City provides an accessible yet critical introduction to one of the key ideas in human geography. While most of the world’s population now lives in cities, the definition and theoretical specification of the city nonetheless remains elusive. In this extensively updated second edition, Phil Hubbard considers the different ways that the lived and messy realities of urban life have been approached by geographers, past and present.

Situating these in the context of ongoing debates concerning gl...

The Social Dynamics of Family Violence explores family violence throughout the life course, from child abuse and neglect to intimate partner violence and elder abuse.

While the subject of migration has received enormous attention in academic journals and books across the social sciences, introductory texts on the matter are few and far between. Even fewer books have explored migration through a critical and explicit engagement with spatial concepts. Now in its second edition, Migration remains the only text in more than a decade that emphasizes how geographical or spatial concepts can be used critically to understand migration.

The multi-disciplinary text ...

One of America's leading anthropolgists offers solutions to the perplexing question of why people behave the way they do.

Why do Hindus worship cows? Why do Jews and Moslems refuse to eat pork? Why did so many people in post-medieval Europe believe in witches?

Marvin Harris answers these and other perplexing questions about human behavior, showing that no matter how bizarre a people's behavior may seem, it always stems from identifiable and intelligble sources.

This theory-based introduction to peace studies provides coverage of theories relevant to peace studies: peace; conflict; development; civilizations; and economics. It provides an analogy between peace studies and health studies, and makes a strong case for a transdisciplinary approach.

The author of this study turns his attention to the everyday, less visible forms of nationalism that are deeply ingrained in contemporary consciousness. This form of nationalism, which is neither exotic nor remote, he describes as "banal nationalism".

In The Right to Maim Jasbir K. Puar brings her pathbreaking work on the liberal state, sexuality, and biopolitics to bear on our understanding of disability. Drawing on a stunning array of theoretical and methodological frameworks, Puar uses the concept of “debility”-bodily injury and social exclusion brought on by economic and political factors-to disrupt the category of disability.

She shows how debility, disability, and capacity together constitute an assemblage that states use to cont...

Introducing the idea of 'granular ethnography', this interdisciplinary text shows readers how to take ethnography's theoretical foundations into account and clearly lays out the importance of doing so.

A comprehensive overview of all the major theorists and key schools of sociological thought, from sociology's origins through to the early 21st century.

Accessibly written, yet analytically rich, Extreme Killing: Understanding Serial and Mass Murder, Fifth Edition, is renowned for its fascinating examination of historical and contemporary serial and mass murder.