Detecting the Social (E-Book, PDF)

<p></p><p>This book analyses the ways in which twenty-first century detective fiction provides an understanding of the increasingly complex and often baffling contemporary world &nbsp;and what sociology, as a discipline, can learn from it.</p><p>Conventional sociological accounts of fiction generally comprehend its value in terms of the ways in which it can illustrate, enlarge or help to articulate a particular social theory. Evans,&nbsp;Moore, and Johnstone suggest a different approach, and demonstrate that by taking a group of detective novels, we can unveil so far unidentified, but crucial, theoretical ideas about what it means to be an individual in the twenty-first century.&nbsp;</p><p>More specifically, the authors argue that detective fiction of the last forty&nbsp;years illuminates the effects of urban isolation and separation, the&nbsp;invisibility of&nbsp;institutional power, financial insecurity, and&nbsp;the failure of public authorities&nbsp;to protect people. In doing so, this body of fiction&nbsp;traces out the fault-lines in our social arrangements, rehearses&nbsp;our collective fears, and captures&nbsp;a mood of restless disquiet.&nbsp;By engaging with detective stories in this way, the book revisits&nbsp;ideas about the promise and purpose of sociology.</p><br><p></p>