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135 results in Philosophy of social science

Page 1 of 7

Causal Processes and their Warrant
  • Nancy Cartwright, Eileen Munro, John Pemberton
  • Coming soon
  • Expected online publication date:
    June 2026
    Print publication:
    30 June 2026
  • In this book, Nancy Cartwright, Eileen Munro and John Pemberton introduce a new method for assessing whether plans for how to affect change produced their intended outcome, or whether they are likely to do so in the future. The method offers the prospect of a step-change improvement in the accuracy of policy assessments, based on a new pluralistic theory of causation. This theory, which goes beyond existing ones, synthesises seven tried and tested familiar component accounts so as to license identification and systematisation of a wide range of evidence types. The authors outline well-grounded improvements to methods for policy development and assessment by the systematic use of real-world examples, including notably that of child welfare. Their book will be valuable for the burgeoning audience concerned with the critical issue of how to develop and implement policies that work across domains from welfare to education and economics to medicine.

Craft Work
  • Making Form in a Broken World
  • Robin Holt
  • Coming soon
  • Expected online publication date:
    March 2026
    Print publication:
    31 March 2026
  • How can human flourishing arise from what the poet Mary Oliver called 'good work/ongoing'? In its attentiveness to the material, form and purpose of distinct, well-made things, craft epitomizes good work. In its disciplined, quiet giving over to the repetitions of tradition, craft is ongoing. Perhaps more than any other practice, craft work reveals the intimacy between a manifest sense of self and the imperative of its common expression. In a world broken into shuttered units, each separated from the other for the purpose of measured comparison and control, Robin Holt argues that craft work can produce the unassigned remainder that refuses being broken up: it generates its own sufficiency and joy.

The Life of Form
  • Anthropology, Wittgenstein, and the Problem of Context
  • Paolo Heywood
  • Coming soon
  • Expected online publication date:
    February 2026
    Print publication:
    12 March 2026
  • What if anthropology's fundamental assumptions about cultural and social context were shaped by a philosopher many anthropologists have never engaged with? This book explores how, from the early twentieth century to the present day, anthropological ideas about context have been shaped by Ludwig Wittgenstein's evolving philosophy, often without anthropologists fully realizing it. It shows how Wittgenstein's philosophical journey mirrors anthropology's own theoretical transformations. Through careful analysis of key figures from Malinowski and Radcliffe-Brown to Geertz and contemporary theorists, Paolo Heywood reveals unexpected connections between philosophical developments and anthropological practice. The result is a surprising genealogy of how we came to think about culture, society, and everyday life the way we do. This intellectual history illuminates the hidden philosophical assumptions that continue to shape anthropological work today. It reveals how disciplines are shaped by ideas they've forgotten they borrowed, and the surprising ways such ideas evolve in new contexts.

Karl Polanyi and twenty-first-century capitalism
  • Edited by Radhika Desai, Kari Polanyi-Levitt
  • Published by:
    Manchester University Press
    Published online:
    05 February 2026
  • Karl Polanyi (1886–1964) returned to public discourse in the 1990s, when the Soviet Union imploded and globalization erupted. Best known for The Great Transformation, Polanyi’s wide-ranging thought anticipated twenty-first-century civilizational challenges of ecological collapse, social disintegration and international conflict, and warned that the unbridled domination of market capitalism would engender nationalist protective counter-movements. In Karl Polanyi and Twenty-First-Century Capitalism, Radhika Desai and Kari Polanyi Levitt bring together prominent and new thinkers in the field to extend the boundaries of our understanding of Polanyi's life and work. Kari Polanyi Levitt's opening essay situates Polanyi in the past century shaped by Keynes and Hayek, and explores how and why his ideas may shape the twenty-first century. Her analysis of his Bennington Lectures, which pre-dated and anticipated The Great Transformation, demonstrates how Central European his thought and chief concerns were. The next several contributions clarify, for the first time in Polanyi scholarship, the meaning of money as a fictitious commodity. Other contributions resolve difficulties in understanding the building blocks of Polanyi's thought: fictitious commodities, the double movement, the United States' exceptional development, the reality of society and socialism as freedom in a complex society. The volume culminates in explorations of how Polanyi has influenced, and can be used to develop, ideas in a number of fields, whether income inequality, world-systems theory or comparative political economy. Contributors: Fred Block, Michael Brie, Radhika Desai, Michael Hudson, Hannes Lacher, Kari Polanyi Levitt, Chikako Nakayama, Jamie Peck, Abraham Rotstein, Margaret Somers, Claus Thomasberger, Oscar Ugarteche Galarza.

The futures of feminism
  • Valerie Bryson
  • Published by:
    Manchester University Press
    Published online:
    05 February 2026
  • This book makes the case for an inclusive form of socialist feminism that will benefit both individuals and societies, and that puts multiply disadvantaged women at its heart. It argues that developing a feminist vocabulary is a key part of feminist politics, and it demystifies some key terms, including patriarchy and intersectionality. The book’s longest chapter engages with fierce disputes between some feminists and some trans women, and suggests possible compromises and ways forward. It argues throughout that the analysis of gender cannot be isolated from that of class or race, that patriarchy is inexorably entangled with capitalism, and that the needs of most women will not be met in an economy based on the pursuit of profit. In making these arguments, it explains why capitalism is not meeting human needs and it highlights the flaws in the ideologies that sustain it; it also shows how the assumptions of neoliberalism are incompatible with anything other than a narrow, elitist form of feminism that has little relevance for most women. Throughout, the book asserts the social, economic and human importance of the unpaid caring and domestic work that has been traditionally done by women, and the need to redistribute this and value it properly. It concludes that the combination of some policy trends, the increased presence of feminists in positions of influence and a rise in all kinds of grassroots activism give grounds for optimism about a future that could be both more feminist and more socialist.

Rethinking untouchability
  • The political thought of B.R. Ambedkar
  • Jesús F. Cháirez-Garza
  • Published by:
    Manchester University Press
    Published online:
    31 January 2026
  • Rethinking Untouchability brings new light to the political and intellectual life of B.R. Ambedkar, one of India’s most influential intellectuals of the last century. Usually under the shadow of Indian nationalists such as Gandhi and Nehru, the importance of Ambedkar’s political thought remains largely unexplored. Ambedkar’s primary concern throughout his life was the abolition of untouchability, which he fought throughout his writings and politics. Ambedkar’s place in the history of Indian political thought is unique. Coming from one of the most oppressed communities in India, he received doctoral degrees from Columbia University and the London School of Economics. Similarly, Ambedkar familiarised himself with the newest anthropological, political and sociological theories emerging at the turn of the twentieth century. Influenced by the thought of Franz Boas and John Dewey, among others, Ambedkar showed his followers that their condition of oppression was fluid and malleable; it could be changed as it was not dependent on karma from previous lives. By analysing untouchability and its links to religion and ideologies of racial supremacy, Ambedkar exposed untouchability as an economic, political and cultural system designed to oppress Dalits. He demanded political and educational rights to bridge the inequalities present in the lives of his followers. For Ambedkar, India required a social and political revolution beyond the scope of nationalist aspirations. At a time when inequality and injustice are still rampant in India and elsewhere, recovering the value of Ambedkar’s thought is paramount.

Deleuze's Difference and Repetition
  • An Edinburgh Philosophical Guide
  • Henry Somers-Hall
  • Published by:
    Edinburgh University Press
    Published online:
    30 January 2026
    Print publication:
    31 March 2013
  • When students read Difference and Repetition for the first time, they face two main hurdles: the wide range of sources that Deleuze draws upon and his dense writing style. This Edinburgh Philosophical Guide helps students to negotiate these hurdles, taking them through the text step by step. It situates Deleuze within Continental philosophy more broadly and explains why he develops his philosophy in his unique way. Seasoned Deleuzians will also be interested in Somers-Hall's novel interpretation of Difference and Repetition.

Indigenising Anthropology with Guattari and Deleuze
  • Barbara Glowczewski
  • Published by:
    Edinburgh University Press
    Published online:
    27 January 2026
    Print publication:
    30 November 2019
  • This collection of essays charts the intellectual trajectory of Barbara Glowczewski, an anthropologist who has worked with the Warlpiri people of Australia since 1979. She shows that the ways Aboriginal people actualise virtualities of their Dreaming space - time into collective networks of ritualised places resonate with Guattarian and Deleuzian concepts. Inspired by the art and struggles of different Indigenous people and other discriminated groups, especially women, Glowczewski draws on her own conversations with Guattari, and her debates with various scholars to deliver an innovative agenda for radical anthropology.

A Thousand Plateaus and Philosophy
  • Edited by Henry Somers-Hall, Jeffrey A. Bell, James Williams
  • Published by:
    Edinburgh University Press
    Published online:
    27 January 2026
    Print publication:
    31 January 2018
  • This volume brings together a team of international specialists on Deleuze and Guattari to provide in-depth critical studies of each plateau of their major work, 'A Thousand Plateaus'. It combines an overview of the text with deep scholarship and brings a renewed focus on the philosophical significance of their project.

    'A Thousand Plateaus' represents a whole new way of doing philosophy. This collection supports the critical reception of Deleuze and Guattari's text as one of the most important and influential works of modern theory.

Virilio and Visual Culture
  • Edited by John Armitage, Ryan Bishop
  • Published by:
    Edinburgh University Press
    Published online:
    27 January 2026
    Print publication:
    31 January 2013
  • This collection of thirteen original writings, including a newly translated piece by Virilio himself, is the first genuine appraisal of Virilio's contribution to contemporary art, photography, film, television and more. Paul Virilio is one of the leading and most challenging critics of art and technology of the present period. Re-conceptualising the most enduring philosophical conventions on everything from technology and photography to literature, anthropology, cultural, and media studies through his own original theories and arguments, Virilio's work has produced substantial debate, compelling readers to ask if his criticism is out of touch or out in front of traditional perspectives.

Everything must change
  • Philosophical lessons from lockdown
  • Vittorio Bufacchi
  • Published by:
    Manchester University Press
    Published online:
    08 January 2026
  • French philosopher Michel de Montaigne (1533–92) famously said that facing our mortality is the only way to properly learn the ‘art of living’. He was right. This book is about what we can learn from COVID-19 about the art of living, as individuals but also collectively as a society: this crisis could potentially change our lives for the better, ushering in a more just society. The book will explore a number of key themes through philosophical lenses. Chapter 2 asks whether coronavirus is a misfortune, or an injustice. Chapter 3 focuses on the largest cohort of victims of coronavirus: people in old age. Chapter 4 asks whether life under coronavirus is comparable to life in the so-called ‘state of nature’. Chapter 5 explores the likely impact of coronavirus on the global phenomenon of populism. Chapter 6 investigates the relationship between post-truth and coronavirus. Chapter 7 focuses on the role of experts during this crisis. Chapter 8 looks at the spike of incidents of domestic violence during the lockdown via an analysis of Sally Rooney’s Normal People. Chapter 9 explores four key lessons that must be learned from the COVID-19 crisis: that politics matters; that central states are necessary; that taxation is important; and that radical reforms, including the introduction of a universal basic income, are crucial. Chapter 10 considers what philosophy can contribute to the debate on COVID-19, and why we have a moral duty not to become ill.

How to save politics in a post-truth era
  • Thinking through difficult times
  • Ilan Zvi Baron
  • Published by:
    Manchester University Press
    Published online:
    06 January 2026
  • In 1989, in the American journal The National Interest, Francis Fukuyama's conclusion was about the triumph of Western democratic liberal capitalism over communism. The forces of liberal capitalism that he saw as representing the end of history have unleashed a powerful wave of anger directed at the winning elites. This book is written with two purposes in mind. The first is to try to make some sense of what appears to be a world that is falling apart around us. The second is to try to advance an argument about where we go from here. One of the arguments of the book is that the Brexit and Trump results are a consequence of a series of failures. The book explores debates about methodology and political theory, and about the importance of context and thus of narratives. It discusses points from this debate between the behaviouralists and those in political theory. The book discusses the electoral results of Trump and of Brexit, offering an interpretation of what these results mean in the context of a post-fact world of identity politics. It argues for the importance of political responsibility and of how by recasting and re-emphasising the politics of responsibility becomes possible to address the current failures of our political leaders and political systems. The book suggests three elements to politics: the relationship between knowledge and power, with a particular emphasis on the role of interpretation; political responsibility or the politics of responsibility; and the significance of narratives or meaning (hermeneutics).

Conversations on Rational Choice
  • Catherine Herfeld
  • Published online:
    27 December 2025
    Print publication:
    19 February 2026
  • Rational choice theories belong to the most important building blocks of 20th century economics. Their usefulness to model human behaviour has been extensively debated in modern social science and beyond. While some have argued that rational choice theories should be applied to a broad range of political and social phenomena, the rise of behavioural economics questions whether they are appropriate at all for understanding economic behaviour. Conversations on Rational Choice sheds light on what is actually at stake in these debates. In 23 conversations, some of the most prominent protagonists from economics, psychology, and philosophy discuss their individual perspectives on the nature, possible justifications, and epistemic limitations of rational choice theories. Offering a comprehensive assessment of the value of rational choice theories in producing knowledge in economics, these conversations lay the ground for a more nuanced appraisal of rational choice theories from a practical viewpoint.

The political materialities of borders
  • New theoretical directions
  • Demetriou Olga, Dimova Rozita
  • Published by:
    Manchester University Press
    Published online:
    23 December 2025
  • Materiality has long been tied to the political projects of nationalism and capitalism. But how are we to rethink borders in this context? Is the border the limit where the capitalist nation-state, contested and re-created at its centre, becomes fixed? Or is it something else? Is the border something, or does it instead do things? This volume brings questions of materiality to bear specifically on the study of borders. These questions address specifically the shift from ontology to process in thinking about borders. The political materialities of borders does not presume the material aspect of borders but rather explores the ways in which any such materiality comes into being. Through ethnographic and philosophical explorations of the ontology of borders and its limitations from the perspective of materiality, this volume seeks to throw light on the interaction between the materiality of state borders and the non-material aspects of state-making. This enables a new understanding of borders as productive of the politics of materiality, on which both the state project rests, including its multifarious forms in the post-nation-state era.

Entanglements in World Politics
  • The Power of Uncertainty
  • Peter J. Katzenstein
  • Published online:
    27 November 2025
    Print publication:
    11 December 2025
  • In this seminal study, Peter J. Katzenstein drags the analysis of world politics from the Newtonian humanism of the nineteenth century into a new post-Newtonianism of the twenty-first. The key concept is entanglement. By examining differences in context, process, and language, Katzenstein specifies how risk and uncertainty intertwine. Three deeply researched case studies – finance and political economy, nuclear crisis politics and war, and global warming and AI – support his original arguments. A chapter on power further illustrates the risk-uncertainty conundrum. Entanglements in World Politics calls for humility and eclectic pragmatism, emphasizing the unity of knowledge of the natural and humanistic sciences and the complementarities of science and religion. Katzenstein's engaging writing and innovative approach make this a must-read for anyone interested in the complexities of global politics. This book is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

Unhappy Families
  • Childcare in a Hopeless World
  • Adam Ferner
  • Published by:
    Agenda Publishing
    Published online:
    05 June 2025
    Print publication:
    26 September 2024
  • Adam Ferner's engaging and personal book explores the ethical dimensions of childcare in a world riven by conflict and inequality. He argues that widespread attitudes towards biological parenthood contribute to these worsening crises and examines the liberatory potential of foster-care and adoption.

    Written in a clear and jargon-free style, the book is informed by both Ferner's training as a philosopher and his extensive experience as a child support worker. His analysis foregrounds the concerns of young people largely marginalized by society, and he argues against the prevailing orthodoxy that hope is a necessary element of childcare. The book challenges us to look afresh at our everyday notions of parenthood, childcare and having children, and to question the dominant ethos of the family.

Contemporary Screen Ethics
  • Absences, Identities, Belonging, Looking Anew
  • Edited by Lucy Bolton, David Martin-Jones, Robert Sinnerbrink
  • Published by:
    Edinburgh University Press
    Published online:
    08 March 2025
    Print publication:
    02 June 2023
  • Contemporary Screen Ethics focuses on the intertwining of the ethical with the socio-political, considering such topics as: care, decolonial feminism, ecology, histories of political violence, intersectionality, neoliberalism, race, and sexual and gendered violence. The collection advocates looking anew at the global complexity and diversity of such ethical issues across various screen media: from Netflix movies to VR, from Chinese romcoms to Brazilian pornochanchadas, from documentaries to drone warfare, from Jordan Peele movies to Google Earth. The analysis exposes the ethical tension between the inclusions and exclusions of global structural inequality (the identities of the haves, the absences of the have nots), alongside the need to understand our collective belonging to the planet demanded by the climate crisis. Informing the analysis, established thinkers like Deleuze, Irigaray, Jameson and Rancière are joined by an array of different voices - Ferreira da Silva, Gill, Lugones, Milroy, Muñoz, Sheshadri-Crooks, Vergès - to unlock contemporary screen ethics.

Choose Your Bearing
  • Édouard Glissant, Human Rights, and Decolonial Ethics
  • Benjamin P. Davis
  • Published by:
    Edinburgh University Press
    Published online:
    06 March 2025
    Print publication:
    30 August 2023
  • What do we in the West owe those who grow our food, sew our clothes and produce our electronics? And what have we always owed one another, but forgotten, avoided, or simply disregarded?

    Looking back on nearly a century of colonial war and genocide, in 1990 the poet and philosopher Édouard Glissant appealed directly to his readers, calling them to re-orient their lives in service of the political struggles of their time: 'You must choose your bearing'.

    Informed by the prayer camps at Standing Rock, and presenting Glissant alongside Stuart Hall, Emmanuel Levinas, Simone Weil, Enrique Dussel, Gloria Anzaldúa and W. E. B. Du Bois, this book offers an urgent ethics for the present - an ethics of risk, commitment and care that together form a new sense of decolonial responsibility.

The Eye of the Cinematograph
  • Lévinas and Realisms of the Body
  • Keyvan Manafi
  • Published by:
    Edinburgh University Press
    Published online:
    01 March 2025
    Print publication:
    08 February 2023
  • The Eye of the Cinematograph investigates the ethical and aesthetic implications of the automatic formation of the body's image by the camera. Drawing on Emmanuel Lévinas' thought, Manafi asks what happens when the other makes their body available to the gaze of the camera to be automatically recorded, and this giving of the body is preserved within the image, juxtaposed with other images to allude to a story that might otherwise remain untold.

    To locate the ethical at this intersection of the body and the aesthetic, this book articulates an ethical account of a diverse range of film theories to demonstrate alternative encounters with the other that realisms of the body offer. Manafi discusses works by Chantal Akerman, Bruno Dumont, Pedro Costa, Gus Van Sant, Sohrab Shahid Saless, Abbas Kiarostami, Amir Naderi, Jafar Panahi, Carlos Reygadas and Andy Warhol to make a case for the ethics and aesthetics of incompleteness and performative failure.

Shakespeare's Virtuous Theatre
  • Power, Capacity and the Good
  • Edited by Kent Lehnhof, Julia Reinhard Lupton, Carolyn Sale
  • Published by:
    Edinburgh University Press
    Published online:
    28 February 2025
    Print publication:
    01 September 2023
  • This collection of essays explores how the Shakespearean drama enacts ancient virtues and conceptualises new ones in complex fictional scenarios that test virtues for their continuing value. Contributors approach the virtues as a source of imaginative, affective and intellectual nourishment and consider how Shakespeare's art increases our capacity for new pursuits of the good. Examining Shakespeare's virtuous theatre in tragic, comic and romance modes and from ethical, theatrical and political perspectives, this volume establishes virtue as a framework for a socially, environmentally and spiritually renewed literary criticism. Contributors balance historical depth and philosophical insight with the art of close reading as they contemplate the dynamic field of virtue - embodied, responsive, energetic and dynamic - as it ebbs and flows across time, among multiple wisdom traditions, and in the entangled lives and troubled circumstances of Shakespeare's characters.

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