Polity imprint: 1443 books

Across the Western world, people are angry about the inability of government to perform basic functions competently. With widespread evidence of policy failures at home and ill-conceived wars and interventions abroad, it is hardly surprising that politicians are distrusted and government is derided...

The relationship between feminism and ecology has grown in importance in recent years. This book provides a comprehensive introduction to the ecofeminist movement and its history, as well as an extended analysis of the main perspectives within it. Mellor examines the connections between feminism...

Beast. Monster. Savage. Psycho. The glowering menace of Mike Tyson has spooked us for almost two decades. And still we remain fascinated. Why? Ellis Cashmore's answer is disturbing: white society has created Tyson as vengeance for the loss of privilege produced by civil rights. Cashmore's eviscerating...

Of all the inventions of the nineteenth century, the scientist is one of the most striking. In revolutionary France the science student, taught by men active in research, was born; and a generation later, the graduate student doing a PhD emerged in Germany. In 1833 the word 'scientist' was coined;...

What drives a person to take his or her own life? Why would an individual be willing to strap a bomb to himself and walk into a crowded marketplace, blowing himself up at the same time as he kills and maims the people around him? Does suicide or ‘voluntary death’ have the same meaning today as...

In this groundbreaking book, sociologist Andrew Perrin shows that rules and institutions, while important, are not the core of democracy. Instead, as Alexis de Tocqueville showed in the early years of the American republic, democracy is first and foremost a matter of culture: the shared ideas, practices,...

Work is, and always will be, a central institution of society. What makes a capitalist society unique is that it treats the human capacity to engage in labor as a basic commodity. This can be a source of dynamism, as when innovative firms raise wages to attract the best and brightest. But it can also...

Work Time is a sociological overview of a complex web of relations that shapes much of our experience of work and life yet often goes without critical examination. Cynthia Negrey examines work time past and present, exploring structural economic change and the gender division of labor to ask:...

The Art of Conversation is a major contribution to the social history of language - a relatively new field which has become the focus of lively interdisciplinary debate in recent years. Drawing on the work of sociolinguists and others, Burke uses their concept while reserving the right to qualify...

The Immigration Act of 1965 was one of the most consequential laws ever passed in the United States and immigration policy continues to be one of the most contentious areas of American politics. As a "nation of immigrants," the United States has a long and complex history of immigration...

The period in which we live is marked by increasingly frequent and intense cultural encounters of all kinds. However we react to it, the global trend towards mixing or hybridization is impossible to miss, from curry and chips – recently voted the favourite dish in Britain – to Thai saunas, Zen...

All the great ideals that gave life meaning in earlier societies - God, the nation, revolution, freedom, democracy - are in disarray today, questioned by many and rejected by those who have lost faith in them. But there is another value, rooted in the birth of the modern family and in the passage...

Peter Sloterdijk’s reputation as one of the most original thinkers of our time has grown steadily since the early 1980s. This volume of over thirty conversations and interviews spanning two decades illuminates the multiple interconnections of his life and work. In these wide-ranging dialogues...

A compelling history of science from 1900 to the present day, this is the first book to survey modern developments in science during a century of unprecedented change, conflict and uncertainty. The scope is global. Science's claim to access universal truths about the natural world made it an...