Routledge Studies in Social and Political Thought
About the Book Series
This series explores core issues in political philosophy and social theory. Addressing theoretical subjects of both historical and contemporary relevance, the series has broad appeal across the social sciences. Contributions include new studies of major thinkers, key debates and critical concepts.
Alfred Schutz, Phenomenology, and the Renewal of Interpretive Social Science
1st Edition
By Besnik Pula
August 29, 2025
In recent decades, the historical social sciences have moved away from deterministic perspectives and increasingly embraced the interpretive analysis of historical process and social and political change. This shift has enriched the field but also led to a deadlock regarding the meaning and status ...
Revisiting Social Theory: Challenges and Possibilities
1st Edition
Edited
By D.V. Kumar
August 29, 2025
This book revisits social theory with a view to highlighting certain essential features of ‘good’ social theory: its ability to raise certain questions, its explanatory power, its critical and reflexive interrogation of concepts, its search for objectivity, its concern to make sense of empirical ...
Revolutionary Hope in a Time of Crisis: Political Disillusion, Democracy, and Utopia
1st Edition
Edited
By Maša Mrovlje, Alex Zamalin
August 29, 2025
Revolutionary Hope in a Time of Crisis takes up the question of how to theorize and revive revolutionary hope in the present era of political disillusion. The collection consists of new cutting-edge research essays written by an interdisciplinary mix of established and emerging scholars, bringing ...
Henri Lefebvre, Metaphilosophy, and Modernity
1st Edition
By Patrick Gamsby
August 22, 2025
Henri Lefebvre, Metaphilosophy, and Modernity provides a new interpretation of the work of Henri Lefebvre (1901–1991), reframing it as being above all a metaphilosophy of modernity. Henri Lefebvre is increasingly being recognized as one of the great twentieth-century thinkers. Nevertheless, the ...
Re-Reading Pareto on Elite Power and Societal Bipolarisation: A Critical Perspective on Metapolitics and Democracy
1st Edition
By Alasdair J. Marshall
August 22, 2025
Assessing Vilfredo Pareto’s sociological reworkings of Machiavelli’s Fox and Lion animal spirits as friend-enemy codings, this book offers a unique insight into the growing division today between relatively liberal elites and relatively conservative non-elites. Re-Reading Pareto on Elite Power and ...
Critical Theory, Poststructuralism and ‘Nietzsche’s Paradox’: The Missing Debate Between Adorno and Deleuze Over Dialectics
1st Edition
By Nektarios Kastrinakis
July 17, 2025
Critical Theory, Poststructuralism and ‘Nietzsche’s Paradox’ addresses a fundamental question in the exchange between Critical Theory and poststructuralism: is poststructuralism justified in its critique of dialectical thinking and in the conclusion of this critique that we need to leave dialectics...
Social Theory and the Political Imaginary: Practice, Critique, and History
1st Edition
By Craig Browne
May 06, 2025
Social Theory and the Political Imaginary: Practice, Critique, and History is an innovative work of synthesis, critique and analysis. It presages a social theory perspective that recognizes the constitutive significance of the political imaginary in modernity. Social theory’s current dilemmas are ...
Fraternity as an Overlooked Element in Global Politics
1st Edition
Edited
By Joanna Kulska, Anna M. Solarz
May 05, 2025
This collection of chapters explores the often-overlooked concept of fraternity, positioning it alongside freedom and equality as a vital pillar of political discourse from its ancient origins to contemporary practice. In a comprehensive framework, the book delves into fraternity's evolving ...
Illusion and Fetishism in Critical Theory: A study of Nietzsche, Benjamin, Castoriadis and the Situationists
1st Edition
By Vasilis Grollios
May 05, 2025
Through the negative dialectics of Theodore Adorno, Illusion and Fetishism in Critical Theory offers an examination of Nietzsche, Benjamin, Castoriadis and the Situationists, who put the concept of illusion at the forefront of their philosophical thought. Vasilis Grollios argues that these ...
The Cognitive Foundations of Classical Sociological Theory
1st Edition
By Ryan McVeigh
April 14, 2025
The Cognitive Foundations of Classical Sociological Theory explores the role that understandings of mind and brain played in the development of sociological theory. It isolates five key authors in the classical tradition and comprehensively explores their oeuvres for moments where they reflect on, ...
Creating Democracy: Arendt and Bakhtin in Dialogue
1st Edition
By Charles Hersch
February 03, 2025
Creating Democracy brings into dialogue for the first time two important theorists of democracy: Hannah Arendt (1906–75) and Mikhail Bakhtin (1895–975). Their shared conception of democracy stemming from their encounters with totalitarian governments – Nazi Germany for Arendt and Stalinist Russia ...
Revolution and Constitutionalism in Britain and the U.S.: Burke and Madison and Their Contemporary Legacies
1st Edition
By David A. J. Richards
January 30, 2025
In Revolution and Constitutionalism in Britain and the U.S.: Burke and Madison and Their Contemporary Legacies, David A. J. Richards offers an investigative comparison of two central figures in late eighteenth-century constitutionalism, Edmund Burke and James Madison, at a time when two great ...