"Santo Daime: A New World Religion" deals with a young, exotic and controversial religious movement. Emerging in the Brazilian Amazon in the 1930s, Santo Daime has since spread to many of the world's major cities. Santo Daime is a mixture of indigenous, popular Catholic, Afro-Brazilian, esoteric, Spiritist, and new age beliefs and activities. Ritual practice is centred on the consumption of a psychotropic beverage called 'Daime' which members believe enhances their interaction with the supernatural world. Because Daime is treated as an illegal narcotic in many parts of the world, outside of its Brazilian homeland most Santo Daime rituals are practised clandestinely. This book unites extensive fieldwork experience with an established theoretical background and makes a significant contribution to understanding the contemporary interface of religion and late-modern society. Individualization and religious subjectivism, pluralization and religious hybridism, transformation and detraditionalization, globalization and religious identity, and commoditization and religious consumption are among the many issues engaged by this book. "Santo Daime: A New World Religion" is an accessible and multi-disciplinary book suitable for undergraduate students and researchers working in Religious Studies, Sociology of Religion, Anthropology, Cultural Studies and Latin American Studies.

Sustainable development helps undo the havoc that has been created by human beings in the last few years in the name of development and growth. It helps to promote a more social, environmental, and economical way of living. There are many ways in which we all can practice sustainable development in our daily lives and further study is required. Multidisciplinary Approaches to Sustainable Human Development focuses on all agendas of sustainable development goals and offers approaches to develop a transdisciplinary perspective that encompasses the natural, social, and human sciences in the search for a sustainable society. Covering topics such as green economy, social innovation, and climate change, this premier reference work is ideal for environmentalists, government officials, policymakers, researchers, scholars, academicians, practitioners, instructors, and students.

"Mathematical Models for Society and Biology," 2e, is a useful resource for researchers, graduate students, and post-docs in the applied mathematics and life science fields. Mathematical modeling is one of the major subfields of mathematical biology. A mathematical model may be used to help explain a system, to study the effects of different components, and to make predictions about behavior.

"Mathematical Models for Society and Biology," 2e, draws on current issues to engagingly relate how to use mathematics to gain insight into problems in biology and contemporary society. For this new edition, author Edward Beltrami uses mathematical models that are simple, transparent, and verifiable. Also new to this edition is an introduction to mathematical notions that every quantitative scientist in the biological and social sciences should know. Additionally, each chapter now includes a detailed discussion on how to formulate a reasonable model to gain insight into the specific question that has been introduced.
Offers 40% more content - 5 new chapters in addition to revisions to existing chapters Accessible for quick self study as well as a resource for courses in molecular biology, biochemistry, embryology and cell biology, medicine, ecology and evolution, bio-mathematics, and applied math in general Features expanded appendices with an extensive list of references, solutions to selected exercises in the book, and further discussion of various mathematical methods introduced in the book

Disruptions are being caused in the workplace due to the development of advanced software technology and the speed at which these technological advancements are being produced. These disruptions could take diverse forms and affect various aspects of work and the lives of entities in the workplaces and families of the individual employees. Work and family are caught in the crossfire between technological disruptions and human adaptation. Hence, there is a need to assess the overall effect that the Fourth Industrial Revolution would have on work, employee work-family satisfaction, and employee well-being. Future of Work, Work-Family Satisfaction, and Employee Well-Being in the Fourth Industrial Revolution is a critical reference source that discusses practical solutions and strategies to manage challenges and address fears regarding the effect of the Fourth Industrial Revolution on the future of employment and the workforce. Featuring research on topics such as corporate governance, job satisfaction, and mental health, this book is ideally designed for human resource professionals, business managers, industry professionals, government officials, policymakers, corporate strategists, consultants, work-life balance experts, human resources software developers, business policy experts, academicians, researchers, and students.

Governments must continuously update policies, laws, and legislation as the world continues to rapidly evolve due to technologies and changing cultural perspectives. To streamline policy creation and implementation, governments seek new and efficient methods to ensure their citizens' and communities' safety while also encouraging citizen participation. Advanced Methodologies and Technologies in Government and Society provides research on emerging methodologies in effective governing including sections on public sector management and socioeconomic development. While highlighting the challenges facing government officials and law enforcement such as crisis response and natural disaster management, this book shows how technology use can make those areas of government more efficient and improve preventative measures. This book is an ideal resource for law enforcement, government officials and agencies, policymakers, public servants, citizen activists, researchers, and political leaders seeking cutting-edge information to strengthen their government's relationship with society and their constituents while also strengthening their policy measures through new technology and methods.

The Discussion is distorting today. Within schools, social movements, and firms, there has been an increasing tendency for teachers and facilitators to announce that there will be a discussion while the interaction which follows this announcement is not a discussion, but something else??likely a recitation and lecture. This distortion of discussion promises democracy, equality, and participation during a meeting or class, but delivers inequality, prohibition, and dominance. Now is the time to begin changing these practices which ultimately create and support a neoliberal society that promises democracy but practices oligarchy. One way to change this neoliberal social world is by intervening in the distortion of discussion, by facilitating interaction so that discussion's promise of equality and participation is fulfilled rather than negated. Elements of Discussion is a resource for this intervention. It is a political, poetic, and practical handbook for facilitating discussion. Discussions happen everywhere, and if society itself is composed of relationships between people then creating more participation and equality during discussions can help create the conditions for social change. Elements of Discussion therefore includes practical tips, techniques, and reflective questions through which it firmly and sensitively suggests to readers how to facilitate discussions across contexts. Beginning with the ways chairs and tables are set up, continuing through the kinds of questions a facilitator can ask, and including sample activities facilitators can use, the book expounds a philosophy of facilitating discussion, emphasizing the political and poetic significance of the tactics it recommends.

Organisations and the nature of work have undergone fundamental changes in recent decades. At the same time, the traditional family pattern in Europe is being challenged by the growing number of dual-income families, and by the rise of women's employment. The central aim of this book is to consider to what extent changes in organisations and in the nature of jobs are compatible with the need, increasingly expressed by employees, for greater integration between work and family life. The book questions what sort of dilemmas modern and future employees face, in terms of shaping their careers and organising their lives at home. The authors formulate answers to these problematic questions by shedding light on relevant developments in the European labour markets, the European workplaces, in (flexible) working patterns, changing preferences for working hours and in gender relations at work. With a focus on future developments, this book will be of interest to labour market researchers and social policymakers in Europe, and also students in the social sciences, management (HRM) and social policy.

The transition to democracy in South Africa was one of the defining events in twentieth-century political history. The South African women's movement is one of the most celebrated on the African continent. Shireen Hassim examines interactions between the two as she explores the gendered nature of liberation and regime change. Her work reveals how women's political organizations both shaped and were shaped by the broader democratic movement. Alternately asserting their political independence and giving precedence to the democratic movement as a whole, women activists proved flexible and remarkably successful in influencing policy. At the same time, their feminism was profoundly shaped by the context of democratic and nationalist ideologies. In reading the last twenty-five years of South African history through a feminist framework, Hassim offers fresh insights into the interactions between civil society, political parties, and the state. Hassim boldly confronts sensitive issues such as the tensions between autonomy and political dependency in feminists' engagement with the African National Congress (ANC) and other democratic movements, and black-white relations within women's organizations. She offers a historically informed discussion of the challenges facing feminist activists during a time of nationalist struggle and democratization.

How to wage spiritual warfare in the last days. An important spiritual law was revealed by Jesus in Luke 21:22 and Matthew 12:29" "How can one enter into a strongman's house, and spoil his goods, except he first bind the strongman? And then he will spoil his house."Now, instead of "binding" symptoms, we can attack the sixteen strongmen or demonic spirits mentioned by name in the Bible! If God names them, they are real, and He has given us dominion over them through the Name of Jesus! In easy to understand language this bookTeaches how to zero in on and quickly identify the strongman in every situationIllustrates each strongman by a tree showing the fruits or symptoms for quick identificationInstructs how to bind the enemy and loose the power of God according to Matthew 18:18Provides instant recognition when and where Satan is attacking our lives and the lives of those around usShows that God wants us to be free from Satan's hassles so that we can reach this world for Christ. A scriptural, balanced, uplifting approach to present-day spiritual warfare.

Published in association with Indian History Congress. A comprehensive social history of tribes and forests in India is yet to be written. However, considerable research work has been done in the last few decades on the variations of social formation emanating from the relationship between tribes and forests in India. Questions multiplied over time. To what extent were the tribes or communities residing in forests living in isolation of peasant society? How far were they prudent in the use of forest resources in different periods? How did state formations affect natural resource exploitation and the respective social formations over time? What was the exact nature of colonial watershed in ecologic terms? How have the issues related to forest management and community rights been tackled in post-colonial years? In the wake of the emergence of subaltern studies in the 1980s and the ecological studies in the 1990s, a need was felt to approach these questions from new perspectives. The present volume, mainly combines revised versions of the papers presented at a Panel organized by the Indian History Congress in 2001. It includes twelve articles besides an Introduction by the editors. It argues that since the 1970s old issues of economic development and social integration have given place to the new ones of community, culture, power, class and identity in recent years. The contributors represent multiple viewpoints, question old assumptions, revise them whenever possible and often take altogether new positions to stimulate academic interest to promote further studies and research on the subject.

Social and environmental factors have profound impacts on health and diseases across the lifespan. Each year, hundreds of millions of animals are used in biomedical research. Yet many experimental studies utilize animals housed in standard conditions conferring minimal physical, social, and mental stimulation. Lacking appreciation of macroenvironment impacts on physiology and disease risks of the laboratory animals may not only hinder the use of appropriate animal models for human diseases, but also question the validity of preclinical assessments of therapeutic agents.This book summarizes our work on environmental enrichment, a housing condition for laboratory animals, recapitulating an active lifestyle by providing a complex physical, social, and cognitive stimulations. Environmental enrichment exerts a wide range of benefits on energy balance, cancer, immunity, stress, behavior, and healthy aging. One underlying mechanism is the activation of a specific neuroendocrine brain-adipocyte axis with brain-derived neurotrophic factor as the key brain mediator. This book integrates recent discoveries regarding mechanisms, mediators, and biomarkers of environmental enrichment, and discusses its translational potential.By providing a timely review and discussion of murine models, this book should be of interest to basic, translational, and clinical researchers, as well as psychologists, nutrition scientists, and students that have interest in cancer, obesity, aging, and genetic disorders.

The age-friendly community movement is a global phenomenon, currently growing with the support of the WHO and multiple international and national organizations in the field of aging. Drawing on an extensive collection of international case studies, this volume provides an introduction to the movement. The contributors - both researchers and practitioners - touch on a number of current tensions and issues in the movement and offer a wide-ranging set of recommendations for advancing age-friendly community development. The book concludes with a call for a radical transformation of a medical and lifestyle model of aging into a relational model of health and social/individual wellbeing.

Written by the scholar who, together with Chris Freeman, first introduced the concept of the innovation system, this book brings the literature an important step forward. Based upon extraordinarily rich empirical material, it shows how and why competence building and innovation are crucial for economic growth and competitiveness in the current era. It also provides a case study of a small, very successful European economy combining wealth creation with social cohesion. The author's comparative analysis of innovation systems demonstrates that the 'new economy' can thrive and grow not only in the US-type of economy but also in European economies which exhibit a high degree of social cohesion. He warns against the polarisation that may result from a development path where the success of individuals, organisations and national economies reflects their capability to adopt new competencies and skills. He argues that if this kind of learning economy is left unattended, it will eventually undermine the social cohesion that is essential for interactive learning processes. As such, he emphasises the need to develop coherent policy strategies at the regional, national and EU level in order to cope with the new challenges of the globalising learning economy. Innovation, Growth and Social Cohesion is a highly readable, non-technical book which illustrates the basic concepts with plentiful examples and a wide variety of empirical material. Students and scholars in the field of industrial dynamics and innovation research will find this an invaluable resource. It will also be of significant interest to policymakers looking for growth models compatible with social cohesion and those interested in understanding the dynamics of the new learning economy.

This book provides a comprehensive overview of the latest theory and practice on Patient and Public Involvement (PPI) in research. Its seven chapters cover the historical and conceptual background; the various ways implementation can be approached and how they are put into practice; ethical considerations and critical perspectives, including on the potentially negative impacts of PPI; approaches to meaningful evaluation; a step by-step guide to planning PPI and conclusions with considerations for future research. Drawing on current literature, this book provides an essential reference work for research students and all who want to better understand PPI in practice. It offers exercises to address key questions, case examples and a checklist for planning PPI and includes a valuable glossary of terms.

In today's political climate, when sustainable development is the perceived goal for farming and forest communities throughout the globe, the experiences of early Canadian settlers force a re-examination of many of the assumptions about the processes through which wilderness has been civilised. The Frontier Environment and Social Order examines the development of civil society within the forest frontier of Upper Canada, using the letters of Francis Codd, a young English doctor, who settled in the Ottawa Valley in 1846 as the textual basis. The letters provide detailed evidence about frontier development: clearing the forest, establishing farming communities, and bringing civil institutions to a developing country. This period was one of intense social and environmental transformation as immigrants began the difficult task of settling a new land. The backdrop to Francis Codd's life in Canada was dramatic, but the detailed observations he provides bring the process of settlement to life. Codd became one of the cornerstones of local society and his letters and the memoirs of his contemporaries document the privations and struggles of the time. They also present new evidence on the establishment of a relationship between nature and culture at a time when ideas of wilderness and civilisation were being forged through civil society and its myths. This fascinating book will appeal to environmental social scientists and economists, historians, geographers and migration specialists as well as the interested reader.

This book analyzes the multimodal verbal and nonverbal behavior of humans in both an artificial game, based on the well-known Mafia and Resistance games, as well as selected other settings. This book develops statistical results linking different types of facial expressions (e.g. smile, pursed lips, raised eyebrows), vocal features (e.g., pitch, loudness) and linguistic features (e.g., dominant language, turn length) with both unary behaviors (e.g. is person X lying?) to binary behaviors (Is person X dominant compared to person Y? Does X trust Y? Does X like Y?). In addition, this book describes machine learning and computer vision-based algorithms that can be used to predict deception, as well as the visual focus of attention of people during discussions that can be linked to many binary behaviors. It is written by a multidisciplinary team of both social scientists and computer scientists. Meetings are at the very heart of human activity. Whether you are involved in a business meeting or in a diplomatic negotiation, such an event has multiple actors, some cooperative and some adversarial. Some actors may be deceptive, others may have complex relationships with others in the group. This book consists of a set of 11 chapters that describe the factors that link human behavior in group settings and attitudes to facial and voice characteristics. Researchers working in social sciences (communication, psychology, cognitive science) with an interest in studying the link between human interpersonal behavior and facial/speech/linguistic characteristics will be interested in this book. Computer scientists, who are interested in developing machine learning and deep learning based models of human behavior in group settings will also be interested in purchasing this book.

Following the core principle of phenomenology as a return "to the things themselves," Body Matters attends to the phenomena of bodily afflictions and examines them from three different standpoints: from society in general that interprets them as "sicknesses," from the medical professions that interpret them as "diseases," and from the patients themselves who interpret them as "illnesses." By drawing on a crucial distinction in German phenomenology between two senses of the body the quantifiable, material body (Korper) and the lived-body(Leib) the authors explore the ways in which sickness, disease, and illness are socially and historically experienced and constructed. To make their case, they draw on examples from a multiplicity of disciplines and cultures as well as a number of cases from Euro-American history. The intent is to unsettle taken-for-granted assumptions that readers may have about body troubles. These are assumptions widely held as well by medical and allied health professionals, in addition to many sociologists and philosophers of health and illness. To this end, Body Matters does not simply deconstruct prejudices of mainstream biomedicine; it also constructively envisions more humane and artful forms of therapy."

More than two decades after Michael Rutter (1987) published his summary of protective processes associated with resilience, researchers continue to report definitional ambiguity in how to define and operationalize positive development under adversity. The problem has been partially the result of a dominant view of resilience as something individuals have, rather than as a process that families, schools,communities and governments facilitate. Because resilience is related to the presence of social risk factors, there is a need for an ecological interpretation of the construct that acknowledges the importance of people's interactions with their environments. The Social Ecology of Resilience provides evidence for this ecological understanding of resilience in ways that help to resolve both definition and measurement problems.

Currently in a state of cultural transition, global society is moving from a literary society to digital one, adopting widespread use of advanced technologies such as the Internet and mobile devices. Digital media has an extraordinary impact on society's formative processes, forcing a pragmatic shift in their management and organization. ""Digital Literacy"" strives to define a conceptual framework for understanding social changes produced by digital media and creates a framework within which digital literacy acts as a tool to assist younger generations to interact critically with digital media and their culture, providing scholars, educators, researchers, and practitioners a technological and sociological approach to this cutting-edge topic from an educational perspective.

This book provides a definitive account of koro, a topic of long-standing interest in the field of cultural psychiatry in which the patient displays a fear of the genitals shrinking and retracting. Written by Professor A.N. Chowdhury, a leading expert in the field, it provides a comprehensive overview of the cultural, historical and clinical significance of the condition that includes both cutting-edge critique and an analysis of research and accounts from the previous 120 years published literature. The book begins by outlining the definition, etymology of the term, and clinical features of koro as a culture-bound syndrome, and contextualizes the concept with reference to its historical origins and local experience in Southeast Asia, and its subsequent widespread occurrence in South Asia. It also critically examines the concept of culture-bound disorder and the development of the terminology, such as cultural concepts of distress, which is the term that is currently used in the DSM-5. Subsequent chapters elaborate the cultural context of koro in Chinese and South Asian cultures, including cultural symbolic analysis of associations with animals (fox and turtle) and phallic imagery based on troubling self-perceived aspects of body image that is central to the concept. The second section of the book offers a comprehensive, global literature review, before addressing the current status and relevance of koro, clinically relevant questions of risk assessment and forensic issues, and research methodology. This landmark work will provide a unique resource for clinicians and researchers working in cultural psychiatry, cultural psychology, anthropology, medical sociology, social work and psychosexual medicine.

This book explores the fascinating world of religious hair observances within six religious traditions that account for 77% of the world's adherents: Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Sikhism. Symbolic use of hair has been, and remains, prevalent in all six and carries significant amounts of religious and social meaning. Hair is a unique body substance. It can be shaped and colored, removed from us without pain but still retain an individual's essence, signal our age, sex, and sexual maturity, and much, much more. The book's approach is to situate each practice within its tradition. That requires a study of its foundational leaders and their teachings, sacred texts (where they mention hair), its rites and rituals, ideas of religious power and subsequent historical development. Contemporary practitioners are interviewed for their motivations. Even more insight can be gleaned by searching beyond an overt religious purpose. Social scientists from anthropology, sociology, psychology, and related fields bring their research to deliver added perceptions. The author reveals how hair practices are created from ancient psychological and cultural impulses, become modified by time, culture and religious intent, and are adopted by adherents for reasons ranging from personal religious expression to group identity. This book is written for the interested observer of our increasingly diverse society and for the student of comparative religion and sociology. It will change forever how you see hair.

This book explores the ways in which Eastern and Western medical knowledge inform each other in the treatment of people in Asia across a wide range of health issues. To do so, it brings together health communication scholars from diverse disciplines both in Hong Kong and worldwide and combines their observations and expertise with those of clinicians working in healthcare in Asia to provide a topical portrait of the expanding horizons of healthcare in Asia. Social scientists and clinicians discuss their research and clinical practice respectively using a range of analytic approaches that include traditional qualitative and quantitative methodologies, as well as cutting-edge computer diagnostics that digitally visualize health interactions across time. The book presents an innovative and interdisciplinary investigation of Eastern and Western perspectives on healthcare in Asia. It covers topics concerned with a range of mental and physical problems that are currently confronting Asia. Importantly, the views and experiences of front line clinicians delivering patient care in Asia are also included. Accordingly, the book offers varied and innovative perspectives on health communication issues in China, Singapore, Bangladesh and Australia.