This book discusses feature films that enrich our understanding of doctor-patient dilemmas. The book comprises general clinical ethics themes and principles and is written in accessible language. Each theme is discussed and illuminated in chapters devoted to a particular film. Chapters start with a discussion of the film itself, which shares details behind the making of the film; box-office and critical reception; casting; and other facts about production. The chapter then situates the film in a history of medicine and medical sociology context before it delves into the clinical ethics issues in the film, and how to use it as a teaching aid for clinical ethics. Readers will understand how each film in this collection served to bring particular clinical ethics issues to the public's attention or reflected medico-legal issues that were part of the public discourse. The book is a perfect instructor's guide for anyone teaching bioethics, healthcare ethics, medical sociology, medical history, healthcare systems, narrative medicine, or nursing ethics.

Relativist and constructivist conceptions of truth and knowledge have become orthodoxy in vast stretches of the academic world in recent times. In his long-awaited first book, Paul Boghossian critically examines such views and exposes their fundamental flaws.
Boghossian focuses on three different ways of reading the claim that knowledge is socially constructed--one as a thesis about truth and two about justification. And he rejects all three. The intuitive, common-sense view is that there is a way the world is that is independent of human opinion; and that we are capable of arriving at beliefs about how it is that are objectively reasonable, binding on anyone capable of appreciating the relevant evidence regardless of their social or cultural perspective. Difficult as these notions may be, it is a mistake to think that philosophy has uncovered powerful reasons for rejecting them.
This short, lucid, witty book shows that philosophy provides rock-solid support for common sense against the relativists. It will prove provocative reading throughout the discipline and beyond.

This is the first systematically comparative study of environmental protest in a representative cross-section of EU member states. It breaks entirely new ground in the study of environmental politics in Europe and is a major contribution to the study of protest events.

Treating the everyday as central to the study of regional and international politics, this book reconstructs the last two decades of the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya, leading up to the 2011 events that sanctioned its fall. It provides a unique and vivid look into the political dynamics that characterized the everyday lives of Libyans, offering a compelling counterargument to those who insist on framing the history of the country as a stateless, authoritarian, and rogue state. Based on the collection of oral histories, what sets the tempo of this journey is an extensive collection of personal anecdotes, moods and emotions, popular jokes and rumors. In weaving the threads that link these quotidian lives to Libya's interaction with wider international and geopolitical dynamics, the book offers a unique and timely analysis of the 2011 events that witnessed the fall of the regime reaching the current state of violence, war, and hope.

This volume is about deviance in the workplace. It defines deviance as departures from laws or organizational rules by workers, managers, or an organization as an entity. It brings together contributions by scholars in the sociology of work and of crime and deviance, and identifies workplace deviance as a subject shared by the two. The contributions center around two main topics: deviance-making processes, and the social control of deviance through workplace regulation to detect and correct deviant behavior.

This book looks at the discursive construction of European identities in a variety of institutional and non-institutional contexts and through a variety of social and political actors. Its multilevel and interdisciplinary approach - rooted in the Discourse-Historical tradition of Critical Discourse Analysis - allows for a comparison of identity constructions at different levels of Europe's social and political organisation and in different modes of communication. The book analyses discourses as diverse as those of the EU politicians, of Europe's national media as well as of migrants living in Europe. It offers a set of integrated models and analytical procedures which bring to the fore the inherent dynamism and complexity of both 'bottom-up' and 'top-down' European identity constructions.

A biography of the English social investigator and pioneer in the development of the social survey method who, with Beatrice Potter Webb, made an exhaustive statistical study of poverty in London. He was instrumental in the passage of the Old Age Pensions Act.

Globalization is at the heart of debates about the present phase of development of the world economy. In Globalization and the Postcolonial World, Ankie Hoogvelt joins these debates to examine the ways in which globalization is affecting the countries of the developing world.

Taking a new look at historical trends and theories in development studies, Hoogvelt places special emphasis on emerging global forms of production, exchange, and governance. She describes the diverse impacts of globalization in sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East, East Asia, and Latin America, identifying different postcolonial responses in each of these regions.

Hoogvelt concludes that today the social logic of globalization drives the economics of globalization--in contrast to the past, in which economic forces stimulated the integration of human societies across international borders. Globalization, she concludes, has created a new architecture of core-periphery relations in the world economy, in which social divisions replace geographic divisions and in which the politics of exclusion replace the politics of incorporation characteristic of previous phases of capitalist expansion.

In determining the news that s fit to print, U.S. courts have traditionally declined to second-guess professional journalists. But in an age when news, entertainment, and new media outlets are constantly pushing the envelope of acceptable content, the consensus over press freedoms is eroding. The First Amendment Bubble" examines how unbridled media are endangering the constitutional privileges journalists gained in the past century.

For decades, judges have generally affirmed that individual privacy takes a back seat to the public s right to know. But the growth of the Internet and the resulting market pressures on traditional journalism have made it ever harder to distinguish public from private, news from titillation, journalists from provocateurs. Is a television program that outs criminals or a website that posts salacious videos entitled to First Amendment protections based on newsworthiness? U.S. courts are increasingly inclined to answer no, demonstrating new resolve in protecting individuals from invasive media scrutiny and enforcing their own sense of the proper boundaries of news.

This judicial backlash now extends beyond ethically dubious purveyors of infotainment, to mainstream journalists, who are seeing their ability to investigate crime and corruption curtailed. Yet many heedless of judicial demands for accountability continue to push for ever broader constitutional privileges. In so doing, Amy Gajda warns, they may be creating a First Amendment bubble that will rupture in the courts, with disastrous consequences for conventional news."

Strategic Choice Under Uncertainty provides an inside perspective of how multinational corporations dealt with the pressure to withdraw from South Africa in the 1980s. The decision was mired in the uncertainty of weighing the economic and social costs of the disinvestment strategy against the benefits that would come with the restoration of racial equality and democracy in the country. By providing a robust conceptual scaffolding of environmental uncertainty, the book empirically demonstrates how extra-organizational environmental forces can affect strategic choices and, therefore, performance outcomes. Furthermore, the book demonstrates the vulnerability of multinational business operations to repressive host government practices, and the powerlessness of business decision-makers to implement their objectively rational plans under such conditions. It illustrates that the threat and, indeed, the actual execution of large scale corporate withdrawal can be instrumental in spurring social change in such repressive host countries.

This ambitious book provides a comprehensive history of the World Health Organization (WHO) Global Programme on AIDS (GPA), using it as a unique lens to trace the global response to the AIDS pandemic. The authors describe how WHO came initially to assume leadership of the global response, relate the strategies and approaches WHO employed over the years, and expound on the factors that led to the Programme's demise and subsequent formation of the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS(UNAIDS). The authors examine the global impact of this momentous transition, portray the current status of the global response to AIDS, and explore the precarious situation that WHO finds itself in today as a lead United Nations agency in global health. Several aspects of the global response - the strategies adopted, the roads taken and not taken, and the lessons learned - can provide helpful guidance to the global health community as it continues tackling the AIDS pandemic and confronts future global pandemics. Included in the coverage: The response before the global response Building and coordinating a multi-sectoral response Containing the global spread of HIV Addressing stigma, discrimination, and human rights Rethinking global AIDS governance UNAIDS and its place in the global response The AIDS Pandemic: Searching for a Global Response recounts the global response to the AIDS pandemic from its inception to today. Policymakers, students, faculty, journalists, researchers, and health professionals interested in HIV/AIDS, global health, global pandemics, and the history of medicine will find it highly compelling and consequential. It will also interest those involved in global affairs, global governance, international relations, and international development.

How we address one another says a great deal about our social relationships and which groups in society we belong to. This edited volume examines address choices in a range of everyday interactions taking place in Dutch, Finnish, Flemish, French, German, Italian and the two national varieties of Swedish, Finland Swedish and Sweden Swedish. The chapter 'Introduction: Address as Social Action Across Cultures and Contexts' is oepn access under a CC BY 4.0 license via link.springer.com.

In Always On, Naomi S. Baron reveals that online and mobile technologies--including instant messaging, cell phones, multitasking, Facebook, blogs, and wikis--are profoundly influencing how we read and write, speak and listen, but not in the ways we might suppose.
Baron draws on a decade of research to provide an eye-opening look at language in an online and mobile world. She reveals for instance that email, IM, and text messaging have had surprisingly little impact on student writing. Electronic media has magnified the laid-back "whatever" attitude toward formal writing that young people everywhere have embraced, but it is not a cause of it. A more troubling trend, according to Baron, is the myriad ways in which we block incoming IMs, camouflage ourselves on Facebook, and use ring tones or caller ID to screen incoming calls on our mobile phones. Our ability to decide who to talk to, she argues, is likely to be among the most lasting influences that information technology has upon the ways we communicate with one another. Moreover, as more and more people are "always on" one technology or another--whether communicating, working, or just surfing the web or playing games--we have to ask what kind of people do we become, as individuals and as family members or friends, if the relationships we form must increasingly compete for our attention with digital media?
Our 300-year-old written culture is on the verge of redefinition, Baron notes. It's up to us to determine how and when we use language technologies, and to weigh the personal and social benefits--and costs--of being "always on." This engaging and lucidly-crafted book gives us the tools for taking on these challenges.

Can sociology help us to tackle environmental problems? What can sociology tell us about the nature of the environment and about the origins and consequences of environmental risks, hazards and change? In this important new book Alan Irwin maps out this emerging field of knowledge, teaching and research. He reviews the key sociological debates in the field and sets out a new framework for analysis and practice.

Among the themes examined are constructivism and realism, sustainable development and theories of the risk society. Readers are also introduced to communities at risk, institutional regulation and the environmental consequences of technology. Particular topics for discussion include genetically modified organisms, nuclear power, pesticide safety and the local hazards of the chemical industry. Rather than maintaining a fixed boundary between nature and society, Irwin highlights the hybrid character of environmental issues and emphasizes the role of social and cultural factors within environmental policy.

Combining theoretical discussion and case-studies with a sensitivity to the concerns of environmental policy and practice, "Sociology and the Environment "provides an excellent introduction to an expanding and immensely important field. It will be a valuable text for students and scholars in sociology, geography, environmental studies and related disciplines.

A classic book about the phenomenon of suicide and its social causes written by one of the world's most influential sociologists.
Emile Durkheim's "Suicide "addresses the phenomenon of suicide and its social causes. Written by one of the world's most influential sociologists, this classic argues that suicide primarily results from a lack of integration of the individual into society. "Suicide "provides readers with an understanding of the impetus for suicide and its psychological impact on the victim, family, and society.

This book examines the complexities of the colonization of the territory that is now Brazil and its shaping of psychological knowledge and practice. It reveals the rich network of cultural practices that were formed through the appropriation of elements of Jesuit Catholicism and the blending with elements of the cultures of native, African and Lusitanian populations present in the territory, and how psychological concepts and practices emerged and circulated between the sixteenth and the late eighteenth centuries, long before the establishment of psychology as a modern science. The volume summarizes the research program developed by the author over 38 years of academic activity through which she contributed to expand the field of historical studies in psychology by investigating how psychological concepts and practices were produced in cultural and historical contexts different from the European and North American societies where scientific psychology developed in the 19th and 20th centuries. Psychological Knowledge and Practices in Brazilian Colonial Culture will be of interest not only to historians of psychology, but also to professional psychologists working with culturally diverse populations who seek to understand how psychological concepts and phenomena are shaped by culture. By doing so, the book intends to contribute to the development of a psychology better prepared to deal with cultural diversity in an increasingly multicultural world. "Massimi's book will now form an important foundation of English-language scholarship about the psychological and cultural impact of colonization on subjugated peoples. She has, of course, made many such contributions in Portuguese. It is to be hoped that much of her work will be translated into English so that more scholars may benefit from the richness of her insights." - Excerpt from the Foreword by Dr. Wade E. Pickren.

Crises and Hegemonic Transitions reworks the concept of hegemony at the international level and analyses its relation to world market crises. Returning to the critical edition of Gramsci's Quaderni and maintaining that the author's work is permeated by Marx's Capital and the law of value, Fusaro argues that imperialist states strive to constructing hegemonic relations in order to secure capital accumulation using domination and leadership, coercion and consensus, and that economic crises have only the potential to provoke crises of hegemony. Tracing the vicissitudes of US hegemony from the interwar period to the present and assessing the Great Depression's and the Great Recession's impact, Fusaro provides a novel way to interpret past and present developments within the world economy.

After the end of the apartheid regime in the 1990s, South Africa experienced a boom in new heritage and commemorative projects. These ranged from huge new museums and monuments to small community museums and grassroots memory work. At the same time, South African cities have continued to grapple with the difficulties of overcoming entrenched inequalities and divisions. Urban spaces are deep repositories of memory, and also sites in need of radical transformation. Remaking the Urban examines the intersections between post-apartheid urban transformation and the politics of heritage-making in divided cities, using the Nelson Mandela Bay Metro in South Africa's Eastern Cape as a case study. Roux unpacks the processes by which some narratives and histories become officially inscribed in public space, while others are visible only through alternative, ephemeral or subversive means. Including discussions of the history of the Red Location Museum of Struggle; memorialisation of urban forced removals; the heritage politics and transformative potential of public art; and strategies for making visible memories and histories of former anti-apartheid youth activist groups in the city's townships, Roux examines how these twin processes of memory-making and change have played out in Nelson Mandela Bay. -- .

This volume draws on disciplines as different as Psychology, Anthropology, History and Biology to explain when and why individuals act to promote their own self-interest and when they sacrifice their own outcomes so that others can benefit.

Your organs are failing and require replacement. If you had the choice, would you prefer organs from other humans or non-human animals, or would you choose a 'cybernetic' medical implant? Using a range of social science methods and drawing on the sociology of the body and embodiment, biomedicine and technology, this book asks what happens to who we are (our identity) when we change what we are (our bodies)? From surveying young adults about whether they would choose options such as 3-D bioprinting, living or deceased human donation, or non-human animal or implantable biomechanical devices, to interviewing those who live with an implantable cardiac defibrillator, Haddow invites us to think about what kind of relationship we have with our bodies. She concludes that the reliance on 'cybernetic' medical devices create 'everyday cyborgs' who can experience alienation and new forms of vulnerability at implantation and activation. Embodiment and everyday cyborgs invites readers to consider the relationship between personal identity and the body, between humans and non-human animals, and our increasing dependency on 'smart' implantable technology. The creation of new techno-organic hybrid bodies makes us acutely aware of our own bodies and how ambiguous the experience of embodiment actually is. It is only through understanding how modifications such as transplantation, amputation and implantation make our bodies a 'presence' to us, Haddow argues, that we realise our everyday experience of our bodies as an absence. -- .

Taking the recent coronavirus pandemic as a starting point, this book presents and analyzes new research around medical clowning in hospitals, from social media use to the impact on the hospitalized child in later life. This innovative book begins with an overview of the work of medical clowns. It discusses the idea of humor as a mechanism related to the revolution in language and human consciousness, and makes a connection between humor and anxiety, exploring how this can be mobilized to support hospitalized patients. There is extensive examination of medical clowning to strengthen coping skills and promote wellbeing in the time of Covid-19, where loneliness and isolation loomed large and anxieties were high. Subsequent chapters explore the role of medical clowning in wartime and at time of natural disasters, the experiences of children some time after their experience of hospitalization and clowning, and the role of social media and medical clowns in community building. This book is a fascinating contribution to the literature on medical clowning. It is of interest to researchers, practitioners and lecturers in medical clowning, play in healthcare, nursing, medicine, and performance studies.

Narasimha is one of the least studied major deities of Hinduism. Furthermore, there are limited studies of the history, thought, and literature of middle India. Lavanya Vemsani redresses this by exploring a range of primary sources, including classical Sanskrit texts (puranas and epics), and regional accounts (sthalapuranas), which include texts, artistic compositions, and oral folk stories in the regional languages of Telugu, Oriya, and Kannada. She also examines the historical context as well as contemporary practice. Moving beyond the stereotypical classifications applied to sources of Hinduism, this unique study dedicates chapters to each region of middle India bringing together literary, religious, and cultural practices to comprehensively understand the religion of Middle India (Madhya Desha). Incorporating lived religion and textual data, this book offers a rich contribution to Hindu studies and Indian studies in general, and Vaishnava Studies and regional Hinduism in particular.

Social life is in a constant process of change, and sociology can never stand still. As a result, contemporary sociology is a theoretically diverse enterprise, covering a huge range of subjects and drawing on a broad array of research methods. Central to this endeavour is the use of core concepts and ideas which allow sociologists to make sense of societies, though our understanding of these concepts necessarily evolves and changes. This clear and jargon-free book introduces a careful selection of essential concepts that have helped to shape sociology and continue to do so. Going beyond brief, dictionary-style definitions, Anthony Giddens and Philip W. Sutton provide an extended discussion of each concept which sets it in historical and theoretical context, explores its main meanings in use, introduces relevant criticisms, and points readers to its ongoing development in contemporary research and theorizing. Organized in ten thematic sections, the book offers a portrait of sociology through its essential concepts, ranging from capitalism, identity and deviance to the digital revolution, environment, postcolonialism and intersectionality. It will be essential reading for all those new to sociology as well as anyone seeking a reliable route map for a rapidly changing world.