"This well-crafted anthology provides us with rich material to stretch our thinking, concerning Sociology of Education, beyond the customary Eurocentric framework. It is comprehensive in scope, covering a variety of issues relevant to the educational scene in sub-Saharan Africa. The volume draws on the work of emerging and well established writers who focus on different areas that feature in the educational debate in Africa: inclusive education, school curricula, higher education, gender and equity, colonial and anti-colonial education, and African educational philosophies. It is a boon for scholars engaged not only in sociology of education but also in Gender Studies, Postcolonial Studies, Curriculum Studies, Comparative Education, Social Theory and Philosophy of Education."--Peter Mayo, University of Malta, author of "Gramsci, Freire and Adult Education "and "Liberating Praxis,"

What are the origins of charisma? Are these the same in the various forms of public life, in politics and the media as well as in religion? This interpretation of charisma argues that the basis of charisma in all its forms must be found in the often-obscure symbolic intersection between the inner world of the charismatic and external social and political reality. As illustrations of various facets of this argument, the author provides general analyses of charisma in politics, religion and the media, as well as individual studies of Churchill, Hitler, Krishnamurti, Bialik and Chaplin. This volume is intended for use on courses in political philosophy and theory, cultural and media studies, philosophy, psychology and history.

Based on a comprehensive review of human and societal evolution the book develops an approach to conscious, self-guided evolution. In the course of the evolutionary journey of our species, there have been three seminal events. The first happened some seven million yeas ago, when our humanoid ancestors entered on the evolutionary scene. Their journey toward the second crucial event lasted over six million years when - as the greatest event of our evolutionary history - homo sapiens sapiens, started the revolutionary process of cultural evolution. Today, we have arrived at the threshold of the third major event, the revolution of conscious evolution, ' when it becomes our responsibility to enter into the evolutionary design space and guide the evolutionary journey of our species. The book tells the story of the first six million years of the journey in just enough detail to understand how evolution had worked in times when it was primarily biological, driven by natural selection. With the human revolution some fifty thousand years ago, with the emergence of self-reflective consciousness, the evolutionary process transformed from biological into cultural. From this point on, the book follows the journey with detailed attention, in order to learn how cultural evolution works. The book is organized in three parts. Part One commences with an exposition of a brief history of the evolutionary idea through time with a focus on a review of the science of general evolution and specifically social and societal evolution. Next, the book unfolds the evolutionary story' of our species from the time when the first humanoids entered the evolutionary scene to our current era. Part Two develops a systems view of evolution, explores the ways and means of how evolution works, characterizes evolutionary consciousness and develops the idea of conscious evolution. Part Three builds upon the knowledge developed in the first two parts and sets forth the key conditions of conscious, self-guided evolution, elaborating the core condition, which is the acquisition of evolutionary competence through evolutionary learning. The focus of this part is on an approach to the design of evolutionary guidance systems that our families, neighborhoods, communities, organizations, social and societal systems can use to design the future they aspire to attain. The work is set aside from other statements in three important ways. It provides: (1) a comprehensive review of how evolution has worked with a focus on socio-cultural evolution, (2) an explanation of evolutionary consciousness and the conditions of engaging in conscious evolution, and (3) most significantly, it develops a detailed approach and a methodology to the design of evolutionary guidance systems.

This volume offers one of the first systematic analyses of the rise of modern social science. Contrary to the standard accounts of various social science disciplines, the essays in this volume demonstrate that modern social science actually emerged during the critical period between 1750 and 1850. It is shown that the social sciences were a crucial element in the conceptual and epistemic revolution, which parallelled and partly underpinned the political and economic transformations of the modern world. From a consistently comparative perspective, a group of internationally leading scholars takes up fundamental issues such as the role of the Enlightenment and the French Revolution in the shaping of the social sciences, the changing relationships between political theory and moral discourse, the profound transformation of philosophy, and the constitution of political economy and statistics.

Advances in Quality-of-Life Theory and Research is relevant to quality-of-life researchers working in the areas of Social Medicine, Sustainable Development, Social Indicators Research and Health Psychology/Behavioral Medicine.
This volume contains 14 chapters that represent a culmination of programmatic research in the science of quality of life (QOL). Each chapter offers interesting findings in different areas of QOL research and, together, the chapters reflect the very basic premise that QOL research is a broad interdisciplinary topic explored in a multidisciplinary manner. The research methods and conceptual models used by the different authors are exemplary and can induce QOL researchers to conduct future research in QOL in other cultures, geographic areas, and different socio-economic and demographic groups as well as in different QOL domains.

Zygmunt Bauman is one of the most important contemporary social thinkers. He has changed the way we think about the Holocaust, postmodernity and globalisation. This is the first book to discuss all of Bauman's work, from the first essays in post Stalinist Poland, through to his participation in 1960s Marxist revisionism, and up to the work for which he is well known in the West. Bauman's work is put into its social and historical context, and it is shown why Bauman matters.

All former Soviet Union countries experience their past as a heavy burden. It led to the centralisation of scientific personnel, the separation of research from teaching at universities, and a concentration of certain branches of technology in different parts of the Union. This has given rise to a one-sided technology and science potential which frequently cannot be sufficiently supported due to a lack of adequate finance. Cooperation between the Baltic States themselves is often hampered by an exaggerated sense of national identity, and international cooperation can be made difficult by linguistic problems. A critical issue is finance. The Baltic States themselves are experiencing budgetary constraints, and the West is cutting back on funding. The analytical issues dealt with here include specific questions, such as in the sectors of energy policy, electrical equipment and electronics, and environmental considerations. The transfer of technology is also discussed, as is security: there is the possibility that science and scientific results can be obtained from the former Soviet Union at low cost by the criminal community.

The debate between modernization theory and dependency theory has been waged for decades without either being fully accepted. Billet attempts to bridge the gap in that debate by evaluating the underlying causes of economic discontent in the developing world. The author's evaluation is based on a theoretical and empirical analysis of the interrelatedness of external forms of development capital and the implications of these patterns not only for modernization and dependency theorists but also for the least developed countries of the world. The purpose of this analysis is two-fold: (1) to evaluate the degree to which modernization and/or dependency theory is applicable to the experiences of developing countries; and (2) to evaluate why external capital flows have resulted in an overabundance of economically discontented developing countries.

This book brings together key debates and empirical cases from an international perspective exploring the ways in which more sustainable communities might develop. There is a growing recognition that more effective sustainable development cannot be achieved without the engagement of the ???local community???. But this is far from an unproblematic process, and it requires a critical examination of the nature of the potential links between what we now consider as ???community??? and sustainable development. The book critically reviews the literatures on sustainable communities before addressing through empirical case studies of Firm, State and Resource perspectives on attempts to create them. The volume is a synthesis of research work and debate conducted over recent years by members of the Economic and social Research Council??'s research centre for Business Relationships, Accountability, Sustainability and Society (BRASS), under its sustainable communities programme.
*Critically explores and analyzes the policies, practices and strategies related to community involvement and how this shapes local environmental contexts
*Debates and shares experiences generated through the various empirical studies
*Considers the effectiveness of "stakeholder's dialogue" and relationships to reach consensus in ensuring the effective implementation of sustainable development practices
*Identifies innovative organization infrastructure and modes of (community) interactions which are conducive to community empowerment and regeneration
*Begins to provide a new evidence base to enhance multi-institutional learning possibilities in involving "local" communities in deriving improved sustainabledevelopment possibilities

It is critical for the food industry to maintain a current understanding of the factors affecting food choice, acceptance and consumption since these influence all aspects of its activities. This subject has matured in recent years and, for the first time, this book brings together a coherent body of knowledge which draws on the experiences in industrial and academic settings of an international team of authors. Written for food technologists and marketeers, the book is also an essential reference for all those concerned with the economic, social, and psychological aspects of the subject.

Food activism is core to the contemporary study of food - there are numerous foodscapes which exist within the umbrella definition of food activism from farmer's markets, organic food movements to Fair Trade. This highly original book focuses on one key emerging foodscape dominating the Italian alternative food network (AFN) scene: GAS (gruppi di acquisto solidale or solidarity-based purchase groups) and explores the innovative social dynamics underlying these networks and the reasons behind their success. Based on a detailed 'insider' ethnography, this study interprets the principles behind these movements and key themes such as collective buying, relationships with local producers and consumers, financial management, to the everyday political and practical negotiation involving GAS groups. Vitally, the author demonstrates how GAS processes are key to providing survival strategies for small farms, local food chains and sustainable agriculture as a whole. Beyond Alternative Food Networks offers a fresh and engaged approach to this area, demonstrating the capacity for individuals to join organised forms of alternative political ecologies and impact upon their local food systems and practices. These social groups help to create new economic circuits that help promote sustainability, both for the environment and labor practices. Beyond Alternative Food Networks provides original insight and in-depth analysis of the alternative food network now thriving in Italy, and highlights ways such networks become embedded in active citizenship practices, cooperative relationships, and social networks.

This volume presents the results of several studies involving scientists and technicians. The author describes and analyses the interpretation scientists volunteered given graphs that had been culled from an introductory course and textbook in ecology. He next reports on graph usage in three different workplaces based on his ethnographic research among scientists and technicians.

Munch and his colleagues examine how democracy works in the practice of political regulation. Based on empirical research on the politics of clean air in the United Kingdom, France, Germany, and the United States, they provide a comparative sociological perspective. Thus, they look at social change and social integration rather than issues of governance and administration in terms of effectiveness and democratic legitimation.

The analysis looks at how different forms of democracy given in the four countries achieve more or less in the political regulation of clean air in terms of societal innovation, conflict settlement, and consensus formation. They concentrate on the network of actors involved, their professions included with their concepts of rationality, the institutional rules of policymaking, and the cultural ideas that are invoked in the legitimation of procedures and decisions. While each country has developed a peculiar form of democracy-representative democracy in the UK, etatist-republican democracy in France, consensus and rule of law democracy in Germany, and multilevel pluralist competitive democracy in the US-they conclude that challenges of the established regulatory style and political order are pushing each country towards a more open democracy. Scholars and students in comparative sociology and political science as well as environmentalists will find the study of particular interest.

This second edition of a classic text in the field has been revisited by its authors and extensively reworked. It incorporates new case studies based on the authors experiences as well as one completely new chapter. The first edition of Clinical Sociology was published in 1996. Its goal was to explore various approaches to problem-solving at the micro, meso, and macro levels of social complexity.

Understanding and responding to corruption is a worldwide challenge. This book offers a general overview of the nature, pattern, and differing perspectives on political and economic corruption. Providing detail and depth, the book examines and compares corruption in four countries: the United States, Israel, Russia, and India. Each country chapter explores how corruption is defined and understood in that country and provides case material illustrating corrupt practice and responses to it. The country chapters also cover whistleblowing activities, their prevalence, importance, and impact. A comparative analysis presents the most prominent factors contributing to a reduced level of corruption and the factors that lead to whistleblower success.

"The Open Covenant" examines two opposing trends in contemporary American culture: an adherence to traditional, rigid structures, institutions, and lifestyles; and a move toward a more flexible, tolerant society in which individuals and organizations work together on shared needs, interests, and goals. This volume presents a unique discussion of the distinctive new pattern in today's society--the increasing willingness of Americans to extend themselves beyond narrowly defined self-interests into more controversial and universal issues.

Current environmental problems and technological risks are a challenge for a new institutional arrangement of the value spheres of Science, Politics and Morality. Distinguished authors from different European countries and America provide a cross-disciplinary perspective on the problems of political decision making under the conditions of scientific uncertainty. cases from biotechnology and the environmental sciences are discussed. The papers collected for this volume address the following themes: (i) controversies about risks and political decision making; (ii) concepts of science for policy; (iii) the use of social science in the policy making process; (iv) ethical problems with developments in science and technology; (v) public and state interests in the development and control of technology.

This monograph presents the proceedings of the 2002 Spring Symposium sponsored by the Lake Champlain Research Consortium, hosted by the Missisquoi Bay Watershed Corporation. The book examines this common body of water shared by Canada and the US, and summarizes knowledge of the dynamics of this system with a primary focus on land use, water management, and bridging the gap between researchers and the public.

Despite hundreds of millions of visitors each year, zoos have remained outside of the realm of philosophical analysis. This lack of theoretical examination is interesting considering the paradoxical position within which a zoo is situated, being a space of animal confinement as well as a site that provides valuable tools for species conservation, public education, and entertainment. Why Do We Go to the Zoo? argues that the zoo is a legitimate space of academic inquiry. The modes of communication taking place at the zoo that keep drawing us back time and time again beg for a careful investigation. In this book, the meaning of the zoo as communicative space is explored. This book relies on the phenomenological method from Edmund Husserl and a rhetorical approach to examine the interaction between people and animals in the zoo space. Phenomenology, the philosophy of examining the engaged everyday lived experience, is a natural method to use in the project. Despite its rich history and tradition it is interesting that there are very few books explaining "how to do" phenomenology. Why Do We Go to the Zoo? provides a detailed account of how to actually conduct a phenomenological analysis. The author spent thousands of hours in zoos watching people and animals interact as well as talking with people both formally and informally. This book asks readers to bracket their preconceptions of what goes on in the zoo and, instead, to explore the meaning of powerful zoo experiences while reminding us of the troubled history of zoos.

This collection examines ways in which modern literature responds to the body-at-war, examining the effects of violent conflict on the body in its literal and representative forms. Spanning literature from World War I to the present day, it includes essays on pacifist theatre, torture, fascist fantasies, and uniforms and masculinity.

This is the sixth and latest addition to the European Union Studies Association's prestigious series, State of the European Union. The contributors of this volume take the dynamic interaction between law, politics and society as a starting point to think critically about key recent events in the European Union, while bringing to the forefront why these developments matter for ordinary citizens.