Philosophy & Religion

The tradition of ancient philosophy is a long, rich and varied one. Julia Annas gives a succinct account of ancient Greco-Roman philosophy, emphasizing its freshness and variety of themes, and its approach of lively discussion and argument. Getting away from the presentation of ancient philosophy as a succession of Great Thinkers, the book gives readers a sense of the freshness and liveliness of ancient philosophy, and of its wide variety of themes and styles.This new edition has been fully updated to reflect updates in the field, with new illustrations and up to date further reading to allow further exploration of the field. The text has been expanded and modernized to be more comprehensive and accessible to the general reader, as well as exploring the relation of the tradition of ancient Greco-Roman philosophy to other traditions and to us.

This book presents a novel theoretical account of the claim that sexed and gendered bodies are socially constructed. In order to do so it critically reconstructs and combines existing theories of the embodiment of social identity (Bourdieu, Foucault, Butler) with the constructionist account of the Sociology of Knowledge (Strong Programme). This allows the author to develop a detailed conceptual apparatus which helps to analyse the nature of sexed and gendered bodies as social institutions. This book argues for a view of the body as an 'artificial kind' of entity which is the effect of contingent and localized practices and that incorporates both social and natural determinants. In doing so, the book reformulates key sociological dichotomies such as nature/society; structure/agency and domination/resistance, critically analysing different structuralist positions and advancing an 'intrinsic' structuralist model which foregrounds the importance of human relations in the constitution of social phenomena. This theoretical investigation has important methodological implications for empirical research into the formation of sex and gender identities and practices, enabling a more objective and naturalistic approach to empirical data concerning social phenomena.

In recent decades, friendship has been a site of analysis for understanding the connections between people and groups, and as a fabric for holding the political and social together. Starting with the theoretical debates about how to conceptualize friendship as a political idea, the anthology then looks at friendship's relationship with justice, the state, and civic relations. The collection presents cutting-edge research which moves the theorization of friendship beyond western confines to consider the themes in cross-cultural and decolonized contexts.

The Fair Process Effect aims to shed light on why there are so many instances of distrust, polarization, and conspiracy thinking in our world and what we can do about this. The book focuses on the fair process effect as a mechanism that may help to start overcoming these important issues of societal discontent. This is a positive effect that people exhibit when they have been treated in genuinely fair and just ways by fellow human beings and societal authorities. Current insights presented in the book aid the understanding of why people may experience discontent, distrust, and disillusionment. Furthermore, these insights can be used to start countering exaggerated levels of distrust, heightened polarization, and unfounded conspiracy thinking. To this end, Van den Bos develops a coherent and modern account of the fair process effect, targeted at understanding and managing these pertinent issues.

Queering Black Churches explores how open and affirming (ONA) historically Black churches have queered their congregations. Using the lenses of practical theology, ecclesiology, Queer theology, and gender studies, Brandon Thomas Crowley examines the heteronormative histories, theologies, morals, values, and structures of Black churches and how their longstanding assumptions can be challenged to dismantle homophobia within African American congregations and move beyond surface-level allyship toward actual structural renovation.

In his book, Andreas Urs Sommer reflects on the question of what it really means when everybody's appealing to values, all the time - the question, fundamentally, of what values actually are. Values explores both of these points, arriving at two intriguing suggestions: Maybe what we call values are just a set of elaborate fictions. And maybe those fictions serve some very important purposes.

Around the world, Islamic cultures have developed distinctive matrilineal, matrifocal, matrilocal, or matriarchal natures as a result of how they have been practised by integrated and indigenised Muslim communities. In matrilineal descent systems, in contrast to the more common mosaic of patrilineal patterns, children belong to the mother's ancestry group. Matrilineal Muslims therefore follow a social system in which people are identified with their mother's lineage, and the inheritance of property as well as succession are transferred through the matriline. This volume focuses on matrilineal, matrifocal and matriarchal Muslims and their unique folk natures, integrated social structures, adopted legal systems, and so on. It provides a unique perspective for understanding global Muslim communities that have succeeded in integrating the matrilineal tenets of local practices with religion, adhering to essential Islamic values in a way that makes traditional women-centred cultures acceptable to mainstream Islam.