SIMSOC: Participant's Manual

SIMSOC (which is pronounced sim-sock and stands for simulated society) is a dynamic group simulation game that forces participants to cope with the daily problems of governing society. Assuming a variety of roles, the players grapple with issues like abuse of power, justice, diversity, trust, and leadership as they negotiate their way through labor-management strife, political turmoil, and natural disasters. SIMSOC imposes few rules and restrictions upon its participants. There is no programmed outcome. Success or failure is dependent upon decisions made by players and the creativity of the group. To be successful, players must utilize every basic social process from cooperation and reward to threat and punishment. SIMSOC will make participants ask questions about social control, and bring everyday experience and deeper understanding to even the most arcane social and organizational theory.

Included in this Fifth Edition of SIMSOC's Participant's Manual are instructions for playing, materials for play, study questions based on participation, and selected readings about simulation games, leadership, and social processes. New to the Fifth Edition are additional size levels to accommodate larger groups, simplified rules, and readings by authors from Nicholas Lemann to Robert Putnam.

Each SIMSOC participant should have a copy of the Participant's Manual and the instructor a copy of SIMSOC's Coordinator's Manual, which contains additional materials needed for play and directions on how to set up and run SIMSOC. One Coordinator's Manual will be needed for each SIMSOC exercise of up to ninety participants. It can be obtained, for a $5.00 fee, by writing, on letterhead, to:

The Free Press
A Division of Simon & Schuster, Inc.
Faculty Service Desk
1230 Avenue of the Americas
New York, NY 10020

The Handbook on Teaching Social Issues, 2nd edition, provides teachers and teacher educators with a comprehensive guide to teaching social issues in the classroom. This second edition re-frames the teaching of social issues with a dedicated emphasis on issues of social justice. It raises the potential for a new and stronger focus on social issues instruction in schools. Contributors include many of the leading experts in the field of social studies education. Issues-centered social studies is an approach to teaching history, government, geography, economics and other subject related courses through a focus on persistent social issues. The emphasis is on problematic questions that need to be addressed and investigated in-depth to increase social understanding, active participation, and social progress. Questions or issues may address problems of the past, present, or future, and involve disagreement over facts, definitions, values, and beliefs arising in the study of any of the social studies disciplines, or other aspects of human affairs. The authors and editor believe that this approach should be at the heart of social studies instruction in schools.

This book addresses the conceptualization and practice of Indigenous research methodologies especially in Sami and North European academic contexts. It examines the meaning of Sami research and research methodologies, practical levels of doing Indigenous research today in different contexts, as well as global debates in Indigenous research. The contributors present place-specific and relational Sami research approaches as well as reciprocal methodological choices in Indigenous research in North-South relationships. This edited volume is a result of a research collaboration in four countries where Sami people live. By taking the readers to diverse local discussions, the collection emphasizes communal responsibility and care as a key in doing Indigenous research. Contributors are: Rauni AEarela-Vihriala, Hanna Guttorm, Lea Kantonen, Pigga Keskitalo, Ilona Kivinen, Britt Kramvig, Petter Morottaja, Eljas Niskanen, Torjer Olsen, Marja-Liisa Olthuis, Hanna Outakoski, Attila Paksi, Jelena Porsanger, Aili Pyhala, Rauna Rahko-Ravantti, Torkel Rasmussen, Erika Katjaana Sarivaara, Irja Seurujarvi-Kari, Trond Trosterud and Pirjo Kristiina Virtanen.

The number of practice-based or practice-led doctorate programs continues to grow across the U.S. Doctoral students who seek a terminal practitioner doctorate typically conduct practice-based research within the dissertation research used as the culmination of the degree program. These terminally degreed graduates return to educational practice to improve practice, impact innovation, and solve the complex problems of practice through research-based decision making. Practice-Based and Practice-Led Research for Dissertation Development provides the most current research, innovation, and insights into practice-based research conducted within U.S. practitioner doctorate programs across fields that include management, education, computer science, health sciences, and social and behavioral sciences. The book illustrates the latest uses of practitioner research and highlights current findings for the dissemination and use of practice-based and practice-led research within these settings. Covering topics that include self-inquiry methods, action research, and high-impact writing support, this book is an ideal reference source for doctoral scholars, doctoral research supervisors, faculty, program deans, higher education leadership, and doctorate program developers.

Decentering Comparative Analysis in a Globalizing World aims to go beyond the traditional criticism in comparative analysis. It wants to shed new light on the question of comparing as a form of categorizing. In this perspective, three relevant dimensions to question the naturalized categories of comparison are mobilized: ethnocentrism, the nation, and academic disciplines. Based on original empirical work, the volume proposes to use comparative categories by mixing and shifting the analytical perspectives. It brings together contributions that come to terms with the historicity of the comparative method in the social sciences. It eventually deals with the key issue of comparability of various cases, in the enlarged context of a globalizing world. Contributors are: Anna Amelina, Camille Boullier, Catherine Cavalin, Serge Ebersold, Andreas Eckert, Mouhamedoune Abdoulaye Fall, Isabel Georges, Olivier Giraud, Aissa Kadri, Wiebke Keim, Michel Lallement, Marie Mercat-Bruns, Luis Felipe Murillo, Kiran Klaus Patel, Lea Renard, Ferruccio Ricciardi, Paul-Andre Rosental, Pablo Salazar-Jaramillo, Stephanie Tawa-Lama, Nikola Tietze, Tania Toffanin, Michel Vincent and Benedicte Zimmermann.

The accounts of women navigating pregnancy in a post-conflict setting are characterized by widespread poverty, weak infrastructure, and inadequate health services. With a focus on a remote rural agrarian community in northern Uganda, Global Health and the Village brings the complex local and transnational factors governing women's access to safe maternity care into view. In examining local cultural, social, economic, and health system factors shaping maternity care and birth, Rudrum also analyzes the encounter between ambitious global health goals and the local realities. Interrogating how culture and technical problems are framed in international health interventions, Rudrum reveals that the objectifying and colonizing premises on which interventions are based often result in the negative consequences in local healthcare.

Advances in students' educational experiences are regularly studied, documented, and improved upon. However, to provide the best foundation for students, professional educators must also continue their own education in order to perfect their teaching abilities. Personalized Professional Learning for Educators: Emerging Research and Opportunities is an advanced scholarly reference source that discusses the most effective methods and techniques that can provide educators with a strong path for continuing their education. Featuring insights on relevant topics such as digital learning, educational coaching, personalized learning, and pedagogical practices, this publication is an ideal resource for professional educators, students, and researchers interested in upcoming trends in teacher education.

While there are many ways to collect information, students have trouble understanding how to employ various research methods effectively, since everyone learns and processes information differently. Instructing students on successfully using research methods is a continual challenge in education. The Handbook of Research on Students' Research Competence in Modern Educational Contexts is a scholarly resource that examines the critical analysis of the development of research competence in students. Featuring coverage on a broad range of topics, such as educational technologies, cognitive interest, and research capacity, this book is geared towards academicians, researchers, and students seeking current research on the development of research competence.

‘Mr Watson, come here, I want to see you.’

It’s been almost 150 years since Alexander Graham Bell said these immortal words on the first ever phone call, to his assistant in the next room. Between 10 March 1876 and now, the world has changed beyond recognition. And telecommunications, which has played a fundamental role in this change, has itself evolved into an industry that was the sole preserve of science fiction.

When the world’s first modern mobile telephone network was launched in 1979, there were just over 300 million telephones. Today, there are more than eight billion, most of which are mobile. Most people in most countries can now contact each other in a matter of seconds. Soon we’ll all be connected, to each other, and to complex computer networks that provide us with instant information, but also observe and record our actions. No other phenomenon touches so many of us, so directly, each and every day of our lives.

This book describes how this transformation came about. It considers the technologies that underpin telecommunications – microcircuits, fibre-optics and satellites – and touches on financial aspects of the industry: privatisations, mergers and takeovers that have helped shape the $2-trillion telecom market. But for the most part, it’s a story about us and our need to communicate.

Consumption in Russia and the former USSR has been lately studied as regards the pre-revolutionary and early Soviet period. The history of Soviet consumption and the Soviet variety of consumerism in the 1950s-1990s has hardly been studied at all. This book concentrates on the late Soviet period but it also considers pre-WWII and even pre-revolutionary times.The book consists of articles, which survey the longue duree of Russian and Soviet consumer attitudes, Soviet ideology of consumption as indicated in texts concerning fashion, the world of Soviet fashion planning and the survival strategies of the Soviet consumer complaining against sub-standard goods and services in a command economy. There's also a case study concerning the uses of concepts with anti-consumerist content. Contributors include: Lena Bogdanova, Olga Gurova, Timo Vihavainen and Larissa Zakharova.

The third volume on theoretical driven methodology in the social sciences, again edited by Hakon Leiulfsrud and Peter Sohlberg, explains how to identify sociological research objects, and the art of living theory. Theoretical concepts such as social structure, the Global South, social bonds, organisations and management are explore and developed by a broad range of authors. The methodological chapters, including critical notes on sociology and uses of statistics, the value of thought experiments in sociology, researching subjects in time and space, and an academic 'star war' between Pierre Bourdieu and Dorothy E. Smith are indispensible for researchers and students interested in theoretical construction work in the social sciences. Contributors are: Goeran Ahrne, Michela Betta, Harriet Bjerrum Nielsen, Michael Burawoy, Raju Das, David Fasenfest, Raimund Hasse, Johs Hjellbrekke, Hakon Leiulfsrud, Emil A. Royrvik, John Scott, Peter Sohlberg, Karin Widerberg and Richard Swedberg.

The Davis Conference on Organizational Research, held for the last 15 years, is the world's leading conference for qualitative researchers in organizational studies. Scholars receiving the "Best presentation awards" at the Davis Conference for the past 6 years have contributed chapters to this volume. These papers explore social relationships in organizations and work, and cover a diverse set of topics ranging from boundary spanning in collaboration and teamwork to embodied competence at work and beliefs about availability among professionals. Yet all the papers are similar in that they benefited from the community of over 150 scholars developed through the Davis Conference, and represent qualitative research at its very best.