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Over the past decades, psychosocial studies has demonstrated its strengths and influence across diverse sites of theory and practice; it continues to grow as an area of transdisciplinary research that dialogues with psychoanalysis, sociology, critical psychology, cultural studies, gender and sexuality studies, and postcolonial studies. The Palgrave Handbook of Psychosocial Studies is the first Major Reference Work to explore the history and depth of the field and offer a critical evaluation of contemporary theories, empirical methods and practices of psychosocial studies. With 50 chapters, this state-of-the-art collection:· reflects back on texts that have influenced the development of psychosocial studies from a 2020s perspective· explores current major topics with evaluative reviews· identifies newly emerging areas ofenquiry · features a wide range of international psychosocial voices. Published chapters can be read and downloaded individually online: https://link.springer.com/referencework/10.1007/978-3-030-61510-9 The Palgrave Handbook of Psychosocial Studies is unique in covering a wide range of psychosocial topics and in being written accessibly from many different perspectives. It will appeal to students, scholars and practitioner-researchers alike.

Tracing the evolution of Chinese Sociology from the late 1970s to the present day, the book aims to record the path of reconstruction, localization, change, and reform of Chinese Sociology through interviews with 40 Chinese top sociologists such as Su Guoxun, Zhou Xiaohong, Bian Yanjie, Zhao Dingxin, Zhou Xueguang et al. Divided into three sections, this insightful book is the best proof of the rapid development and overall improvement of the discipline since the reform and opening-up in China. On the occasion of the 40th anniversary of the restoration and reconstruction of Chinese Sociology, this book is expected to inspire the younger generation of sociology researchers and deepen public's understanding of sociology.

This book presents a collection of old and new essays exploring the author's unique contributions to the sociology of science, mathematics, logic, robotics, brain, and god. Known for his defense of a strong social constructionist approach to the hard problems in the sociology of science, the power and range of Restivo's interests and studies are discussed in this unique text. The essays range from his introduction of the sociology of objectivity early in his career to his recent construction of a social brain paradigm. The author situates himself in the context of the leading paradigms in science studies and his relationships with leading figures in the field including Latour, Woolgar, Needham, and D.T. Campbell. The book demonstrates a general theoretical focus on the rejection of transcendence. He rejects Platonism in mathematics and socially situates consciousness, genius, and God. The author's wide ranging interdisciplinary competencies reflect classical and postmodern influences and will be an invaluable reference for researchers working in this field.

This book shows how many previously contingent social processes have gradually been re-organised and transformed into entangled processes of ‘discontinuance'and ‘continuance'through the implementation of digital logic. Together with the necessary co-evolution of our collective digital literacy, this persistent process of transformation throughout modernity is theorised here as one of ‘social digitalisation.'Social digitalisation highlights the ways in which material digital technology, like preceding material technologies, has been fitted into the longer term trajectory of digital transformation. This new social theory thus reverses prevailing accounts of the ‘digital revolution'that focus exclusively on changes allegedly caused by material digital technology in recent decades. The book also demonstrates the fruitfulness of applying the theory of social digitalisation as a holistic approach in researching the wide-ranging consequences of contemporary digitalisation, including its contrasting effects on different social groups. It will be useful to students and researchers of sociology, communications, media and history, but also for general readers interested in understanding the overall complexity of digitalisation and how digital transformation has come to dominate the ways we live today.

This book weaves together disparate worlds of crafting, social justice, and digital technologies around The Partnership Quilt. It crafts a manifesto for meaningful action and design processes in charitable organizations through participatory sewing and its digital augmentation. The book charts a history of how sewing has been used to voice concerns of oppression, and how digital technologies can be embedded into textiles to tell stories more powerfully. It explores the relationship between quilting and research, looking beyond the seams of The Partnership Quilt to shed light on the importance of invisible work behind such participatory, justice-oriented design projects. It concludes with a discussion of the impacts and potential future avenues for research on digitally quilting social justice. “This book is an excellent offering that highlights ways in which visual approaches to research and community work can serve as a canvasfor the outpouring of oppression, anger, hope, resilience and reimagining of a socially just future. It is a great gift and valuable resource for academics, activists and students interested in social justice, participatory action research, and digital technologies.” —Puleng Segalo, Professor, University of South Africa, SA “This expansive undertaking exhibits Strohmayer's force as a thinker, author, and partner in design. From the soldering of electrodes through the review on craft-based activism, Strohmayer generously takes us through a design process from start to finish to examines the relationships that shift along the way. She shows us how worlds of textiles partake in the making of collective futures—nurturing forms of connection as a means of creative expression, self-determination, and remembrance.” —Daniela Rosner, Associate Professor, Human Centered Design & Engineering, University of Washington, USA “This book is a highlight for the courageous minds to break the circle and re-think artistic practices as a more justice-oriented, connected and collaborative mechanisms for our futures. You will have a journey to face who and what forms of designs were privileged or silenced in the global history of quilting. You will be inspired and provoked by the making of the Partnership Quilt. The quilt piece is the materialized example that embodies the many ways of touchy-feely conversations and the possibilities to weave, stitch -or this time to quilt new worlds together. This book is about the making of artistic hope. It is about what is possible, once we see the beauty of equity instead of privileges in design.” —Özge Subaşı, Futurewell, Assistant Professor, Department of Media and Visual Arts, Koç University, Turkey'The Partnership Quilt is a powerful example of the transformative power of craftivism. In this book Dr Angelika Strohmayer pragmatically illustrates how carefully considered participatory craft based projects empower those involved, value-add to the important work being done by NGO's and provide researchers with a methodology that supports and promotes social justice outcomes.'—Dr Tal Fitzpatrick, Artist, Craftivist and Disability Support Worker, Naarm (Melbourne), Australia ‘'The Partnership Quilt, as a model of participatory textile making, draws together relational expertise from the distinct worlds of communication technologies, crafting and ecologies of care. With a focus on collaboration, Strohmayer experiments with the quilt as a metaphor for a layered, interdisciplinary research process as well as a material expression of carefully crafted relationships between makers, researchers, charitable organisations and a marginalised group of sex workers. This richly detailed and insightful book is a timely addition to a growing literature around participatory textile making advocatin

This book provides empirically driven discussions and investigations in the relevance of Actor Network Theory (ANT) and its theoretical concepts. As our civilization evolves from a human to a technologically driven society, new socio-technical network of actors – in society, industry and government are emerging by the day. These networks of actors collaborate to produce contemporary goods and services; handle production processes; manage risks; develop social and commercial networks; develop policies; manage complexities; and create a new way of life. This book provides unique conceptual tools needed to analyze such processes, highlighting the effectiveness of ANT in fostering collaborations between governments, organizations and society.

This book examines the changing role of statistics in institutional reform in Turkey, and the unanticipated ways in which such changes transform livelihoods as well. Turkish agriculture is undergoing its most profound transformation since the establishment of the Republic in the 1920s. Seemingly minor technical adjustments in farmers'reporting requirements and practices to collect better data on agriculture for statistics are also having a rapid and massive effect on farmers'practices and livelihoods. The attempt to understand agriculture in Turkey in new ways is changing agriculture itself. The relationship between statistics and social and natural phenomena is thus performative, and such performativity undergirds a great deal of socio-technical change in the world. Drawing on fieldwork in Turkey with statisticians, farmers and agricultural extension technicians, the book shows how alongside deliberation about reforms, it is in and through this performativity that much of the work of institutional commensuration actually happens.

This book offers a unique analysis of how ideas about science and technology in the public and scientific imaginations (in particular about maths, logic, the gene, the brain, god, and robots) perpetuate the false reality that values and politics are separate from scientific knowledge and its applications. These ideas are reinforced by cultural myths about free will and individualism. Restivo makes a compelling case for a synchronistic approach in the study of these notoriously'hard'cases, arguing that their significance reaches far beyond the realms of science and technology, and that their sociological and political ramifications are of paramount importance in our global society. This innovative work deals with perennial problems in the social sciences, philosophy, and the history of science and religion, and will be of special interest to professionals in these fields, as well as scholars of science and technology studies.

This book explores the development of queer Gothic fiction, contextualizing it with reference to representations of queer sexualities and genders in eighteenth and nineteenth-century Gothic, as well as the sexual-political perspectives generated by the 1970s lesbian and gay liberation movements and the development of queer theory in the 1990s. The book examines the roles that Gothic motifs and narrative strategies play in depicting aspects of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transsexual and intersex experience in contemporary Gothic fiction. Gothic motifs discussed include spectrality, the haunted house, the vampire, doppelganger and monster. Regional Gothic and the contribution that Gothic tropes make to queer historical fiction and historiography receive attention, as does the AIDS narrative. Female Gothic and feminist perspectives are also explored. Writers discussed include Peter Ackroyd, Vincent Brome, Jim Grimsley, Alan Hollinghurst, Randall Kenan, Meg Kingston, Michelle Paver, Susan Swan, Louise Tondeur, Sarah Waters, Kathleen Winter and Jeanette Winterson.

Working at the intersection of medical, theological, cultural, and literary studies, this book offers an innovative approach to understanding maternity, genealogy and social identity as they are represented in popular literature in late-medieval England.

Love in Print in the Sixteenth Century explores the impact of print on conflicting cultural notions about romantic love in the sixteenth century. This popularization of romantic love led to profound transformations in the rhetoric, ideology, and social function of love - transformations that continue to shape cultural notions about love today.

Ledbetter explores themes and patterns of poetry publication in a variety of women's periodicals published throughout the Victorian era using taste, style and the significance of poetry to advance our understanding of women's lives in the nineteenth century.

Through analysis of eight English novels of the Nineteenth century, this work explores the ways in which the novel contributes to the formation of ideology regarding the family, and, conversely, the ways in which changing attitudes toward the family shape and reshape the novel.

This book explores gender relations and women's work and activism in different parts of the world. It also explores the subject from multiple perspectives and links each of these not only to cultural and domestic arrangements but also to an emerging industrial and capitalist system from the Eighteenth through the Twentieth centuries.

William S. Burroughs is consistently thought of as a novelist who is gay, rather than a gay novelist. This distinction is slight, yet remarkable, since it has meant that Burroughs has been excluded from the gay canon and from the scope of queer theory. In this intelligent book, Jamie Russell offers the first queer reading of Burrough's novels. He explores how the novels of Burroughs can be seen as a sustained attempt to offer a very personal rethinking of gay subjectivity, and as an attempt to overturn stereotypes of gay men as effeminate. Yet in his celebration and appropriation of some of the most violent, misogynistic, and effeminaphobic elements of heterosexually-identified masculinity, Burroughs's life and writing suggests a subjectivity which has been deeply troubling to many in the gay community.

Animals appear not just as biological creatures, but as vehicles of meaning for human imagination, mind and culture. Animal life may form the basis for an animalizing imagination that can enhance our cultural, religious and aesthetic sensibilities. This imagination is rooted in the pre-modern affective relationship between shamans and their familiars, but can be tracked to our post-modern ecological crisis, where we can reclaim a totemic identification with animals as signifiers of a new ecological understanding.

Children in Culture is one of the first fully multi- and interdisciplinary collections of essays on theoretical approaches to childhood and formulates and presents new and exciting ideas about the construction of childhood as a cultural identity. The ten original chapters have been written especially for this volume by some of the most eminent writers on childhood in their fields: psychology (Valerie Walkerdine; Rex and Wendy Stainton Rogers), history (Jenny Bourne Taylor; Kimberly Reynolds; Paul Yates), critical theory (Erica Burman), literary criticism (Margarida Morgado; Sara Thornton), children's literature criticism (Karin Lesnik-Oberstein; Stephen Thomson), and film and drama theory (Joe Kelleher).

This book examines how contemporary fantasy literature offers critical insights into western society and culture by drawing on the ancient myths of Wales. These books emphasise the need to have a set of social and personal values in order to be free from a sense of dislocation and alienation in a highly technologised society and in order to satisfy the sense of'hiraeth'or longing for a place where one truly belongs.

TV Drama in Transition reflects upon changing dramatic forms on television in the context of broad cultural shifts over the past two decades. Analyses of a wide range of series (from Heartbeat to Middlemarch and Our Friends in the North; from NYPD Blue to Twin Peaks to The X-Files) are interspersed with accounts of new technologies, viewing dispositions and the political economy of culture. This book is generally concerned as much with the condition of culture in the 1980s and 1990s, as specifically with TV drama.