This Festschrift honors the enduring legacy of George Ritzer, one of sociology’s most influential and recognizable figures. Ritzer’s scholarship has helped shape core areas of the discipline—ranging from consumption and social theory to globalization and beyond—while also generating new conceptual terrains such as McDonaldization, prosumption, and the study of “nothing” and “something.”
This special issue is a product of over a decade of collaboration between Thesis Eleven and Sichuan University’s College of Literature and Journalism. The issue provides a platform for emerging Chengdu scholars and developed around the idea that this younger generation of Masters students might consider writing less directly in their immediate fields of research and more in terms of general and personal interest. It offers a window into some of the concerns and patterns of thinking of the next generation and the worlds that they inhabit, where tradition and modernity intersect.
Peter Murphy, Stranger Cities. Australian Creation and the Ambidextrous Mind, A Profile of Portal Modernity (Brill, 2023)
Reviewed by Peter Beilharz
Anthony Elliott, Algorithms of Anxiety: Fear in the Digital Age (Polity Press, 2024)
Reviewed by James Smithies
Speaker: Professor James Smithies
Co-Chairs: Prof Joy Damousi and Prof Peter Beilharz
Convener: A/Prof Rachel Busbridge
When: Friday 1 August 2-4pm AEDT.
Where: Australian Catholic University, Melbourne Campus
Contributors: Domonkos Sik, Mathew Abbott, Nikos Nikoletos, Fabian Cabaluz, Tomás Torres López, Harry Blatterer, Panu Minkkinen, Peter Beilharz and Frédéric Vandenberghe
Carlo Bordoni, Ethical Violence (Polity Press, 2023)
Reviewed by Peter Beilharz
Andreas Reckwitz, Hartmut Rosa, Late Modernity in Crisis (Polity, 2023)
Reviewed by Peter Beilharz
by Peter Murphy
I think that what happened to both of us separately but in unconscious tandem in the 1990s says a lot about the intellectual framing of Australian society and history. We both, unwittingly, without any preconception of this, moved away from a politicised interpretation of Australian society (typical of much of Australian historiography) toward a view that placed art and aesthetics at the centre of social analysis.
Eva Illouz is arguably the most prominent sociologist of emotions of all time. This review essay synthesizes and engages with her work on romantic love.
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