Table of Contents

Introduction Part 1: Values, Economy and Society 1. Valuing Values in Sociology and the Capability Approach 2. Economy and Society: A CA-based synthesis? Part 2: Agency, Alienation and Emotions 3. From Agency to Capabilities: The Capable Social Self 4. From Alienation to Capability Deprivation: Reconstructing a Sociological Concept 5. The Capability Approach and the Sociology of Emotions Part 3: Institutions, Modernity and Fundamentalism 6. ‘Capable Institutions’? Rebuilding Social Ethics 7. The Crisis of Capability? Value-Fundamentalism and Solitarist Identity Epilogue

About the Author

Spiros Gangas is Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology at Deree-the American College of Greece. His principal areas of research are classical and contemporary sociological theory, value theory, capability approach and film studies.

Reviews

"A systematic conversation between the capabilities approach, as developed by Martha Nussbaum and Amartya Sen, and the grand tradition of sociological theory of Marx, Weber, Parsons and Habermas has long been overdue and this is precisely what Spiros Gangas offers in his original and ambitious new book. By revisiting the main tenets of the capabilities approach in light of contemporary sociological debates on normativity and social crises, Gangas articulates interdisciplinary arguments that handle successfully insights from philosophy, critical theory, economics and sociology itself in both their conceptual and normative sophistication. The result not only does justice to these traditions but also carries them forward." – Daniel Chernilo, Professor of Sociology, Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez, Chile, and Visiting Professor of Social and Political Thought, Loughborough University, UK