Reshaping Social Life

Caught up in current social changes, we still do not fully understand the reshaping of social life. Influential approaches stress agency, and a weakening of "traditional" social structural constraints and codes of behavior. Critics stress continuities in structural constraints and inequalities. Reshaping Social Life moves beyond these frameworks and explores key aspects of social change by analyzing the reshaping of social relations, differences and interdependencies, alongside linked norms, values and claims. It offers a fascinating and innovative way of slicing into and re-interrogating our changing social world. Reshaping Social Life offers important new insights into changing social relations and patterns of interdependence. It will help reframe our understanding of social diversity and change. It will become a landmark resource for students, scholars and researchers.

Sarah Irwin is Senior Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Leeds