Jeremy Cander has designed a home that cures depression. Jack Nesteby, a Canadian reporter, wants the story. In a New Ulm, Minnesota bar called The Broken Gate, they meet, but a flood and an accident change both men forever.

From the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe's resistance against the Dakota Access pipeline to the Nepalese Newar community's protest of the Fast Track Road Project, Indigenous peoples around the world are standing up and speaking out against global capitalism to protect the land, water, and air. By reminding us of the fundamental importance of placing Indigenous politics, histories, and ontologies at the center of our social movements, Indigenous Resurgence positions environmental justice within historical, social, political, and economic contexts, exploring the troubling relationship between colonial and environmental violence and reframing climate change and environmental degradation through an anticolonial lens.

From the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe's resistance against the Dakota Access pipeline to the Nepalese Newar community's protest of the Fast Track Road Project, Indigenous peoples around the world are standing up and speaking out against global capitalism to protect the land, water, and air. By reminding us of the fundamental importance of placing Indigenous politics, histories, and ontologies at the center of our social movements, Indigenous Resurgence positions environmental justice within historical, social, political, and economic contexts, exploring the troubling relationship between colonial and environmental violence and reframing climate change and environmental degradation through an anticolonial lens.

The liberating promise of big data and social media to create more responsive democracies and workplaces is overshadowed by a nightmare of election meddling, privacy invasion, fake news and an exploitative gig economy. Yet, while regressive forces spread disinformation and hate, 'guerrilla democrats' continue to foster hope and connection through digital technologies. This book offers an in-depth analysis of platform-based radical movements, from the online coalitions of voters and activists to the Deliveroo and Uber strikes. Combining cutting edge theories with empirical research, it makes an invaluable contribution to the emerging literature on the relationship between technology and society.

For many Europeans, the persistence of America's death penalty is a stark reminder of American otherness. The practice of state killing is an archaic relic, a hollow symbol that accomplishes nothing but reflects a puritanical, punitive culture - bloodthirsty in its pursuit of retribution. In debating capital punishment, the usual rhetoric points to America's deviance from the western norm: civilized abolition and barbaric retention; 'us' and 'them'. This remarkable new study by a leading social thinker sweeps aside the familiar story and offers a compelling interpretation of the culture of American punishment. It shows that the same forces that led to the death penalty's abolition in Europe once made America a pioneer of reform. That democracy and civilization are not the enemies of capital punishment, though liberalism and humanitarianism are. Making sense of today's differences requires a better understanding of American society and its punishments than the standard rhetoric allows. Taking us deep inside the world of capital punishment, the book offers a detailed picture of a peculiar institution - its cultural meaning and symbolic force for supporters and abolitionists, its place in the landscape of American politics and attitudes to crime, its constitutional status and the legal struggles that define it. Understanding the death penalty requires that we understand how American society is put together - the legacy of racial violence, the structures of social power, and the commitment to radical, local majority rule. Shattering current stereotypes, the book forces us to rethink our understanding of the politics of death and of punishment in America and beyond.

Abortion in Popular Culture: A Call to Action brings together scholars who examine depictions of abortion in film, television, literature, and social media. By examining texts ranging from medical dramas of the 1960s and recent films such as Never Rarely Sometimes Always and Unpregnant to dystopian novels and social-media campaigns, the essays analyze a range of narrative styles, rhetorical strategies, and cinematic techniques, all of which shape cultural attitudes toward abortion. They also analyze cultural shifts, including the willingness or reluctance of networks and cable channels to acknowledge medication abortion and the role that abortion plays in family planning. As a whole, however, the essays argue that popular culture can play a significant role in destigmatizing abortion by including a wider range of narratives and doing so with nuance and empathy. With reproductive rights under attack in the United States, each essay is a call to action for writers, producers, directors, showrunners, authors, and musicians to use their platforms to tell more positive and accurate stories about abortion.

This collection gathers a set of seminal papers from the emerging area of ethics and climate change. Topics covered include human rights, international justice, intergenerational ethics, individual responsibility, climate economics, and the ethics of geoengineering. Climate Ethics is intended to serve as a source book for general reference, and for university courses that include a focus on the human dimensions of climate change. It should be of broad interest to all those concerned with global justice, environmental science and policy, and the future of humanity.

In Rescuing Humanity, Willem H. Vanderburg reminds us that we have relied on discipline-based approaches for human knowing, doing, and organizing for less than a century. During this brief period, these approaches have become responsible for both our spectacular successes and most of our social and environmental crises. At their roots is a cultural mutation that includes secular religious attitudes that veil the limits of these approaches, leading to their overvaluation. Because their use, especially in science and technology, is primarily built up with mathematics, living entities and systems can be dealt with only as if their "architecture" or "design" is based on the principle of non-contradiction, which is true only for non-living entities. This distortion explains our many crises. Vanderburg begins to explore the limits of discipline-based approaches, which guides the way toward developing complementary ones capable of transcending these limits. It is no different from a carpenter going beyond the limits of his hammer by reaching for other tools. As we grapple with everything from the impacts of social media, the ongoing climate crisis, and divisive political ideologies, Rescuing Humanity reveals that our civilization must learn to do the equivalent if humans and other living things are to continue making earth a home.

From Josh Tickell, one of America's most celebrated documentary filmmakers, comes a "fascinating, easy-to-follow blueprint for how eating in ways that nourish and regenerate the soil can not only help reverse global warming, but also bring greater vitality to our lives" (Wolfgang Puck). "A must read for anyone committed to healing our bodies and our Earth" (Deepak Chopra), Kiss the Ground explains an incredible truth: by changing our diets to a soil-nourishing, regenerative agriculture diet, we can reverse global warming, harvest healthy, abundant food, and eliminate the poisonous substances that are harming our children, pets, bodies, and ultimately our planet. This "richly visual" (Kirkus Reviews) look at the impact of an underappreciated but essential resource-the very ground that feeds us-features fascinating and accessible interviews with celebrity chefs, ranchers, farmers, and top scientists. Kiss the Ground teaches you how to become an agent in humanity's single most important and time-sensitive mission: reverse climate change and effectively save the world-all through the choices you make in how and what to eat. Also a full-length documentary executive produced by Leonardo DiCaprio and narrated by Woody Harrelson, "Kiss the Ground both informs and inspires" (Marianne Williamson, #1 New York Times bestselling author).

Since the sexual revolution of the 1960s, debates over pornography have raged, and the explosive spread in recent years of sexually explicit images across the Internet has only added more urgency to these disagreements. Politicians, judges, clergy, citizen activists, and academics have weighed in on the issues for decades, complicating notions about what precisely is at stake, and who stands to benefit or be harmed by pornography. This volume takes an unusual but radical approach by analyzing pornography philosophically. Philosophers Andrew Altman and Lori Watson recalibrate debates by viewing pornography from distinctly ethical platforms - namely, does a person's right to produce and consume pornography supersede a person's right to protect herself from something often violent and deeply misogynistic? In a for-and-against format, Altman first argues that there is an individual right to create and view pornographic images, rooted in a basic right to sexual autonomy. Watson counteracts Altman's position by arguing that pornography inherently undermines women's equal status. Central to their disagreement is the question of whether pornography truly harms women enough to justify laws aimed at restricting the production and circulation of such material. Through this debate, the authors address key questions that have dogged both those who support and oppose pornography: What is pornography? What is the difference between the material widely perceived as objectionable and material that is merely erotic or suggestive? Do people have a right to sexual arousal? Does pornography, or some types of it, cause violence against women? How should rights be weighed against consequentialist considerations in deciding what laws and policies ought to be adopted? Bolstered by insights from philosophy and law, the two authors engage in a reasoned examination of questions that cannot be ignored by anyone who takes seriously the values of freedom and equality.

Winner of the British Society of Criminology Annual Book Prize 2022. As the labour market continues to exploit workers by offering precarious, low-paid and temporary jobs, for some duality offers much-needed flexibility and staves off poverty. Based on extensive empirical work, this book illustrates contemporary accounts of individuals taking extraordinary risks to hold jobs in both sex industries and non-sex work employment. It also opens a dialogue about how sex industries are stratified in the UK in terms of race and culture against the backdrop of Brexit. Debunking stereotypes of sex workers and challenging our stigmatisation of them, this book makes an invaluable contribution to discourses about work, society and future policy.

Today, two-thirds of the world's nations have abolished the death penalty, either officially or in practice, due mainly to the campaign to end state executions led by Western European nations. Will this success spread to Asia, where over 95 percent of executions now occur? Do Asian values and traditions support capital punishment, or will development and democratization end executions in the world's most rapidly developing region?
David T. Johnson, an expert on law and society in Asia, and Franklin E. Zimring, a senior authority on capital punishment, combine detailed case studies of the death penalty in Asian nations with cross-national comparisons to identify the critical factors for the future of Asian death penalty policy. The clear trend is away from reliance on state execution and many nations with death penalties in their criminal codes rarely use it. Only the hard-line authoritarian regimes of China, Vietnam, Singapore, and North Korea execute with any frequency, and when authoritarian states experience democratic reforms, the rate of executions drops sharply, as in Taiwan and South Korea. Debunking the myth of "Asian values," Johnson and Zimring demonstrate that politics, rather than culture or tradition, is the major obstacle to the end of executions. Carefully researched and full of valuable lessons, The Next Frontier is the authoritative resource on the death penalty in Asia for scholars, policymakers, and advocates around the world.

As a psychiatrist-in-training fresh from medical school, Carl Erik Fisher came face to face with his own addiction crisis, one that nearly cost him everything. Here, he investigates the history of this age-old condition. Humans have struggled to define, treat, and control addictive behaviour for most of recorded history, including well before the advent of modern science and medicine. The Urge is a rich, sweeping history that probes not only medicine and science but also literature, religion, philosophy, and sociology, illuminating the extent to which the story of addiction has persistently reflected broader questions of what it means to be human and care for one another. Fisher introduces us to the people who have endeavoured to address this complex condition through the ages: physicians and politicians, activists and artists, researchers and writers, and of course the legions of people who have struggled with their own addictions. He also examines the treatments and strategies that have produced hope and relief. The Urge is at once an eye-opening history of ideas, a riveting personal story of addiction and recovery, and a clinician's urgent call for a more expansive, nuanced, and compassionate view of one of society's most intractable challenges.

Written by Dr. Marty Klein, a Certified Sex Therapist and Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist with more than three decades' experience, this fascinating book contests the common belief that pornography is unilaterally harmful to individuals and our society, addresses common concerns and debunks widely believed myths, and explains how to heal America's obsession with porn by engaging in honest talk about sex. When you first logged onto the Internet in the 1990s, did you ever wonder, "What do you suppose would happen if the United States were flooded with free, high-quality pornography?" We now know the answer, says Dr. Marty Klein, as this is exactly what took place 15 years ago. Written by an award-winning author and veteran sex therapist, this practical, innovative, and often passionate book addresses the explosion of pornography use, advises couples on defusing conflict about it, guides parents in helping their kids deal with it, advises people concerned about their use of it, and shows how honest talk about sex can resolve America's "porn panic." So what did happen when Internet porn flooded America? The rates of sexual assault, divorce, and child molestation declined. And yet various religious groups, politicians, some feminists, anti-trafficking activists, and many marriage counselors talk unceasingly about the damage porn viewing is doing to our society. They have created a "PornPanic" that has demonized the recreation of some 60 million Americans. Americans are always ready for new reasons to feel guilty and ashamed of their sexuality, and Internet porn is the newest reason. Wives and girlfriends worry that they can't compete with it; teens use it as a misguided substitute for sex education, often disturbed by intense adults-only imagery; and psychologically vulnerable people get caught up in hours of compulsive porn surfing every night, feeling isolated and inadequate as a result. Fortunately for his many readers, however, using clear reasoning, clinical expertise, and political savvy, Klein shows that for most people, porn is not the real problem. With the experience gained from 34 years of doing therapy-that's 35,000 sessions-Klein asks a simple but profound question: when we talk about porn, what are we really talking about? This book eases readers' minds as Klein addresses common concerns and debunks common myths while identifying what we should be concerned about. Most importantly, the author explains how we can heal America's obsession with porn by engaging in honest talk about sex-something he knows is neither simple nor easy. The text includes sample conversations to help adults talk to each other about pornography, and suggestions for parents on how to talk to their kids about porn-healthy discussions to help their kids develop "Porn Literacy." This book offers honest, thorough, expert information desperately needed by a nation of people driven to panic about pornography. Provides the only book to discuss and resolve conflicts about pornography without demonizing porn or porn users Confronts a common source of conflict in marriage and anxiety in parenting-and presents innovative, practical ways to resolve these problems using down-to-earth language Shows why there's no such thing as "porn addiction," explains why it really matters what we call it, exposes the billion-dollar industry behind this failed concept, and offers real insight and hope for people concerned about their involvement with pornography Shows how new technologies are always adapted for sexual purposes-making the Internet's application to pornography a technology issue as much as a sexual issue Identifies-and corrects-the most common myths and junk science about pornography Describes the politics through which progressive feminists and the Religious Right have wound up in bed together opposing pornography-by re-branding porn from an immorality problem to a public health crisis Explains how America's lack of real sex education and frank talk from adults leaves young people looking at porn for sex information-and what they're actually learning from it Explains how America's lack of real sex education and frank talk from adults leaves young people looking at porn for sex information-and what they're actually learning from it Relieves parental anxiety with easy-to-follow advice on talking with kids about porn, including conversations about youth "sexting" Appeals to general readers: educators, psychologists, clergy, and social workers; and policymakers, scholars, students, and researchers in psychology, law, public policy, communications, and media studies

This volume is a compilation of new original qualitative and ethnographic research on pimps and other third party facilitators of commercial sex from the developed and developing world. From African-American pimps in the United States and Eastern European migrants in Germany to Brazilian cafetaos and cafetinas this volume features the lives and voices of the men and women who enable diverse and culturally distinct sex markets around the world. In scholarly, popular, and policy-making discourses, such individuals are typically viewed as larger-than-life hustlers, violent predators, and brutal exploiters. However, there is actually very little empirical research-based knowledge about how pimps and third party facilitators actually live, labor, and make meaning in their everyday lives. Nearly all previous knowledge derives from hearsay and post-hoc reporting from ex-sex-workers, customers, police and government agents, neighbors, and self-aggrandizing fictionalized memoirs. This volume is the first published compilation of empirically researched data and analysis about pimps and third parties working in the sex trade across the globe. Situated in an age of highly punitive and ubiquitous global anti-trafficking law, it challenges highly charged public policy stereotypes that conflate pimping and sex trafficking, in order to understand the lived experience of pimps and the men and women whose work they facilitate.

The topic of moral competence is generally neglected in the study of public management and policy, yet it is critical to any hope we might have for strengthening the quality of governance and professional practice. What does moral competence consist in? How is it developed and sustained? These questions are addressed in this book through close examination of selected practitioners in Asian countries making life-defining decisions in their work. The protagonists include a doctor in Singapore, a political activist in India, a mid-level bureaucrat in central Asia, a religious missionary in China, and a journalist in Cambodia-each struggling with ethical challenges that shed light on what it takes to act effectively and well in public life. Together they bear witness to the ideal of public service, exercising their personal gifts for the well-being of others and demonstrating that, even in difficult circumstances, the reflective practitioner can be a force for good.

One Nation Under Blackmail is a damning indictment of the consequences resulting from the nearly century old relationship between both US and Israeli intelligence and the organized criminal network known as the National Crime Syndicate.

This book specifically explores how that nexus between intelligence and organized crime directly developed the sexual blackmail tactics and networks that would later enable the sexual blackmail operation and other crimes of deceased pedophile and sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein.

Other books on Jeffrey Epstein focus on the depraved nature of his crimes, his wealth, and his most famous/politically-connected friends and acquaintances. This book, in contrast, reveals the extent to which Epstein's activities were state-sponsored through an exploration of his intelligence connections.

In this edited collection, contributors analyze how the media is navigating Africa's most populous nation, Nigeria, and its mediated democracy. Despite its constitutional role, recognizable as the fourth estate of the realm, the Nigerian media has a history of confronting daunting challenges headlong. This book captures an array of the challenges faced, from British colonialism and military rule to democratic dispensation. Ordinarily, democracy is purposefully streamlined to elevate freedom of expression to an inalienable right and a necessary corollary of democracy. Yet, media freedom in Nigeria has been tortuous and nebulous, and there is a paradoxical difference in how the state relies on the media for partnership while also obstructing accountable journalism that would hold the state and the media itself accountable. The editors provide a poignant outlook of the onerous interactions and dialectics of media and democracy, and the cascading state power. Contributors argue for open democratic deliberations, civic space, and freedom of the press, all rooted in public good. Scholars of journalism, political communication, media studies, and African studies will find this book of particular interest.

Recent years have seen a 'quiet revolution' in the way that the sex industry is regulated and governed. The consensus around what the problems of prostitution are has broken down and in its place a plethora of contradictory themes has emerged. "Regulating sex for sale" examines the total package of reforms and proposals that have been introduced in this area since May 2000. Bringing together some of the most well-known writers, researchers and practitioners in the field, it provides a detailed analysis and critical reflection on the processes, assumptions and contradictions shaping the UK's emerging prostitution policy. What are the unintended consequences of recent policies and how do they impact on the populations that they regulate? Do they contain any possibility for radical intervention and/or new ways of governing prostitution? The book describes the impact these policies have on indoor sex workers, street-based sex workers, young people, men or those with drug misuse issues. It also looks at the assumptions made by policy makers about the various constituencies affected, including the communities in which sex work takes place. This is the first book to address the contradictions in current policy on prostitution in England and Wales and will be of interest to academics, postgraduate students and policy makers in criminal justice, as well as in other areas, including children and young people, community safety and urban studies.

Millions of us suffer from addiction, including psychiatrist and recovering alcoholic Carl Erik Fisher. But where does this centuries-old behaviour come from and how should we treat it? As a young doctor, Carl Erik Fisher came face to face with his own addiction crisis, one that nearly cost him everything. Now, in The Urge, he investigates the history of this condition; how we have struggled to define, treat, and control it; and how broader understanding and compassion could change people's lives. The Urge is at once an eye-opening history of ideas, a riveting personal story of addiction and recovery, and a clinician's urgent call for a more expansive, nuanced view of one of society's most intractable challenges.

Weaving together a diverse range of scholarly-activist intersectional voices from around the world, Critical Animal Studies and Activism: International Perspectives on Total Liberation and Intersectionality co-edited by Anthony J. Nocella II and Richard J. White makes a powerful contribution to knowledge and understanding. It is essential reading for environmentalists, animal advocates, social justice organizers, policy-makers, social change-makers, and indeed for all those who care about the future of this planet. This book spans many scholar disciplines and activist social movements, and provides new insights to fundamental debates surrounding inter-species justice, liberation, and democracy. This critical theory for total liberation book expands the understanding of one struggle one fight: for human freedom, for animal rights, and for the liberation of the earth herself. Rooted in a radical praxis, the book argues that those in academia that claim critical animal studies, need to hit the streets with the protesters and the protesters need to join the theoretical conversations. Theory and practice and not binaries, but two pieces of a larger goal. Read this book and use its arguments to take the fight to smash capitalism, oppression, and domination in all its forms!

Fifteen years ago, New Jersey became the first of over twenty states to introduce the family cap, a welfare reform policy that reduces or eliminates cash benefits for unmarried women on public assistance who become pregnant. The caps have lowered extra-marital birth rates, as intended but as Michael J. Camasso shows convincingly in this provocative book, they did so in a manner that few of the policys architects are willing to acknowledge publicly, namely by increasing the abortion rate disproportionately among black and Hispanic women. In Family Caps, Abortion, and Women of Color, Camasso (who headed up the evaluation of the nations first cap) presents the caps history from inception through implementation to his investigation and the dramatic attempts to squelch his unpleasant findings. The book is filled with devastatingly clear-cut evidence and hard-nosed data analyses, yet Camasso also pays close attention to the reactions his findings provoked in policymakers, both conservative and liberal, who were unprepared for the effects of their crude social engineering and did not want their success scrutinized too closely. Camasso argues that absent any successful rehabilitation or marriage strategies, abortion provides a viable third way for policymakers to help black and Hispanic women accumulate the social and human capital they need to escape welfare, while simultaneously appealing to liberals passion for reproductive freedom and the neoconservatives sense of social pragmatism. Camasso's conclusions will please no one along the political spectrum, making it all the more essential for them to be studied widely. A classic example of what can happen to research and the researcher when research findings become misaligned with political goals and strategies, Family Caps, Abortion and Women of Color is sure to foment a contentious but vital discussion among all who read it.

Surveillance and the Vanishing Individual is an investigation into the impact of the spread of digital technologies and practices, and especially the wide-spread practice of mass surveillance, on privacy and personhood. The book argues that the quest for prediction, certainty, and control lying at the heart of the state's security apparatus destroys an essential component of human dignity and fundamentally undermines liberalism. The book begins with a discussion of the rise of the digital age and the historical import of this development. Subsequent chapters of the book examine different cultural understandings of privacy, the philosophical discussion of its centrality to human existence, and the form and extent of its legal protection. Lindau explores the reasons behind the rise of mass state surveillance, the modest legal restraints governing its use, and its deployment against activists, protestors, and dissidents and its impact on individuals and on privacy. The book then turns to a discussion of the rise of "surveillance capitalism" and, because this is not just-or even primarily-a U.S. phenomenon, examines the political, social, and other impacts of social media around the world. The book includes a case study discussing the global use of surveillance during the Covid-19 pandemic and the implications of this development before concluding with reflections on the relationship between mass surveillance and liberalism. The book will appeal equally to readers across the social sciences and philosophy, and to students in courses on privacy, surveillance, and democracy. Lindau expertly explores the social, political, and economic consequences of digitization and one of its essential features - the appropriation and "mining" of ever large troves of personal information. The book primarily focuses on the experience of the United States but includes a comparative cross-national and cross-regional analysis and a discussion of the link between different regime types and state surveillance.

This collection of 13 specially commissioned essays expands a new intellectual terrain for sociology: virtue ethics. Using a variety of religious perspectives, of Catholicism, Protestantism, Hinduism, Quakerism, with considerations of Islam and the New Age, this engaged and topical collection deals with properties of virtue in relation to the person, celibacy, hope, the apocalypse, mourning, and moral ambiguity. It also treats the concept of virtue in response to MacIntyre, Bauman, Weber, Durkheim, and Giddens. It seeks to move sociology past disabling effects of postmodernity.

A comprehensive overview of the ethical dilemmas faced by journalists today. Written in an accessible style, with updated interviews from working journalists discussing challenges and lessons learned. Updated chapters address developments including the phone hacking scandal and Leveson Inquiry, the impact of social media, fake news and citizen journalism. Considers ethical issues surrounding race and representation, protection of sources, privacy and the use of drones.