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The Public Intellectual by Helen Small (Blackwell) In this exciting and timely book, prestigious thinkers such as Edward Said, Jacqueline Rose, Bruce Robbins, and Stefan Collini discuss the role of writers and intellectuals today and in the past, examining the ways in which thought can be publicly expressed, and how it may relate or fail to relate to activism. Their combined responses represent a major and long overdue riposte to claims of a decline in public intellectual life. The volume significantly extends the historical range of most writing about intellectuals, exploring the relationship between thought, professionalism, and public action from Hellenistic late antiquity onward. Other essays in this collection are immediately contemporary in focus, addressing the ways in which the idea of the public intellectual is being reformed today in different political and national contexts and in different media, including film and the visual arts.

Disciplined Minds: A Critical Look at Salaried Professionals and the Soul-Battering System That Shapes Their Lives by Jeff Schmidt (Rowman & Littlefield) This is as important as it is a controversial work. Simply it shows how our institutions deeply affect individual integrity at many levels of professional life. Eye-opening and forcefully political. Highly recommended. Author’s preface: This book is stolen. Written in part on stolen time, that is. I felt I had no choice but to do it that way. Like millions of others who work for a living, I was giving most of my prime time to my employer. My job simply did not leave me enough energy for a major project of my own, and no one was about to hire me to pursue my own vision, especially given my irreverent attitude toward employers. I was working in New York City as an editor at a glossy science magazine, but my job, like most professional jobs, was not intellectually challenging and allowed only the most constrained creativity. I knew that if I were not contending with real intellectual challenges and exercising real creativity‑and if I were not doing anything to shape the world according to my own ideals‑life would be unsatisfying, not to mention stressful and unexciting. The thought of just ac­cepting my situation seemed insane. So I began spending some office time on my own work, dumped my TV to reappropriate some of my time at home, and wrote this book. Not coincidentally, it is about professionals, their role in soci­ety, and the hidden battle over personal identity that rages in professional edu­cation and employment. More

Sociology and Society is a series of four textbooks designed as an introduction to the sociological study of modern society. The books form the core study materials for The Open University course Sociology and Society (DD201), which aims to provide an attractive and up‑to‑date introduction to the key concerns and debates of contemporary sociology. They also take account of the ways in which sociology has been shaped by dialogue with adjacent disciplines and intellectual movements, such as cultural studies and women's studies. More

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