SOCIETY & CULTURE: GENERAL

This book examines the evolution of digital platform economies through the lens of online gaming with a unique economic sociology perspective.

Paying particular attention to Valve’s ‘Steam’ platform, the book examines the architecture of this online videogame marketplace and the way it enables new markets and economic transactions.

Inequality is an ever-present danger in our society. This book addresses the nexus between the lived experience of inequality and how it shapes political responses. It offers a powerful examination of how the politics of the UK and the lived experiences of its residents have been reframed in the first decades of the 21st century.

Young people ‘on-road’ are often criminalised due to interlocking structural inequalities. Looking beyond concerns about gangs, the book addresses the concerns of practitioners, policy makers and scholars in analysing aspects and misinterpretations of the shifting realities of young people’s urban life.

This book, offering in-depth analysis from a native scholar, is a critical examination of the world-renowned community Auroville located in Tamil Nadu, South India as a site of spiritually prefigurative utopian practice.

EPDF and EPUB available Open Access under CC-BY-NC-ND licence. This book offers a comprehensive overview of how efforts to achieve SDGs can be enhanced by paying greater attention to freedom of religion and belief.

Discussing the political understandings of trust and mistrust in the context of data, AI and technology at large, this book defines a process of trustification used by governments, corporations, researchers and the media to legitimise exploitation and the increasing of inequalities.

Children in the Global South continue to be affected by social disadvantage in our unequal post-colonial world order. With a focus on working-class children in Latin America, this book explores the challenges of promoting children’s rights in a context of decolonization.

What does mothering mean in different cultures and societies? This book extensively applies biographical and narrative research methods to mothering from international perspectives. Considering self-care, rapport, trust and self-reflection, the collection advances methodological practice in the study of mothers, carers and childless women’s lives.

The Greek island of Lesvos is frequently the subject of news reports on the refugee ‘crisis’. Drawing on her experiences as an activist in Lesvos refugee camps, Iliadou considers the impacts of EU deterrence policies and highlights the global responsibility for safeguarding refugees’ human rights.

Bringing together a range of perspectives from practice, lived experience and academia, this is an accessible and timely guide to children’s services reform. Critically considering the impact of the MacAlister Review, the book highlights both the positive and negative aspects of reform, before setting out alternative policy and practice directions.

Detroit is the first city of its size to become bankrupt and policy-makers have argued that, since then, it has entered a ‘new beginning’. This book analyses whether Detroit’s patterns of inequality on race and class lines still exist and whether the city is truly reversing its decline.

EPDF and EPUB available Open Access under CC-BY-NC-ND licence. Drawing on empirical data from US and UK as well as the unique example of Nordic countries where there is a high level of confidence in state and media institutions, this book shows how platforms and algorithms are transforming media, journalism and audiences’ civic practices.