The contents of this volume reflect the multiple foci that have historically defined the series. We present here two papers on methodological issues facing the study of social movements, four papers on specific social movements or social movement organizations (including two on environmental movements), two papers on aspects of social change and inequality, and one study critically analyzing the conflict resolution prospects in a situation of protracted violence.

When we catch a bus, visit a doctor, borrow a book from the library or enrol in a course we benefit from the social policies of government. Talking Policy explains how the myriad programs and services we take for granted are developed and delivered, and how this fits into the political process. There is a human and political aspect to social policy-making; it's not all rational solutions to measurable problems. The authors explain how issues come to be defined as social problems, and offer an account of the historical development of social policy and the welfare state in Australia. They also outline the competing political and philosophical ideas which influence the different ways in which governments respond to social inequality and needs in the community.With detailed case studies from variety of areas of social policy making, Talking Policy is a valuable introduction to this complex and important field. Talking Policy is an informative, insightful book that is also absorbing and challenging.' Lois Bryson, Emeritus Professor, University of Newcastle With a commitment to reinvigorate policy debate, the authors make a convincing case that at its heart policy-making is about competing ethical visions, that ideas count, and that words serve as tools in this political and contested activity.'Associate Professor, Carol Bacchi, University of Adelaide

'An alluvial goldfield of social theorists - nuggets lying around all over the place.'Bob ConnellWho's who in the social theory zoo? This book introduces some of the leading social theorists in short, lively entries by leading Australian scholars. Social Theory covers thinkers from Althusser to Williams, by locals from Alexander to Yeatman.For beginner and enthusiast alike, it gives a sense of the state of the art in classical and modern social theory. Social Theory is an indispensable reference for undergraduates, postgraduates, academics and anyone else interested in the ideas behind social and political theory and cultural studies today.

This book brings together a series of papers and responses to papers presented at a conference on the minimum core content of socio-economic rights in Pretoria, South Africa, during August 2000.

The papers describe, first from an international law perspective and then from a South African perspective, these socio-economic rights. In the process, the normative content of rights concerned is given flesh: the authors identify particular obligations that can be said to form the core of rights, such as the right to housing, the right to food, rights to education and social security and assistance. At the same time, the concept of a minimum core obligations of economic and social rights is problematised and the difficulties of using concepts, developed within the general and abstract realm of international law, in the more particular and concrete context of domestic rights adjudication are explored.

As a result, this book contains a great deal of practical information and is useful for human rights practitioners, both legal and non-legal. It also provides some critical reflection on the conceptual framework from which it is derived.

Written by a star cast of contributors, this introductory undergraduate text provides students with a rich, stimulating and authoritative account of key debates and issues in sociology today. Carefully structured and edited to take account of the undergraduate student reader's needs, the essays explore sociological understandings of a range of core topics and critically examines what key issues have emerged for debate from past and current research.

The Sacred is the Profane collects nine essays written over several years by William Arnal and Russell McCutcheon, specialists in two very different areas of the field (one, a scholar of Christian origins and the other working on the history of the modern study of religion). They share a convergent perspective: not simply that both the category and concept "religion" is a construct, something that we cannot assume to be "natural" or universal, but also that the ability to think and act "religiously" is, quite specifically, a modern, political category in its origins and effects, the mere by-product of modern secularism. These collected essays, substantially rewritten for this volume, advance current scholarly debates on secularism-debates which, the authors argue, insufficiently theorize the sacred/secular, church/state, and private/public binaries by presupposing religion (often under the guise of such terms as "religiosity," "faith," or "spirituality") to historically precede the nation-state. The essays return, again and again, to the question of what "religion"-word and concept-accomplishes, now, for those who employ it, whether at the popular, political, or scholarly level. The focus here for two writers from seemingly different fields is on the efficacy, costs, and the tactical work carried out by dividing the world between religious and political, church and state, sacred and profane. As the essays make clear, this is no simple matter. Part of the reason for the incoherence and at the same time the stubborn persistence of both the word and idea of "religion" is precisely its multi-faceted nature, its plurality, its amenability to multiple and often self-contradictory uses. Offering an argument that builds as they are read, these papers explore these uses, including the work done by positing a human orientation to "religion," the political investment in both the idea of religion and the academic study of religion, and the ways in which the field of religious studies works to shape, and stumbles against, its animating conception.

Frank Sayi grew up in Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe, in the 1970s. His childhood straddled two very significant periods in his country's history, both of which heavily influenced his memoir. The first was the war of liberation (1975-1979), closely followed by the post-independence internecine war (1981-1987).

Crucially, Frank was raised in a native reserve in colonial Rhodesia, a country under white minority rule, governed by Ian Smith's racist and illegal regime. Native reserves were places of repression, and containment-replete of hope.

Frank and his two older sisters, Thoko and Gift, lived with their grandmother, a stern, wise, mercurial matriarch, capable of intimidating severity, and her son Uncle Sami. Frank's mother, the main breadwinner, lived in the city. Frank and his siblings didn't see much of her; in his mind she was just another sister.

The memoir is intricately woven around the lives of the members of Frank's immediate family, whom he uses to foreground the tragic lives of a people caught within the web of war.

Their lives were extremely hard. During the war a dusk-to-dawn curfew was declared, schools were closed, and food supply chains and clothing contaminated with poison. Thousands of refugees fled the warring factions. There seemed to Frank to be no difference between government soldiers, various law enforcement agencies, and the guerrillas fighting for freedom: they were all men of violence, who terrorised the civilian population.

However, by June 1979 there was a brief hiatus in fighting. And after protracted negotiations, Blacks gained their independence from white rule in April 1980. The country had a new name: Zimbabwe; Blacks welcomed a new national anthem-Nkosi sikelel'Africa! - God Bless Africa - but after an extra-ordinarily convenient discovery of an arms cache was made on a farm in Matabeleland, the stronghold of the opposition, Robert Mugabe declared total war on Matabeleland. He unleashed Gukurundi, his North Korean-trained partisan army on the Ndebele people who hadn't voted for him. Simply put, this was a war of retribution.

By 1982 Frank had joined his father's family in N'kayi, one of the areas to experience the most intense violence and massacres by Gukurahundi soldiers. By using scorched-earth tactics, they brought famine, disease, murder, rape, and terror.

Within their first week of deployment, they'd ruthlessly dispensed with more than 2000 lives.

And as a silhouette of war, Frank's memoir showcases human capacity for extra-ordinary violence, but also, compassion, endurance, survival and the triumph of the human spirit. It binds together the narratives from two wars and acts as lens through which the implications of political violence in Zimbabwe can be understood. Frank goes beyond and beneath standard historical narratives of war and examines the psychological impact of war on ordinary people.

But more importantly, Frank's memoir tells of a childhood conditioned in the shadow of the mayhem brought about by the structure and dehumanising effects of colonialism and it's dreadful legacy, and the impact of civil war. Yet it is full of moving, hilarious, and beautiful stories of innocence and the increasingly hard-won experience of a war-torn childhood, and the development of a man who was determined to leave this violence behind.

'Could there be a more relevant book for our times? While there are plenty of books on persuasion, none tells us how to influence others through the quiet art of understanding. Vengoechea implores us to truly hear other people (maybe for the first time) and is the perfect author of a book on why we should listen like we mean it' Nir Eyal, bestselling author of Hooked and Indistractable Hear me out. Does this sound like you? You end a team meeting and can't recall a single thing that was said. You leave a conversation with a friend feeling disconnected and unfulfilled. You think you and your boss are on the same page, only to find out you haven't been meeting expectations. Fortunately, listening, like any communication skill, can be improved, and Ximena Vengoechea can show you how. As a user researcher, she has spent nearly a decade facilitating hundreds of conversations at LinkedIn, Twitter and Pinterest. It's her job to uncover the truth behind how people use, and really think about, her company's products. In Listen Like You Mean It, she reveals the tips and tricks of the trade, including: - How to quickly build rapport with strangers - Which questions help people unlock what they need to say - When it's time to throw out the script entirely - How to recover from listener's drain

Despite the rhetoric, the people of Sub-Saharan Africa are becoming poorer. From Tony Blair's Africa Commission, the G7 finance ministers' debt relief, the Live 8 concerts, the Make Poverty History campaign and the G8 Gleneagles promises, to the United Nations 2005 summit and the Hong Kong WTO meeting, Africa's gains have been mainly limited to public relations. The central problems remain exploitative debt and financial relationships with the North, phantom aid, unfair trade, distorted investment and the continent's brain/skills drain. Moreover, capitalism in most African countries has witnessed the emergence of excessively powerful ruling elites with incomes derived from financial-parasitical accumulation. Without overstressing the 'mistakes' of such elites, this title contextualises Africa's wealth outflow within a stagnant but volatile world economy.

A revolutionary approach to longevity and ageing

In many western countries, people complain of turning invisible after 50. When they hit their mid-60s, they expect or are forced to retire, cutting them adrift from social networks and leading to a loneliness epidemic. But it doesn’t have to be this way.

In Healthy to 100, Ken Stern uncovers the ground-breaking secrets of the winners in healthy longevity – countries like Singapore, Spain, Japan and South Korea – who are all top-rankers on the ‘Healthy Longevity Index’, the best measure not just of living long, but living long well.

Bringing together the latest science of ageing and real-life stories, this book offers us a personal and societal guide to living a fulfilling life after 65: one where purpose, learning, community and intergenerational connection are the pillars of good health. Rather than advocating for special diets or exercise regimens, Healthy to 100 offers a hopeful, attainable and research-backed model for anyone seeking a longer, healthier and purpose-driven life.

Despite the ongoing global expansion of Christianity, there remains a lack of comprehensive scholarship on its development in Asia. This volume fills the gap by exploring the world of Asian Christianity and its manifold expressions, including worship, theology, spirituality, inter-religious relations, interventions in society, and mission. The contributors, from over twenty countries, deconstruct many of the widespread misconceptions and interpretations of Christianity in Asia. They analyze how the growth of Christian beliefs throughout the continent is linked with the socio-political and cultural processes of colonization, decolonization, modernization, democratization, identity construction of social groups, and various social movements. With a particular focus on inter-religious encounters and emerging theological and spiritual paradigms, the volume provides alternative frames for understanding the phenomenon of conversion and studies how the scriptures of other religious traditions are used in the practice of Christianity within Asia. The Oxford Handbook of Christianity in Asia draws insightful conclusions on the historical, contemporary, and future trajectory of its subject by combining the contributions of scholars in a wide variety of disciplines, including theology, sociology, history, political science, and cultural studies. It will be an invaluable resource for understanding Christianity in a global context.

Since its publication in 1974, Blood of My Blood has become the most highly esteemed book on the subject. It is also rare in that it has been a popular best-seller and is widely used as a college text.

2.6 billion people are inhabitants of former British colonies.

The empire's influence upon the quarter of the planet it occupied, and its gravitational influence upon the world outside it, has been profound: from the spread of Christianity by missionaries, to nearly 1 in 3 driving on the left side of the road, to the origins of international law. Yet Britain's idea of its imperial history and the world's experience of it are two very different things. ­­

With an inimitable combination of wit, political insight and personal honesty, the award-winning author and journalist explores the international legacies of British empire – from the creation of tea plantations across the globe, to environmental destruction, conservation, and the imperial connotations of Royal tours.

His journey takes him from Barbados and Mauritius to India and Nigeria and beyond. In doing so, Sanghera demonstrates just how deeply British imperialism is baked into our world.

And why it’s time Britain was finally honest with itself about empire.

All of us have in our minds a cartoon image of what an autocratic state looks like, with a bad man at the top. But in the 21st century, that cartoon bears little resemblance to reality. Nowadays, autocracies are run not by one bad guy, but by sophisticated networks composed of kleptocratic financial structures, security services and professional propagandists. The members of these networks are connected not only within a given country, but among many countries. The corrupt, state-controlled companies in one dictatorship do business with corrupt, state-controlled companies in another. The police in one country can arm, equip, and train the police in another. The propagandists share resources―the troll farms that promote one dictator’s propaganda can also be used to promote the propaganda of another―and themes, pounding home the same messages about the weakness of democracy and the evil of America.

Unlike military or political alliances from other times and places, this group doesn’t operate like a bloc, but rather like an agglomeration of companies: Autocracy, Inc. Their relations are not based on values, but are rather transactional, which is why they operate so easily across ideological, geographical, and cultural lines. In truth, they are in full agreement about only one thing: Their dislike of us, the inhabitants of the democratic world, and their desire to see both our political systems and our values undermine.

That shared understanding of the world―where it comes from, why it lasts, how it works, how the democratic world has unwittingly helped to consolidate it, and how we can help bring it down―is the subject of this book.

Rich, wild and shimmering with mystery, Bog Queen is the new novel from Anna North, bestselling author of Reese's Book Club Pick Outlawed

In 2018, a young forensic scientist, homesick and adrift in the North of England, is heading to a coroner's office to identify a body. But this body, found in a moss-layered bog, is not like any Agnes has ever seen: its bones prove it was buried more than two thousand years ago, yet it is almost completely preserved.

The body draws the attention of numerous groups with competing interests: archaeologists desperate to study the bog, those who want to profit from the land's resources, a group of neo-pagans who demand the body be returned to its resting place. And underfoot, all along, there's the land itself: a teeming colony of moss, with its own dark stories to tell.

As Agnes becomes tangled in controversies stirred by her own discovery, she must face the deep history of what she has unearthed. Equally alive to post-Brexit England and Europe at the dawn of the Roman era, Bog Queen connects across time two young women learning to harness their strange strengths, in a landscape more mysterious than either can imagine.

This collection of insights about The Book of Mormon adds to and complements the author's legal publications about freedom of conscience, evidence and comparative constitutional law. The book includes insights distilled from contemporary anthropology, careful analysis of the doctrine of resurrection taught in The Book of Mormon, philosophical questions about the rule of law which inform life in contemporary society, and how reflection on the pervasive New Testament intertexuality in The Book of Mormon should increase the knowledge of modern readers. Important reading for scholars of religion and faith, and particularly those interested in understanding the beliefs and practices of members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints around the world.

This book provides a detailed history of Hindu goddess traditions with a special focus on the local goddesses of Andhra Pradesh, past and present. The antiquity and the evolution of these goddess traditions are illustrated and documented with the help of archaeological reports, literary sources, inscriptions and art. Tracing the symbols and images of goddess into the brahmanical (Saiva and Vaisnava), Buddhist, and Jaina religious traditions, the book argues effectively how and with what motivations goddesses and their symbolizations were appropriated and transformed. The book also examines the evolution of popular Hindu goddesses such as Durga and Kali, discussing their tribal and agricultural backgrounds. It also deals extensively with how and in what circumstances women are deified and shows how these deified women cults share characteristics with the village goddesses.

Exploring the potential of poetry and poetic language as a means of conveying perspectives on ageing and later life, this book examines questions such as 'how can we understand ageing and later life?' and 'how can we capture the ambiguities and complexities that the experiences of growing old in time and place entail?' As poetic language illuminates, transfigures and enchants our being in the world, it also offers insights into the existential questions that are amplified as we age, including the vulnerabilities and losses that humble us and connect us. Literary gerontology and narrative gerontology have highlighted the importance of linguistic representations of ageing. While the former has been concerned primarily with the analysis of published literary works, the latter has foregrounded the individual and collective meaning making through narrative resources in old age. There has, however, been less interest in how poetic language, both as a genre and as a practice, can illuminate ageing. This volume suggests a path towards the poetics of ageing by means of presenting analyses of published poetry on ageing written by poets from William Shakespeare to Wallace Stevens; the use of reading and writing poetry among ordinary people in old age; and the poetic nuances that emerge from other literary practices and contexts in relation to ageing - including personal poetic reflections from many of the contributing authors. The volume brings together international scholars from disciplinary backgrounds as diverse as cultural psychology, literary studies, theology, sociology, narrative medicine, cultural gerontology and narrative gerontology, and will deploy a variety of empirical and critical methodologies to explore how poetry and poetic language may challenge dominant discourses and illuminate alternative understandings of ageing.