ISA Books

Published Books

Journey to Adulthood: East Asian Perspectives

By Chin-Chun Yi and Ming-Chang Tsai

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Young people in East Asia are increasingly experiencing a prolonged transition to adulthood. They are spending longer in school, entering the labour market later, and getting married later still.

This protracted young adulthood interacts with forces of both tradition and modernization, as social and economic changes generate profound effects on the transition from school to work, on family formation, on personal relationships, and on subjective well-being.

Journey to Adulthood explores the special characteristics of young adulthood in East Asia. It uses Taiwan as illustrative example, with comparative findings from its East Asian neighbours Japan, Korea and Hong Kong.

Power, Violence and Justice: Reflections, Responses and Responsibilities

By Margaret Abraham

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This book brings together sociological insights, theoretical perspectives and global research to contribute to a deeper understanding of the complexities of contemporary power, violence, and justice.

It explores a diverse range of urgent topics, including: colonialism, migration, race, gender and intersectionality, social movements, security, environment, and education. In doing so, it asks what the role of sociology is – and could be – in moving us forward.

Sociologies in Dialogue

By Sari Hanafi and Chin-Chun Yi

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Sociologies in Dialogue brings together expert contributions from international scholars, who reflect on the importance of collaboration between diverse sociological perspectives to enhance our understanding of the role of sociology as an academic discipline, and as a vehicle for social change.

By exploring the distinctive practices and research of a range of sociologists, the book shows how an open dialogue between sociologists is critical to addressing major sociological issues across the globe such as inequality and ethnocentrism, and challenging the hierarchies of knowledge production and circulation. Contributors also discuss novel strands in theory and methodology such as multicultural sociology, cosmopolitanism, and multiple modernities.

Global Childhoods in International Perspective: Universality, Diversity and Inequalities

By Claudio Baraldi and Lucia Rabello De Castro

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Global Childhoods in International Perspective gathers a wide spectrum of contributors from Europe, the U.S., South Asia, South Africa and Latin America, who, attuned with present dilemmas in the area of childhood studies, discuss some key theoretical and empirical aspects of child scholarship, such as identity, child wellbeing, child mobility and migration, intergenerational relationships and child abuse.

Key Texts for Latin American Sociology

By Fernanda Beigel

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Key Texts for Latin American Sociology comprises translations of key texts from the Latin American Sociology canon. It is the first book to curate and then translate these key texts into English, bringing together texts from leading sociologists in Argentina, Brazil, Peru, Chile, Costa Rica, Mexico, Bolivia, and Uruguay, to provide comprehensive coverage of a wide range of issues in Latin American Sociology.

Global Sociology and the Struggles for a Better World

By Markus S. Schulz

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The contemporary world has reached a pivotal moment of escalating injustices and apocalyptic risks, but also of unprecedented opportunities. Mounting pressures of social and ecological problems are met by a confluence of intellectual trends that allow the questioning of entrenched assumptions and the unleashing of a forward-oriented sociological imagination.

Sociology and Social Justice

By Margaret Abraham (ed.)

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By using contextual global sociology, Sociology and Social Justice explores:

  • Historic and contemporary sites and contexts around the world
  • Sociological insights on topics ranging from social movements, to cyber space.
  • International struggles, processes, and outcomes

Facing An Unequal World

By Raquel Sosa Elizaga (ed.)

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Facing an Unequal World tackles and critically examines key issues and challenges for global sociology across these interrelated themes:

  • The dimensions of inequality and the configurations of structural inequalities and structures of power
  • Conceptions of justice in different historical and cultural traditions
  • Conflicts on environmental justice and sustainable futures
  • The social injuries of inequality, and overcoming inequalities 

Global Modernity and Social Contestation

By Breno M. Bringel, Jose Mauricio Domingues

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How can we link contemporary social processes – which have typically been theorized in terms of the concept of modernity – with contemporary social movements, conflicts, and mobilizations which aim at social change?


To claim a discount for the titles ordered via the Sage website, ISA members should order the books and enter the code UK09OB001 at checkout. This discount is valid until December 31, 2024.

Worlds of Difference

By Said Arjomand, Elisa P. Reis

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How can differences be understood in social theory through comparisons, and how should social theory relate to regional studies to do so? This question has been prevalent within the sociological field for over a century, but is becoming increasingly important in a globalised age in which cultural borders are constantly challenged and rapidly changing.


To claim a discount for the titles ordered via the Sage website, ISA members should order the books and enter the code UK09OB001 at checkout. This discount is valid until December 31, 2024.

Cities and Crisis

New Critical Urban Theory
By Kuniko Fujita

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Recognizing the deep relations between politics, finance, cities and citizens, this book argues for a rejuvenated account of urban theory. The book emphasises the need to understand the importance of the 2008 global financial crisis and how the crisis affects cities nested in a variety of political economies.


To claim a discount for the titles ordered via the Sage website, ISA members should order the books and enter the code UK09OB001 at checkout. This discount is valid until December 31, 2024.

Sociology Today

Social Transformations in a Globalizing World
By Arnaud Sales

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We are living in a turbulent world marked by fast, continuous social changes that affect the lives of individuals, families, communities, organizations, businesses, nation-states, and international networks. This fundamentally commits contemporary sociology to being a science of change.

The Shape of Sociology for the 21st Century

Tradition and Renewal
By Devorah Kalekin-Fishman, Ann Denis

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Over the past century, the field of sociology has experienced extraordinary expansion and vitality. But is this growth positive or negative - a promise of diversity or a threat of fragmentation?

This critical volume explores the meaning of sociology and sociological knowledge in light of the recent growth and institutionalization of the discipline. A stellar group of international authors powerfully identify, question, and transform key assumptions in sociology.

Reason of Sociology

George Simmel and Beyond
By Kaulo Pietila

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Sociology has long lacked the sense of propulsive direction that it possesses in the 1960s and early 70s. The subject has fragmented in a series of interlocking fields and sub-disciplines. Is there a way of revitalizing the subject? Where can we look for guides to build a sociology that combats fragmentation, constantly unites the micro with the macro level, and provides a holistic view of society?

Professional Men, Professional Women

The European Professions from the 16th Century until Today
By Maria Malatesta

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This book tells the story of the principal European intellectual professions from the demise of the ancien régime to the rise of the European Union. A historical study which applies sociological concepts it creates a European-scale picture of the professions spanning over two centuries of change. Uniting the legal, medical, engineering and accounting professions it provides a comparative historical and sociological exploration of 'Professional Europe'.

Rethinking Civilizational Analysis

Edited by Said Arjomand, Edward A Tiryakian

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Although the concept of 'civilization' has deep roots in the social sciences, there is an urgent need to re-think it for contemporary times. This book points to an exhaustion in using 'the nation state' and 'world system' as the basic macro-units of social analysis because they do not get to grips with the 'soft power' variable of cultural factors involved in global aspects of development. Also, globalization requires us to reconsider the link between civilization and a fixed or given territory.

The ISA Handbook of Diverse Sociological Traditions

Edited by Sujata Patel

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This latest edition to the ISA handbook series actively engages with the many traditions of sociology in the world. Twenty-nine chapters from prominent international contributors discuss, challenge and re-conceptualise the global discipline of sociology; evaluating the diversities within and between sociological traditions of many regions and nation-states. They assess all aspects of the discipline: ideas and theories; scholars and scholarship; practices and traditions; ruptures and continuities through an international perspective.

The ISA Handbook in Contemporary Sociology

Edited by Ann Denis and Devorah Kalekin-Fishman

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This new ISA handbook presents and tracks the transformation of the societies and social relations that characterize the twenty-first century. The volume is organized around a conceptualization of three processes that are fundamental to the analyses of micro, meso and macro social relations: Conflict, Competition, and Cooperation.

Knowledge, Communication and Creativity

By Arnaud Sales, Marcel Fournier

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Knowledge, communication and creativity are obsessions of contemporary modern societies. The rhetoric of information, imagination, improvisation and play have invaded our daily lives and work spaces. However, little attention has been paid to the sociological relationships among these elements, let alone their impacts as processes driving social change.

The Situated Politics of Belonging

By Nira Yuval-Davis, Kalpana Kannabiran, Ulrike Vieten

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This collection of essays examines the racialized and gendered effects of contemporary politics of belonging, issues which lie at the heart of contemporary political and social lives. It encompasses critical questions of identity and citizenship, inclusion and exclusion, emotional attachments, violent conflicts and local/global relationships.

Global Modernization Rethinking the Project of Modernity

By Alberto Martinelli

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This short book critically reexamines the concepts and theories of modernity and modernization.

Women and Men in Political and Business Elites

A Comparative Study in the Industrialized World
By Mino Vianello, Gwen Moore

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Awarded the Descartes Prize 2004 of the European Commission. How do gender inequalities translate at the top of politics and business?. Is the gender gap eliminated for the most influential players in industrial democratic society?

Global Forces and Local Life-Worlds

Social Transformations
By Ulrike Schuerkens

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How are global forces impacting on local lifestyles? Where does the personal stand in relation to globalization? Global Forces and Local Life-Worlds explores these questions using a mixture of sociological and anthropological analysis and case study methods.

The International Handbook of Sociology

By Stella R Quah, Arnaud Sales

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This unique Handbook provides state-of-the-art reviews of sociology conducted by prominent scholars. Drawing on dedicated knowledge and expertise, the book constitutes an unrivalled guide to the central theoretical and methodological perspectives in the discipline as a whole.

Environment and Global Modernity

By Gert Spaargaren, Arthur P J Mol, Frederick H Buttel

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This accomplished book argues that we can only make sense of environmental issues if we consider them as part of a more encompassing process of social transformation. It asks whether there is an emerging consensus between social scientists on the central issues in the debate on environmental change, and if concerns about the environment constitute a major prop to the process of globalization?

The Future of Global Conflict

By Volker Bornschier, Christopher Chase-Dunn

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This critical analysis of long-term trends and recent developments in world systems examines such questions as: Will the cycles of boom and bust, peace and war of the past 500 years continue? Or have either long-term trends or recent changes so profoundly altered the structure of world systems that these cycles will end or take on a less destructive form?

Real Civil Societies

Dilemmas of Institutionalization
By Jeffrey C Alexander

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Written from an empirical social-science perspective by some of the world's most important social theorists, this volume is a critical examination of the normative sense of `civil society'. It includes analyses of civil society and democracy, citizenship, race and ethnicity, and post-communism.

International Tourism

Identity and Change
By Marie-Françoise Lanfant, John B Allcock, Edward M Bruner

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The contributors to International Tourism reconceptualize the local and the global, avoiding such crude oppositions as centre v periphery, modern v traditional, macro v micro and North v South. Instead, they demonstrate that the local cannot be understood without the global, and that the global can never be isolated from the regional setting within which it operates.

Social Movements and Social Classes

The Future of Collective Action
By Louis Maheu

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This book assembles an international cast of eminent contributors who focus on issues of social movements and social class from the perspective of collective action. An important addition to current debate, the text discusses such topics as: middle-class radicalism, racism, class, the institutionalization of movements, urban politics, citizenship, education and democracy.

The Future of Labour Movements

By Marino Regini

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In the light of the experience of the 1980s this volume provides an interdisciplinary reassessment of the traditions and future of collective worker's action in Western states.

Changing Classes

Stratification and Mobility in Post-Industrial Societies
By Gøsta Esping-Andersen

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Drawing together comparative research on the dynamics of social stratification in a number of key western societies, the authors develop a framework for the analysis of post-industrial class formation.

Gender, Work and Medicine

Women and the Medical Division of Labour
By Elianne Riska, Katarina Wegar

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This critical assessment of the division of labour in medicine sets current practice in its historical context. The book demonstrates the centrality of gender divisions both between and within the individual medical and health professions - doctors, nurses, midwives and others.

Economy and Society

Overviews in Economic Sociology
By Alberto Martinelli, Neil J Smelser

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This is the first overview of the interface between economics and sociology. Normally considered quite separately, the volume reconciles the disciplines. Amongst the many questions considered are: the formal relationship between the two disciplines; the distinctive ranges of empirical data which each discipline calls into question; how the substantive findings of one discipline can modify the assumptions of the other.

National Traditions in Sociology

By Nikolai Genov

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In this book an international team of authors consider the nature of sociology and its development in a range of countries. Concentrating on the period since 1945, they show how the intellectual and institutional history of sociology has varied widely.

Capital and Labour in the Urbanized World

By John Walton

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This book examines the impact such a shift of resources will have on the rich Western nations that dominate the international system. Also it describes the likely domestic consequences for countries which have to reconcile the clashing interests of domestic capital and labour and to attract vital foreign industry and investment.