This fully revised and updated introduction to political sociology incorporates the burgeoning literature on globalization and shows how contemporary politics is linked to cultural issues, social structure and democratizing social action.

• New material on global governance, human rights, global social movements, global media
• New discussion of democracy and democratization
• Clearly lays out what is at stake in deciding between alternatives of cosmopolitanism, imperialism and nationalism
• Includes additional discussion of the importance of studying culture to political sociology

Kate Nash is Reader in the Department of Sociology at Goldsmiths, University of London, Faculty Fellow at the Center for Cultural Sociology, Yale University, and Co-Director of the Centre for the Study of Global Media and Democracy at Goldsmiths. She recently published The Cultural Politics of Human Rights: Comparing the US and UK (2009), she is editor (with Alan Scott and Anna Marie Smith) of New Critical Writings in Political Sociology (2009), and she is currently editing (with Alan Scott and Edwin Amenta) The New Blackwell Companion to Political Sociology.