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"The book examines the issue of old age in death in contemporary Western societies in the pre-Covid-19 period and during the recent pandemic. It aims to prompt rethinking of societal obligations to the aged and to reflect on ways of handling death in old age. By exposing which values and orientations towards death in old age have been reinforced and which have been challenged by the coronavirus pandemic, the book offers a platform to debate society's responsibility to old people and to reflect on the legacy of the pandemic for the quality of the end of life care. It raises ethical and philosophical implications of the normalization the idea that during health crises some lives need to be prioritised over others. The book, by drawing from an extensive literature, from sociology, psychology, philosophy gerontology to death studies, throws light on the cultural values by which we understand mortality. Whilst the book's focus is on the UK, its argument, that the marginalization of death in old age impacts on the quality of the end of life care, has enormous implications for other cultures in terms of how old age tends to be ignored and how they were neglected during the pandemic"--

Cover -- Half Title -- Series Page -- Title -- Copyright -- Dedication -- Contents -- Introduction: Later life and the experience of ageing -- Part I The pillars of later life -- Chapter 1 Keeping on wondering -- Chapter 2 It takes courage -- Chapter 3 The enabling potential of habit -- Part II The ordeals of later life -- Chapter 4 The specious present and boredom -- Chapter 5 The flexible past and bitterness -- Chapter 6 The diminishing future and sadness -- Epilogue: Explications and ellipses -- Literary sources -- References -- Index.

Provides an overview of the sociology of memory. This book aims to show to what extent the investigation of memory challenges sociological understandings of the formation of social identities and conflicts. It is a useful text for undergraduate courses in social theory, the sociology of memory and those in cultural studies, history and politics

Provides an overview of the sociology of memory. This book aims to show to what extent the investigation of memory challenges sociological understandings of the formation of social identities and conflicts. It is a useful text for undergraduate courses in social theory, the sociology of memory and those in cultural studies, history and politics.

The paper emphasizes the contemporary relevance of civility, understood as a respectful way of treating the other and recognition of people's differences and sensibilities. It outlines the sociological importance of civility as being connected with its role as both a normative guidance orienting us towards prescriptive ideals and as an empirical concept with important social impact on identities and actions. The paper examines Adam Smith's theory which roots civility in a commercial society, analyses Elias's (1994) history of civility as the folding of the logic of the civilizing process, and it debates theories linking the idea of civility to civil society. In conclusion, emphases are put on the importance of civility, seen as the act of respectful engaging with people across deep divisions, for the quality of democracy.

This paper asserts that the growing expansion of the micro realm of social activity calls for the exploration of everyday experience, seen as ranging from the most extraordinary to the most ordinary. The paper focuses on two constitutive features of the ordinary type of experience, namely, normality and boredom. It conceptualizes normality as an outcome of people's potential to construct meaning of their ordinary experiences and boredom as a state signaling our inability to realize this desire. Both types of ordinary experience are in the core of everyday life and thus their consequences can be detrimental to the quality of social life. This paper's discussion of normality and boredom includes both sociological and literary works where these two phenomena find their rich expression.

This article argues that our understanding of the complexity of the links between memory and migration can be enhanced by focusing on the role of experience in lending meaning to migrants' lives. Realizing the difficulties of providing a comprehensive sociological account of experience
and recognizing the potential of works of fiction to enrich sociological imagination, this article will try to capture details of people's experiences with the help of literature. Using a broad narrative method to analyse the selected British realist novels, this paper aims to discover
their representations of the ways in which migrants rely on past experiences in sense-making practices.

The aim of this paper is to argue a need to re-evaluate the notion and function of civil courage in creating conditions for cohesive, just and pluralistic dimensions of contemporary societies. It will assert that courage can perform a vital social function by providing the basis for civic initiatives that affirm human rights and dignities, enrich the functioning of institutions and quality of civil society and enhance social or cultural change. Since the concept of courage is still commonly discussed using terms derived from the Classical Greece, I will delineate this ancient legacy and its contribution to the persistence of various obstacles and impediments in theorizing about courage. This will be followed by a discussion of the relevance of classical sociology's input into today's understanding of this notion, after which I will demonstrate that currently, as a result of border socio-political and technological transformations, this notion is in urgent need of re-evaluation. Finally, I will discuss the functions of civil courage in the contemporary world and its place in social science.