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The Wiley-Blackwell Companion to Political Sociology is a complete reference guide, reflecting the scope and quality of the discipline, and highlighting emerging topics in the field. Global in focus, offering up-to-date topics from an interdisciplinary, international set of scholars addressing key issues concerning globalization, social movements, and citizenship The majority of chapters are new, including those on environmental politics, international terrorism, security, corruption, and human rights Revises and updates all previously published chapters to include new themes and topics in political sociology Provides an overview of scholarship in the field, with chapters working independently and collectively to examine the full range of contributions to political sociology Offers a challenging yet accessible and complete reference guide for students and scholars.

How sensibly can one talk of industrial sociology in a non-industrial continent? Industrial sociology has been called the 'special' sociology whose task should be to carry through scientifically the analyses of the social relationships and interactions present within the industrial organisation in all its theoretical depth and breadth.1 Raif Dahrendorf, for instance, in Industrie und Betriebssoziologie (Berlin, 1962), whilst accepting industrial sociology as one of the 'special' sociologies, makes the reservation that it is concerned with the industrial society. But since the whole process of industrialisation was a historical one, the limitation of industrial sociology to any specific period must be an open question, especially since every kind of society requires the production of goods and services through industrial organisation. Elsewhere I have questioned the premises and validity of Dahrendorf's assertion;2 but it must be admitted that in its present form this special sociology has little or no meaning for the pre-industrial societies largely because they have not yet been exposed to it as a scientific tool. Nevertheless, sociological researches in pre-industrial societies can demonstrate the operational use of industrial sociological categories, such as performance efficiency and incentives, managerial techniques, industrial commitment, and the effect of industrial work on personality, as will be shown below by surveying the work of C. H. Northcott, W. Elkan, and Y. Glass in pre-industrial societies of Africa.

Nietzsche's life and thought -- Nietzsche's influence on modern social theory -- From genealogy to biopower: Michel Foucault (1926-84) -- On negative dialectics and genealogy: Theodor W. Adorno (1903-69) -- From the Protestant work ethic to the iron cage of modernity: Max Weber (1864-1920) -- Nietzsche and other sociologists -- Nietzsche and Marx on the limits of enlightenment -- The ascetic sociologists: the case of Comte and Durkheim -- Nietzsche on culture -- The sociology of culture -- The sociology of politics and history -- The sociology of knowledge -- Toward an affirmative thought for life.

This paper presents new cultural concepts drawn from the Arab world. The terms 'other underdevelopment' and 'cultural symbols' are new as terms as well as cultural concepts in today's social sciences. As such, they are in favour of the development of cultural sociology with a 'strong programme'. This paper argues that the building of a cultural theory based on a different epistemology and on new cultural concepts is a legitimate possibility. This potential contribution to the growing cultural sociology has been done independently before the official meaning of cultural sociology was generally adopted.

Nowadays, the widespread view is that classical sociology is tainted with 'methodological nationalism and it would appear that there has been a significant overlap between social and political space. We disagree with this point of view for three reasons: (1) by dealing with the global world, classical sociology has already glimpsed the possibility of going beyond the nation-state as a unit of analysis; (2) having operated above all with the notion of 'social' rather than 'national', its categories are transnational; and (3) when classical sociology has dealt with national society, studies have not reified it within its political boundaries. Consequently, in our opinion, classical sociology highlights both analytical categories that go beyond the ontology of the nation-state as well as new socio-political forms defined within the trajectory of modernity under the pressure of globalization processes.

The area of the sociology of medicine has developed its own internal debates. Over the years there has been a shift from a sociology in medicine to a sociology of medicine and then towards a sociology of health and illness. This book discusses the latter perspective

Theoretical sociology -- The classical period, 1830-1935 -- Auguste Comte and the emergence of sociology -- Herbert Spencer -- Karl Marx -- Max Weber -- Georg Simmel -- Émile Durkheim -- George Herbert Mead -- The classical roots of contemporary theorizing -- The modern era of theorizing -- Functional theorizing -- General systems theorizing -- Ecological theorizing -- Evolutionary theorizing -- Conflict theorizing -- Exchange theorizing -- Symbolic interactionist theorizing -- Role and status theorizing -- Dramaturgical theorizing -- Phenomenological and ethnomethodological theorizing -- Structural and structuralist theorizing -- Cultural theorizing -- Postmodern theorizing -- European critical theorizing -- American-style critical theorizing -- Elements of scientific theorizing in sociology -- Overcoming roadblocks to cumulative explanatory theory in sociology

One of the fields of sociology which is experiencing a dramatic explosion is that catch‐all area of Women's Studies. Books and articles touching on women's experiences in the labour market or in the home, the education of girls or images of femininity, the impact of the law on women or sexism in the social sciences have been proliferating in the last decade. Much of the impetus has been provided by the renascent Women's Movement, and the various academic concerns echo the diverse attacks on the status quo being made by politically active women. The one thing which holds all this material together is an explicit concern to bring women to the centre of the stage in the social sciences, instead of leaving them (as they so often have been) in the wings or with mere walk‐on parts. Taking the woman's point of view is seen as a legitimate corrective to the tendency to ignore women altogether. But is this sufficient to constitute the nucleus of a new speciality within sociology, which is what seems to be happening to 'Women's Studies' and 'feminist' social science? More seriously, should sociological discussions of women be ghettoised into special courses on women in society? As a preliminary attempt to redress the balance maybe such separate development can be justified, but if that is all that happens, the enriching potential of feminist social science may well be lost to mainstream sociology. It is not just that feminist social scientists want women to be brought in to complete the picture. It is not just that they claim that half the picture is being left unexposed. The claims are often much more ambitious than that: what much feminist writing is attempting is a demonstration of the distortion in the half image which is exposed. An injection of feminist thinking into practically any sociological speciality could lead to a profound re‐orientation of that field. More than this, a feminist approach can indicate the ways in which traditional boundaries between sociological specialities can obscure women and their special position in society. Feminist social scientists throw down the gauntlet on the way in which the field of sociology has traditionally been carved up. But if women's studies are kept in their ghetto, this challenge will be lost: to me, the explicitly critical stance which feminist research takes with respect to mainstream sociology is one of its most exciting qualities, and such research has important insights to contribute to the development of the discipline.