The Stranger

Know about the book -

The Stranger is written by Shaun Best and published by Routledge. It's available with International Standard Book Number or ISBN identification 0429857535 (ISBN 10) and 9780429857539 (ISBN 13).

This book explores the concept of the stranger as a ‘modern’ social form, identifying the differing conceptions of strangerhood presented in the literature since the publication of Georg Simmel’s influential essay ‘The Stranger’, questioning the assumptions around what it means to be regarded as ‘strange’, and identifying the consequences of being labelled a stranger. Organised both chronologically and thematically, the book begins with Simmel’s major essays on the stranger and culminates with an analysis of Zygmunt Bauman’s thought on the subject, with each chapter introducing an idea or key theme initially discussed by Simmel before exploring the development of the theme in the work of others, including Schütz, Derrida, and Levinas. The stranger is an enduring concept across many disciplines and is central to contemporary debates about refugees, asylum, the nature of inclusion and exclusion, and the struggle for recognition. As such, this book will be of interest to scholars across the social sciences.