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Sociology

Books and e-books

UCL Explore is the best place to find books, journals and other materials, either in print or in electronic format.

Print books on Sociology can be found in the IOE Library and SSEES Library.

In the IOE Library, most books on Sociology can be found in the Non-Education collection on Level 5. Books on the Sociology of Childhood and Education can be found in the Main Education collection on Level 3.

At SSEES Library, general books for SSEES Politics and Sociology courses are located in the Miscellaneous section on the First Floor. The Library does not have one section designated to Politics and Sociology collection. Books are arranged by country and then within that by topic. As a result, there are separate Politics and Sociology sections for each country.

How can you tell if a book is available online?

On UCL Explore, you can look at the results of your search to quickly discover if a book is available in print or/and online: View Online means that the book is available electronically, while Available means that the book is available in print. In some cases a book is available both in print and online.

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Latest titles added to the collection

Family and Disability Activism

Family and Disability Activism reveals how families and disabled people who identify as BIPOC and/or LGBTQIA2S+ understand issues of rights versus justice. Contributions by Deaf and disabled activists emphasize the frequent need for either care or independence. Other chapters show how members of the disabled community and their families must navigate systemic issues of segregation, institutionalization, and access to special education services differently depending on their ethnic and racial identities. Expanding the conversation about disability, kinship, biological and chosen families, and activism, this volume amplifies important voices in the fight for disability rights.

Research Handbook on the Sociology of Knowledge

This Handbook celebrates and contributes to the recent revitalisation of the sociology of knowledge. A diverse group of leading experts from the global North and South provide a state of the art overview of a field, which is developing rapidly with the growth of poststructuralist, postcolonial, and feminist approaches. Fran Collyer and contributing authors explore the theoretical frameworks underpinning the sociology of knowledge and demonstrate how these can address new issues, problems and circumstances. They shed light on how the sociology of knowledge is applied to and impacts contemporary challenges including racial and gender inequality, climate change, and the growth of neoliberalism. They also offer insights into the association between theories of knowledge and other conceptual and theoretical developments such as the sociology of science, constructivism, pragmatism, postmodernism, poststructuralism, and postcolonialism.

Wittgenstein and Social Epistemology

The last twenty years have witnessed a 'social turn' in analytic philosophy. Social epistemology has been crucial to it. Social epistemology starts by repudiating the kind of individualistic epistemology, which, since Descartes' Meditations and through Kant's maxim 'Think for yourself', has dominated philosophy. It is a sign of the deep erasure of Wittgenstein's ideas from many debates in analytic philosophy that neither his views against fundamental tenets of individualistic epistemology, nor his positive contribution to key themes in social epistemology are considered. This Element on Wittgenstein and Social Epistemology is the first comprehensive study of the implications of the later Wittgenstein's ideas for key issues at the core of present-day social epistemology, such as the nature of common sense and its relations to common knowledge; testimony and trust; deep disagreements in connection with genealogical challenges; and the meaning of 'woman' and the role of self-identification in the determination of gender.

Social Work in an Unequal World

Social work is a human service profession that continues to work for human wellbeing and achieving a just and equal society. However, the gross inequality in the form of wealth, economy, concentration of resources and power, as well as gender, race, and social and political access challenge the ability of a social worker in addressing the social problems experienced by most marginalized people in the world. Social Work in an Unequal World focuses on the social work profession and education and explores different dimensions of inequality around the globe.The book particularly addresses some of the pertinent questions: How does social work operate in an unequal and unfair world? As social work educators, how do we respond to this? How do we address these issues in our classrooms?

Social Informatics

Taking a social informatics perspective, this edited volume investigates the interaction between society and digital technologies and includes research that examines individuals, groups, organizations, and nations, as well as their complex relationships with pervasive mobile and wearable devices, social media platforms, artificial intelligence, and big data. The readers of the book will understand theoretical frameworks of social informatics; gain insights into recent empirical studies of social informatics in specific areas such as big data and its effects on privacy, ethical issues related to digital technologies, and the implications of digital technologies for daily practices; and learn how the social informatics perspective informs research and practice.

The Pedagogy of Radical Change

This book discusses and compares how social movements in Brazil, Chile, Greece and England are beacons of alternative politics. It focuses on the potential of these movements to radically transform higher education and society. It explores how social movements create new forms of resistance to the ubiquity of global capitalism and new forms of thinking, acting and being in the world that are not based on exploitation and profit. Rather, they are premised on respect for diversity, commitment to equality and inclusion, solidaristic structures and multiple and equally valued (pluriversal) epistemologies. The book draws on empirical material collected over 12 years in conversation with key participants in social movements including the Brazilian Movimiento de los Trabajadores Rurales Sin Tierra, Chilean and Greek Student movements, and the Black Lives Matter Movement in England. These movements confront the realist pedagogies in our lives, that is, the practices and structures that dominate the way society and education are organized.

Interpretive Sociology and the Semiotic Imagination

Semiotics provides key analytical tools to understand the creation and reproduction of meaning in social life. Although some fields have productively incorporated semiotic models, sociology still needs to engage with semiotic mediation. Written by a diverse group of authors in interpretive sociology, this ambitious volume asks what the relationship between meaning systems and action is, how we can describe culture and which roles we assign to language, social processes and cognition in a sociological context. Contributors offer empirical research that not only outlines the conceptual issues at stake, but also demonstrates 'how to do things' with semiotics through case studies.

The Sociology of Boredom

A pioneering sociological exploration of boredom as a culturally- and socially-dependent emotion Does boredom have a history? What can hunter-gatherers teach us about boredom? Is boredom experienced differently by those in different socio-economic classes? Is boredom a disease that is now globalized in a world of inequalities and marginalization? Does boredom contribute to political movements, wars, terrorism, or cultural revolutions? What does boredom have to do with power? How do high expectations contribute to being recurrently bored? In The Sociology of Boredom, Mariusz Finkielsztein provides a new approach to conceptualizing, interpreting, and perceiving one of the most widespread, yet neglected, human emotions.

The Handbook of Social and Political Conflict

Provides real-world insights into social and political conflict across disciplines The Handbook of Social and Political Conflict offers a comprehensive exploration of conflict from a variety of disciplinary perspectives, merging insights from fields including sociology, political science, psychology, communication, and conflict resolution. Bringing together original work by experts from around the world, this authoritative volume provides readers with a deep understanding of the mechanisms, causes, and consequences of conflict. Designed for those who wish to bridge academic disciplines, the Handbook both advances theoretical understanding and offers practical conflict resolution strategies that can be applied in a broad range of contexts, from interpersonal disputes to international tensions.

The Oxford Handbook of International Political Sociology

This handbook provides an in-depth analysis of the theoretical agendas, analytical tools, and substantive contributions offered by International Political Sociology. It explores the range of insights available to those who use sociological theory to engage various facets of world politics, from colonialism to globalization. Structured around three defining commitments - relationalism, intersubjectivity, and historicism - the book outlines what is distinct about IPS, where it came from, and where it can go next. Engaging a wide range of debates in International Relations and related fields of enquiry, the volume includes contributions on seminal concepts in the social sciences, including power, order, rule, resistance, and agency, alongside discussion of a range of important issue-areas, from climate change to revolutions.

Other collections

  • Economics: provides material on economic theory and policy.
  • History: for individual countries' political, social and economic history.
  • Human Rights: From textbooks to material on specific rights and the situations in specific regions and countries.
  • Public Policy: covers aspects of political science and the formulation of government policy, including some material on social policy.
  • Anthropology: includes resources on gender and sexuality studies as well as other topics.
  • Geography includes resources on race, migration, development, globalisation and the environment.
  • Psychology: is a useful collection for additional material on psychology and the human sciences.

UCL Bartlett Library hold material on urban studies, the environment, and related social policies.