Makes a case for the necessity of unstructured social time as a key element of our cultural vitality and how it can help take back our social lives from the constant swirl of contemporary life.

"Winner of the 1997 Charles A. Corr Award in Literature" Myra Bluebond-Langner is professor emerita at University College London and Board of Governors Professor of Anthropology Emerita at Rutgers University. She is also the author of In the Shadow of Illness: Parents and Siblings of the Chronically Ill Child (Princeton). Winner of the Margaret Mead Award A classic, moving study of terminally ill children that emphasizes their agency and shows...

Reinvigorates Jürgen Habermas' early critical theory. The first close study of Jürgen Habermas's theory of socialization, a central but infrequently discussed component of his defense of deliberative democracy, The Idolatry of the Actual charts its increasingly uneasy relationship with the later development of Habermas's social theory. In particular, David A. Borman argues that Habermas's account of the development of the subject and of the conditions...

High school and the difficult terrain of sexuality and gender identity are brilliantly explored in this smart, incisive ethnography. Based on eighteen months of fieldwork in a racially diverse working-class high school, Dude, You're a Fag sheds new light on masculinity both as a field of meaning and as a set of social practices. C. J. Pascoe's unorthodox approach analyzes masculinity as not only a gendered process but also a sexual one. She demonstrates...

A watershed book that masterfully integrates insights from evolutionary biology, genetics, psychology, economics, and more to explore the development and workings of human societies "There is no good reason why human societies should not be described and explained with the same precision and success as the rest of nature." Thus argues evolutionary psychologist Pascal Boyer in this uniquely innovative book. Integrating recent insights from evolutionary...

This book offers practical examples and informed advice about: how even very young children form close relationships with each other, the ways that observant adults can nuture possible friendships, understanding social play and skills from the children's perspective, young children who may have special difficulty over making friends and leading best practice for promoting friendships and realistic social skills in early childhood.

Watching the revolution of January 2011, the world saw Egyptians, men and women, come together to fight for freedom and social justice. These events gave renewed urgency to the fraught topic of gender in the Middle East. The role of women in public life, the meaning of manhood, and the future of gender inequalities are hotly debated by religious figures, government officials, activists, scholars, and ordinary citizens throughout Egypt. Live and Die...

Douglas R. Holmes teaches social anthropology at the Univesrity of Otago, New Zealand. He is the author of Cultural Disenchantment: Worker Peasantries in Northeast Italy (Princeton). Over the past 15 years, the project of advanced European integration has followed a complex secular and cosmopolitan agenda. As that agenda has evolved, however, so have various hard-line populist movements with goals diametrically opposed to the ideals of a harmonious...

Riveting stories of how affluent, white children learn about race… American kids are living in a world of ongoing public debates about race, daily displays of racial injustice, and for some, an increased awareness surrounding diversity and inclusion. In this heated context, sociologist Margaret A. Hagerman zeroes in on affluent, white kids to observe how they make sense of privilege, unequal educational opportunities, and police violence. In fascinating...

Middle-schooler Greg Heffley nimbly sidesteps his father's attempts to change Greg's wimpy ways until his father threatens to send him to military school.