Social Sciences: The Big Issues

Fully revised and updated, the fourth edition of Social Sciences: The Big Issues explores key debates about how we live our personal, domestic and emotional lives at a time of enormous, previously unimaginable change and disruption, including a pandemic that locked down households and economies.

Since the third edition, everyone’s life has changed. The pandemic – at least temporarily – stopped social life as we knew it and virtually forced governments to close down their economies. This is where this edition of The Big Issues starts. Staying at home posed a radical departure from routine life, but reactions to Covid-19 have exposed the endurance of particular social relations – especially inequalities – which characterize societies worldwide.

A few of the new big issues covered in this edition include:

• Changing selves and personal lives in light of racism and sexual and identity politics in a pandemic
• Changing patterns of consumption in relation to market production and what it means for climate change
• Changing intersections of citizenship, migration and globalization in the context of the virus crossing borders, and both the opportunities and sources of inequality involved
• Changing ideas about power, politics and populism in the aftermath of Brexit

Building on the strong foundation of this well-loved text, this fully revised fourth edition explores how big issues and social forces intersect to create both change and evidence of continuity, especially of social inequalities. It provides a clear, accessible introduction to the ideas and approaches of the social sciences across a range of disciplines, including sociology, psychology and politics.