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Cover -- Half Title -- Series Page -- Title Page -- Copyright Page -- Table of Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction: Cultural Sociology of Cultural Representations of Italy -- 1 Methods, Theory, Data -- 2 Italy as Paradise and Hell -- 3 Republican Rome and Imperial Britain -- 4 Italy as Re-Enchantment and Refuge -- 5 Italy as Salvation and Liberation -- 6 Multiple Italys Past -- Multiple Italys Present -- 7 Italy as Illusion and Paradox -- Conclusion -- Appendix 1 -- Appendix 2 -- Appendix 3 -- References -- Index.

Introduction: why social theory matters for social work -- Classical social theory and modern social problems -- Phenomenology and social theory: exploring the life-world of the service user -- Symbolic interactionism and the social self -- Norbert Elias: emotions, rationality and self-restraint -- Michel Foucault: social work and professional power -- Pierre Bourdieu: symbolic violence and self-exclusion -- Feminist social theory and social work -- Globalization and social work -- Conclusion: the future of social work and social theory.

This article takes the main arguments made by Bourdieu in his late work On Television and Journalism and applies them to the empirical case of the production of discursive visions of Italy and the Italians in Britain from approximately 1840 to the present day. In doing so, Bourdieu's field theory is applied in order to examine and compare the range and diversity of the Italian visions produced at around the mid-point of the 19th century — a period of high cultural autonomy in England — with those produced in the present day. In the account of the present day, the dominant assemblage of discursive practices and the fields from which they derive is explicated and the extent to which these visions are shaped by the `audience ratings' mindset is scrutinized.The article concludes by reflecting on the analytical utility of Bourdieu's field theory for understanding inter-cultural representation.

What constitutes the field of 'cultural sociology' today? Where has it come from, and where is it going? And how has the journal Cultural Sociology played a role in the field over the journal's 15 years of existence? This article comprises a dialogue between one of the current editors, Christopher Thorpe, and one of the founding editors, David Inglis. Reflecting on these questions, the dialogue also touches on major issues in cultural sociology today; these include the continuing legacy of Bourdieu, the presence of Actor Network Theory, differences between critical-theoretical and Yale School conceptions of cultural autonomy, neo-liberalization processes, the status of postcolonial sociological ideas in the field, attempts to decolonize sociological accounts of culture, and the interplay between mainstream and 'productively weird' kinds of cultural sociology.

There is today persistent debate in journalism and politics about social generations. Social scientists point out that young(er) people across the planet today seem to be in increasingly similar socio-economic, political and cultural situations. These involve shared forms of experience, as well as means of dealing with often highly challenging circumstances. A major debate at the intersection of social theory, globalization studies and youth studies is whether it makes sense to say that 'younger' people across the world today constitute one single 'global generation'. Such ideas have been promoted by leading social theorists like Bryan S. Turner and Ulrich Beck and Elisabeth Beck-Gernsheim. The analysis of social generations stretches back to Karl Mannheim's pioneering statements in the 1920s. It has been argued that the Mannhemian tradition is in many ways outdated, and needs to be subjected to profound refurbishment, so that it may better understand cross-border, trans-national, 'cosmopolitan' phenomena, involving global generations and the forces and mechanisms which create them. This paper argues that claims about 'global generations' made by the theorists are muddled, especially in terms of conflating generations and age cohorts, and are often deterministic. The problems derive partly from imperfect readings and usages of Mannheim's original ideas. It is shown that these are much more 'cosmopolitan' and attuned to cultural phenomena than critics allege. While the paper is sceptical as to the potential of the global generations concept in general, nonetheless the ongoing relevance of Mannheim for future endeavours to improve uses of it are underlined.

There is today persistent debate in journalism and politics about social generations. Social scientists point out that young(er) people across the planet today seem to be in increasingly similar socio-economic, political and cultural situations. These involve shared forms of experience, as well as means of dealing with often highly challenging circumstances. A major debate at the intersection of social theory, globalization studies and youth studies is whether it makes sense to say that 'younger' people across the world today constitute one single 'global generation'. Such ideas have been promoted by leading social theorists like Bryan S. Turner and Ulrich Beck and Elisabeth Beck-Gernsheim. The analysis of social generations stretches back to Karl Mannheim's pioneering statements in the 1920s. It has been argued that the Mannhemian tradition is in many ways outdated, and needs to be subjected to profound refurbishment, so that it may better understand cross-border, trans-national, 'cosmopolitan' phenomena, involving global generations and the forces and mechanisms which create them. This paper argues that claims about 'global generations' made by the theorists are muddled, especially in terms of conflating generations and age cohorts, and are often deterministic. The problems derive partly from imperfect readings and usages of Mannheim's original ideas. It is shown that these are much more 'cosmopolitan' and attuned to cultural phenomena than critics allege. While the paper is sceptical as to the potential of the global generations concept in general, nonetheless the ongoing relevance of Mannheim for future endeavours to improve uses of it are underlined. ; Peer reviewed