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Books > Social sciences > Sociology, social studies > General
Anthropological approaches to the sciences have developed as part of a broader tradition concerned about the place of the sciences in today's world and in some basic sense concerned with questions about the legitimacy of the sciences. In the years since the second World War, we have seen the emergence of a number of different attempts both to analyze and to cope with the successes of the sciences, their broad penetration into social life, and the sense of problem and crisis that they have projected. Among the of movements concerned about the earlier responses were the development social responsibility of scientists and technological practitioners. There is little doubt that this was a direct outgrowth of the role of science in the war epitomized by the successful construction and catastrophic use of the atomic bomb. The recognition of the deep social utility of science, and especially its role as an instrument of war, fostered curiosity about the earlier develop ment of scientific disciplines and institutional forms. The history of science as an explicit diSCipline with full-time practitioners can be seen as an attempt to locate science in temporal space - first in its intellectual form and second ly in its institutional or social form. The sociology of science, while certainly having roots in the pre-war work of Robert K."
The Active Society, published in 1968, is the most ambitious book in Amitai Etzioni's remarkable career. It is sociology in the grand tradition, with at least one foot outside its own time. In it, Etzioni confronts the great modern irony- that setting out to become the masters of nature, humans become mastered by their own instruments- championing the sense of agency and aiming to demonstrate that humanity can direct its own creations, or at least, that societies can aspire to a greater measure of authentic self-government. In this new collection of essays, Wilson Carey McWilliams brings together scholars in a range of disciplines to analyze the significance and shortcomings of this important work. They comment on the importance of Etzioni's contributions, the magnitude of his achievement, and the extent to which The Active Society speaks to contemporary social and political life.
The prevailing view of scientific popularization, both within academic circles and beyond, affirms that its objectives and procedures are unrelated to tasks of cognitive development and that its pertinence is by and large restricted to the lay public. Consistent with this view, popularization is frequently portrayed as a logical and hence inescapable consequence of a culture dominated by science-based products and procedures and by a scientistic ideology. On another level, it is depicted as a quasi-political device for chan nelling the energies of the general public along predetermined paths; examples of this are the nineteenth-century Industrial Revolution and the U. S. -Soviet space race. Alternatively, scientific popularization is described as a carefully contrived plan which enables scientists or their spokesmen to allege that scientific learn ing is equitably shared by scientists and non-scientists alike. This manoeuvre is intended to weaken the claims of anti-scientific protesters that scientists monopolize knowledge as a means of sustaining their social privileges. Pop ularization is also sometimes presented as a psychological crutch. This, in an era of increasing scientific specialisation, permits the researchers involved to believe that by transcending the boundaries of their narrow fields, their endeavours assume a degree of general cognitive importance and even extra scientific relevance. Regardless of the particular thrust of these different analyses it is important to point out that all are predicated on the tacit presupposition that scientific popularization belongs essentially to the realm of non-science, or only concerns the periphery of scientific activity."
A multi-cultural, inter-disciplinary volume which includes contributions from scholars in Japan, Australia and the US in various fields of the social sciences. It takes individuals, institutions and methodology as the three foci of analysis, and scrutinizes a wide range of specific areas: life cours
This book seeks to provide answers to everything you ever wanted to know about the law-except what the rules are or ought to be This book seeks to provide answers to everything you ever wanted to know about the law-except what the rules are or ought to be. For centuries, the law has been considered a neutral, objective arena that sets societal standards and in which conflicting forces resolve disputes. More recently, however, the interaction between law and society has been recognized as a two-way street: society clearly exacts a considerable influence on the practice and evolution of law. Further, the discrepancy between what the law mandates and what the social reality is has served as evidence of the chasm between theory and practice, between the abstraction of law and its actual societal effects. Examining such issues as the limits of legal change and the capacity of law to act as a revolutionary agent, the essays in this book offer a well-rounded introduction to the relationship between law and society. By focusing on flashpoint issues in legal studies-equality, consciousness and ideology, social control--and making ample use of engaging case studies, The Law and Society Review provides an invaluable resource for scholars and students alike.
This book advances our understanding of change over time in human social conduct, and represents the first consolidated effort to reveal how micro-analytic studies of social interaction address such issues. The book presents a collection of longitudinal studies drawing on conversation analysis across a variety of settings, practices, languages and timescales, and analyses the ways in which participants produce and deal with practices changing over time. This edited collection will interest students and scholars of conversation analysis, sociolinguistics, discourse analysis, interactional linguistics and pragmatics.
Over the last 20 years, the number of professional managers
displaced from US corporate jobs has increased dramatically. This
has coincided with the rapid expansion of employment in the US
nonprofit sector; a sector that has a high proportion of managerial
and professional workers among its employees.
Offering new ways of understanding the nature of disease, and exploring the idea that health and illness have a special interdependence, The Meaning of Illness shows the positive side of illness and its value in human experience.
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.
Sustaining the Forest, the People, and the Spirit tells the story of the Menominee Indian Tribe and how they have sustained their 230,000 acre forest in ways that have enhanced, rather than degraded, the environment in the face of development pressures. Through a careful look at Menominee history, politics, institutions, economy, culture, spirituality, science, and technology. Thomas Davis provides insight into how this case study of sustainable environmental development can offer a rough road map for other communities to follow.
The role that the social and behavioural sciences play in the daily practice of dentistry is now an essential part of all dentistry training, but it can often seem distant from the reality of daily clinical practice. Dentists often ask: what is sociology? Why do I need to know about psychology? Why do I need sociology and psychology to be an effective dentist? How can they help improve my clinical practice? This new textbook answers these important questions and shows how the social and behavioural sciences can inform the practice of dentistry and allied healthcare services in the twenty-first century. It provides a comprehensive, accessible introduction to sociology and psychology for students and members of the dental team with no prior knowledge of the subject, and although the book assumes little or no previous knowledge of psychology or sociology, it also provides enough depth to meet the needs of those with some background in these fields. Throughout, the links between sociology and psychology and everyday practice are emphasized and explained and theoretical concepts are put into the context of everyday clinical work. The authors have extensive experience in teaching and researching the social and behavioural sciences from undergraduate to post-doctoral levels. This book will be an indispensable teaching aid within dental health education, and other allied health and social care disciplines.
In an original, and highly interdisciplinary, mixed method approach, Green and Janmaat identify four major traditions of social cohesion in developed societies, analyzing how these various mechanisms are withstanding the strains of the current global financial crisis.
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.
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.
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.
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."
Senator Rand Paul was on to Anthony Fauci from the start. Wielding
previously unimaginable power, Fauci misled the country about the
origins of the Covid pandemic and shut down scientific dissent.
Why? Hundreds of millions of dollars of grants and unreported royalties were at stake, and heads would roll if the truth got out. It almost worked. At Fauci's insistence, the government imposed needlessly extreme lockdowns on Americans at the cost of immense personal and economic destruction. Covid-19 was deadly, but the real killer was the coverup, led by America's most durable medical bureaucrat--a man for whom the truth was too often expendable. Senator Paul makes a powerful case that funding dangerous bioengineering in a totalitarian country is madness. If we don't heed this warning, the next pandemic could be far worse.
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).
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.
Syria is now one of the most important countries in the world for the documentary film industry. Since the 1970s, Syrian cinema masters played a defining role in avant-garde filmmaking and political dissent against authoritarianism. After the outbreak of violence in 2011, an estimated 500,000 video clips were uploaded making it one of the first YouTubed revolutions in history. This book is the first history of documentary filmmaking in Syria. Based on extensive media ethnography and in-depth interviews with Syrian filmmakers in exile, the book offers an archival analysis of the documentary work by masters of Syrian cinema, such as Nabil Maleh, Ossama Mohammed, Mohammed Malas, Hala Al Abdallah, Hanna Ward, Ali Atassi and Omar Amiralay. Joshka Wessels traces how the works of these filmmakers became iconic for a new generation of filmmakers at the beginning of the 21st century and maps the radical change in the documentary landscape after the revolution of 2011. Special attention is paid to the late Syrian filmmaker and pro-democracy activist, Bassel Shehadeh, and the video-resistance from Aleppo and Raqqa against the regime of President Bashar al-Assad and the Islamic State. An essential resource for scholars of Syrian Studies, this book will also be highly relevant to the fields of media & conflict research, anthropology and political science.
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.
This book engages in a critical discussion on how to respect and promote patients' autonomy in difficult cases such as palliative care and end-of-life decisions. These cases pose specific epistemic, normative, and practical problems, and the book elucidates the connection between the practical implications of the theoretical debate on respecting autonomy, on the one hand, and specific questions and challenges that arise in medical practice, on the other hand. Given that the idea of personal autonomy includes the notion of authenticity as one of its core components, the book explicitly includes discussions on underlying theories of the self. In doing so, it brings together original contributions and novel insights for "applied" scenarios based on interdisciplinary collaboration between German and Serbian scholars from philosophy, sociology, and law. It is of benefit to anyone cherishing autonomy in medical ethics and medical practice.
Sociology, as a discipline, was born at the height of global colonialism and imperialism. Over a century later, it is yet to shake off its commitment to colonial ways of thinking. This book explores why, and how, sociology needs to be decolonized. It analyses how sociology was integral in reproducing the colonial order, as dominant sociologists constructed theories either assuming or proving the supposed barbarity and backwardness of colonized people. Ali Meghji reveals how colonialism continues to shape the discipline today, dominating both social theory and the practice of sociology, how exporting the Eurocentric sociological canon erased social theories from the Global South, and how sociologists continue to ignore the relevance of coloniality in their work. This guide will be necessary reading for any student or proponent of sociology. In opening up the work of other decolonial advocates and under-represented thinkers to readers, Meghji offers key suggestions for what teachers and students can do to decolonize sociology. With curriculum reform, innovative teaching and a critical awareness of these issues, it is possible to make sociology more equitable on a global scale. |
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