When Marshall McLuhan first coined the phrases "global village" and "the medium is the message" in 1964, no-one could have predicted today's information-dependent planet. No-one, that is, except for a handful of science fiction writers and Marshall McLuhan. Understanding Media was written twenty years before the PC revolution and thirty years before the rise of the Internet.

Yet McLuhan's insights into our engagement with a variety of media led to a complete rethinking of our entire society. ...

Across the world, most people are well aware of ordinary criminal harms to person and property. Often committed by the powerless and poor, these individualized crimes are catalogued in the statistics collected annually by the FBI and by similar agencies in other developed nations. In contrast, the more harmful and systemic forms of injury to person and property committed by powerful and wealthy individuals, groups, and national states are neither calculated by governmental agencies nor annual...

Now in its third edition, this dynamic textbook blends coverage of the major theories and research methods in mass communication to enable students to apply their knowledge in today's media and communication careers.

-Hybrid coverage of media theory and research methods that enables students to apply their academic knowledge in professional settings -Focus on building from theory and methods coverage to research projects makes for easy and dynamic use in a range of introductory, capstone, and...

In contrast to other disciplines, social psychology has been slow in responding to the questions posed by the issue of ethnicity. The Social Psychology of Ethnic Identity, Second Edition, demonstrates the important and diverse contribution that social psychology can make. Comprehensively updated to include the latest research on dual and multiple identities, mutual links between sense of ethnic identity and social contexts, and the development of ethnic identity in adolescence, this new editi...

This accessible book introduces the story of 'social science', with coverage of history, politics, economics, sociology, psychology, anthropology, and geography. Key questions include: How and why did the social sciences originate and differentiate? How are they related to older traditions that have defined Western civilization? What is the unique perspective or 'way of knowing' of each social science? What are the challenges-and alternatives-to the social sciences as they stand in the twenty...

Health systems have long been considered key determinants of well-being within modern societies, a valuable resource which have faced a series of reform initiatives throughout the past decades. These reforms have been used to manage the cost of development, measure the tenability of health systems in globalizing economies and promote the increasing importance of health problems related to lifestyle and living conditions, yet they have failed to provide a true resolution to the persistent econ...

Global Development: The Basics is a lively and engaging introduction to the shifting landscape of global development, right from its origins, to today, and on to what the future might look like. Delving into economics, politics, gender and climate change, this book is for readers starting out in their understanding of global development.

As the EU continues its integration process, the concepts of culture and transnational European belonging remain ambivalent, whether in the realm of socio-historical representation or mass politics. Engaging with recent scholarly debates surrounding the formation of collective transnational identities, this collection draws on the latest empirical case studies to explore the meaning and composition of European identity, the mechanisms that create and shape it and the question of whom it inclu...

Power, Politics and Society: An Introduction to Political Sociology discusses how sociologists have organized the study of politics into conceptual frameworks, and how each of these frameworks foster a sociological perspective on power and politics in society. This includes discussing how these frameworks can be applied to understanding current issues and other "real life" aspects of politics. This second edition incorporates new material on cultural divides in American politics, emerging rol...

One of the most talked-about scholarly works of the past fifty years, Judith Butler’s Gender Trouble is as celebrated as it is controversial. Arguing that traditional feminism is wrong to look to a natural, 'essential' notion of the female, or indeed of sex or gender, Butler starts by questioning the category 'woman' and continues in this vein with examinations of 'the masculine' and 'the feminine'. Best known however, but also most often misinterpreted, is Butler's concept of gender a...