Category Archives: Publications

Bourdieu in International Relations. Rethinking Key Concepts in IR Edited by Rebecca Adler-Nissen, Routledge, 2012 This book rethinks the key concepts of International Relations by drawing on the work of Pierre Bourdieu. The last few years have seen a genuine wave of publications promoting sociology in international relations. Scholars have suggested that Bourdieu’s vocabulary can be applied to study security, diplomacy, migration and global environmental politics. Yet we still lack a systematic and accessible analysis of what Bourdieu-inspired IR might look like. This book provides the answer. It offers an introduction to Bourdieu’s thinking to a wider IR audience, challenges … Continue reading →

A Political Sociology of Transnational Europe Edited by Niilo Kauppi, ECPR Press, 2013 This volume presents cutting-edge, theoretically ambitious studies in political sociology by first-rate European scholars that deal with some of the major challenges European societies and politics are facing. These have to do with globalisation and complex Europeanisation, which have contributed to restructuring the European nation-state and redefining political power. Accounting for these transformations requires revisiting traditional objects of political science such as state sovereignty, civil society and citizenship. While doing this, the studies of this volume join sophisticated empirical analyses with methodological and conceptual innovations such as … Continue reading →

Transnational Power Elites. The new professionals of governance, law and security. Edited by Niilo Kauppi and Mikael Rask Madsen, Routledge, 2013 This book argues that European Union institutional mechanics and the EU as a political unit cannot be properly understood without taking into account the elites that make the policy decisions. Spurred by globalisation, technological and economic development has provided the backbone for social and political transformations that have changed the social structures that unite and differentiate individuals and groups in Europe and their interface with extra-European actors. These developments are not only exemplified by the rise of the EU, … Continue reading →

The latest issue of International Political Sociology (5,3) is dedicated to Bourdieu and the international. Find more information on the journal and the special issue here and here

Davita Silfen Glasberg, Deric Shannon, Political Sociology: Oppression, Resistance, and the State, London, Sage, 2011 Taking a multidimensional approach, this book emphasizes the interplay between power, inequality, multiple oppressions, and the state. This framework provides students with a unique focus on the structure of power and inequality in society today.     Table of contents: Preface Chapter 1 – Power, Oppression, and the State: An Introduction Chapter 2 – From the Top Down? Power Structure Theories Chapter 3 -“Is This the Best or Only Possible World?” Oppression and Socialization Chapter 4 – Power to the People? Voting and Electoral Participation Chapter … Continue reading →

Kate Nash, Contemporary Political Sociology: Globalization, Politics, and Power, Second Edition, Wiley-Blackwell, Malden MA, Oxford, 2010 This fully revised and updated introduction to political sociology incorporates the burgeoning literature on globalization and shows how contemporary politics is linked to cultural issues, social structure and democratizing social action. The second edition includes new material on global governance, human rights, global social movements, global media, a new discussion of democracy and democratization, and clearly lays out what is at stake in deciding between alternatives of cosmopolitanism, imperialism and nationalism. Includes additional discussion of the importance of studying culture to political sociology.

Salvatore Palidda (Ed), Racial Criminalization of Migrants in the 21st Century, Farnham, Ashaget, 2010 Over the last two decades in the West, there has been a significant increase in the arrest, imprisonment and detention of migrants. The racial criminalization and victimization of migrants and Roma people has led judicial authorities, local governments, the police, mass media and the general population to perceive migrants and ‘gypsies’ as responsible for a wide range of offences. Taking into consideration the political and cultural conditions that affect and interconnect societies of emigration and immigration, the contributors examine and compare a range of cases in … Continue reading →

This issue of French Politics features a symposium on French historical and political sociology of the EU (symposium editor: D. Georgakakis). More information on the website of French Politics.

A political sociology of the European Union. Reassessing constructivism, edited by Jay Rowell and Michel Mangenot, Manchester University Press, 2010 The study of the European Union has historically been a theoretical battleground. Since the 1990s, new theoretical directions such as neo-institutionalism, multi-level governance and constructivism have provided a new impetus. However, despite these new inroads, empirical work has often remained sociologically and empirically underspecified.This volume seeks to bridge the gap between theory and fieldwork by developing an actor-centred political sociology. In doing so, the volume engages in a critical dialogue with the constructivist framework and proposes to build on its … Continue reading →

Niilo Kauppi, Radicalism in French Culture. A Sociology of French Theory in the 1960s, London, Ashgate, 2010 An invisible pattern draws together most studies dealing with French cultural radicalism in the 1960s with intellectual creation reduced to individual creation and the role of semiotic and social factors that influence intellectual innovation minimized. Sociological approaches often see a more or less external link between social location and intellectual production but, because of their structural approach, they are incapable of taking into account unique historical circumstances, the crucial role of personal impulses, and more importantly the semiotic logic of ideas as conditions … Continue reading →