De Gruyter Contemporary Social Sciences Handbooks

The birth of the newspapers, radio and television in the 19th century brought various interconnected social, behavioral and cultural changes in the lives of the colonizer and the colonized in the economically ‘developing’ nations. Then in the 20th century and now the 21st century, the birth of digital media for political, social, cultural, and economic communications have witnessed divergent results in the West and the non-Western countries.

The Global South is currently facing digital divides and issues related to media illiteracy that tend to impact people’s lives more than those in the North. Furthermore, a significant shift in online and offline communicative behavior has had various effects in the way the young and the old, male and female, the haves and the have-nots interact in the media space.

This handbook brings together a multidisciplinary group of authors from the Global South and the diaspora to document, examine, expose and critically assess the nature, role and impact of the social changes brought by the emergence of the mediated forms of communication in the Global South. This remarkable volume is a must-have resource for anyone interested in communication and social change, and development and social change in the Global South.

The De Gruyter Handbook of Digital Political Communication provides a comprehensive survey of the contemporary trends concerning political communications in the digital realm, by analysing, assessing and explaining current debates around information and communications technologies in the political and public sphere. With accessible and thought-provoking chapters, this volume challenges readers’ presuppositions.

The book shines a light on two different perspectives when it comes to the influence that social media have on politics: For advocates of a digital democracy, the abundance of unfiltered information they provide constitutes a decentralisation of power relations within the body politic, and a removal of old hierarchies. Conversely, critical theorists argue social media have created societal and political dislocations, which has eroded rational debate in favour of ideological polarisation. Celebrity politicians such as Donald Trump and tech giants like Elon Musk are examples of this within electoral and party politics. States and non-state actors have sought to enhance their soft power attraction to foreign publics. This book analyses the transformation in the behaviour of governing institutions, parties and the media through the digital commons.

This book provides a comprehensive overview of key concepts, debates and cutting-edge research in ocean governance and maritime affairs.

Due to their increasing economic significance, it is valuable to provide insights into contemporary maritime issues. This handbook explores how the ocean is being used and governed, and analyzes the future challenges in its management.

Organized into five themed parts, the book explores political economy, techno-economic developments, green transitions, infrastructure, and geopolitics. International contributions from leading researchers across disciplines offer perspectives on topics such as the control of sea lanes, sanctions, infrastructure and ports, supply lines, the production and transmission of energy, the production and extraction of resources, green initiatives, ocean management and sustainability.

The De Gruyter Handbook of Eastern European Politics, Society and Culture provides a comparative analysis of why the region is at the forefront of a momentous turn in European history. It takes stock of the ways in which Eastern Europe has evolved since the region was incorporated into the post-communist order, taking stock of major political, social and cultural developments.

Employing a mix of social science research designs and methodologies, this volume discusses key contemporary issues, such as the fate of liberal democracy in the region, the rise of conservative populism, the Russian invasion of Ukraine, NATO expansion, the repression of the LGBT community, the social effects of post-twentieth-century deindustrialization, the role of oligarchs, and migration.

As Digital Cultures becomes the dominant term used by many across a variety of intellectual fields to describe the social, aesthetic, and political impact of digital media, it is necessary to provide a reference volume that specifies and defines the bounds of scholarly debates and curricular outlines for an otherwise amorphous interdisciplinary space.

This handbook provides a comprehensive reference for the varied methodologies, historical frames, and theoretical perspectives essential for the study of Digital Cultures today. In outlining these foundations, it serves as a practical guide for educators and students into the broad range of perspectives grouped together for the critical, historical, and social scientific study of digital media.

It also looks into the future and outlines an agenda for future research by examining not only the origins of the concept of Digital Culture, but emerging topics and themes still in development, such as the relation between digital technology and climate change, artificial intelligence and knowledge, sensation and aesthetics, and the rise of new infrastructures reinventing not only the built environment, but the boundaries of nations and sovereignty.

This book establishes a new, and much-needed, interdisciplinary field of Political Control.

The Earl and Braithwaite layered model of repression integrates previously siloed areas into a larger study of Political Control, connecting research spanning a variety of disciplines (Sociology, Political Science, Communication), interdisciplinary fields (Law and Society, Internet Studies, Surveillance Studies), and various area studies (American studies, China studies).

Instead of treating the study of repression as beginning and ending with the direct surveillance and suppression of social movements, nonviolent resistance, and violent contention (e.g., civil wars, terrorism), the layered model of repression broadens the lens to examine how quiescence may be produced and maintained through political controls directed at entire societies and/or minoritized populations and operating through political institutions and/or civil society. This more comprehensive understanding of political control allows scholars to identify the broader strategies and tactics that governments and non-governmental authorities use to prevent, and lacking that, reduce or eliminate dissent. The layered model also highlights how activists and dissidents have countered these attempts at control.

By organizing and relating these literatures using the layered model under the umbrella of political control, this volume provides the most comprehensive and wholistic view of the context in which movements form, operate, and dissolve and the overall control complex movements face.

This book presents a survey of contemporary research investigating the psychological processes related to media consumption. As a rapidly growing and changing sub-discipline of mass communication, Media Psychology analyzes how media facilitate communication and how communication, in turn, shapes attitudes, emotions, and behavior. The handbook addresses leading ideas and debates in media psychology, persisting lines of inquiry and new areas of interest. Adopting an organizational approach that embraces a dynamic systems perspective, the book is subdivided into sections that examine nested components of the larger system in question, such as audiences, messages, content and context, while also acknowledging that they do not function in isolation.

The De Gruyter Handbook of Digital Health and Society provides an in-depth survey of a rapidly growing field, approaching digital health from a social science perspective, where previously medical and engineering perspectives were prevalent.

It contains complex discussions of key social theories that explain how processes of digitalisation require organisations and practices of health and medicine to cope with increases in quantification, ubiquitous connectivity and unprecedented modes of computational power. This book also outlines how the entanglement of contemporary life with digital technologies reconfigures the perception of the self and the sensing of the body, and provides important insights into emerging forms of digital health activism and new perspectives towards the responsible governance of digital health.

Through these analyses, the handbook establishes a much-needed thematic framework for future teaching and research.

This is the first handbook to focus exclusively on youth activism, to outline the current state of research and identify promising emerging areas, and to forecast what new developments one might anticipate in the future. It provides a comprehensive introduction to theoretical and methodological approaches, as well as insights into the directions of both the scholarly field and the phenomenon of youth activism itself within the context of global power relations.

Youth political socialization, civic engagement, and citizenship attributes have frequently been highlighted as arenas of global concern, often by pundits and politicians declaiming the supposed ‘democratic deficit’ amongst more recent generations. Youth activism scholarship has often engaged with these debates, providing critical responses to more mainstream analyses of young people as apathetic, apolitical, or unconcerned about the society in which they live. In its place, youth activism scholarship provides more nuanced accounts of the possibilities and potentials for meaningful youth engagement in political social change, and, conversely, the barriers and proscriptions that prevent some young people from taking up a place within the polity.

The number of organization theorists and sociologists studying innovation and entrepreneurship has grown rapidly over the past two decades, yet it has been roughly 15 years since any volume has attempted a comprehensive review of the state of the literature.

In addition to having grown rapidly, the sociological literatures on entrepreneurship and innovation have evolved relatively independently. However, there are intellectual synergies to be gained in connecting these two literatures. A large share of innovation happens in the context of startups and a large share of startups pursue innovation through the commercialization of products and services.

Featuring engaging contributions from leading scholars in the field, the De Gruyter Handbook of Sociology of Innovation and Entrepreneurship is a must-have and up-to-date summary of the literatures on the sociology of entrepreneurship and innovation. It is a comprehensive reference work, highlighting emerging areas and cutting-edge research, while also providing a vibrant agenda that empowers scholars and students to generate new ideas and knowledge.

The De Gruyter Handbook of Political Parties in the Global South provides a survey of the literature that illuminates a worrying blind spot in current research. While our knowledge of parties and parliamentary democracies in the West is rich and nuanced, the same cannot be said about parties in the Global South.

This handbook defines what constitutes a party in practice beyond the borders of the West and the confines of Western academia, particular in non-democratic states. It analyzes parties’ way of organizing and their relationship with society. With contributions by leading scholars in the field as well as up-and-coming scholars, this volume examines parties in the Global South from various perspectives and in the eyes of both the citizenry and the state.

The De Gruyter Handbook of Digital Criminology examines how digital devices spread and cut across all fields of crime and control. Providing a glossary of key theoretical, methodological and criminological concepts, the book defines and further establishes a vibrant and rapidly developing field. At the same time, Digital Criminology is not only presented as a novelty, but also as a continuation of the discipline's history.

Each chapter can be read as a free-standing contribution or texts can be combined to gain a more holistic understanding of Digital Criminology or to design a research project. Expert contributions vary from Criminology, Sociology, Law, Science and Technology Studies, to Information Science and Digital Humanities. Together, these supply readers with rich and original perspectives on the digitization of crime and control.

In 2010, 60 states had a military drone program. Today at least 113 countries and 65 non-state actors now have access to weaponized drone technologies. Alongside this, established ‘drone powers’ – the U.S., China, Turkey, and Iran – have expanded their own use of military drones, increasing the sale and deployment of drones around the world. In the De Gruyter Handbook of Drone Warfare, drone expert, policy adviser, and historian, Dr James Patton Rogers, brings together 37 of the world’s leading voices on the growing issues of commercial and military drone technologies.

From the origins of military drones in the early 1900s and the resurgence of drone use during the War on Terror, through to the global proliferation of drones across Europe, Africa, and the Middle East, this handbook explores the moral, ethical, technological, legal, military, geopolitical, social, and strategic issues at the heart of drone warfare. The first handbook of its kind, the volume also addresses Russia’s offensive war against Ukraine, the rise of Iranian and Houthi drones, and provides a focused analysis of the future of drone warfare and the opportunities and perils of AI, autonomy, and swarming technologies in the coming Third Drone Age.

Accelerating climate change is widely predicted to have profound impacts on human mobility over the coming decades. Climate mobilities and immobilities invoke issues of justice and social inequality and pose numerous socio-cultural, health, economic, legal and political challenges. Current international legal frameworks and national governance mechanisms provide insufficient protection for people displaced by climate change who are often subjected to health risks, psychosocial trauma, human rights abuse, and even new climatic risks. At the same time, there is a need to better understand how climate change interacts with other mobility drivers and why many climate-affected people decide to stay put or remain trapped in at-risk locations. Drawing on a wide range of disciplinary traditions and featuring Indigenous voices and youth perspectives, this book introduces new conceptual frameworks and empirical studies to examine the unique challenges facing people on the move and those staying behind.

The De Gruyter Handbook of Humor Studies consolidates the cumulative contributions in theory and research on humor from 57 international scholars representing 21 different countries in the widest possible diversity of disciplines. It organizes research in a unique conceptual framework addressing two broad themes: the Essence of Humor and the Functions of Humor. Furthermore, scholars of humor have recognized that humor is not only a universal human experience, it is also inherently social, shared among people and woven into the fabric of nearly every type of interpersonal relationship.

Scholars across all academic disciplines have addressed questions about the essence and functions of humor at different levels of analysis relating to how narrowly or broadly they conceptualize the social context of humor. Accordingly, the editors have organized each broad thematic section into three subsections defined by level of analysis. The book first addresses questions about individual psychological processes, then discusses text properties, and finally moves to questions involving broader conceptualizations of the social context addressing humor and social relations, as well as humor and culture.

By providing a comprehensive review of foundational work as well as new research and theoretical advancements across academic disciplines, the De Gruyter Handbook of Humor Studies will serve as the foremost authoritative research handbook for experienced humor scholars as well as an essential starting point for newcomers to the field, such as graduate students seeking to conduct their own research on humor. Further, by highlighting the interdisciplinary interest of new and emerging areas of research the book identifies and defines directions for future research for scholars from every discipline that contributes to our understanding of humor.

Globalisation, regionalisation, new technology, demography, voters’ expectations and re-structuring of societies are expected to influence welfare state development for years to come. This handbook analyses how different welfare state models and regimes will be able to cope with contemporary and future challenges, providing a variety of evidence based tools that make it essential reading for students, researchers and policy makers alike.