Sociology & Criminology for a Changing World
Poststructuralism is a paradigm of social theory that understands social reality as a historically contingent web of power-knowledge relations. Society does not emerge through stable structures or universal truths, but through discursive practices that define what counts as true, normal, and legitimate. At the center lies the guiding question: How are truth, identity, and social
Critical theory is a major paradigm in sociology that understands social reality as a historically developed order of domination. Society does not primarily emerge through functional integration or communicative self-reference, but through power relations, economic structures, and ideological mediation. At the center lies the guiding question: How are relations of domination socially stabilized—and how is
Sociological theories do not primarily differ in their subject matter, but in how they respond to fundamental problems of social order. They address, in different ways, how society is possible, how stability is maintained, how power operates—and what role individuals play within these processes. At the core are recurring axes of tension: Structure vs. agency
The Power Elite (1956) by C. Wright Mills is one of the most influential works in twentieth-century sociology. It offers a powerful critique of postwar American society by arguing that political, economic, and military leaders form a tightly interconnected ruling class. Unlike pluralist theories that see power as widely dispersed, Mills claims that a relatively
Punishing the Poor by French-American sociologist Loïc Wacquant offers a sharp analysis of the relationship between poverty, criminal justice, and the neoliberal state. The central thesis: in times of neoliberal redistribution and social insecurity, the penal apparatus takes the place of the welfare state—not to solve social problems, but to manage the consequences of growing
With its provocative title We Have Never Been Modern, Bruno Latour radically questions the taken-for-granted foundations of the modern world. The book is one of the central texts in the sociology of science and marks a turning point in thinking about the relationships between nature, technology, and society. Latour argues that modernity is an illusion—an