Description
Product ID: | 9783319945194 |
Product Form: | Paperback / softback |
Country of Manufacture: | CH |
Title: | Detecting the Social |
Subtitle: | Order and Disorder in Post-1970s Detective Fiction |
Authors: | Author: Hazel Johnstone, Sarah Moore, Mary Evans |
Page Count: | 196 |
Subjects: | Literary studies: c 1900 to c 2000, Literary studies: from c 1900 -, Popular culture, Social and ethical issues, Social theory, Popular culture, Social issues & processes, Social theory |
Description: | Select Guide Rating This book analyses the ways in which twenty-first century detective fiction provides an understanding of the increasingly complex and often baffling contemporary world — and what sociology, as a discipline, can learn from it. Conventional sociological accounts of fiction generally comprehend its value in terms of the ways in which it can illustrate, enlarge or help to articulate a particular social theory. Evans, Moore, and Johnstone suggest a different approach, and demonstrate that by taking a group of detective novels, we can unveil so far unidentified, but crucial, theoretical ideas about what it means to be an individual in the twenty-first century. More specifically, the authors argue that detective fiction of the last forty years illuminates the effects of urban isolation and separation, the invisibility of institutional power, financial insecurity, and the failure of public authorities to protect people. In doing so, this body of fiction traces out the fault-lines in our social arrangements, rehearses our collective fears, and captures a mood of restless disquiet. By engaging with detective stories in this way, the book revisits ideas about the promise and purpose of sociology.? This book analyses the ways in which twenty-first century detective fiction provides an understanding of the increasingly complex and often baffling contemporary world - and what sociology, as a discipline, can learn from it. Conventional sociological accounts of fiction generally comprehend its value in terms of the ways in which it can illustrate, enlarge or help to articulate a particular social theory. Evans, Moore, and Johnstone suggest a different approach, and demonstrate that by taking a group of detective novels, we can unveil so far unidentified, but crucial, theoretical ideas about what it means to be an individual in the twenty-first century. More specifically, the authors argue that detective fiction of the last forty years illuminates the effects of urban isolation and separation, the invisibility of institutional power, financial insecurity, and the failure of public authorities to protect people. In doing so, this body of fiction traces out the fault-lines in our social arrangements, rehearses our collective fears, and captures a mood of restless disquiet. By engaging with detective stories in this way, the book revisits ideas about the promise and purpose of sociology. |
Imprint Name: | Springer International Publishing AG |
Publisher Name: | Springer International Publishing AG |
Country of Publication: | GB |
Publishing Date: | 2018-09-26 |