Sociological Routes and Political Roots

Michaela Benson is a visiting research fellow at the University of Bristol. She previously held the Sociological Review fellowship (2008-9), and is the author of The British in Rural France (forthcoming), and co-editor of the volume Lifestyle Migration (2009). Rolland Munro is Emeritus Professor at Keele University and was previously Director of the Centre for Social Theory & Technology, CSTT. He is internationally regarded for his path-breaking and interdisciplinary work on consumption, power and identity.

This monograph explores the interplay between ideas of the political and the way that we, as sociologists, look at the phenomena that we study. Shows what empirical sociological enquiries into the political reveal on theoretical and conceptual levelsDiscusses how sociologists should study and understand a political environment Evaluates how the political intersects with current social identities and divisionsIncludes empirical and theoretical cases

Introduction Unfolding social construction: sociological routes and political roots (Rolland Munro) Part 1: Borders 1. The Danube and ways of imagining Europe (Michael Schillmeier and Wiebke Pohler) 2. The art of narrating and the question of cultural acknowledgment: the case of Die Kinder von Golzow and a reunified Germany (Barbara Gruning) Part 2: Belonging 3. Landscape, imagination and experience: processes of emplacement among the British in rural France (Michaela Benson) 4. The reproduction of 'cultural taste' amongst the Ukrainian Diaspora in Bradford, England (Oscar Forero and Graham Smith) 5. Forum for the Ugly People - study of an imagined community (Maria Adamczyk) Part 3: Theory 6. Sociological analysis and socio-political change: juxtaposing elements of the work of Bourdieu, Passeron and Lyotard (Derek Robbins) 7. Cultivating disconcertment (John Law and Wen-yuan Lin) 8. Epistemology and the politics of knowledge (Celine-Marie Pascale) Part 4: Discourse 9. Populist elements in contemporary American political discourse (Ritchie Savage) 10. Released from gender? Reflexivity, performativity, and therapeutic discourses (Katerina Liskova) 11. Embracing dependency: rethinking (in)dependence in the discourse of care (Bernhard Weicht) Part 5: Social movements 12. Curious cases: small island states' exceptionalism and its contribution to comparative welfare theory (Zoe Irving) 13. The political-opportunity structure of the Spanish anti-war movement (2002-2004) and its impact (Isis Sanchez Estelles) 14. Between mobility and mobilization - lifestyle migration and the practice of European identity in political struggles (Michael Janoschka) Notes on contributors Index