i) This is the first published book studies family burden coefficient in China. ii) The author of this book is from one of the top institutes (CASS) in China. iii) The Chinese version sold 1500 copies. iv) Scholars interested in China's family studies would also find this book helpful.

The idea of the "mamma italiana" is one of the most widespread and recognizable stereotypes in perceptions of Italian national character both within and beyond Italy. This figure makes frequent appearances in jokes and other forms of popular culture, but it has also been seen as shaping the lived experience of modern-day Italians of both sexes, as well as influencing perceptions of Italy in the wider world. This interdisciplinary collection examines the invented tradition of mammismo but also contextualizes it by discussing other, often contrasting, ways in which the role of mothers, and the mother-son relationship, have been understood and represented in culture and society over the last century and a half, both in Italy and in its diaspora.

This book documents and explains the remarkable decline in the American marriage rate that began about 1970. This decline has occurred in spite of the fact that married people are better off than unmarried people in many ways. Many other attempts to explain the "retreat from marriage" blame it on culture change involving a devaluation of marriage, and/or on ignorance of the benefits of marriage among the unmarried population. In turn, because unmarried adults and single-parent families are poorer than others, poverty and its associated problems are attributed to the failure to marry. The argument presented here is that the declining marriage rate is due to the deteriorating position of workers, particularly men, in the American economy. Not only have jobs disappeared and wages decreased, especially for the less-educated, but existing jobs have become more precarious. Less-educated workers can't count on having jobs in the future, and can't count on earning enough to support families if they have jobs because their wages have stagnated. In this economic environment, the flexibility to change partners becomes a survival strategy for the economically marginalized population, which has been increasing in size for the past four decades. Arrangements such as cohabitation allow for this flexibility; marriage does not. This argument implies that marriage is not a realistic choice for many Americans. In fact, it is a choice that many people don't actually have. Marriages between economically marginal men and women would not eventuate in the benefits that middle-class people experience when they marry, and would eliminate an option they may need to survive in the face of unrelenting poverty. We won't convince these people that marriage would improve their lives, because in most cases it wouldn't be true. To return the marriage rate to its pre-1970 level, we need to address the economic factors that have caused the decline.

What need is there for kinship? What good is it anyway? The questions are as old as anthropology itself, but few answers have been enduringly persuasive. Kinship systems can contribute to our enslavement, but more often they permit, channel, and facilitate our relations with others and our further fashioning of ourselves--as kin but also as subjects of other kinds. When they do, they are among the matrices of our lives as ethical beings. Each contributor to this innovative book treats his or her own alterity as the touchstone of the exploration of an ethnographically and historically specific ethics of kinship. Together, the chapters reveal the irreducible complexity of the entanglement of the subject of kinship with the subject of nation, class, ethnicity, gender, desire. The chapters speak eloquently to the sometimes liberating stories that we cannot help but keep telling about our kin and ourselves.

This book takes a novel approach to family, exploring in detail how status is inherited and maintained within families; the process of upward social mobility; and how the roots of social decline start within families. The author also examines how rigidly status equivalence determines choice of spouse. Exceptionally extensive in its coverage, the book ranges from the seventeenth century to the present day, across a large range of European countries and part of the United States, and across several class groups, including royalty, nobility and entrepreneurial dynasties, as well as families of professionals, artists and those in lower ranks. The book also discusses the viability of the central sociological concepts of class and status. The book will be of interest to scholars and students in the areas of family sociology, history, social equality and inequality and class and elitism research.

In this original and highly accomplished study, first published in 1994, Marie Maclean studies the writings of social rebels and explores the relationship between their personal narratives and illegitimacy. The case studies which Maclean examines fall into four groups: those which stress alternative family structures and 'female genealogies' those which pair female illegitimacy and revolution those which question the deliberate refusal of the name of the father by the legitimate those which study the revenge of genius on the society which excludes it Skilfully interweaving feminist theory, French literary criticism, social and cultural history, deconstruction and psychoanalytic theory, Maclean traces the place of these personal narratives of illegitimacy in history and their use in theory, from Elizabeth I to Freud, Sartre and Derrida. The Name of the Mother will be of vital interest and importance to any student of critical theory, feminist philosophy, French or cultural studies.

This book is a detailed examination of parental authority: what justifies and what are the proper limits of a parent's authority over her children? Dennis Arjo focuses on and criticizes attempts to answer these and related questions in the context of liberal philosophy of education. He also offers an alternative framework for thinking about parental authority that draws on recent philosophical work in Virtue Ethics, Care Ethics, and Confucianism that challenges some of the assumptions of contemporary liberal theory. This book will be of interest to philosophers working in ethics, political philosophy and philosophy of education.

This book explores the educational experiences of young male Somali students in British schools. Through narrative research, Abdi offers critical insights into the ways in which identities are constructed, challenged and negotiated in the classroom by sharing stories and artefacts from the students themselves. These stories are shared in a context where a rise in school exclusions, Islamophobia and narratives of youth violence push discussions around identity and belonging to the forefront of political and public debates-making clear the need for this work.

Winner of the 2009 Feminist & Women's Studies Association (UK & Ireland) Book Award

Many women find mothering a shocking experience in terms of the extremity of feelings it provokes, and the profound changes it seems to prompt in identity, relationship and sense of self. However, although motherhood can catapult us into a state of internal disarray, it can also provide us with a unique chance to make ourselves anew. How then do we understand this radical potential for transformation within maternal experience? In Maternal Encounters, Lisa Baraitser takes up this question through the analysis of a series of maternal anecdotes, charting key destabilizing moments in the life of just one mother, and using these to discuss many questions that have remained resistant to theoretical analysis the possibility for a specific feminine-maternal subjectivity, relationality and reciprocity, ethics and otherness.

Working across contemporary philosophies of feminist ethics, as well as psychoanalysis and social theory, the maternal subject, in Baraitser s account, becomes an emblematic and enigmatic formation of a subjectivity called into being through a relation to another she comes to name and claim as her child. As she navigates through the peculiarity of maternal experience, Baraitser takes us on a journey in which the mother emerges in the most unlikely, precarious and unstable of places as a subject of alterity, transformation, interruption, heightened sentience, viscosity, encumberment and love.

This book presents a major new theory of maternal subjectivity, and an innovative and accessible way into our understanding of contemporary motherhood. As such, it will be of interest to students of family studies, gender studies, psychoanalysis, critical psychology and feminist philosophy as well as counselling and psychotherapy.

This book analyses the arrival of emerging and traditional information and technology for public and economic use in Latin America. It focuses on the governmental, economic and security issues and the study of the complex relationship between citizens and government. The book is divided into three parts: * 'Digital data and privacy, prospects and barriers' centers on the debates among the right of privacy and the loss of intimacy in the Internet, * 'Homeland security and human rights' focuses on how novel technologies such as drones and autonomous weapons systems reconfigure the strategies of police authorities and organized crime, * 'Labor Markets, digital media and emerging technologies' emphasize the legal, economic and social perils and challenges caused by the increased presence of social media, blockchain-based applications, artificial intelligence and automation technologies in the Latin American economy. This first volume in a two volume set will be important reading for scholars and students of governance in Latin American, the protection of human rights and the use of technology to combat crime and the new advances of digital economy in the region.

International media regularly features horrific stories about Chinese orphanages, especially when debating international adoption and human rights. Much of the popular information is dated and ill-informed about the experiences of most orphans in China today, Chinese government policy, and improvements evident in parts of China. Informal kinship care is the most common support for the orphaned children. The state supports orphans and abandoned children whose parents and relatives cannot be found or contacted. The book explores concrete examples about the changing experiences and future directions of Chinese child welfare policy. It is about the support to disadvantaged children, including abandoned children in the care of the state, most of whom have disabilities; HIV affected children; and orphans in kinship care. It identifies how many orphans are in China, how they are supported, the extent to which their rights are met, and what efforts are made to improve their rights and welfare provision. When our research about Chinese orphans started in 2001, these children were almost entirely voiceless. Since then, the Chinese government has committed to improving child welfare. We argue that a mixed welfare system, in which state provision supplements family and community care, is an effective direction to improve support for orphaned children. Government needs to take responsibility to guarantee orphans' rights as children, and support family networks to provide care so that children can grow up in their own communities. The book contributes to academic and policy understanding of the steps that have been taken and are still required to achieve the goal of a child welfare system in China that meets the rights of orphans to live and thrive with other children in a family.

This book critically assesses the main features of the modernization of family life and personal relationships by examining and comparing three European countries with different social and political pathways: Portugal, Switzerland and Lithuania. Drawing on national surveys of family trajectories and social networks, the contributors highlight personal and family relationships through the lens of network and life course perspectives as well as gender and generational perspectives. Providing innovative, comparative findings on families and personal networks through the use of diverse methodologies, this edited collection will be of interest to scholars, students and policymakers across a range of social science disciplines.

In this essay collection, a variety of authorities explore the significance of parent-child interaction and its implications for all stages of family life. Numerous aspects of this socialization process in changing societies throughout the world are represented, for relatively uniform societies, such as in Western Europe; multicultural societies, such as in North America; and traditional societies facing the impact of modernization or Westernization of values, such as in India, China, or Japan. Individual approaches range from analyses of typical intergenerational changes to direct comparisons of specific family systems within and among societies, cultures, and ethnic groups. Also discussed are current theories in the area of parent-child interaction, including changing authority structures, differences between fathers and mothers, adjustment and social disorganization crises of children, pressures of modernization, cultural transitions, divorce, and the problems of child abuse. A valuable bibliographic essay, referring to many related works, appears at the end of the volume.

This book responds to the need to investigate the complex links between sex and leisure and their implications for research and practice. Understanding sex as leisure aligns with sex-positive culture that focuses on affirming pleasure in the contemporary sexual discourse and advocating for sexual diversity, freedom, empowerment, and fulfilling sex lives. The focus of this book is on analyzing the complexity of sex as leisure in various socio-cultural and geographical contexts, with particular reference to vulnerable populations and pressing sexual issues, including sexual pleasure and expression, biomedicalization of sexuality, and social justice and sexuality. Specific chapters offer diverse international coverage and address the links between a positive sexuality framework and leisure research. The chapters cover sexual play and sex toys based on consumer experience perspectives; using the leisure lens to analyze sex and pornography addiction; quadriplegic sexuality and leisure; rejection and resilience on a gay cruise; relational dynamics of aging, exploitation, and deceit in sex tourism; sexual harassment of solo female travelers; and the complexity of consent in the sexualized leisure space of a pornography expo. This book will be of great value to those interested in transdisciplinary scholarship as it critically broadens the bio-psycho-socio-cultural perspective of sex as leisure. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of the journal, Leisure Sciences.

Introducing the New Sexuality Studies: Original Essays is an innovative, reader-friendly collection of essays that introduces the field of sexuality studies to undergraduate students. Examining the social, cultural, and historical dimensions of sexuality, this collection is designed to serve as a comprehensive yet accessible textbook for sexuality courses at the undergraduate level. The fourth edition adds 51 new essays whilst retaining 33 of the most popular essays from previous editions. It features perspectives that are intersectional, transnational, sex positive, and attentive to historically marginalized groups along multiple axes of inequality, including gender, race, class, ability, body size, religious identity, age, and, of course, sexuality. Essays explore how a wide variety of social institutions, including medicine, religion, the state, and education, shape sexual desires, behaviors, and identities. Sources of, and empirical research on, oppression are discussed, along with modes of resistance, activism, and policy change. The fourth edition also adds new user-friendly features for students and instructors. Keywords are italicized and defined, and each chapter concludes with review questions to help students ascertain their comprehension of key points. There is also an online annotated table of contents to help readers identify key ideas and concepts at a glance for each chapter.

Mediated Intimacy looks at contemporary sex and relationship advice, exploring how our intimate lives are shaped through different media, from manuals and magazines to television and Twitter. By exploring how intimacy is constructed through different media texts, the authors consider which ideas and practices these changing forms of 'sexpertise' open up, and which they close down.The book reveals the intimate operation of power in mediated advice, how words and images, stories and sound can work to shore up social injustice. It critically engages with the ideas of choice and responsibility in sex self-help, arguing that these can obscure and/or justify oppression, even if they're sometimes experienced as empowering and/or pleasurable.This bold and incisive book provides a radical challenge to the assumptions underlying the sex advice industry, and presents a critical, collaborative and consensual vision for sex advice of the future.

A wide-ranging and accessible introduction to the origins and histories of the first agricultural populations in many different parts of the world This fully revised and updated second edition of First Farmers examines the origins of food production across the world and documents the expansions of agricultural populations from source regions during the past 12,000 years. It commences with the archaeological records from the multiple homelands of agriculture, and extends into discussions that draw on linguistic and genomic information about the human past, featuring new findings from the last ten years of research. Through twelve chapters, the text examines the latest evidence and leading theories surrounding the early development of agricultural practices through data drawn from across the anthropological discipline--primarily archaeology, comparative linguistics, and biological anthropology--to present a cohesive history of early farmer migration. Founded on the author's insights from his research into the agricultural prehistory of East and Southeast Asia--one of the best focus areas for the teaching of prehistoric archaeology--this book offers an engaging account of how prehistoric humans settled new landscapes. The second edition has been thoroughly updated with many new maps and illustrations that reflect the multidisciplinary knowledge of the present day. Authored by a leading scholar with wide-ranging experience across the fields of anthropology and archaeology, First Farmers, Second Edition includes information on: The early farming dispersal hypothesis in current perspective, plus operational considerations regarding the origins and dispersals of agriculture The archaeological evidence for the origins and spreads of agriculture in the Eurasian, African and American continents The histories of the language families that spread with the first farming populations, and the evidence from biological anthropology and ancient DNA that underpins our modern knowledge of these migrations Drawing evidence from across the sub-disciplines of anthropology to present a cohesive and exciting analysis of an important subject in the study of human population history, Farmers First, Second Edition is an important work of scholarship and an excellent introduction to multiple methods of anthropological and archaeological inquiry for the beginner student in prehistoric anthropology and archaeology, human migration, archaeology of East and Southeast Asia, agricultural history, comparative anthropology, and more disciplines across the anthropology curriculum.

What does pregnancy mean when it does not lead to the birth of a child? Through personal experience via graphic novel and with a corresponding philosophical analysis, The Pregnancy Childbearing Project narrates and assesses the alternative values possible in miscarriage, a.k.a., the failed pregnancy. Having shared in both experiences - miscarriage and childbirth - solidarity among women must be possible. All pregnancies lead to a kind of 'emptying out' - a loss - whether wanted or unwanted, with or without a child. Often, after miscarriage, people say, 'just try again.' What then for the work of grief? How do you get over what you cannot get over? The kind of loss in the experience of miscarriage is not socially or culturally recognized as a kind of death. The Pregnancy Childbearing Project seeks solidarity among women who have known pregnancy independent of the politics and rhetoric of pro-life discourse, and in doing so, holds the pro-life agenda accountable for the silencing of women, arguing that alienates them from each other and their own experiences.

Digital technologies are now central to the machinations of capitalism. How are they giving rise to new forms of capital accumulation and domination? And in what terms are these changes being promoted and justified by a new and incredibly powerful elite? This book takes on such questions. Beyond demonstrating how digital technologies make new forms of capital accumulation possible, Huberman interrogates the ideological transformations that have accompanied the emergence of digital capitalism. She examines how business gurus, entrepreneurs, and venture capitalists make claims about how digital technologies contribute to the common good, foster collaboration and connectivity, and render life more convenient, even if this convenience comes at the expense of values such as privacy and liberty. Ultimately, Huberman argues that the spirit of digital capitalism is Janus-faced and reveals deeper cultural contradictions at the heart of contemporary American society: promising, in the same moment, to liberate us and surveil us, enrich us, and yet render our lives more economically precarious. Smart and thought-provoking, this book offers new perspectives that will speak to anyone interested in the contours of contemporary capitalism, particularly students and scholars of economic anthropology and sociology.

Why is it that relationships with family members predict the quality of children's relationships outside the family? A wealth of research has documented that various aspects of family relationships are predictably related to the quality of children's interactions and relationships with peers. Understanding what account for these effects is important both for theories of children's relationships and intervention efforts to ameliorate children's peer relationship difficulties. This volume advances the field by discussing several mechanisms that may account for continuities across family and peer relationships.

A variety of theoretical perspectives are represented in the book. For example, both learning and biological explanations are considered. Authors also note two key considerations in investigating family and peer relationships. First, it is necessary to consider the cultural context. The function and meaning of family and peer relationships may differ depending on what roles are played by these relationships in different cultural contexts. Second, it is necessary to consider the child's age. Developmental issues, such as concerns with establishing greater independence at the entrance to adolescence, will impact both family and peer relationships.

Combining work and family remains a major challenge for married women in contemporary Japan, and it's not uncommon for them to quit working when starting a family. Single mothers, by contrast, almost always work, regardless of the age of their children. Despite their eagerness to support themselves and their children through employment, their average income remains low and many live on a household budget close to the poverty line. This book examines how the difficult living conditions facing single mothers in Japan highlight not only the challenges they face in earning a family wage and managing the work-family balance, but also reveals the class dimensions of family life in contemporary Japan. The need to make ends meet with few resources means that mothers may find it difficult to uphold the lifestyle they may consider as most appropriate for the upbringing of their children, and that they may have to choose between their presence at home, in line with the ideal of the middle-class housewife and mother, or devoting more time to earning an income that can pay for a good education. Social class, in this case, is not just a matter of education, occupation, or income, but is also expressed by mothers' approaches to their children's' upbringing and future opportunities in education and employment. Based on life history interviews with single mothers, this study examines the gendered meanings of social class and social achievement and the role of maternal practices in shaping their children's future life trajectories.

The volume takes a close look at the forms and functions of family and kinship in cultural narratives in the United States. It analyzes social and cultural contexts of kinship and family membership, relations of family and nation on a metaphorical level, and the political discourses that regulate sexuality and reproduction. Representations of family and kinship inform all aspects of American life, which is prominently noticeable in politics, legislation, art, and the media. Family discourses are employed to communicate and negotiate constellations of power and they can serve to investigate differences, struggles, alliances, strategic endeavors, and innovative conceptualizations of kinship. The essays collected in this volume provide readings of texts across various genres that highlight the role of cultural production in reconfiguring paradigms of family and kinship in the US.

The contributors to this book present case studies of elder care in China and India, and draw comparisons between the two - illuminating some of the key issues facing the two largest Asian countries as they develop rapidly. Caring for the elderly is a major challenge for all countries, and one which is of acute concern for rapidly developing economies. Development tends to run counter to long-established cultural norms of family-based caring and filial piety, even as it also tends to lead to longer life expectancy. Taking a range of methodological and conceptual approaches to understanding these challenges, the contributors present a multifaceted understanding of elder care issues in both India and China. They focus in particular on caregiving within families and at care homes - and the impacts these have on quality of life and the experience of caregiving for both caregivers and the aged themselves. An invaluable collection for scholars and students of gerontology and aging in Asia, that will also be of great interest to scholars with a broader interest in global trends in caregiving.

Provides empirical insights based on research on youth and vulnerability and frontline practices showing theoretical, political as well as practical implications. Uses case-studies from Portugal, Greece, Poland, Czech Republic, Great Britain, Sweden, Finland and Denmark. Provides a distinct social work perspective on youth and welfare encounters.