Every society must find a way to resolve the tension between individual interests and the common good. Today, poorer nations bear the added burden of sagging economics and colossal debt, hardly a sound basis for sustaining a semblance of civil rights or social justice. Cuba stands apart, as a small and poor country, which nevertheless has established standards of access to education, health care and housing that are among the highest in the world. An understanding of the legal system that has fostered and continues to protect this singular achievement offers inarguably important lessons for the global legal and policy-making community. Debra Evenson's eloquent analysis of Cuban law and society first appeared in 1994, and remains the only detailed, first-hand treatment of the subject. This thoroughly revised second edition incorporates the many changes that have taken place in Cuba during the last decade. The author finds a regime still unalterably committed to preserving fundamental principles of socialism, even as it struggles against enormous odds to maintain a secure place in the global economy. As it analyzes the substantive and procedural issues of the various fields of law, judicial administration and legal practice, Law and Society in Contemporary Cuba explores at every turn the ongoing "reinvention" of socialism that Cuba has chosen to pursue. Cuba's commitment to a sustainable socialist economy in the prevailing market-driven global context colors the numerous recent reforms that introduce decentralized decision making and management at local and enterprise levels. The author explains the effects of de-subsidization of state enterprises on legal issues arising inlabor-management relations, banking, and taxation, and describes new "private" initiatives such as expanded areas of foreign investment, individual ownership of farms, and increased self-employment incentives. Other fields of law covered include criminal justice, family law, environmental regulation, intellectual property, and judicial procedure. Ms. Evenson does not turn a blind eye to the undeniable limitations on freedom of expression and political association imposed by Cuban law. However, her analysis also reveals the express and persistent U.S. hostility and efforts to undermine the current government that have a direct impact upon reducing the political and legal space for spontaneous debate inside Cuba. In doing so, she does readers an additional service by allowing us to reflect on the outcomes of one of Washington's most consistent foreign policy directions over the past four decades. By illuminating the relationship between law and social policy in a system striving to guarantee basic social rights, racial and gender equality and equitable distribution of wealth, this book is a major contribution to legal theory and invites re-examination of the appropriate balance between social justice and individual autonomy as perceived by the dominant legal culture.

According to mainstream economic thinking, inspired by the ideas of Smith, Ricardo and others, globalisation of the world economy is profitable. But unlike these classic writers, neoliberal economists pay little attention to the moral and social consequences of economic policies. Despite the fact that present social circumstances differ a great deal from those in the time of Smith and Ricardo they keep maintaining that "an invisible hand" will further social ends. In doing so they ignore growing poverty worldwide and the exclusion of countries from the international legal order and of people from the right to social participation and freedom. This book pays attention to economic aspects of globalisation and also to philosophical, legal, social, cultural, ethical and ecological aspects. Its aim is to contribute to possible solutions for worldwide problems that accompany the globalisation process.

Kauffman's perspective on progress in America-from the point of view of those who lost-revives forgotten figures and reinvigorates dormant causes as he examines the characters and arguments from six critical battles that forever altered the American landscape: the debates over child labor, school consolidation, women's suffrage, the back-to-the-land movement, good roads and the Interstate Highway System, and a standing army. The integration of these subjects and the presentation of the anti-Progress case as a coherent political tendency encompassing several issues and many years is unprecedented. With wit, passion, and an arsenal of long-neglected sources, Kauffman measures the cost of progress in 20th-Century America and exposes the elaborate plans behind seemingly inevitable reforms. Kauffman brings to life such people and places as Ida Tarbell, the muckraker who thought that suffrage would ruin women; Onward, Indiana, the town that took up arms to defend its high school from death by consolidation; and the motley band of agrarian poets and ghetto dwellers who tried to stop the bulldozers that paved over America. He maintains that these forlorn causes-usually regarded as quaint, archaic, and hopeless-rested, in large part, upon quintessential American ideals: limited government, human-scale community, and family autonomy. The victory of progress has uprooted our citizens, swollen the central state at the expense of liberty, and sucked much of the life from what was once a nation of small communities.

This book brings together studies by seventeen specialists in the science of religions in which they relate the changes in their discipline to the changes which have occurred in a select number of modern(ising) societies worldwide. It attempts to study these developments in their relation to and as conditioned and constrained by cultural change, changes in educational systems, technology, population (for example migration), economic patterns, politics, and, last but not least, religious systems. The essays focus on resp. France, Germany, the Netherlands, Spain, the USA, Turkey, Israel, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Indonesia, Japan, and China. Written in honour of Dr. Lammert Leertouwer, professor of History of Religions and the Comparative Study of Religions at Leiden University from 1979 until his retirement in 1997, the book is particularly important for all those who are interested in the religious, social and political contexts of the academic Study of Religions in general and in the various countries dealt with in particular.

What happens when previously autonomous firms from different countries, each with their own identities, routines and capabilities, come together inside a single multinational corporation? Can a cooperative strategy be established that advances the development of the multinational as a whole, or do mutual misunderstandings and the unintended consequences of strategic interaction among the players' lead instead to endemic conflict and disintegration?
This book tackles these novel and important questions through an empirical study of the strategic constitution of an 'actually existing' multinational. It does so by tracing the historical construction of the multinational corporation from the confluence of multiple formerly independent firms and analyzing the interacting web of strategies pursued by different actors within it. The analysis reveals how workers, unionists, subsidiary managers, and corporate executives pursue separate strategic games rooted in their local contexts, whose global outcome contrasts sharply with idealized views of the multinational as an integrated and coordinated organization.
By comparing these findings to those of the broader literature, the book proceeds to a theoretical examination of the challenges of managing the multinational, and the difficulties of resolving them through conventional organizational means. The authors propose new procedural solutions aimed at fostering mutual recognition and knowledge exchange within the multinational corporation, and explore how a multinational public may be created to press for the necessary reforms in corporate governance. As the success of such reforms is far from preordained, the book concludes with a seriesof alternative scenarios that illustrate the many obstacles to a smooth continuation of the globalization process.
This is an important and original study of significance for researchers, academics, and advanced students of international business, business strategy, comparative management and organizational studies.

The age-friendly community movement is a global phenomenon, currently growing with the support of the WHO and multiple international and national organizations in the field of aging. Drawing on an extensive collection of international case studies, this volume provides an introduction to the movement. The contributors - both researchers and practitioners - touch on a number of current tensions and issues in the movement and offer a wide-ranging set of recommendations for advancing age-friendly community development. The book concludes with a call for a radical transformation of a medical and lifestyle model of aging into a relational model of health and social/individual wellbeing.

It's hard to imagine a good life without friends. But why is friendship so valuable? What is friendship at all? What unites friends and distinguishes them from others? Is the preference given to friends rationally and morally justifiable? This collection examines answers given by classic philosophers and offers new answers by contemporary thinkers.

This volume brings together theoretical meditations and empirical studies of the intersection of culture, power and history in social life. New strategies for marketing and advertising to children, the production of gendered subjectivity in maquiladora factories, the racialized economic history of the construction of the Chicago School of sociology, and the normalization of cosmetic plastic surgery in contemporary America-these are some of the crossroads under investigation here, where cultural meanings and practices are set against historical landscapes of power. Included are contributions from William Gamson, Juliet Schor, Stephen Pfohl, Arthur and Marilouise Kroker, Jackie Orr, Leslie Salzinger, Eva Garroutte, Davarian Baldwin, Ramon Grosfoguel, Charlotte Ryan, Danielle Egan, Charles Sarno, Steve Farough, Karen McCorkmack, Abigail Brooks, Aimee Van Wagenen and William Wood.

This book provides an overview of the ongoing transition in China's health system, especially focusing on the new healthcare reform initiated in 2009. First, it reviews the changes in China's healthcare system from the 1950s to 2008, establishing the situation when the reform was introduced. The book subsequently analyzes the social and economic context in which the health system is embedded. Since the primary focus is on the new healthcare reform, the book introduces the blueprint and the year-for-year development of the new healthcare reform, as well as the specific reforms in health financing, public hospitals, and primary care. Given its central importance in the health system, the book also described major trends in long-term care in the past several years. In addition, it examines the health policy-making process with a case study of the New Cooperative Medical Scheme of China. Lastly, the book assesses the performance of China's health system and predicts future developmental trends.

Eastern Europe in Transformation examines the history of sociology in Eastern Europe during the period leading up to and including glasnost and perestroika. Taking advantage of the raising of the iron curtain, the volume editors have assembled 25 contributors from throughout the region to chronicle the impact these developments have had on sociology, as well as any contributions sociologists might have made to them. The result is a fascinating account of a discipline under siege, struggling to come to terms with its place in a changing social milieu. In addition, the work offers Western sociologists unprecedented access to the sociological research carried out in Eastern Europe during this period.

Financial markets have often been seen by economists as efficient mechanisms that fulfill vital functions within economies. But do financial markets really operate in such a straightforward manner? The Sociology of Financial Markets approaches financial markets from a sociological perspective. It seeks to provide an adequate sociological conceptualization of financial markets, and examine who the actors within them are, how they operate within which networks, and under which cognitive and cultural assumptions. Patterns of trading, trading room coordination, cognition and emotions, and global interaction are studied to help us better understand how markets work and the types of reasoning underlying these institutions. Financial markets also have a structural impact on the governance of social and economic institutions. Until now, sociologists have examined issues of governance mostly with respect to the legal framework of financial transactions. Contributions in this book highlight the ways in which financial markets shape the inner working and structure of corporations and their governance. Finally, the book seeks to investigate the symbolic aspects of financial markets. Financial markets affect not only economic and social structures but also societal cultural images and frameworks of meaning. Barbara Czarniawska demonstrates how representations of gender relationships are a case in point. Arguing that financial markets are not simply neutral with respect to questions of gender but enhance certain images and interpretations of men and women. Addressing many important topics from a sociological perspective for the first time, this book will be key reading for academics, researchers, and advanced students of financial markets in Business, Management, Economics, Finance and Sociology.

Cyberculture is a particularly complex issue. It is seen as a fantastic meeting point of classic philosophers with postmodern theorists, politicians with community engineers, contemporary sophists with software engineers, and artists with rhetoricians. Today, cyberculture is identified highly with new media and digital rhetoric and could be used to create a comprehensive map of modern culture. Present and Future Paradigms of Cyberculture in the 21st Century is a comprehensive research publication that explores the influence of the internet and internet culture on society as a whole. Highlighting a wide range of topics such as digital media, activism, and psychology, this book is ideal for academicians, researchers, sociologists, psychologists, anthropologists, and students.

Scholars of religion have always worked closely with media of one kind or another, from sacred books and archaic languages to cassette-sermons and the Internet. Yet comparatively little attention has been paid to the ways we actually use these and other media in the pursuit of historical inquiry. Drawing on ethnographic and archival research conducted on the Indonesian island of Bali, this book offers a critique of the media-related assumptions underpinning fields as diverse in their subject matter and approach as the history of religions, British cultural studies and Old Javanese philology. Its central contention is that more nuanced attention to problems of media will have serious implications for how we think about the study of religions, past and present.

The closing years of the 20th century will be remembered as a time of tumultuous change. The various essays are attempts to understand the changes and ground them in the context of the logic of the contemporary world-system. The essays are divided into two main themes: structural transformations and regional ramifications of global transformations. East Asia, the Pacific Rim, European periphery, and the Middle East are all examined to determine if fundamental changes are occuring. Scholars and upper level and graduate students of economic history, developmental economics, regional economics, international economics, and political economy will find provocative contrasts and insights in this collection of essays, presented at the 18th annual Political Economy of the World-System Conference.

This book provides a comprehensive examination of the complex issues surrounding the regulation of the medical profession. It offers up-to-date information on the current legislative framework and institutional arrangements surrounding the regulation in the United Kingdom. Well organized and written in an accessible way, it offers an insight into key sociological theories surrounding medical regulation. It gives a historically situated analysis of the contemporary relationship between medicine, the state and the public, and an overview of relevant social scientific research. Case studies highlight the practical or applied circumstances in which issues can occur. Readers will gain insight into possible future directions for medical governance.

A much needed reference aid for the academic and national defense communities, this book provides a framework for the historical and comparative study of the military culture of Arab society. In sections considering warfare in Arab traditions, military roles in medieval Islam, and Arab armies in the modern age, each chapter's bibliography is preceded by a background essay, designed to assist researchers who are unfamiliar with the general outline of Arab history or the thematic bent of Arabic historiography. The work also includes a glossary and tables of Islamic dynasties. Written primarily for professors and students of comparative military history, national and service intelligence analysts, and students of Arab-Islamic or Middle Eastern history, this work will also be of use to the generalist historian.

Essays on the capture of slaves and the Middle Passage, the identities of the enslaved and their lives after capture, the economics of the slave trade, the struggle to end slavery, and the slave trade's legacy, as well as biographies of important figures, primary documents, and an annotated bibliography make this the perfect source for student research on this critically important historical topic. In 1502, the first African slaves were taken to Hispaniola. In 1888, Brazil became the last western-hemisphere country to outlaw slavery. Yet for the nearly 400 years in between, slavery played a major role in linking the histories of Africa, North and South America, and Europe. The Atlantic Slave Trade begins with an overview of African slavery in the new world, then delves deeply into the phenomenon itself with essays on five separate issues: • The capture of slaves and the Middle Passage • Identities of the enslaved and their lives after capture • The economics of the slave trade • The struggle to end slavery • The slave trade's legacy Following this extensive analytical section are biographies of important persons—both black and white—in the history of the slave trade. Thirteen primary documents show students the actual words of the participants. An annotated bibliography and a timeline complete the book, making it the perfect source for student research on this heartrending and critically important historical topic.

This book offers a broad-based critical examination of the consequences--moral, psychological, sociological, educational, and economic--of increasing specialization in today's world. According to the author, we have now reached a stage where the education and professional work of both elite and non-elite groups are so narrowly focused as to diminish both the individual and society. The development of the complete individual has given way to the development of a complete collective, made up of narrowly focused, fragmented individuals. And educators--the very people who should be able to lead us out of this path of increasing specalization--have themselves fallen victim, unable to function outside their own specialized areas of expertise. This controversial work will be of interest to scholars and students in social psychology, philosophy, educational foundations, economics, Third World development, and business--in short, to all thinking members of modern society.

This work departs from other important sociological studies of voluntary associations in its use of occupation, rather than status and social class, as the clue to the nature of work conditions that directly affect participation in community voluntary associations.

Few people beyond South Carolina’s Lowcountry knew of Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston—Mother Emanuel—before the night of June 17, 2015, when a twenty-one-year-old white supremacist walked into Bible study and slaughtered the church’s charismatic pastor and eight other worshippers. Although the shooter had targeted Mother Emanuel—the first A.M.E. church in the South—to agitate racial strife, he did not anticipate the aftermath: an outpouring of forgiveness from the victims’ families and a reckoning with the divisions of caste that have afflicted Charleston and the South since the earliest days of European settlement.

Mother Emanuel explores the fascinating history that brought the church to that moment and the depth of the desecration committed in its fellowship hall. It reveals how African Methodism was cultivated from the harshest American soil, and how Black suffering shaped forgiveness into both a religious practice and a survival tool. Kevin Sack, who has written about race in his native South for more than four decades, uses the church to trace the long arc of Black life in the city where nearly half of enslaved Africans disembarked in North America and where the Civil War began. Through the microcosm of one congregation, he explores the development of a unique practice of Christianity, from its daring breakaway from white churches in 1817, through the traumas of Civil War and Reconstruction, to its critical role in the Civil Rights Movement and beyond.

At its core, Mother Emanuel is an epic tale of perseverance, not just of a congregation but of a people who withstood enslavement, Jim Crow, and all manner of violence with an unbending faith.

As a student, and in any profession based on your studies, good oral communication skills are essential. It is therefore extremely important to develop your ability to converse, to discuss, to argue persuasively, and to speak in public. This is one reason why, whatever subject you study, you will be encouraged to discuss your work in seminars and you will have opportunities to give short talks or presentations.
Most people probably take for granted their ability to speak; not thinking much about it until the have to address an audience, or attend an important interview. However, just as your first impressions of other people are based on how they look and how they speak - so are their impressions of you. In every conversation, as well as when you give a talk or presentation, or are interviewed, you are not only conveying information about the subject being discussed but also presenting yourself.
"Speaking for Yourself" provides clear, straightforward advice that will help you:
Be a good listener
Express yourself clearly and persuasively
Contribute effectively to discussions
Prepare talks or presentations
Prepare effective visual aids
Deliver effective presentations
Perform well in interviews
In short, it will help you to express your thoughts clearly and persuasively - and so to achieve your short and medium-term goals as a student, and your career goals.

Specially commissioned essays evaluating the work of David Martin, one of the most prominent British sociologists of religion. David Martin is a world-renowned sociologist, and one of the most prominent sociologists of religion ever to have emerged from the British Isles. Noted for his work on secularization, Pentecostalism, the Church of England and religious trends in general, his work has influenced the entire shape of a discipline that is now firmly established in many universities. This volume celebrates his 70th birthday, and his substantial and varied contributions to the sociology of religion stretching over a 50 year period. Andrew Walker and Martyn Percy have collated and edited a collection of essays - all freshly commissioned - that evaluate Martin's work. Contributors include Bryan Wilson, Steve Bruce, Grace Davie, Graham Howes, Richard Fenn, Karel Dobbelaere, Christie Davies, Robin Gill, Bernice Martin and Kieran Flanagan. This timely and appreciative volume is essential reading for all who want to understand the shape of the discipline of the sociology of religion.