How elite athletes and entertainment industry movers and shakers work to win the culture war for LGBTQ+ social justice.

The unquestionable runaway television hit of late 2025 was Crave/HBO Max's Heated Rivalry, a show that tells the love story of two queer ice hockey players. This show-and the wider social context around it-would have been unthinkable without the courageous writing, art, and advocacy of previous generations of LGBTQ+ people and their allies in the entertainment industry. In How to Win a Culture War, sociologist Lisa M. Stulberg argues that, despite substantial barriers, past and current creatives and athletes are changing American culture through their contributions to arts, sports, and politics.

Stulberg conducted in-depth interviews with 170 culture workers-including television, film, and theater actors and creators; musicians; elite athletes; and activists over the span of 14 years. These include stars such as Will & Grace's Eric McCormack, Orange Is the New Black's Lea DeLaria, Olympic diver Greg Louganis, and several former NFL players, as well as the TV and movie writers, producers, and directors behind some of pop culture's boldest moves. These culture makers take six primary steps toward LGBTQ+ social change: they become visible, use available platforms, change their workplaces, overachieve, become normal, and stay queer. In this work, they are opening up the culture, changing hearts and minds, and building community, even amid a fresh round of ruthless political attacks on LGBTQ+ people.

Providing rich behind-the-scenes insight and cultural material, Stulberg outlines an urgently needed playbook for how to win a culture war.

This book examines how the design of female monsters in science fiction and fantasy roleplaying games positions women's bodies and behaviors as transgressive, horrific, and threatening. Engaging with established feminist theories related to nonhumanness, transgression, female embodiment, and the horrific, this book unpacks the misogyny embedded in interactive entertainment media and technology in overt, subtle, and intersectional ways. Specifically, utilizing a close reading methodology employing visual and textual analysis of visual design, narrative role, developer commentary, and player reception, this book provides a thorough critical examination of female monsters such as the succubus, siren, broodmother, banshee, harpy, hag, and crone in several games.Through a focus on the archetypes of “maiden,” “mother,” and “crone,” this work reveals how games promote misogynistic beliefs via the design of female monsters related to sexualization and seduction, maternity and pregnancy, and old age and disability; position transgressive women as enemies to be fought and slain by heterosexual male protagonists; and remediate sexist tropes and assumptions that are deeply embedded in mythology, popular culture, the game industry, and gaming culture. In its exploration of the relationship between technology, difference, gender, and monstrosity, this book contributes to feminist media scholarship by highlighting a key problematic in game design that has remained largely unexplored in scholarly and critical writing.

This book offers a scholarly audience a new key to Gilbert Simondon’s encyclopaedic philosophy. It traces a psychological theory in Simondon’s work that guides his entire oeuvre and that holds together his technological and philosophical interests. Against the dominant view that psychology occupies a marginal place in Simondon’s thought, the volume demonstrates that genetic psychology constitutes its methodological and theoretical core. Far from being a secondary discipline, psychology functions as a transversal matrix that articulates ontology, technology, life, and collective existence within a unified theory of individuation. By reconstructing the genesis of this project ? from early cybernetic writings to the two doctoral theses ? the book shows that their apparent bifurcation conceals a deeper unity grounded in a general allagmatics of being. Drawing on lesser-known texts and lectures, it redefines imagination, affectivity and creativity as ontogenetic vectors and repositions Simondonian psychology as an open paradigm for rethinking subjectivity, technology, and collective life in the digital age.

This book traces the shifting politics of race in contemporary Britain through analysis of screen comedy that has worked to parrot, cloak or confront racist discourse. Moving from 1950s minstrelsy through to contemporary streaming-era content, Ilott demonstrates how race is made and unmade through screen comedy's engagements with the tacit (and often racist) premises of British multicultural discourse. Chapters on the romcom, sitcom and police comedy read selected films and TV shows as counter-narratives on British multiculturalism, intervening in popular discourse that constructs interracial romance as spelling hope for the future, the Black neighbour as inherently threatening, or racially minoritised communities as disproportionately criminal. Drawing on decolonial, critical race and cultural studies perspectives, the study reimagines humour theory as a vehicle for interpreting the affective, political and epistemological significance of comedy to shape processes of racialisation and national identity construction.

Artificial Intelligence is reshaping how work happens, yet few people understand its human impact. The Human-AI Decoder makes that impact visible, offering a practical guide to the future of work. Drawing on two decades of digital transformation experience, Mario Jacober introduces the AI Workforce Impact Model and its Six Levels of AI Impact classification. Together, they help readers assess where AI is changing work, how deeply that change runs and how to respond responsibly.

Through real-world use cases and practical tools, Jacober brings clarity to the human side of AI, helping organisations lead change with confidence and care.?As AI reshapes roles and expectations, the book extends this perspective to Human?Machine Resources, a future-facing evolution of HR that helps organisations clarify responsibilities and design workplaces where people and intelligent systems can succeed together. The Human-AI Decoder is a practical playbook and a call to responsible action: to protect what makes work human, design the future with intention and meet the age of AI with courage and confidence.

This handbook provides an overview of representations of masculinities in Anglophone literatures worldwide. While Part One provides an introduction to the complexities of exploring masculinities across nations, the next parts revolve around a select number of masculinity-related topics that recur across contemporary Anglophone literatures, ranging from violence(s) to boyhood and fatherhood, to aging, or to alternative models of being a man. Crossing traditional boundaries across different literary genres, the collection analyzes fiction but also poetry, drama, short stories, and film adaptations of literary texts. It also challenges the distinction between high- and low-brow culture by incorporating chapters on hard-boiled fiction or domestic noir. The handbook will be of interest to students and scholars in the fields of gender studies, cultural and literary studies, and postcolonial theory, among others.

This book studies and reveals perspectives on sleep from very young children (ages 2-5) and their parents. Employing interviews with children and their mothers, as well as photo elicitation, Scherer amplifies children's own voices on how sleep is managed in their homes. Research participants were recruited from The Beyond Sleep Training Project, a large Facebook group of more than 180,000 members who approach children's sleep with the aim to respond to their nighttime needs for comfort, safety, and nourishment as they would during the day. Topics covered include the history of infant sleep and sleep training, family sleep set-ups and routines, and competition and support amongst mothers discussing sleep on and offline. The book also outlines the research methodology used for interviewing very young children.

An in-depth look at the timeless quandary of how average high school basketball players navigate their dreams of greatness with the adults who coach and support them.

We all admire the stories of famous athletes with humble origins who rose to the top through hard work and dedication. Michael Jordan and Steph Curry, after all, both started as second-string players. But their climbs to athletic dominance call to us because they seem to prove a message we all want to believe: Anything is possible with hard work and determination. But for most people, it simply isn't. Most of us will end up being more or less average rather than extraordinary.

In Playing Time, sociologist and sports scholar Scott N. Brooks introduces readers to young athletes who are middle-status players on their basketball teams-not the best, but not the worst-who often find themselves at odds with their coaches and teammates as they compete for playing time to show off their skills. Drawing on his extensive experience as a coach of middle and high school-age boys, Brooks invites us into the inner lives and daily experiences of kids, parents, and coaches, as players try to make sense of who they are and differentiate themselves on the court. These boys have been told by coaches, their parents, and society that hard work, effort, and attitude determine effectiveness, and Brooks reveals how that message affects them when it's clear that their best efforts are not always enough. Middle-status boys often feel alone, alienated, socially stigmatized, and powerless to improve their fate.

By focusing on the boys stuck in the middle, Brooks uncovers essential aspects of the formative years of adolescence when kids dream of and plan for a future. As many of us will recognize our own dreams of greatness in these kids, we can all learn to support them as they build their sense of self, both on and off the court.

This book provides a naturalistic account of the problems that led Wilfrid Sellars to formulate two rival images of humans and their place in the world. According to Sellars, the scientific image separated from the manifest image during the Renaissance because philosophers and scientists agreed that mind and matter were independent of each other, and because they found that a mathematical description of matter is possible if matter is characterized by what can be measured and weighed.

Sellars argued that these two alternative images cannot be reduced to each other and indeed seemed to think that they stand as opposites to one another. This book, on the other hand, tries to show that both the manifest image and the scientific image are incomplete in different ways. The manifest picture of humanity is incomplete in the sense that new scientific discoveries about humanity are constantly being added to the picture and become part of everyday knowledge, whereas the scientific picture is incomplete so long as it either ignores or is unable to explain the nature of human experiences on which the manifest picture is based.

The book is essential reading for all philosophers of science. It is also ideal for philosophers working on ontology and metaphysics.

Ritual and the Body explores how people experience life's most profound transitions: birth, marriage, and death. Drawing on Ukrainian folk traditions, Maria Mayerchyk shows how rituals mark changes in social status by shaping how the body moves, speaks, eats, hears, and even feels itself to exist.

From christenings and weddings to funerals, the book follows key figures and moments of ritual life-the newborn child, parents, newlyweds, and the deceased-and reveals how bodily states, clothing, sound, food, light and darkness, joy and grief all carry meaning. With clarity and insight, Mayerchyk invites readers to see the human body as a powerful cultural language, one through which communities make sense of loss, transformation, and belonging.

Beyond Microfoundations and Macrofoundations of Institutions challenges the binary distinction that has long constrained institutional scholarship. Transcending the limitations of Coleman’s “bathtub” metaphor, this volume advances a multilevel theory of institutions as dynamic, recursive systems. Rather than privileging micro-action or macro-structure, the contributors view institutions as a continuum where influence flows continuously across levels?from individual cognition to societal logics.

Building on previous Research in the Sociology of Organizations volumes, this collection shifts the analytical focus from static "boxes" to the "arrows" that connect them. A central theme is that communication and language serve as the critical bridge traversing these levels, enabling meanings to aggregate and disseminate. By integrating these perspectives, this volume offers a framework where constraint and agency coevolve, encouraging scholars to "lean into" the complexity of cross-level interactions.

Reading Thoreau as a scientist for modern times

Henry David Thoreau's Walden stands as the foundational text for the environmental movement and as a model for the practice of nature writing. In The Walden Experiments, Robert Thorson tells the story of how, after several discarded drafts of social critique, Thoreau resuscitated Walden with a sharp swerve toward science. Thorson invites us to read-or reread-Walden to discover the observations, empirical thinking, and scientific explanations supporting this canonical work of literature. Chapter by chapter, he guides us through Walden's relevance for such contemporary scientific concerns as climate change, ecological collapse, water supply, agriculture, artificial intelligence, and technology.

Thoreau's first "experiment" of living deliberately took place in a one-room house at Walden Pond from 1845 to 1847. This was followed from 1851 to 1852 by a little-known second experiment of trying to live deliberately in the midst of society as a sojourning scientist. Thorson's account of a science-revitalized version of Walden helps us appreciate Thoreau's masterpiece not only for its prophetic, lyrical, uplifting, witty, and timeless advice on living sustainably, but also as a historic benchmark for anchoring our modern solutions. Exploring the science that underlies Walden enhances our understanding of the deeper meanings Thoreau draws from nature.

How scarcity shapes nearly every aspect of our rental assistance programs, including the Housing Choice Voucher program.

It's no secret that the United States is experiencing a housing crisis. While the cost of rental housing has soared since 2000, the median household income has barely changed. The Housing Choice Voucher program is America's largest rental assistance program, but most households that are eligible for assistance simply cannot get access to it. Without enough resources to serve every eligible household in their communities, public housing agencies keep waiting lists, run lotteries, and claw back vouchers from households that are unable to meet the demands of the housing market. Despite the enormous benefits that come from affordable housing, it's simply out of reach for most renters in need.

In The Housing Lottery, sociologist Brian J. McCabe takes readers to the frontlines of these housing agencies to understand how scarcity shapes nearly every aspect of the program. Following the bureaucrats charged with making these decisions about allocating housing resources, McCabe shows how decisions and regulations resulting from scarcity have enormous consequences. He presents extensive evidence about the importance of rental assistance for lifting households out of poverty and creating economic opportunity. To improve housing assistance as a public resource and to combat housing insecurity and its negative effects, McCabe argues for a more inclusive, expansive approach to federal housing policy.

This undergraduate textbook educates non-science majors?our future policy makers?on how science works, the rules that underpin our existence, our impact on nature, and nature's impact on us. The book provides a concise, historically based, non-mathematical treatment of modern physics relevant to societal issues. It challenges readers to examine the problems we face (and their own beliefs) in light of the scientific method.

In this new edition, a large volume of material has been revised and updated, including expanded discussions on climate change, electric vehicles, and future energy sources. It contains additional new end-of-chapter problems as well as an interactive module that seeks to reduce endorsement of pseudoscience and conspiratorial beliefs by promoting critical thinking, scientific literacy, and effective self-reflection. With a narrative structure, Science and Society, 2nd Edition explains the scientific process and the power it brings to dealing with the natural world. The reader will gain a deeper understanding of scientific results reported by the media, and thus the tools to develop a rational, fact-based assessment of energy and resource policy.

Praise for?Science and Society:

"Anyone who thinks society can be managed without science should think again, or better: read this book. The authors explain how science permeates society, and with simple examples of the scientific process they show its special power in dealing with the natural world. This is a must read for the world's seven billion scientists."

F.E. Close, OBE, Oxford University, author of, among others, "Half-Life: The Divided Life of Bruno Pontecorvo, Physicist or Spy", "The Infinity Puzzle", and "Neutrino"

As the 2030 deadline for the Sustainable Development Goals approaches, From Fragmentation to Wholeness offers a profound re-examination of global transformation. While nations have pledged sustainability through targets and reforms, the world continues to face climate breakdown, widening inequality, ecological collapse, and deepening social fragmentation. This timely work argues that these crises are not merely institutional or technical, but arise from a deeper fragmentation within consciousness itself. When thought divides life into sectors, when identity fuels conflict, and when fear and desire shape ambition, institutions inevitably inherit these divisions.

Beginning from the insight that the outer world mirrors the inner movement of the self, the authors explore how patterns of thought shape climate policy, economic design, governance, education, and technology. Through three interwoven movements-the global crisis as inward division writ large; the mirror of the self in fear, memory, and psychological time; and action arising from awareness beyond identity-the book invites readers to consider transformation as an integrated process of inner and outer change. For policymakers, sustainability scholars, UN professionals, systems thinkers, educators, and students, this is not a philosophical abstraction but a practical inquiry into intelligence without identity, and institutions as living spaces, rather than instruments of control. It opens a doorway to a future where wholeness, rather than fragmentation, becomes the foundation of global action.

This edited volume explores how global issues such as urbanisation, globalisation, digital practice, and global warming are experienced and interpreted by young people in their local contexts. Drawing on research from 13 countries and 20 study sites, this volume examines how adolescents perceive urban space and how their environments shape their daily lives. The broader research in this volume builds upon participatory action research practices and principles that aim to empower young people by giving them a voice and supporting their agency in decision making. These approaches are used to advocate for youth health and wellbeing in contemporary urban contexts across Australia, Canada, Chile, China, Colombia, Germany, Lebanon, Nepal, the Netherlands, Aotearoa (New Zealand), Nigeria, the Philippines and the United States of America. The research project focuses on low-income communities undergoing rapid change, examining ways to engage minority and youth populations in informal settlements who are particularly reliant on the resources of their immediate environments and whose circumstances hold significant implications for urban policy. Providing a broad-ranging and comparative perspective on young people's experience of urban life, this volume offers valuable insights for students, researchers, social workers and policymakers concerned with youth wellbeing, urban and community development and related fields.

An integrated quantitative framework for understanding the dynamics of collective action

Collective action has been a fundamental aspect of human societies throughout history, from building irrigation systems and defenses in Neolithic times to coordinated disaster relief and scientific collaborations today. In this book, Sergey Gavrilets explains when and why groups of people cooperate, presenting a quantitative framework that unifies game theory with models of social influence, cognition, and individual and cultural variation. He shows how humans' deep susceptibility to social influence-grounded in evolutionary need to cooperate and learn from peers, reinforced by deference to parents and elders, and extended to cultural, religious, and political leaders-shapes norms, beliefs, and collective outcomes.

Integrating previously separate literatures, Gavrilets introduces explicit dynamics for norms and beliefs, quantifies the effects of individual and cultural differences, and tests predictions across societies. Drawing on formal, data-based mathematical modeling supported by behavioral experiments and studies of online behavior, he concludes that successful collective action depends on six interacting forces: material payoffs, personal norms and attitudes, social influence, cognition, evolving social norms and beliefs about others, and individual and cultural differences. Lasting cultural change, he argues, depends on norms and institutions that shape behavior through persuasion, nudging, and enforcement. Gavrilets translates this theory into practical, testable strategies for policy and design, including targeted messaging, dynamic norms, and culturally sensitive approaches, and connects it to broader theories of behavior change.

Cities are not just collections of roads, buildings and policies. They are living communities shaped by the aspirations, fears and decisions of their people. Yet too often, development happens to citizens instead of with them.

Designing Cities with People, Not Just for Them: The Power of Collaborative Urban Futures invites planners, engineers, policymakers and everyday citizens to reimagine how we build and transform our cities - together.

Drawing on original research - including participatory workshops, global case studies, and rigorous analysis - this book uncovers what truly makes cities inclusive, resilient and future-ready. Based on in-depth research from Digos City, Philippines, and enriched by comparative case studies, it offers a practical framework and cost-effective tools that any community can adapt. Powerful stories of co-creation from around the world illustrate key lessons applicable across diverse contexts.

For leaders who want to facilitate change rather than dictate it, and for citizens who want to reclaim their right to shape their own urban future, this book is both a guide and a call to action.

A provocative account of how empire and absolutism institutionalized slavery in America

The original draft of the Declaration of Independence condemned British kings for supporting slavery in their empire. England’s two seventeenth-century revolutions were in part a reaction to the crown’s proslavery policies, with politicians such as John Locke arguing that all people were born equal and that government should be based on consent. But while these principles would underpin the American Revolution, the treaty that ended that war protected the legal foundations of the plantation system in the new republic. The King’s Slaves untangles this thorny history, arguing that American slavery was borne from authoritarian rule.

In this incisive and thought-provoking book, Holly Brewer challenges the notion that slavery arose naturally in the colonies through the interests of merchants and planters, showing how behind them lay a British crown that believed in absolute power over subjects and granted similar powers to proprietors and masters. British kings used their authority over navies and armies, judges and royal governors to create an elaborate plantation system that produced more crops for export and greater wealth from tariffs. Royal propaganda supported claims that some peoples had no rights while edicts and proclamations circumvented the legislative process. Brewer describes how African and Indigenous peoples resisted the king’s slavery, as did some colonists, English politicians, and reformers. Yet slavery persisted, becoming enshrined after independence as a dehumanizing legal foundation of American capitalism.

A bold work of scholarship by a historian at the height of her powers, The King’s Slaves shares new perspectives on America’s founding, exposing empire’s pervasive role in spreading and justifying slavery in the new world.

Delve into Rome's lost history through the stories of a single city block.

Cutting through the heart of Rome is Via delle Botteghe Oscure, a time-worn street named for the mysterious "shops" said to run beneath it. History lies thick here, a museum atop a convent atop ancient ruins; layered in are traces of artisans and poets, pilgrims and saints, a Fascist deportation, a communist coffee bar, a political assassination, and shopkeepers, too. These stories all rest upon a single city block, the same place where, in 13 BCE, the triumphal Roman general Lucius Cornelius Balbus built a monumental theater complex in his own honor.

Elizabeth Rodini's On the Street of the Hidden Shops digs deep into this corner of the city, uncovering a set of surprising, often poignant narratives that range across two thousand years. For as the walls of Balbus's compound decayed and the neighborhood was rebuilt, this block would come to shelter Romans from all walks of life: the daughters of local prostitutes, an earnest young man in search of a bride, an entrepreneur determined to preserve the city's colorful dialect, a Jewish family recently liberated from the nearby Ghetto, and a band of idealistic archaeologists unearthing a long-forgotten past, as well as a gifted baker, a medieval donkey, and a Renaissance ghost. Their stories survive in archives and artifacts but also in the enduring power of rumor and legend.

On the Street of the Hidden Shops invites us on a captivating journey to one place across many centuries. Its tight urban focus reveals a Rome most visitors miss, while uncovering some of the many Romes that have been largely lost to history.

This book explores the profound connections between Nam June Paik's artistic vision and Korean shamanism, a theme that has been largely overlooked in English-language scholarship. Drawing from key historical performances and theoretical insights, this volume examines Paik's role as a shamanic figure who mediated between past and future, technology and tradition, and material and spiritual realms. The book situates Paik's work within broader discourses on emerging media, emphasizing how his engagement with shamanism extends beyond ritual performance to a conceptual framework of communication, transformation, and spiritual resonance. It also investigates Paik's legacy in relation to dark shamanism and neoliberalism, offering new perspectives on the cultural and political dimensions of his art. By bringing together critical essays from leading scholars, Electronic Shaman provides an essential resource for those interested in media art, shamanism, and the intersections of technology and spirituality in contemporary culture.