Bøger udgivet af Polity Press

* This is a brief, authoritative and accessible introduction to the idea of modernity, written by a leading social theorist. * Wagner shows that modernity was based on ideas of freedom, reason and progress, but he examines the extent to which these ideas have been, and can be, realized in the modern world.

* Fully revised, expanded and updated edition of the successful Visual Culture textbook. * Designed to introduce students to the analysis of a broad range of visual texts, including paintings, television, photographs, advertisements and new media.

The sixteenth and seventeenth centuries have traditionally been regarded by historians as a period of intense and formative historical change, so much so that they have often been described as early modern' - an epoch separate from the medieval' and the modern'.

This revised edition of Patrick Baert's widely acclaimed Social Theory in the Twentieth Century , now benefitting from the collaboration of Filipe Carreira da Silva has been brought right up-to-date with cutting-edge developments in social theory today.

Draws together some of the most prominent and influential authors of recent methodological debates in the field of art history.

* Innovative textbook on the social and cultural history of England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales during the period when they came under the rule of a single monarch. * Provides an accessible and engaging introduction to a key and turbulent period in British history.

* Accessible, up-to-date textbook overview of a major discipline in sociology. * Addresses the apparent irrelevance of formal political institutions and practices to people s everyday social life. * Provides tools to assess and rethink the relations between politics and society.

This incisive book provides a succinct overview of the new academic field of citizenship and immigration, as well as presenting a fresh and original argument about changing citizenship in our contemporary human rights era.

* Why do people use drugs? * What happens when people are intoxicated? * Are we being medicated into normality? Drugs and intoxication have been facts of human life for millennia. Across the world, many people use illicit drugs, smoke, and drink alcohol. Yet very little has been written about their experiences.

Where does perversion begin? Who is perverse? This title presents the history of perversion in the West through a study of great emblematic figures from the Middle Ages, the eighteenth century (Sade), the nineteenth century to modern times (Nazism in the 20th century, and the complementary figures of the paedophile and the terrorist in the 21st).

In the first half of the twentieth century, Theodor Adorno wrote about the 'culture industry'. For Adorno, culture too along with the products of factory labour was increasingly becoming a commodity. Now, in what they call the 'global culture industry', Scott Lash and Celia Lury argue that Adorno's worst nightmares have come true.

Jean--Francois Lyotard was one of the most influential European thinkers in recent decades. He was a leading participant in debates about post--modernism and the decline of Marxism, and he made important contributions to ethics, aesthetics and political philosophy.

Fully revised and updated, The Philosophy of Religion retains the accessibilyt which made it popular with readers, while furthering its distinctive argument that emphasizes the human dimension of religion. This new edition of The Philosophy of Religion will continue to be essential reading for all students and practitioners of the subject.

A study of the many genres and contexts in which Shakespeare and his work have enjoyed a musical afterlife. The fascinating book discusses opera, ballet, and classical symphony alongside musicals, film soundtracks and hip-hop.

In this biting critique of our contemporary condition Dufour shows that the radical transformation of the subject brought about by neoliberalism what he calls the art of shrinking heads contains a new kind of violence which has far-reaching consequences for our ways of living together.

Developments in international politics since the end of the Cold War point to a new international order in the twenty-first century. At its heart is international law. Global community values have been recognised as providing the basis for formal legal obligations, maintained and implemented by an international constitutional order.

* Develops a major new theory of modern warfare, based around the idea that risks in modern war are placed on civilians rather than the military. * Written by a leading sociologist of war, the book includes analyses of recent conflicts such as the two Iraq wars, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Kosovo and the Falklands.

'Baudrillard and the Media' is the first in-depth critical study of Jean Baudrillard's media theory. Rejecting the common positioning of Baudrillard within the discipline as a postmodernist it argues instead for the necessity of a fuller reading of his ideas and critical project.

Exploring the rise of prison populations in the US, Europe and Latin America, this study begins with an account of being inside the Central Jail in Los Angeles. It goes on to point out the connections between neoliberalism as a political doctrine, and incarceration as a social policy.

This is a new paperback edition of a book originally published (by OUP) in 1990. It includes a new Introduction by the authors. It is on many reading lists already, so the paperback should be bought by students. The book is a path-breaking study of how TV viewers interpret popular TV programmes - in this case, Dallas .

We are living through the consequences of a linguistic revolution. Dramatic linguistic change has left us at the beginning of a new era in the evolution of human language, with repercussions for many individual languages. In this book, David Crystal, one of the world s authorities on language, brings together for the first time the three major trends which he argues have fundamentally altered the world s linguistic ecology: first, the emergence of English as the world s first truly global language; second, the crisis facing huge numbers of languages which are currently endangered or dying; and, third, the radical effect on language of the arrival of Internet technology. Examining the interrelationships between these topics, Crystal encounters a vision of a linguistic future which is radically different from what has existed in the past, and which will make us revise many cherished concepts relating to the way we think about and work with languages. Everyone is affected by this linguistic revolution. The Language Revolution will be essential reading for anyone interested in language and communication in the twenty-first century.

Much orthodox economic theory is based on assumptions which are treated as self--evident: supply and demand are regarded as independent entities, the individual is assumed to be a rational agent who knows his interests and how to make decisions corresponding to them, and so on.

Paul Hirst was one was one of the most original thinkers of his generation. This book is being published post-humously after his tragic death in 2003. Written with verve and lucidity, it is a scholarly account of the various ways in which space is configured by power, and in which space becomes a resource for power.