How do social institutions exist? How do they direct our conduct? The Opposite Mirrors defends the thesis that the existence of institutions is a conventional matter. Ultimately they exist because we believe in their existence, and because they play a role in our practical reasoning. Human action necessarily has an unpredictable aspect; human institutions perform an important task by reducing uncertainty in our interactions. The author applies this thesis to the most important institutions: the law and the monetary system. In his analysis he connects many traditional topics of the philosophy of law, social philosophy and the philosophy of social sciences in a new way. He discusses the nature of rules, authority, and power and analyzes the Hobbesian presuppositions which have been dominant in legal theory and in the economic analyses of the state. The book is written for legal theorists as well as for political and social philosophers, and theoretically oriented social scientists.

The organization of work is under critique in many industrialized countries. Bureaucracy, specialization, repetitive technology, and hierarchical control structures are criticized by politicians, trade unionists, and social scientists. They argue for improved quality of work, for work democratization, and for the humanization of work. This book evaluates Norwegian field ex periments in the area of job redesign which started already in 1964. Norway has therefore a lead in experience compared to most other countries, particu to the United States, where debates and subsequent experiments re larly volving around the quality of working life and the democratization of work started only in the early seventies. The Norwegian social scientists who left their academic bastions and started action research drew heavily upon the 'open socio-technical system' thinking as developed by the Tavistock Insti tute of Human Relations in London. This descriptive evaluation study ana lyzes the job redesign experiments from an industrial democracy perspective and places the experiments in their national political and labor relations contexts. Special emphasis is given to the actual and potential role trade unions can play in shopfloor job design projects. The industrial relations of the United States is generally used as reference point in this study. system The theory guiding the experiments regards work democratization through job redesign as a first step in a bottom-up process of organizational demo cratization."

This volume proposes that across many cultures, the revival of religious fundamentalism is a response to the globalization of economies and markets, the weakening of the autonomy of national political sovereignties, and the corruption of cultural autonomy because global information systems are intruding upon regional and ethnic symbolic orders and modes of discourse. Editors Bronislaw Misztal and Anson Shupe bring together theoretical and empirical studies that focus on fundamentalist social movements in North and Central America and Eastern Europe and that examine the role religion plays in determining the direction of social evolution. Each chapter emphasizes a common set of processes at work: how religious identities arise or reemerge to confront the globalization trend, how various social movements cope with pressures to conform their identities, and how the globalization trend sets in motion the antithetical reaction of the nationalistic/religious dialectic that it was thought to have eliminated.

Part I considers the concept of global fundamentalist resurgence and discusses how energetic, even radical, religious movements gradually mellow to accommodate various social institutions they set out to reform or purify. An analysis of American Christian fundamentalism in its relation to modernity and the production of symbolic capital serves as an example. The chapters in Part II examine fundamentalist religious revivals in previously Eastern bloc countries, with special attention to Poland, which gained visibility as one of the first nations to challenge the Communist Party's hegemony. Part III explores religious revival in North and Central America, from the new Christian right and its auxiliary anti-evolution creation science controversy to Protestant fundamentalism and pacifistic resistance in Latin America. Finally, in Part IV the authors attempt predictions about the role of religion in social movements to come. Recommended for sociologists, political scientists, historians, and religious studies scholars.

The fourth edition of this best-selling introductory reader has been thoroughly revised and updated to offer a stimulating and wide-ranging set of readings for anyone who wishes to engage with the scope of sociological thought and practice today. The book delivers a productive mix of classic, contemporary and provocative readings that are highly readable and lively, while retaining their critical bite. Ideal as a companion to the ninth edition of Giddens and Sutton's Sociology, the reader can equally be used independently or alongside other textbooks. Readings are grouped around ten key sociological themes, with a sustained emphasis on comparative, globally and historically informed work. The carefully curated collection ranges from studies of face-to-face interaction through to the analysis of large-scale global systems, covering both the theory and the practice of sociology. Among the new selections in this volume are readings on the decolonial turn; the persistence of racism and its consequences; global health issues and the social impact of COVID-19; digital sociology and the digitization of social life; feminist research and shifting forms of misogyny; climate change and the emerging Anthropocene era; income and wealth inequalities, national populist movements and the spread of 'fake news'. Each of the thematic sections is preceded by a discussion and followed by further reading to facilitate students' comprehension and critical reflection. The result is an exciting new companion that encompasses the major themes and debates in both classical and contemporary sociology. Sociology: Introductory Readings will be an essential resource for all students of sociology.

New Private Law Theory opens a new pathway to private law theory through a pluralistic approach. Such a theory needs a broad and stable foundation, which the authors have built here through a canon of nearly seventy texts of reference. This book brings these different texts from different disciplines into conversation with each other, grouping them around central questions of private law and at the same time integrating them with the legal doctrinal analysis of example cases. This book will be accessible to both experienced and early career scholars working on private law.

The volume presents a range of critical perspectives on the contemporary agri-food sector. The starting point is the recognition that geography matters in agri-food more than ever, and it plays a diverse range of roles in shaping production-consumption relations. With hindsight, it may be argued that the extensive rural sociological literature on the globalisation of food over the past twenty years has tended to over-emphasise the degree to which food products and processes have indeed been industrialised and standardised. But if diversity and variety have become increasingly significant in distinguishing food commodities, spaces of production, and the practices of consumption, how are we to critically understand and theorise this complexity? What are the features of the institutional, private, public and civic frameworks that work to promote and sustain diversity and complexity in the international food sector both within and between the global and the local? What new or reconfigured sets of power relations are developing through the unfolding of this complexity; and what do these suggest for the sustainability or vulnerability of rural locales and natures?
Through the two sections of the book- first concerning Theorising Complexity, and the second, problematising Local development and Local complexities- and bringing together under this theme international theoretical and empirical comparisons, the book begins to explore this rich rural sociological and development field. The chapters examine in detail the ways that constellations of organisations, cultures and entrepreneurial practices become embedded in discrete spatial areas. They show the importance of these areas and theirassociated institutions to the contemporary, and increasingly contingent development of the international food system.
*Both sections of the volume take a critical perspective when examining the agri-food sector
*Explores the sociological and developmental impact of the contemporary food sector

Chronicling the revitalization of the field of applied sociology, Dentler offers an interpretive history of how the field has evolved over the years, how it was transplanted from Europe into the U.S., how and why it declined during the latter years of the 20th century, and its recent rebound. Providing a conceptual and historical framework for the practice of applied sociology, this work profiles a variety of practicing sociologists and offers case studies in the fields of education, organizational development, work and labor, and program evaluation. Students, faculty, and practicing sociologists who wish to better understand the foundations and growth of applied sociology as well as the ways in which they can unify the field around the theoretical resources of symbolic interactionism and its offshoots in participation and client empowerment will find what they need in this accessible and unique text. ^IPracticing Sociology^R will instruct faculty and students in the history, traditions, and future prospects of both applied sociology and sociological practice, the social engineering subfields of the more general field of sociology. Degree programs at both the M.A. and B.S. levels continue to spring up at colleges and universities throughout the U.S. and in many countries around the world. This is the first text aimed at the students of these programs, who are preparing to enter such fields as program evaluation, educational planning and program management, organizational development, and labor relations. It is designed to prepare students for careers in applied sociology while providing them with a thorough discussion of the foundations of the field.

Globalization is one of the buzz-words in the 1990s. It points to a world in which geographic location becomes increasingly irrelevant, a vision that has aroused both hopes and fears. Surprisingly, globalization is accompanied by increasing regionalization. This volume is a timely contribution to the debate on globalization and regionalism. Coming from several disciplines, its contributors explore the consequences of a world with no geographical barriers. Refuting simple notions of globalization, they argue that location and space will remain important dimensions of economic and social development. In view of this, the book develops a more balanced view of the tension between globalization and regionalism.

This volume represents an attempt to link the theories and research of an interdisciplinary group of urbanists with the practical applications that scholars can help institute in the community. The articles in "Neighbourhood Politics", analyze political forces within local communities and their intersection with policy decisions about economic development. Those in "Community and Identity" examine the ways in which individuals are shaped by and respond to changing economic conditions in their communities. In "Perspectives on Community Issues and Policies" the authors explore the specific cases of child development, education reform and rent control policies as outcomes of contested or problematic community relations. The articles in "Information technology and Community Development" discuss models of community development linked to community networks. In "Institutional Support for Community Building" the authors show how the institutions of religion and higher education have the potential to strengthen local community development. Several of these papers were presented in an earlier form at meetings of the Urban Affairs Association in Toronto, USA (1997) or Fort Worth, USA (1998).

The most important collection of essays on American Women's History This collection incorporates the most influential and groundbreaking scholarship in the area of American women's history, featuring twenty-three original essays on critical themes and topics. It assesses the past thirty years of scholarship, capturing the ways that women's historians confront issues of race, class, gender, and sexuality. This second edition updates essays related to Indigenous women, slavery, the American Revolution, Civil War, the West, activism, labor, popular culture, civil rights, and feminism. It also includes a discussion of laws, capitalism, gender identity and transgender experience, welfare, reproductive politics, oral history, as well as an exploration of the perspectives of free Blacks and migrants and refugees. Spanning from the 15th through the 21st centuries, chapters show how historians of women, gender, and sexuality have challenged established chronologies and advanced new understandings of America's political, economic, intellectual and social history. This edition also features a new essay on the history of women's suffrage to coincide with the 100th anniversary of passage of the 19th Amendment, as well as a new article that carries issues of women, gender and sexuality into the 21st century. Includes twenty-three original essays by leading scholars in American women's, gender and sexuality history Highlights the most recent scholarship on the key debates and future directions of this popular and contemporary field Substantially updates the first edition with new authors and topics that represent the expanding fields of women, gender, and sexuality Engages issues of race, ethnicity, region, and class as they shape and are shaped by women's and gender history Covers the breadth of American Women's history, including Native women, colonial law and religion, slavery and freedom, women's activism, work and welfare, culture and capitalism, the state, feminism, digital and oral history, and more A Companion to American Women's History, Second Edition is an ideal book for advanced undergraduates and graduate students studying American/U.S. women's history, history of gender and sexuality, and African American women's history. It will also appeal to scholars of these areas at all levels, as well as public historians working in museums, archives, and historic sites.

How do figurational sociologists approach the subjects of sport and leisure? How does their approach differ from other approaches in the field? This major collection, edited by leading writers on sport and leisure, offers a superb introduction to the figurational sociology of sport and leisure. The distinctive features of the approach are clearly explained and contributors show how figurational sociology is applied in the analysis of concrete problems. However, the collection also gives space to critics of the figurational approach. Included here are contributions which claim that the approach is inaccurate, blinkered and irrelevant.

Believing in Bits advances the idea that religious beliefs and practices have become inextricably linked to the functioning of digital media. How did we come to associate things such as mindreading and spirit communications with the functioning of digital technologies? How does the internets capacity to facilitate the proliferation of beliefs blur the boundaries between what is considered fiction and fact? Addressing these and similar questions, the volume challenges and redefines established understandings of digital media and culture by employing the notions of belief, religion, and the supernatural.

The environment is currently a matter of international public and academic concern, but is often considered separately from health issues. This book brings together work from environmental and health historians to conceptualise the connection between environment and health at different times and in different geographical locations.

This book addresses the over-prescribing of antidepressants in people with mostly mild and subthreshold depression. It outlines the steep increase in antidepressant prescription and critically examines the current scientific evidence on the efficacy and safety of antidepressants in depression. The book is not only concerned with the conflicting views as to whether antidepressants are useful or ineffective in various forms of depression, but also aims at detailing how flaws in the conduct and reporting of antidepressant trials have led to an overestimation of benefits and underestimation of harms. The transformation of the diagnostic concept of depression from a rare but serious disorder to an over-inclusive, highly prevalent but predominantly mild and self-limiting disorder is central to the books argument. It maintains that biological reductionism in psychiatry and pharmaceutical marketing reframed depression as a brain disorder, corroborating the overemphasis on drug treatment in both research and practice. Finally, the author goes on to explore how pharmaceutical companies have distorted the scientific literature on the efficacy and safety of antidepressants and how patient advocacy groups, leading academics, and medical organisations with pervasive financial ties to the industry helped to promote systematically biased benefit-harm evaluations, affecting public attitudes towards antidepressants as well as medical education, training, and practice.

How "drowned town" literature, road movies, energy landscape photography, and "death train" narratives represent the brutality of industrial infrastructures.In this book, Michael Truscello looks at the industrial infrastructure not as an invisible system of connectivity and mobility that keeps capitalism humming in the background but as a manufactured miasma of despair, toxicity, and death. Truscello terms this "infrastructural brutalism"--a formulation that not only alludes to the historical nexus of infrastructure and the concrete aesthetic of Brutalist architecture but also describes the ecological, political, and psychological brutality of industrial infrastructures. Truscello explores the necropolitics of infrastructure--how infrastructure determines who may live and who must die--through the lens of artistic media. He examines the white settler nostalgia of "drowned town" fiction written after the Tennessee Valley Authority flooded rural areas for hydroelectric projects; argues that the road movie represents a struggle with liberal governmentality; considers the ruins of oil capitalism, as seen in photographic landscapes of postindustrial waste; and offers an account of "death train narratives" ranging from the history of the Holocaust to postapocalyptic fiction. Finally, he calls for "brisantic politics," a culture of unmaking that is capable of slowing the advance of capitalist suicide. "Brisance" refers to the shattering effect of an explosive, but Truscello uses the term to signal a variety of practices for defeating infrastructural power. Brisantic politics, he warns, would require a reorientation of radical politics toward infrastructure, sabotage, and cascading destruction in an interconnected world.

Is the internet really transforming children and young people's lives? Is the so-called 'digital generation' genuinely benefiting from exciting new opportunities? And, worryingly, facing new risks?

This major new book by a leading researcher addresses these pressing questions. It deliberately avoids a techno-celebratory approach and, instead, interprets children's everyday practices of internet use in relation to the complex and changing historical and cultural conditions of childhood in late modernity. Uniquely, "Children and the Internet" reveals the complex dynamic between online opportunities and online risks, exploring this in relation to much debated issues such as:

- Digital in/exclusion

- Learning and literacy

- Peer networking and privacy

- Civic participation

- Risk and harm

Drawing on current theories of identity, development, education and participation, this book includes a refreshingly critical account of the challenging realities undermining the great expectations held out for the internet - from governments, teachers, parents and children themselves. It concludes with a forward-looking framework for policy and regulation designed to advance children's rights to expression, connection and play online as well as offline.

Ashlee Quosigk explores the diversity of opinions within the largest religious group in the US - Evangelical Christians - on the topic of Islam. Evangelicals are often characterized as monolithically antagonistic toward Muslims. This book challenges that stereotype, exposing the sharp divides that exist among Evangelicals on Islam and examines why there is division. Drawing on qualitative research on two congregations in the US, as well as on popular Evangelical leaders, this book details the surprisingly diverse views Evangelicals hold on Muhammad, the Qur'an, interfaith dialogue, syncretism, and politics. This research is invaluable for providing a better understanding of what Evangelicals think, and why. This book also offers insight into why conflict exists and why Evangelicals differ, while advancing culture war theory and qualitative methods. Specifically, it explores differences in moral authority (assumptions that guide one's perceptions of the world) among Evangelicals and explains how these differences influence their views on Islam. The findings are relevant to religious relations worldwide as everyone appeals to moral authority, irrespective of their geographic location.

In the eyes of many, one of the most challenging problems of the information society is that we are faced with an ever expanding mass of information. Based on the work done within the European Network of Excellence (NoE) on the Future of Identity in Information Society (FIDIS), a set of authors from different disciplinary backgrounds and jurisdictions share their understanding of profiling as a technology that may be preconditional for the future of our information society.

The research project of which the present study is the end result was initiated in late 1970, while I was affiliated with the Economisch Instituut voor de Bouwnijverheid (Economic Institute for the Construction Indus- try), Amsterdam, the Netherlands. This institution, in association with the Urban Development Authority, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, also suppor- ted fieldwork in Malaysia from early 1973 to spring 1975. This resulted in a report to the Malaysian government (Wegelin, 1975), which forms the basis of the present study. Improvement and extension of the earlier report to mould the study in its present shape has been made possible by the financial support of the Stichting Wetenschappelijk Onderwijs in Econo- mische en Sociale Aspecten van Bouwproductie en Bouwnijverheid (Foun- dation for University Education in Economic and Social Aspects of Construction), Amsterdam, the Netherlands. The support of the above institutions is gratefully acknowledged. The study owes much to the pioneering work on low-income housing in developing countries bij Charles Abrams and has further been stimul- ated particularly by the contributions of Leland S. Bums and John F. C. Turner in this field. The recent development of comprehensive cost- benefit appraisal methods for industrial projects in developing countries by Professor I. M. D. Little and J. A. Mirrlees (OECD) and A. K. Sen, P. Dasgupta and S. A. Marglin (UNIDO) provided a challenge to apply similar methods in the area of low-income housing.

Habermas' recent work makes a major claim, that is to be able to determine what is the most rational thing to do. Postmodernists, notably Lyotard, have perhaps successfully belittled this claim as too positivistic. However it is difficult to see their work as offering more than sheer irrationality as the supposed alternative to Habermas. This book does not dispute the validity of the postmodern critique but it is concerned to resist the irrationality which, thus far, seems to coincide with anti-positivism. The concept utilized in this book is one of justice, a concept that the author uses to demonstrate the theories of both Habermas and Lyotard.

For centuries Japan, although a totalitarian dictatorship, was ruled by figureheads who signed laws formulated 'behind the screen'. Hierarchy still defines everyone's status. The man at the top has power but jeopardizes his position if he ignores consensus opinions. Nowadays fashionable twentieth-century clothing cloaks a contradictory blend of intense competition with a tradition of harmony dependent on close human-relations and complex communal restraint. The Japanese organise themselves in cliques (not groups) which raise barriers against outsiders. Companies are controlled from within; shareholders are outsiders. Women are more than equal in their homes; less than equal at work. After living and managing his own business in Japan for forty years, the author explored widely before coining the term 'competitive communism' to describe Japan's economic and social system.

block possible Soviet expansion by mobilizing European "democracies," the policy soon extended to some developing countries in Asia and Latin America. In response, the USSR gradually initiated development programs for newly independent nations in Asia and Africa. In this context, super power rivalry operated in the South to (i) expand spheres of influence and control; (ii) guard Southern nations from the influence and incursions launched by the opposed camp; (iii) stimulate indigenous development. With few exceptions, Southern nations provided little input to the definition and execution of North-South dynamics during this period. In the case of Africa and to some extent Asia, the acquisition of independence was so recent and often sudden that there was little time to reflect on the kind of policies and measures needed to build bal anced relations with the former mother country. In Latin America, the Monroe Doctrine had long insured that the region was a virtual captive of the US. Aid for development was contingent on conformity to US political and economic interests. The cognitive component of South-North dealings strongly reflected the two above mentioned dispositions. The relative lack of political experience in the South. and the dearth of an organized and sizable intellectual/academic community, meant that there were few cognitive and human resources for undertaking careful study and analysis of the conditions and needs of develop ment from a Southern perspective (influential exceptions existed though, such as Raul Prebisch in Latin America or Ghandi in India)."

The digital revolution has not only transformed multiple aspects of social life - it also shakes sociological theory, transforming the most basic assumptions that have underlain it. In this timely book, Ori Schwarz explores the main challenges digitalization poses to different strands of sociological theory and offers paths to adapt them to new social realities. What would symbolic interactionism look like in a world where interaction no longer takes place within bounded situations and is constantly documented as durable digital objects? How should we understand new digitally mediated forms of human association that bind our actions and lives together but have little in common with old-time 'collectives'; and why are they not simply 'social networks'? How does social capital transform when it is materialized in a digital form, and how does it remould power structures? What happens to our conceptualization of power when faced with the emergence of new forms of algorithmic power? And what happens when labour departs from work? By posing and answering such fascinating questions, and offering critical tools for both students and scholars of social theory and digital society to engage with them, this thought-provoking book draws the outline of future sociological theory for our digital society.

This accessible introductory text explains the importance of studying 'everyday life' in the social sciences. Susie Scott examines such varied topics as home, time and schedules, leisure, and eating, to show how societies are created and reproduced by the apparently mundane micro-level practices of everyday life.