As U.S. cities compete for economic resources, many city leaders adopt business-friendly policies, which boost opportunities for big businesses and institutions in their area. This progrowth strategy proposes to generate jobs for residents and higher tax revenues for local government. As a result, according to the logic of progrowth, economic benefits will trickle down to improve the living conditions in working-class and impoverished neighborhoods.

In spite of this strategy, poverty rates among urban Latinos and Blacks is staggering, even in cities that have pursued neoliberal policies. These progrowth strategies seem to have had little or no impact on resolving problems like poverty, unemployment, homelessness, and the alienation of youth from communities of color. Community development has been and continues to be a response to these kinds of problems. But local political struggles can determine the direction of community development towards neighborhood empowerment and representation of neighborhood interests, versus, community development on behalf of progrowth policies.

This issue of the ANNALS examines the interplay between progrowth politics, community development, and race. It goes well beyond a broad brushstroke of the topic and examines several specific cities and how they have implemented these strategies - and their impact on impoverished populations and race relations. By using concrete examples, the authors discuss how community development fits - or does not fit - within the framework of progrowth policies and politics. The volume covers several important themes:

- Community development is not politically neutral and must be discussed within a broad political, economic, and even global context.

. Local politics play a major role in determining the direction, nature, and possibilities of community development.

. A high level and sustained community participation is crucial for the representation of low-income urban neighborhoods in cities pursing progrowth policies.

. Race remains a fundamental issue I city politics and influences the political interplay between progrowth strategies and community development.

Utilizing information and analysis across several disciplines, this issue offers important research for students, scholars, and practitioners in areas of political science, economics, sociology, urban studies, and race relations. "

Public venues are vital to information access across the globe, yet few formal studies exist of the complex ways people in developing countries use information technologies in public access places. Libraries, Telecentres, Cybercafes and Public Access to ICT: International Comparisons presents groundbreaking research on the new challenges and opportunities faced by public libraries, community telecentres, and cybercafes that offer public access to computers and other information and communication technologies. Written in plain language, the book presents an in-depth analysis of the spaces that serve underserved populations, bridge digital divides, and further social and economic development objectives, including employability. With examples and experiences from around the world, this book sheds light on a surprising and understudied facet of the digital revolution at a time when effective digital inclusion strategies are needed more than ever.

In Scandinavia the study of disputes is still a relatively new topic: The papers offered here discuss how conflicts were handled in Scandinavian societies in the Middle Ages before the emergence of strong centralized states. What strategies did people use to contest power, property, rights, honour, and other kinds of material or symbolic assets? Seven essays by Scandinavian scholars are supplemented by contributions from Stephen White, John Hudson and Gerd Althoff, to provide a new baseline for discussing both the strategies pursued in the political game and those used to settle local disputes. Using practice and process as key analytical concepts, these authors explore formal law and litigation in conjunction with non-formal legal proceedings such as out-of-court mediation, rituals, emotional posturing, and feuding. Their insights place the Northern medieval world in a European context of dispute studies. With introductory sections on social structure, sources materials, and the historiography of Scandinavian dispute studies. Contributors are Gerd Althoff, Catharina Andersson, Kim Esmark, Lars Ivar Hansen, Lars Hermanson, John Hudson, Audur G. Magnusdottir, Hans Jacob Orning, Helle Vogt and Stephen D. White.

An indispensable resource for all levels, this handbook provides up-to-date, in-depth summaries of the most important theories in criminology. * Provides original, cutting-edge, and in-depth summaries of the most important theories in criminology * Covers the origins and assumptions behind each theory, explores current debates and research, points out knowledge gaps, and offers directions for future research * Encompasses theory, research, policy, and practice, with recommendations for further reading at the end of each essay * Features discussions of broad issues and topics related to the field, such as the correlates of crime, testing theory, policy, and prediction * Clearly and accessibly written by leading scholars in the field as well as up-and-coming scholars

Readings in Health, Medicine, and Society offers students carefully selected readings that provide them with a broad and well-rooted knowledge base in global and U.S. medical sociology. Unit I provides students with an overview of the field and examines select concepts and theoretical perspectives. Unit II illustrates the ways in which culture impacts health and health care systems. Unit III examines inequalities at the individual and societal levels. In Unit IV, students investigate how political and corporate structures impact people's health choices and behaviors. Unit V describes the key variables involved in the socialization of Western doctors, reviews the ways folk medicines differ from the Western paradigm, and illustrates an example of healing practices outside Western medicine. Unit VI provides a review of emerging medical technologies as they relate to sociology and offers a critical analysis of pharmaceutical technology. Unit VII critically examines the history of power building by U.S. doctors. The final unit offers a brief overview of the history of bioethics through a discussion of the Nuremburg Code, followed by an examination of patient autonomy and informed consent. Featuring a unique sociological perspective, Readings in Health, Medicine, and Society is an ideal resource for courses in medical sociology and public health.

Although the Information Age is often described as a new era, its conceptual roots stretch back to the profound changes that occurred during the Age of Reason and Revolution. When Information Came of Age argues that the key to the present era lies in understanding the systems developed in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries to gather, store, transform, display, and communicate information.

This book provides an introduction to core concepts in sociology. Accessibly written chapters illustrate the history and practice of sociological work. Recent areas of social science inquiry, e.g., globalization and the Internet are also covered. There are profiles of more than 70 notable sociologists. In addition, there is information on training and working as a sociologist. This book provides an introduction to core conepts in sociology. Written in a readable, accessible style, it uses a mix of both classic studies and current references to illustrate sociological concepts and to underscore their continuing relevance. It examines what sociology is, why sociology is important, and why we study it. It demonstrates how various social forces impact our lives and form our social experiences explaining that, when we understand these forces, we can better make sense of the world around us, better understand ourselves, and better participate in shaping the future for ourselves and for others. The book extends traditional applications of these core concepts by focusing on their application to globalization and the Internet. A series of biographical profiles highlight the careers of more than 70 notable sociologists as well as others, who have contributed to the field. There is a chapter devoted to careers in sociology. Each chapter has a list of additional print and nonprint resources.

Health and social care decisions, and how they impact a family, are often viewed from the perspective of the individual family member making them-for example, the role of the parent in surrogacy questions, the care of the elderly, or decisions that involve fetuses or organ donations. What About the Family? represents a concerted, collaborative effort to depart from this practice-it rather shows that the family unit as a whole is intrinsic and inseparable from patient's ethical decisions. This deeper level of thinking about families and health care poses an entirely new set of difficult questions. Which family members are relevant in influencing a patient? What is a family, in the first place? What duties does a family have to its own members? What makes an ethics of families distinctive from health care ethics, an ethic of care or feminist ethics is that it theorizes relationships characterized by ongoing intimacy and partiality among people who are not interchangeable, and remains centered on the practices of responsibility arising from these relationships. What About the Family? edited by bioethicists Hilde Lindemann, Marian Verkerk, and Janice McLaughlin, represents an interdisciplinary effort, drawing, among other resources, on its authors' backgrounds in sociology, nursing, philosophy, bioethics, and the medical sciences. Contributors begin from the assumption that any ethical examination of the significance of family ties to health and social care will benefit from a dialogue with the debates about family occuring in these other disciplinary areas, and examine why families matter, how families are recognized, how families negotiate responsibilities, how families can participate in treatment decision making, and how justice operates in families.

"Social networks are collections of individuals linked together by a set of relations. The linkage of social networks to people and business contexts as well as to critical government domains is important for the emerging information ecosystems of the knowledge society. Knowledge Networks: The Social Software Perspective concentrates on strategies that exploit emerging technologies for the knowledge effectiveness in social networks. This comprehensive book delivers an excellent mix of information for readers and is a must for those thirsty for knowledge on social networks and information systems."

What was once taboo - faith at work - is increasingly accepted in corporate America. From secretaries to CEOs, growing numbers of businesspeople today want to bring their faith to work. Yet they wrestle with how to do this effectively and appropriately in a pluralistic corporate setting. For help they turn not to their clergy, but to their peers and to a burgeoning cottage industry on spirituality at work. They attend conferences and seminars, participate in Bible study and prayer groups, and read books, blogs, and eNewsletters. They see their faith as a resource for ethical guidance and to help find meaning and purpose in their work.
In God at Work, David W. Miller looks at how this Faith at Work movement developed and considers its potential value for business and society. Done well, the integration of faith and work has positive implications at the personal level, as well as for corporate ethics and the broader economic sphere. At the same time, increasing expressions of religion and spiritual practices at work also present the threat of divisiveness and discrimination.
Drawing on the insights of theological ethics as well as the sociology of religion, Miller analyzes the history of the modern day Faith at Work movement from its roots in the late 19th century to its modern formulation and trajectory. He examines the diversity of its members and modes of expression, and constructs a new framework for understanding, interpreting, and critiquing the movement and its future. Miller concludes that workers and professionals have a deep and lasting desire to live a holistic life, to integrate the claims of their faith with the demands of their work. He documents the surprisingabdication of this field by church and theological academy and its embrace, ironically, by the management academy.
Offering compelling new evidence of the depth and breadth of spirituality at work, Miller concludes that faith at work is a bona fide social movement and here to stay. He establishes the importance of this movement, identifies the possibilities and problems, and points toward future research questions. God at Work is essential reading for business scholars and leaders, theologians and clergy, and anyone interested in the integration of faith and work.

Gilkey's latest work takes the measure of the current American religious and cultural crisis, assesses recent theological responses to it, and shows how these illumine our understanding of the ongoing creationism controversy. Throughout, Gilkey articulates a faith- stance responsive to the contemporary world of radical pluralism and moral uncertainity - without retreating to simplistic dogmatism. Gilkey's vision of a "blue twilight" in which light fights with dark in religion and culture, stands as a stark reminder of what is at stake in the future of American religious life.

Culture is essential to everything we do and is going to play a very significant role in the world of the future. In spite of this, most of us have only a hazy understanding of culture and do not realize how it will affect individual, institutional, community, national, and international affairs. This volume delves into the domain of culture--both as a concept and as a reality--and proposes a formulation of the world system of the future according to culture's highest and most enduring principles. The author draws on many disciplines--anthropology, sociology, philosophy, cosmology, history, economics, and the arts--to make his case that culture and cultures should be accorded a central position in global development and human affairs in the future.

This unique edited volume by some of the leading scholars in the field, examines the importance, or non-importance, of the personalities of political leaders in determining the outcomes of democratic elections. The book argues, contrary to conventional wisdom, that relatively few voters are swayed by candidates' personal characteristics. Their findings imply that modern democratic pointers is not nearly as candidate-cent red and personality-orientated as is often supposed. They also suggest that parties' policies and their performance in office usually count for far more than the men and women they chose as their leaders.

Globalization has, within academic, political and business circles alike, become the buzz word of the 1990s, conjuring an ever growing diversity of associations, connotations and attendant mythologies. In this volume an array of international academics assess the contribution of the globalization thesis, in its various guises, to our understanding of social, political and economic change in contemporary societies. They expose, challenge and demystify many of the exaggerated and over-generalized claims made about globalization, whilst developing a distinctive "third wave" perspective on the world we inhabit and the processes currently reconfiguring it.

Distributional issues may not have always been among the main concerns of the economic profession. Today, in the beginning of the 2000s, the position is different. During the last quarter of a century, economic growth proved to be unsteady and rather slow on average. The situation of those at the bottom ceased to improve regularly as in the preceding fast growth and full-employment period. Europe has seen prolonged unemployment and there has been widening wage dispersion in a number of OECD countries. Rising affluence in rich countries coexists, in a number of such countries, with the persistence of poverty. As a consequence, it is difficult nowadays to think of an issue ranking high in the public economic debate without some strong explicit distributive implications. Monetary policy, fiscal policy, taxes, monetary or trade union, privatisation, price and competition regulation, the future of the Welfare State are all issues which are now often perceived as conflictual because of their strong redistributive content.

Economists have responded quickly to the renewed general interest in distribution, and the contents of this Handbook are very different from those which would have been included had it been written ten or twenty years ago. It has now become common to have income distribution variables playing a pivotal role in economic models. The recent interest in the relationship between growth and distribution is a good example of this. The surge of political economy in the contemporary literature is also a route by which distribution is coming to re-occupy the place it deserves. Within economics itself, the development of models of imperfect information and informational asymmetries have not only provided a means of resolving the puzzle as to why identical workers get paid different amounts, but have also caused reconsideration of the efficiency of market outcomes. These models indicate that there may not necessarily be an efficiency/equity trade-off; it may be possible to make progress on both fronts.

The introduction and subsequent 14 chapters of this Handbook cover in detail all these new developments, insisting at the same time on how they tie with the previous literature on income distribution. The overall perspective is intentionally broad. As with landscapes, adopting various points of view on a given issue may often be the only way of perceiving its essence or reality. Accordingly, income distribution issues in the various chapters of this volume are considered under their theoretical or their empirical side, under a normative or a positive angle, in connection with redistribution policy, in a micro or macro-economic context, in different institutional settings, at various point of space, in a historical or contemporaneous perspective. Specialized readers will go directly to the chapter dealing with the issue or using the approach they are interested in. For them, this Handbook will be a clear and sure reference. To more patient readers who will go through various chapters of this volume, this Handbook should provide the multi-faceted view that seems necessary for a deep understanding of most issues in the field of distribution.

For more information on the Handbooks in Economics series, please see our home page on http: //www.elsevier.nl/locate/hes

The practice of everyday life in Tana Toraja (South Sulawesi, Indonesia) is structured by a series of public events, of which funerals are the most important. Even after Indonesia was hit by an economic crisis in the late 1990s, thousands of extravagant funeral ceremonies, requiring huge expenditures, were still organized each year. To understand the paradoxes and complexities of Torajan livelihoods, Edwin de Jong develops an approach that goes beyond existing economically biased perspectives on livelihoods by including both the cultural and the economic realm, positioned in the socio-political world with a transnational perspective, placed against a historical background, while not losing sight of diversity and individual creativity. It also advances the ethnography of Tana Toraja and the comparative study between numerous similar societies.

Today almost half of all Americans decline to define themselves as either "liberal" or "conservative." In fact, modern liberalism and conservatism seem hopelessly fragmented ideologies. Liberals claim to believe in individual freedom yet advocate a more collectivistic approach to government and an increasingly paternalistic role for the state. Conservatives are hopelessly divided between two incompatible ideals--the highly individualistic, limited-state philosophy of classical liberalism and an older, more collectivistic tradition of cultural conservatism that holds government responsible for shaping social morality. As a result, modern liberals are economic collectivists and moral individualists, while conservatives are economic individualists and moral collectivists.

Centrists reject each of these fragmented and polarized approaches to politics. We believe that government has a role to play in structuring social and economic opportunities and in reinforcing basic moral norms, yet we are deeply troubled by ever-expanding government. We reject libertarianism, left-liberalism, and the various schools of conservatism as a model for government.

Part I of "The Political Centrist" briefly traces the trajectory of the liberal and conservative traditions. It argues that modern liberalism is an unprincipled fusion of classical liberal and socialist ideals while modern conservatism is an untenable hybrid of economic liberalism and social conservatism. Part II offers a centrist approach to many of the most contentious contemporary political and social issues. Those include:

-- abortion

-- affirmative action

-- the death penalty

-- gay marriage

-- illegal immigration

-- judicial activism

-- the relationship of religion and politics

-- the role of government in the economy