-Islamist discourses through the circulation of international objects. The globalization of objects, he argues, was constitutive of the different forms that politics took in Tehran, with each constellation affording and foreclosing distinct modes of agency. Sefat's intention is not to alter historical facts about the Islamic Republic but to show how we can rethink the matter of those facts. By bringing the recent "material turn" into conversation with the canons of structural analysis, poststructuralist theory, sociolinguistics, and Middle East studies, Sefat offers a unique perspective on Iran's revolution and its aftermath. "[A] new and provocative understanding of repressive political systems . . . [Revolution of Things] brings to the fore a novel perspective on the Iranian revolution and the interconnectedness of materiality and linguistics."---Roxana Coman, H-Material-Culture "[Revolution of Things] falls into that rare category of books destined to become a classic. . . . Sefat's material reframing of social and political change is part of what makes his analysis of Iranian politics so compelling. I, for one, am never going to think about the revolution, the war, or the post-war reform movement in quite the same way."---Neema Noori, Social Forces "Sefat has delivered an outstanding ethnography of Islamism that is rich in theory and introduces readers to the Islamic Republic through a fresh language."---Younes Saramifar, Cultural Sociology "Revolution of Things opens up new and productive ways to understand the politics of Iran and to position Iranian studies even more firmly into a transdisciplinary field that speaks to various debates and research agendas. Sefat manages this challenging task with guile and elegance."-Arshin Adib-Moghaddam, SOAS University of London "This is a profound engagement with various strands of scholarship in sociology, anthropology, and literary studies. It is both a cutting-edge application and a critique of the limitations of deconstruction, poststructuralism, phenomenology, and decoloniality, among other approaches."-Hazem Kandil, University of Cambridge

Phillipa K. Chong is assistant professor of sociology at McMaster University. Twitter @ChongSOC An inside look at the politics of book reviewing, from the assignment and writing of reviews to why critics think we should listen to what they have to say Taking readers behind the scenes in the world of fiction reviewing, Inside the Critics' Circle explores the ways critics evaluate books despite the inherent subjectivity involved and the uncertainties of reviewing when seemingly anyone can be a reviewer. Drawing on interviews with critics from such venues as the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, and Washington Post, Phillipa Chong delves into the complexities of the review-writing process, including the considerations, values, and cultural and personal anxieties that shape what critics do. Chong explores how critics are paired with review assignments, why they accept these time-consuming projects, how they view their own qualifications for reviewing certain books, and the criteria they employ when making literary judgments. She discovers that while their readers are of concern to reviewers, they are especially worried about authors on the receiving end of reviews. As these are most likely peers who will be returning similar favors in the future, critics' fears and frustrations factor into their willingness or reluctance to write negative reviews. At a time when traditional review opportunities are dwindling while other forms of reviewing thrive, book reviewing as a professional practice is being brought into question. Inside the Critics' Circle offers readers a revealing look into critics' responses to these massive transitions and how, through their efforts, literary values get made. "The country's newspaper book review pages evaporated in the 21st century. . . . Those of us who remain occupy one of the most tenuous positions in an extraordinarily tenuous industry. That seems to be what attracted the attention of Phillipa K. Chong, a sociology professor at McMaster University in Ontario, Canada. . . . Chong offers rare insight."---Ron Charles, Washington Post Book Club "Phillipa Chong's precise, insightful and fascinating book focuses on journalist critics of fiction who write with an eye to newsworthiness as well as literary value, rather than academics."---Robert Eaglestone, Times Higher Education "[An] exploration of how books get reviewed, what the consequences are, and whether any of it means anything at all. . . . Chong works diligently through the review process. . . . Useful reading for book critics and journalists who cover books." "Inside the Critics' Circle allows academics the opportunity to reflect on how they enact their own roles as reviewers and provides valuable contributions to the sociology of culture, economic sociology, and the sociology of knowledge. . . . Sociologists who study cultural fields and valuation will refer to and cite this book for years to come."---Hannah Wohl, American Journal of Sociology "[A] deep dive into the inner workings of journalistic book criticism in 'the Anglophone publishing field,' and a must-read for critics and editors alike. . . . Impressively, Chong has managed in this study through substantial empirical data to draw a clear, detailed, and nuanced picture of a rather tricky profession."---Dana Hansen, Hamilton Review of Books "Inside the Critics' Circle is an interesting inside look at the current state of (fiction) book reviewing in the United States, specifically as perceived by (presumably) significant actors in the field."---M.A. Orthofer, The Complete Review "I perceived a book review - still perceive it, most days - as an avocation that's as much private as it is public. . . . This public-private feeling is a common one, according to Phillipa K. Chong's academic but engaging analysis of book reviewing, Inside the Critics' Circle. An assistant professor of sociology at McMaster University, Chong endeavored to put some scientific rig

Pamela E. Klassen is Assistant Professor in the Department and Centre for the Study of Religion at the University of Toronto. She is the author of Going by the Moon and the Stars: Stories of Two Russian Mennonite Women. Blessed Events explores how women who give birth at home use religion to make sense of their births and in turn draw on their birthing experiences to bring meaning to their lives and families. Pamela Klassen introduces a surprisingly diverse group of women, in their own words, while also setting their birth stories within wider social, political, and economic contexts. In doing so, she emerges with a study that disrupts conventional views of both childbirth and religion by blurring assumed divisions between conservative and feminist women and by taking childbirth seriously as a religious act. Most American women who have a choice give birth in a hospital and request pain medication. Yet enough women choose and advocate unmedicated home birth--and do so for carefully articulated reasons, social resistance among them--to constitute a movement. Klassen investigates why women whose religious affiliations range from Old Order Amish to Reform Judaism to goddess-centered spirituality defy majority opinion, the medical establishment, and sometimes the law to have their babies at home. In considering their interpretations--including their critiques of the dominant medical model of childbirth and their views on labor pain--she examines the kinds of agency afforded to or denied women as they derive religious meanings from childbirth. Throughout, she identifies tensions and affinities between feminist and traditionalist appraisals of the symbolic meaning of birth and the power of women. What does home birth--a woman-centered movement working to return birth to women's control--mean in practice for women's gender and religious identities? Is this supreme valuing of procreation and motherhood constraining, or does it open up new realms of cultural and social power for women? By asking these questions while remaining cognizant of religion's significance, Blessed Events challenges both feminist and traditionalist accounts of childbearing while broadening our understanding of how religion is ''lived'' in contemporary America. "Considering home birth from a wide variety of perspectives--sociological, political, ethical, medical, psychological, and spiritual--Klassen finds that the pain of childbirth and home birth itself often has a profound impact on the women who choose it." "In this provocative and engagingly written ethnography, Klassen offers an important complement to other social studies on childbirth in America." "Blessed Events will appeal most to those in the alternative birth movement, but will be of interest to anyone committed to exploring female embodied experience, as well as those interested in relations between religion and spirituality."---Amy Mullin, Journal of the Association for Research in Mothering "Klassen fascinates as she shows us how women who give birth at home experience the simultaneous embodiment of pain and power, self-sufficiency and surrender, immanence and transcendence. Weaving these themes into a cohesive portrait of home birthers in all their complexity, Klassen gives us at the same time new ways of understanding what it means to practice religion in contemporary America."-Robbie Davis-Floyd, author of Birth as an American Rite of Passage "This lively book analyzes how women who chose to give birth at home create meaning from their birthing experiences. It makes a significant contribution to several fields, including religious studies and feminist theory, and will also be useful to general readers who are interested in the manifestation of religion in everyday life, as well as to anyone considering home birth."-Lynn Davidman, Brown University "This book examines how women who give birth at home use religious discourse to make meaning of their birth experiences and to resist the vi

Juan Díez Medrano is Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of California, San Diego. He is the author of Divided Nations: Class, Politics, and Nationalism in the Basque Country and Catalonia. This book provides a major empirical analysis of differing attitudes to European integration in three of Europe's most important countries: Germany, Spain, and the United Kingdom. From its beginnings, the European Union has resounded with debate over whether to move toward a federal or intergovernmental system. However, Juan Díez Medrano argues that empirical analyses of support for integration--by specialists in international relations, comparative politics, and survey research--have failed to explain why some countries lean toward federalism whereas others lean toward intergovernmentalism. By applying frame analysis to a unique set of primary sources (in-depth interviews, newspaper articles, novels, history texts, political speeches, and survey data), Díez Medrano demonstrates the role of major historical events in transforming national cultures and thus creating new opportunities for political transformation. Clearly written and rigorously argued, Framing Europe explains differences in support for European integration between the three countries studied in light of the degree to which each realized its particular "supranational project" outside Western Europe. Only the United Kingdom succeeded in consolidating an empire and retaining it after World War II, while Germany and Spain each abandoned their corresponding aspirations. These differences meant that these countries' populations developed different degrees of identification as Europeans and, partly in consequence, different degrees of support for the building of a federal Europe. "By explaining differential attitudes to European integration in terms of differences in national culture, Díez Medrano opens up the field of European integration studies to cultural and sociological inquiry." "Without question a significant achievement. . . . Medrano's study constitutes a significant contribution to the literatures on European integration, political culture, and nationalism. It tells a compelling story of the construction of collective identities and of the myths upon which they are frequently based."---Andreas Sobisch, Perspectives on Politics "Framing Europe is an extremely significant book on an important topic: attitudes toward European integration in Great Britain, Spain, and Germany. It is impressive for its combination of ethnographic, interpretive, historical, and statistical methods and for its synthesis of a vast amount of material. . . . Framing Europe is an important intervention in the cultural sociology of politics. One can read it as an argument about the way political resentations result from other representations in complexly overdetermined historical conjunctures."---George Steinmetz, American Journal of Sociology "Medrano has provided us with new and valuable insights into the EU and European integration--well written, close to his sources and data, employing an interesting analytical approach and design that links micro-level attitudes among European citizens to macrolevel processes."---Stefan Hojelid, European Legacy "This book is a scholarly tour de force. There is nothing comparable that I know of. The richness of the data is unsurpassed, and the contextual knowledge of Spain, Germany, and Britain is superb. The book is logically organized, and the writing is clear. It is what scholarship should be all about but only rarely is these days: careful, in-depth work on an important question, displaying an intellect in full control of the material."-Peter Katzenstein, Cornell University, author of Tamed Power: Germany in Europe "This is a genuinely groundbreaking work. It is to my knowledge the very first study by a comparative historical sociologist of contemporary attitudes to European integration in different European nations. It is a serious,

Claude Rosental is a sociologist and researcher at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique and a member of the Institut Marcel Mauss at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in France. The development of theorems in logic is generally thought to be a solitary and purely cerebral activity, and therefore unobservable by sociologists. In Weaving Self-Evidence, French sociologist Claude Rosental challenges this notion by tracing the history of one well-known recent example in the field of artificial intelligence--a theorem on the foundations of fuzzy logic. Rosental's analyses disclose the inherently social nature of the process by which propositions in logic are produced, disseminated, and established as truths. Rosental describes the different phases of the emergence of the theorem on fuzzy logic, from its earliest drafts through its publication and diffusion, discussion and reformulation, and eventual acceptance by the scientific community. Through observations made at major universities and scholarly conferences, and in electronic forums, he looks at the ways students are trained in symbolic manipulations and formal languages and examines how researchers work, interact, and debate emerging new ideas. By carefully analyzing the concrete mechanisms that lead to the collective development and corroboration of proofs, Rosental shows how a logical discovery and its recognition within the scholarly community are by no means the product of any one individual working in isolation, but rather a social process that can be observed and studied. Weaving Self-Evidence will interest students and researchers in sociology and the history and philosophy of science and technology, and anyone curious about how scientists work. "Sociologist Rosental meticulously argues for the materiality of logic as a field of inquiry. He rigorously grounds his work in science studies, extending the reach of social analysis into a domain superficially thought to be purely mental: that of logical formalism and proof."---J.L. Croissant, Choice "In the history of STS, hard cases, from mathematics to laboratory manipulations, have played key roles. This book should enter the field as an exemplary treatment of a hard case."---Sergio Sismondo, Canadian Journal of Sociology "Rosentals's Weaving Self-Evidence . . . is timely and much needed."---Stephan Fuchs, American Journal of Sociology "This is a beautifully crafted book. In it, Claude Rosental proceeds to demonstrate that, as for all scientific and intellectual pursuits, the production and evaluation of theorems depend on conventions and networks that are eminently social. Rosental is widely regarded as one of the most promising social scientists working in France today. He is clearly a rising star in the field of science studies."-Michèle Lamont, Harvard University "This is a fine piece of scholarship and an important book. Rosental shows that in spite of our assumption that new ideas in logic are thought up individually and evaluated in the minds of others, they are presented, read, and judged in a more social and ritual manner-proofs cannot simply be thought into existence. Weaving Self-Evidence is an important contribution to the sociology of knowledge."-Chandra Mukerji, University of California, San Diego

James L. Nolan, Jr., is Assiociate Professor of Sociology at Williams College. He is the author of The Therapeutic State: Justifying Government at Century's End and the editor of Drug Courts: Theory and Practice. Drug courts offer radically new ways to deal with the legal and social problems presented by repeat drug offenders, often dismissing criminal charges as an incentive for participation in therapeutic programs. Since the first drug court opened in 1989 in Florida, close to 600 have been established throughout the United States. Although some observers have questioned their efficacy, no one until now has constructed an overall picture of the drug court phenomenon and its place in an American history of the social control of drugs. Here James Nolan examines not only how therapeutic strategies deviate from traditional judiciary proceedings, but also how these differences reflect changes afoot in American culture and conceptions of justice. Nolan draws upon extensive fieldwork to analyze a new type of courtroom drama in which the judge engages directly and regularly with the defendant-turned-client, lawyers play a reduced and less adversarial role, and treatment providers exert unprecedented influence in determining judicially imposed sanctions. The author considers the intended as well as unexpected consequences of therapeutic jurisprudence: for example, behavior undergoes a pathological reinterpretation, guilt is discredited, and the client's life story and ability to convince the judge of his or her willingness to change take on a new importance. Nolan finds that, fueled in part by the strength of therapeutic sensibilities in American culture, the drug court movement continues to expand and advances with it new understandings of the meaning and practice of justice. "Beautifully written. . . . Those involved with drug courts in any capacity and all those concerned with criminal law, the philosophy of punishment, or changing conceptions of justice in contemporary America will welcome this book." "[In this] first full-length study of drug courts. . . . Nolan recounts an engaging story and provides a penetrating analysis contrasting the styles of therapeutic and conventional notions of justice. . . . Sociologists, political scientists, and criminologists interested in treatment, 'alternative' programming, and the judicial process should read this fine study." "An excellent book. It is a traditional ethnography in the best sense of the term. . . . Well-organized, cleverly situated in the relevant legal, historical, and sociological literatures, and written with appealing clarity."---John M. Conley, American Journal of Sociology "Reinventing Justice establishes a benchmark for work that will inevitably follow. . . .The author's objectivity distinguishes this book from the promotional and the evaluative literature on drug court. Nolan's account of the evaluation literature is one of the best that I have read."---Drew Humphries, Contemporary Sociology "Nolan's book is a detailed and well-written account of drug courts and his method is well suited for the story he tells. . . . [He] makes valuable contributions to our understanding of how the therapeutic ideal . . . is actually put into practice."---Jason Schnittker, Social Forces "Reinventing Justice describes, in fine ethnographic detail, what Nolan saw and heard in countless hours of observation and interviews with drug court judges. . . . Extraordinarily illuminating." "[Nolan] convincingly situates drug courts as a social movement and illustrates their success as such. This is an important book for scholars of the drug court movement. It forces us to consider the broader cultural meanings and implications for facilitating therapy through courtroom machinery. It critically juxtaposes the underlying assumptions of therapeutic jurisprudence against conventional frames of justice and raises important questions about the implications."---Corey J. Colyer, International Crim

"Co-Winner of the 2016 CITAMS Book Award, Communication, Information Technologies, and Media Sociology Section of the American Sociological Association" "Co-Winner of the 2017 Barrington Moore Book Award, Comparative and Historical Sociology Section of the American Sociological Association" Heather A. Haveman is professor of sociology and business at the University of California, Berkeley. From the colonial era to the onset of the Civil War, Magazines and the Making of America looks at how magazines and the individuals, organizations, and circumstances they connected ushered America into the modern age. How did a magazine industry emerge in the United States, where there were once only amateur authors, clumsy technologies for production and distribution, and sparse reader demand? What legitimated magazines as they competed with other media, such as newspapers, books, and letters? And what role did magazines play in the integration or division of American society? From their first appearance in 1741, magazines brought together like-minded people, wherever they were located and whatever interests they shared. As America became socially differentiated, magazines engaged and empowered diverse communities of faith, purpose, and practice. Religious groups could distinguish themselves from others and demarcate their identities. Social-reform movements could energize activists across the country to push for change. People in specialized occupations could meet and learn from one another to improve their practices. Magazines built translocal communities-collections of people with common interests who were geographically dispersed and could not easily meet face-to-face. By supporting communities that crossed various axes of social structure, magazines also fostered pluralistic integration. Looking at the important role that magazines had in mediating and sustaining critical debates and diverse groups of people, Magazines and the Making of America considers how these print publications helped construct a distinctly American society. "[Magazines and the Making of America] is a work of sociology and as such it contributes to the growing literature on print culture by considering how the demography, geography, and economics of print fueled (and were fueled by) capitalism." "Magazines and the Making of America is a treasure trove for students of social movements and political history, for it chronicles the scores of movements, from anti-dueling to Indian rights to free love, that swept the nation. . . . A bright star to guide others applying the new methods of social science to historical topics. Haveman has a penchant for coding and counting everything in sight. She tracks each broadside and circular from before the dawn of the nation, and thus we get much more than an impressionistic romp through the history of the genre. The book is chock full of figures and analyses that substantiate the argument, and the narrative is followed by well over a hundred pages of appendices and bibliography."---Frank Dobbin., Administrative Science Quarterly "Fills a large hole in the scholarship of early American magazines, finally putting their influence on a par with the much more widely studied newspaper form."---Kevin Lerner, Journal of Magazine & New Media Research "An important reminder of print's history and influence on American culture."---Andrea McDonnell, Journal of American Culture "Haveman's Magazines and the Making of America will remain a landmark in periodical studies. To see with her what periodicals accomplished from 1741 to 1860 may give us some confidence that they will continue to serve a vital role in the making of America."---Robert J. Scholnick, American Periodicals "In this exciting new study of antebellum American magazines, Heather Haveman combines a polished narrative with quantitative data to argue persuasively that periodicals have been underappreciated but vital to the nation's literary and political culture. This boo

Shamus Khan is professor of sociology and American studies at Princeton University. He is an alumnus and former faculty member of St. Paul's School. An inside look at how one of the country's most elite private schools prepares its students for success As one of the most prestigious high schools in the nation, St. Paul's School in Concord, New Hampshire, has long been the exclusive domain of America's wealthiest sons. But times have changed. Today, a new elite of boys and girls is being molded at St. Paul's, one that reflects the hope of openness but also the persistence of inequality. In Privilege, Shamus Khan returns to his alma mater to provide an inside look at an institution that has been the private realm of the elite for the past 150 years. He shows that St. Paul's students continue to learn what they always have-how to embody privilege. Yet, while students once leveraged the trappings of upper-class entitlement, family connections, and high culture, current St. Paul's students learn to succeed in a more diverse environment. To be the future leaders of a more democratic world, they must be at ease with everything from highbrow art to everyday life-from Beowulf to Jaws-and view hierarchies as ladders to scale. Through deft portrayals of the relationships among students, faculty, and staff, Khan shows how members of the new elite face the opening of society while still preserving the advantages that allow them to rule. "A highly readable, intellectually humble hybrid of modern anthropology and magazine-style investigation."---Talmon Joseph Smith, New York Times Book Review "Ethnographic research into the very heart of privilege. . . . [Khan] steps down from his pedestal and lets himself get closer to these future masters of the universe."---Robin D. Schatz, Bloomberg News "This book is beautifully written and filled with important insights into processes of socialization among the elite. I recommend this book for all scholars interested in the reproduction of inequality in U.S. society."---Wendy Leo Moore, American Journal of Sociology "The elites in Britain and in America have changed. They now appear more open. More worldly. More meritocratic. For a description of how that process works, look at [Privilege]."---Aditya Chakrabortty, The Guardian "Khan's many perspectives-as a minority student in a rich WASP school, as a teacher interacting with his students, and as a researcher observing his subjects-gave him unique access to understanding the American elite. . . . Khan's objectivity turns to pessimism as he describes the result of greater diversity, which he finds 'does not mean mobility and it certainly does not mean equality.'"---Barbara Fisher, Boston Globe "Privilege sets out to understand 'the new elite' and its place in the larger story of American education."---Josh Rothman, Boston Globe, Brainiac "Shamus Rahman Khan has his part in loosening the knot of privilege, by analyzing America's dreams and telling us why some of them remain thwarted. . . . Privilege is an exceptional cultural study of inequality that concentrates on elites. It is a brave piece of work, guaranteed to raise the hackles of more than a few private school trustees, administrators, faculty and parents."---Michael D. Langan, Buffalo News "[Privilege] fills in the crucial missing piece. It's a well grounded description of the people who are the 'input' into the elite higher education system. It's a view of elite life from the 'training camp,' right before they are unleashed into American society. Highly recommended to anyone interested in stratification and education."---Fabio Rojas, OrgTheory.net "If you want a peek inside an elite New England prep school, here it is. . . . But while nosiness about St. Paul's is a perfectly good reason to read the book, Khan's purpose is higher. This is a book about the promise of America and how well the nation is fulfilling it. It is a book that suggests how money still trumps ideals and ho

"Winner of the 2011 Charles Tilly Best Book Award, Collective Behavior and Social Movements Section of the American Sociological Association" William G. Roy is professor and chair of the sociology department at the University of California, Los Angeles. He is the author of Socializing Capital (Princeton) and Making Societies. Music, and folk music in particular, is often embraced as a form of political expression, a vehicle for bridging or reinforcing social boundaries, and a valuable tool for movements reconfiguring the social landscape. Reds, Whites, and Blues examines the political force of folk music, not through the meaning of its lyrics, but through the concrete social activities that make up movements. Drawing from rich archival material, William Roy shows that the People's Songs movement of the 1930s and 40s, and the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 60s implemented folk music's social relationships--specifically between those who sang and those who listened--in different ways, achieving different outcomes. Roy explores how the People's Songsters envisioned uniting people in song, but made little headway beyond leftist activists. In contrast, the Civil Rights Movement successfully integrated music into collective action, and used music on the picket lines, at sit-ins, on freedom rides, and in jails. Roy considers how the movement's Freedom Songs never gained commercial success, yet contributed to the wider achievements of the Civil Rights struggle. Roy also traces the history of folk music, revealing the complex debates surrounding who or what qualified as "folk" and how the music's status as racially inclusive was not always a given. Examining folk music's galvanizing and unifying power, Reds, Whites, and Blues casts new light on the relationship between cultural forms and social activity. "Although some of Roy's theoretical discussions in the early chapters should interest folk music scholars, his book will be more important to students of social movements."---Robert V. Wells, Journal of American History "The importance of this excellent book is that it revisits these two movements and reveals once again the power of culture."---Ron Eyerman, American Journal of Sociology "With these carefully documented and well-argued case studies, Roy makes a considerable contribution to cultural sociology in general and social movement studies in particular, and those with a background in the latter field will gain the most from the work as a whole."---Dana Sawchuk, Political Studies Review "Social movement scholars have slowly begun to explore the rich topic of culture and contention. With this wonderful book, Roy breaks important new ground by looking beyond the culture of a given movement to explore the social relations by which movements do culture and with what effects. The argument he puts forward, from examining the Old Left and Civil Rights Movement, is both convincing and important."-Doug McAdam, Stanford University "This exceptional book provides one of the most grounded sociological accounts of music and its role in social movements to date. Integrating insights from the sociology of culture, music, and organizations with in-depth historical analyses of American folk traditions, Reds, Whites and Blues is both theoretically astute and innovative. It is a must-read, with implications for many specialties in our field."-Vincent Roscigno, Ohio State University "In this revealing and incisive book, Roy shows how folk music inhabited two transformative moments of American social history in very different ways. Turning from how movements emerge to what they do, he demonstrates how music both reflects and reshapes the relations between movement leaders and militants. Some movements, his book shows, use music as a weapon of propaganda; others as a means of creating solidarity. Students of movements and American history will never again be able to sideline music as a mere ornament of social movement stud

As one of the most prestigious high schools in the nation, St. Paul's School in Concord, New Hampshire, has long been the exclusive domain of America's wealthiest sons. But times have changed. Today, a new elite of boys and girls is being molded at St. Paul's, one that reflects the hope of openness but also the persistence of inequality. In Privilege, Shamus Khan returns to his alma mater to provide an inside look at an institution that has been the private realm of the elite for the past 150 years. He shows that St. Paul's students continue to learn what they always have--how to embody privilege. Yet, while students once leveraged the trappings of upper-class entitlement, family connections, and high culture, current St. Paul's students learn to succeed in a more diverse environment. To be the future leaders of a more democratic world, they must be at ease with everything from highbrow art to everyday life--from Beowulf to Jaws--and view hierarchies as ladders to scale. Through deft portrayals of the relationships among students, faculty, and staff, Khan shows how members of the new elite face the opening of society while still preserving the advantages that allow them to rule.

"Honorable Mention for the 2009 Book Award, Section on Political Sociology, American Sociological Association" Ann Mische is associate professor of sociology at Rutgers University. Her work examines the relationship between culture, politics, and social interaction in complex social networks. During the 1980s and 1990s, Brazil struggled to rebuild its democracy after twenty years of military dictatorship, experiencing financial crises, corruption scandals, political protest, and intense electoral contention. In the midst of this turmoil, Ann Mische argues in this remarkable book, youth activists of various stripes played a vital and unrecognized role, contributing new forms of political talk and action to Brazil's emerging democracy. Drawing upon extensive and rich ethnography as well as formal network analysis, Mische tracks the lives of young activists through intersecting political networks, including student movements, church-based activism, political parties, nongovernmental organizations, and business and professional organizations. She probes the problems and possibilities they encountered in combining partisan activism with other kinds of civic involvement. In documenting activists' struggles to develop cross-partisan publics of various kinds, Mische explores the distinct styles of communication and leadership that emerged across organizations and among individuals. Drawing on the ideas of Habermas, Gramsci, Dewey, and Machiavelli, Partisan Publics highlights political communication styles and the forms of mediation and leadership they give rise to--for democratic politics in Brazil and elsewhere. Insightful in its discussion of culture, methodology, and theory, Partisan Publics argues that partisanship can play a significant role in civic life, helping to build relations and institutions in an emerging democracy. "Partisan Publics is a remarkable book. It will make a mark in sociology, political science, and Latin American studies. It is smartly written, subtle, and packs an important theoretical punch."---Gianpaolo Baiocchi, Mobilization "I found Mische's qualitative analyses particularly enlightening and refreshing. . . . This book is a valuable addition to the social movements literature, as well as several allied literatures."---D. B. Tindall, Canadian Journal of Sociology "Partisan Publics is based on a truly multimethod research design. . . . By threading narratives of individual activists through the book, Mische effectively uses the individual biographies to illuminate the overall movement and national history. . . . There is much to be gained by comparing Mische's findings to classical classical research in the social movement's literature."---Catherine Corrigall-Brown, Contemporary Sociology "Drawing on rich ethnographic data, cutting-edge relational methodologies, and deeply insightful interpretative readings of cultural discourse, Mische sets a new standard for how to conceptualize the dynamic analysis of an institutional field."-John W. Mohr, University of California, Santa Barbara "With Partisan Publics, Ann Mische establishes herself at the forefront of research seeking solid foundations for a sociology of action and structure that takes seriously cultural projects and partisanship, networks and narratives, institutions and communicative action, and the creation and demise of publics."-Ronald L. Breiger, University of Arizona "Partisan Publics is a stunningly original book. Mische takes us well beyond recognizing the mutual constitution of agency and structure and the generative importance of multiple networks, delving into what happens at the junctures of multiplicity that creates something new. Bridging formal and qualitative methodologies and refusing rigid categorization, Mische's argument and the narratives that bring it to life combine deep ethnographic knowledge with an equally compelling theoretical vision."-Margaret Keck, Johns Hopkins University "Like the activists she s

Randall Collins is Professor of Sociology at the University of Pennsylvania. He is the author of eleven books, including The Sociology of Philosophies: A Global Theory of Intellectual Change, Four Sociological Traditions, and The Credential Society. Sex, smoking, and social stratification are three very different social phenomena. And yet, argues sociologist Randall Collins, they and much else in our social lives are driven by a common force: interaction rituals. Interaction Ritual Chains is a major work of sociological theory that attempts to develop a "radical microsociology." It proposes that successful rituals create symbols of group membership and pump up individuals with emotional energy, while failed rituals drain emotional energy. Each person flows from situation to situation, drawn to those interactions where their cultural capital gives them the best emotional energy payoff. Thinking, too, can be explained by the internalization of conversations within the flow of situations; individual selves are thoroughly and continually social, constructed from the outside in. The first half of Interaction Ritual Chains is based on the classic analyses of Durkheim, Mead, and Goffman and draws on micro-sociological research on conversation, bodily rhythms, emotions, and intellectual creativity. The second half discusses how such activities as sex, smoking, and social stratification are shaped by interaction ritual chains. For example, the book addresses the emotional and symbolic nature of sexual exchanges of all sorts--from hand-holding to masturbation to sexual relationships with prostitutes--while describing the interaction rituals they involve. This book will appeal not only to psychologists, sociologists, and anthropologists, but to those in fields as diverse as human sexuality, religious studies, and literary theory. "Collins again demonstrates why he is considered one of the leading social theorists. This . . . work of Collins, in particular, transcends the boundaries of sociology. . . . This is an outstanding work for theoretically oriented professional and advanced students in sociology, social psychology, and psychology." "Collins argues in this pathbreaking book that ritual--whether in face-to-face conversations or at national presidential funerals--is the key sociological factor that ties group structure and collective beliefs together. . . . Collins plows new ground in several ways. First, he argues that ritual is the central category for all sociological analysis because ritual connects and mediates group structure and beliefs. . . . Second, his work breaks new paths because it proposes a comprehensive theory of ritual grounded in everyday solutions. . . . Finally, Collins bushwhacks new paths when he emphasizes the importance of the emotional energy, what he calls 'collective effervescence,' that is generated by ritual."---Donald B. Kraybill, Christian Century "Collins's book is a major contribution to contemporary sociological theory. His approach--a genuinely sociological microfoundation of sociology--is well chosen and carefully carried out . . . Interaction ritual theory helps to enrich our knowledge about a core process of social life. Interaction Ritual Chains is a book offering rich insights into this core process."---Richard Münch, American Journal of Sociology "Interaction Ritual Chains is a major statement by a major scholar at the top of his game. Starting with a parsimonious set of insights gleaned from the best current work in microsociology, the author builds a compelling theory of how these insights can inform models of the behavior of families, communities, organizations, and nation-states. The book will measurably shape the way that social scientists approach the business of understanding and explaining human behavior."-Paul DiMaggio, Princeton University "This book elaborates an original, bold theory about fundamental social processes that is likely to generate considerable debate amo

"Winner of the Spur Award for Best Western Contemporary Nonfiction, Western Writers of America" "Finalist for the Reading the West Book Award in Adult Narrative Nonfiction" "One of Amazon's Best Books of 2020 in Business and Leadership" Justin Farrell is associate professor of sociology at Yale University in the School of Forestry and Environmental Studies. He is the author of the award-winning book The Battle for Yellowstone: Morality and the Sacred Roots of Environmental Conflict (Princeton). A native of Wyoming, he lives in New Haven and Denver. Website: justinfarrell.org Twitter @J_Farrell A revealing look at the intersection of wealth, philanthropy, and conservation Billionaire Wilderness takes you inside the exclusive world of the ultra-wealthy, showing how today's richest people are using the natural environment to solve the existential dilemmas they face. Justin Farrell spent five years in Teton County, Wyoming, the richest county in the United States, and a community where income inequality is the worst in the nation. He conducted hundreds of in-depth interviews, gaining unprecedented access to tech CEOs, Wall Street financiers, oil magnates, and other prominent figures in business and politics. He also talked with the rural poor who live among the ultra-wealthy and often work for them. The result is a penetrating account of the far-reaching consequences of the massive accrual of wealth, and an eye-opening and sometimes troubling portrait of a changing American West where romanticizing rural poverty and conserving nature can be lucrative-socially as well as financially. Weaving unforgettable storytelling with thought-provoking analysis, Billionaire Wilderness reveals how the ultra-wealthy are buying up the land and leveraging one of the most pristine ecosystems in the world to climb even higher on the socioeconomic ladder. The affluent of Teton County are people burdened by stigmas, guilt, and status anxiety-and they appropriate nature and rural people to create more virtuous and deserving versions of themselves. Incisive and compelling, Billionaire Wilderness reveals the hidden connections between wealth concentration and the environment, two of the most pressing and contentious issues of our time. "Excellent and inspiring."---Nathan Deuel, Los Angeles Times "One of the most fascinating and important portraits of modern American life."---Dylan Schleicher, Porchlight "This is the sort of book you didn't know you needed until after you pick it up."---Ryan Driskell Tate, Los Angeles Review of Books "I just ordered the book Billionaire Wilderness: The Ultra-Wealthy and the Remaking of the American West, on the strength of a recommendation by an architect friend who builds homes for the elite in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. I'm only a chapter in, but I'm already fascinated by how conservation can become a way to salve guilt."---Rana Foroohar, Financial Times "Clearly outlines the roots of the problems: policy, western mythologies, tax breaks, and selfishness."---Heather Hansman, Outside Magazine "Farrell has done a massive amount of research in this absorbing study of the ultra-rich and their effect on the community."---Sandra Dallas, Denver Post "Illuminating and provocative."---Nick Romeo, Daily Beast "The real stories billionaires tell themselves to justify their wealth." "[Justin] Farrell (Yale Univ.) renders a picture of how the ultra wealthy live, protect their wealth, and handle the stigma associated with being unbelievably rich. . . . Highly recommended." "Eye-opening . . . a great read for anyone interested in the intersection of conservation and inequality in the West."---Jennifer Weeks, Society of Environmental Journalists "A Yale sociology professor documents the class divide in Teton County, Wyo., where ultra-wealthy tech CEOs, financiers, and political figures are buying up land and romanticizing rural poverty in order to improve their own socioeconomic status." "An eye-opening look at a specific