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.
Through the Past to the Future: From Georg Simmel and Max Weber to the Twenty-First Century’s Public Intellectuals
1st Edition
By Christian Karner
August 11, 2026
Based upon a close reading of the foundational works of Georg Simmel, Max Weber and the Frankfurt School as well as underexplored other works, Karner critically maps the conceptual approaches and theoretical insights of the German language sociological tradition onto various twenty-first-century ...
Reconsidering Habermas’s Colonization Thesis: A Critical Theory of Neoliberalism
1st Edition
By Roderick Condon
July 20, 2026
This book reconsiders Habermas’s critique of capitalism as a foundation for a critical theory of neoliberalism. Taking criticisms into account, the author refines and redevelops Habermas’s system-lifeworld paradigm in three parts, focusing on system, lifeworld, and communication. The exposition ...
American Fascism and the Battle over Culture: Social Theory, Moral Life, and the Renewal of Democratic Imagination
1st Edition
By Christopher G. Robbins, Eric Ferris
July 14, 2026
This book examines the intensification of fascist politics in contemporary America via an analysis of the fundamental shift in relationships between political fringes and institutions of power, situating the rise of contemporary fascist politics within a broader culture of pedagogy. Employing an ...
Populism, Demagoguery, and Tyranny: Contemporary Challenges to Constitutional Democracy
1st Edition
By Tomás Pacheco-Bethencourt
July 07, 2026
In Populism, Demagoguery, and Tyranny, Tomás Pacheco-Bethencourt examines the political challenges posed by populism to constitutional democracy, with a twofold aim of clarifying its impact and addressing it effectively. He combines conceptual history, history of political thought, political ...
Revisiting Cultural Rights: On the Plausibility and Efficacy of Differentiated Citizenship
1st Edition
By Ajay Raina
June 25, 2026
Revisiting Cultural Rights reevaluates the ‘consensus’ liberal view on minority cultural rights from a new, empirically informed perspective to argue that its justificatory machinery is not very persuasive, and that the normative goals of the view can instead be efficaciously reached from within ...
Four Philosophers and the Bomb: Russell, Aron, Jaspers, and Anders on Atomic Warfare
1st Edition
By Alberto Castelli, Giunia Gatta, Micaela Latini, Francesco Raschi
June 21, 2026
In this book, Alberto Castelli, Giunia Gatta, Micaela Latini, and Francesco Raschi examine how four prominent intellectuals of the 20th century (Bertrand Russell, Karl Jaspers, Raymond Aron, and Günther Anders) understood atomic warfare. With a chapter devoted to the philosophical ideas of each ...
Reason, Crisis, and Europe: Conceptual and Historical Perspectives
1st Edition
Edited
By Marco Piasentier, Panu-Matti Pöykkö
June 18, 2026
This volume examines the intertwined meanings of reason, crisis, and Europe against the backdrop of acute political, ethical, and geopolitical instability. Eschewing any singular diagnosis or overarching interpretive frame, it assembles a range of disciplinary, methodological, and normative ...
Intellectuals in the 21st Century: Reconfiguring Ideologies and Global Struggles Against the Elitization of Knowledge
1st Edition
Edited
By Nicol A. Barria-Asenjo
May 19, 2026
This book sees international academics from across five continents come together to critique the role of the present-day intellectual. Arguing that the elitization of the social sciences and humanities has reached a major climax in the 21st century, owing to the commercialisation of knowledge and ...
Public Intimacy: The Dissolution of the Private in Liquid Society
1st Edition
By Carlo Bordoni
April 18, 2026
This book examines the paradoxical collapse of privacy in contemporary society. The text analyses how personal boundaries are increasingly dissolved through digital technologies and how social networks and new media technologies encourage individuals to publicly expose their most intimate thoughts ...
Activism, Identity, and Social Theory in the 1960s: The Dawn of Life Politics
1st Edition
By Shaun Best
March 20, 2026
Activism, Identity, and Social Theory in the 1960s examines the crucial connection between social analysis and everyday practice using a study of the transformative social movements of the 1960s. It demonstrates how personal experiences of discrimination can reflect broader mechanisms of social ...
Myth, Society and Profanation
1st Edition
By William Pawlett
January 30, 2026
This work challenges the dominant pejorative view of myth by showing how myth is implicated in the deepest layers of society, politics, individuality and temporality. This work draws upon European cultural theorists, particularly Schelling, Nietzsche, Freud, Bataille and Baudrillard, to challenge ...
Liberty, Governance and Resistance: Competing Discourses in John Locke’s Political Philosophy
1st Edition
By John William Tate
December 25, 2025
John Locke is widely perceived as a foundational figure within the liberal tradition. This book investigates the competing discourses that inform Locke’s political philosophy, each underwritten by a distinct purpose, not all of which result in philosophical outcomes consistent with what we today ...