Publications

A Political Sociology of Transnational Europe

Edited by Niilo Kauppi, ECPR Press, 2013

This volume presents cutting-edge, theoretically ambitious studies in political sociology by first-rate European scholars that deal with some of the major challenges European societies and politics are facing. These have to do with globalisation and complex Europeanisation, which have contributed to restructuring the European nation-state and redefining political power.

Accounting for these transformations requires revisiting traditional objects of political science such as state sovereignty, civil society and citizenship. While doing this, the studies of this volume join sophisticated empirical analyses with methodological and conceptual innovations such as field theory, multiple correspondence analysis and the study of space sets. Combining qualitative and quantitative research techniques and macro- and micro-levels, they have in common a contextual analysis of politics through scrutiny of configurations of groups, representations and perceptions in an increasingly transnational space. A transnational perspective that seeks to avoid methodological nationalism is present in all the studies of this volume.

http://press.ecprnet.eu/book_details.asp?bookTitleID=59

Transnational Power Elites. The new professionals of governance, law and security.

Edited by Niilo Kauppi and Mikael Rask Madsen, Routledge, 2013

This book argues that European Union institutional mechanics and the EU as a political unit cannot be properly understood without taking into account the elites that make the policy decisions.

Spurred by globalisation, technological and economic development has provided the backbone for social and political transformations that have changed the social structures that unite and differentiate individuals and groups in Europe and their interface with extra-European actors. These developments are not only exemplified by the rise of the EU, but also by the rise of a set of transnational European power elites evolving in and around the European construction.

This book maps out these EU and international interdependencies and provides a comprehensive picture of the European transnational power elites. Moving away from the majority of literature on European integration dominated by economics, law, IR and political science, the volume is written from a sociological perspective that takes into account the individuals that make the policy decisions, the formal and informal groups in which s/he is included, as well as the social conventions that regulate political and administrative activities in the EU.

 http://www.routledge.com/books/details/9780415665247/

The latest issue of International Political Sociology (5,3) is dedicated to Bourdieu and the international.

Find more information on the journal and the special issue here and here

Davita Silfen Glasberg, Deric Shannon, Political Sociology: Oppression, Resistance, and the State, London, Sage, 2011

Taking a multidimensional approach, this book emphasizes the interplay between power, inequality, multiple oppressions, and the state. This framework provides students with a unique focus on the structure of power and inequality in society today.

Table of contents:

Kate Nash, Contemporary Political Sociology: Globalization, Politics, and Power, Second Edition, Wiley-Blackwell, Malden MA, Oxford, 2010

This fully revised and updated introduction to political sociology incorporates the burgeoning literature on globalization and shows how contemporary politics is linked to cultural issues, social structure and democratizing social action. The second edition includes new material on global governance, human rights, global social movements, global media, a new discussion of democracy and democratization, and clearly lays out what is at stake in deciding between alternatives of cosmopolitanism, imperialism and nationalism. Includes additional discussion of the importance of studying culture to political sociology.

Salvatore Palidda (Ed), Racial Criminalization of Migrants in the 21st Century, Farnham, Ashaget, 2010

Over the last two decades in the West, there has been a significant increase in the arrest, imprisonment and detention of migrants. The racial criminalization and victimization of migrants and Roma people has led judicial authorities, local governments, the police, mass media and the general population to perceive migrants and ‘gypsies’ as responsible for a wide range of offences. Taking into consideration the political and cultural conditions that affect and interconnect societies of emigration and immigration, the contributors examine and compare a range of cases in Europe and the United States. The contributions demonstrate how the persecution of the ‘current enemy’ is the ‘total political fact’ of the 21st century in that it ensures consensus and business, or what might be termed the ‘crime deal’ of today.

This issue of French Politics features a symposium on French historical and political sociology of the EU (symposium editor: D. Georgakakis).

More information on the website of French Politics.

A political sociology of the European Union. Reassessing constructivism, edited by Jay Rowell and Michel Mangenot, Manchester University Press, 2010

The study of the European Union has historically been a theoretical battleground. Since the 1990s, new theoretical directions such as neo-institutionalism, multi-level governance and constructivism have provided a new impetus. However, despite these new inroads, empirical work has often remained sociologically and empirically underspecified.This volume seeks to bridge the gap between theory and fieldwork by developing an actor-centred political sociology. In doing so, the volume engages in a critical dialogue with the constructivist framework and proposes to build on its insights through a sociological hardening centred on European actors.

The renewal of European studies through political sociology is only useful if it generates new understandings through empirical observation. This volume seeks to take a new tack on constructivism by asking what it is that Europe constructs by looking at three areas- social spaces and professions, policy problems and policies and policy instruments such as the Eurobarometer.

Niilo Kauppi, Radicalism in French Culture. A Sociology of French Theory in the 1960s, London, Ashgate, 2010

An invisible pattern draws together most studies dealing with French cultural radicalism in the 1960s with intellectual creation reduced to individual creation and the role of semiotic and social factors that influence intellectual innovation minimized. Sociological approaches often see a more or less external link between social location and intellectual production but, because of their structural approach, they are incapable of taking into account unique historical circumstances, the crucial role of personal impulses, and more importantly the semiotic logic of ideas as conditions of innovative thinking.

This ground-breaking book will further an internal sociological analysis of ideas and styles of thought. It will show that the defining but largely neglected feature of what has become « French theory » was a collective mind and style of thought, an explosive but fragile mixture of scientific and political radicalism that rather quickly watered down to academic orthodoxy. For some time, radical intellectuals succeeded in producing ideas that were perfectly in tune with the demands of the consumers, mostly the young university audience. Ideas were used as part of radical posture that was set in opposition to the establishment and « those in power ». Ideas could not be too empirical or verifiable, and they had to shock. It is not surprising that a slew of new sciences and concepts were invented to indicate this radical posture.

The central argument of this study is that ideas become « power-ideas » only if they succeed in uniting individual and collective psychic investment in powerful social networks with significant institutional and political backing. These conditions were met in the French context for a certain specific period of time. From roughly the mid-1960s to the beginning of the 1970s, radical intellectuals such as Roland Barthes, Pierre Bourdieu, Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, Julia Kristeva developed a host of new ideas, concepts and theories, a number of which have subsequently been labelled as French theory.

Daniel Gaxie, Nicolas Hubé, Marine de Lassalle, Jay Rowell, L’Europe des européens: enquête comparative sur les perceptions de l’Europe, Paris, Economica, 2010

This book presents the main results of a research program on ordinary perceptions of Europe. The goal was to understand and explain the attitudes of different categories of average citizens with respect to Europe, comparing France, Germany, Poland, and Italy.