Book excerpt: This volume presents a series of cutting-edge, theoretically ambitious studies in political sociology that deal with some of the major challenges European societies and politics are facing. Revisiting the study of traditional objects of political science such as state sovereignty, civil society and citizenship, these studies combine sophisticated empirical analyses with methodological and conceptual innovations such as field theory, Multiple Correspondence Analysis and the study of space sets. Combining qualitative and quantitative research techniques and macro- and micro-levels, they have in common a contextual analysis of politics through scrutiny of configurations of groups, representations and perceptions. A transnational perspective that avoids methodological nationalism is present in all the studies of this volume.