THE CHALLENGE In February 2009 Attorney General Eric Holder called America "a nation of cowards." His reason was that we "don't have the guts to be honest with each other about racial issues." The lack of honesty that he bluntly implied is obvious. Its cause however is not a lack of courage, but enforcement of deceptive tactics that undermine freedom of speech. In reality his words gave this nation a challenge. Will we meet it? For over forty years, every major cultural movement of the last century successfully achieved its goal through victimization, oppression, and white privilege principles. These deceptive tools developed entitlement thinking that separated people from common sense and goodness. The more people separated from goodness, the more evil surfaced. Disguised as a right and freedom, evil began silencing America. Many people deny it and the dangers of Marxism. Others are euphoric about the transformation. "Oppression" education is doing its job; the destruction of so called white values and America. White privilege and the wheel of oppression fool those in class attendance. They promise people release from make believe oppression, while injecting them with it. The result is a dangerous epidemic of "oppression-isms," most useful for change. Attorney General Eric Holder stated that America needed open racial discussion. We will accept the challenge. The content within is forthright and bold in presentation. Chapter questions are included for private use, institutes of learning, education conferences, and church groups to develop boldness in speaking the truth. We must STOP the biggest Hoax of the Century, White Privilege and The Wheel of Oppression for the survival of America.

This book explores the current status of primary schools in Rwanda and the history behind their development. It argues that current primary school leaders in the area encounter a wide range of problems relating to conflict prevention, teachers' and school leaders' professionalism, financial and resourcing constraints, student attrition, and parental disengagement, many of which can be attributed to the legacies of war and the genocide in 1994. The book also presents a range of strategies that are pursued by school leaders while dealing with these concerns, as the Rwandan government invests in reconstructing education following the country's turmoil. Through examining the issues of the past and the present, the book provides valuable insights for researchers of educational leadership, school leaders, education policy makers, and those in charge of preparing, developing, and implementing professional development programmes for school leaders and teachers in Rwanda, as well as in other post-war and developing countries.

In Liberal Barbarism, Erik Ringmar sets out to explain the 1860 destruction of Yuanmingyuan - the Chinese imperial palace north-west of Beijing - at the hands of British and French armies. Yuanmingyuan was the emperor's own theme-park, a perfect world, a vision of paradise, which housed one of the greatest collections of works of art ever assembled. The intellectual puzzle which the book addresses concerns why the Europeans, bent on "civilizing" the Chinese, engaged in this act of barbarism. The answer is provided through an analysis of the performative aspect of the confrontation between Europe and China, focusing on the differences in the way their respective international systems were conceptualized. Ringmar reveals that the destruction of Yuanmingyuan represented the Europeans' campaign to "shock and awe" the Chinese, thereby forcing them to give up their way of organizing international relations. The contradictions which the events of 1860 exemplify - the contradiction between civilization and barbarism - is a theme running through all European (and North American) relations with the rest of the world since, including, most recently, the US war in Iraq.

This book select successful cases of poverty reduction and alleviation in the Guizhou province of China, which reflects the highest number and widest distribution of people living in poverty. The local government seeks to achieve sustainable development goals and find multiple solutions to the problem.. The book introduces local experiences and presents the whole process from policy making to practice.

This book places the topic of the state and society in the context of modern development in China over the past century, investigating the dynamic relation and internal tension between the state's power enhancement and society's vitality activation instead of simply regarding the country and society as two separate entities. Building a modern country and activating the people's vitality involves three closely linked and mutually supporting aspects: establishing the identity recognition of the people to unite the nation; adjusting the organizational system of the society to promote mobilization and institute a social incentive system; and determining dominant strategies and means for the interaction between the country and society to address social-governance issues. This book carefully sheds light on the logic behind China's roundabout strategy for building a modern country and motivating the vitality of its people.

This volume introduces the notion of 'relational planning' through a collection of theoretical and empirical contributions that explore the making of heterogeneous associations in the planning practice. The analytical concept builds on recent approaches to complexity and materiality in planning theory by drawing on Science and Technology Studies (STS) of urban issues. It frames planning as a socio-material practice taking place within the multifaceted relations between artefacts, agency and practices. By way of this triad, spatial planning is not studied as a given, linear or technical process but rather problematized as a hybrid, distributed and situational practice. The inquiries in this collection thus describe how planning practices are negotiated and enacted in and beyond formal arenas and procedures of planning, and so make visible the many sites, actors and means of spatial planning. Addressing planning topics such as ecology, preservation, participation, rebuilding and zoning, this volume takes into account the uncertain world planning is embedded in. The implications of such a perspective are considered in light of how planning is performed and how it contributes to the emergence of specific socio-material forms and interactions. This is an invaluable read for all scholars of STS, Ecology, Architecture and Urban Planning.

Clarissa de Waal's new book explains Albania's 'transition' from Communism via the experiences of a diverse range of families, highland villagers, urban elite and shanty dwellers - whose lives she has followed since 1992. As such, this is a history - of economic, social and political change - told from the perspective of the participants. We see how far the archaic world of customary law continues to pervade highland life, from dispute settlement to arranged marriages. At the same time, the author shows us members of the ex-communist elite in Tirana embracing rentier capitalism, while squatters on state farmland live under constant threat of eviction. Albania, the author suggests, is a country wracked by contradictions. Clarissa de Waal's new book will inform and engage all those interested in Albania and southeast Europe. Catapulted from totalitarianism to free market capitalism in 1991, Albania emerged from half a century of isolation to find itself an anomaly in Europe: a third world country economically and infra-structurally, first world in terms of education, literature and the arts. This portrait of Albania's 'transition' is based on the experiences of a diverse range of families - highland villagers, urban elite, shanty dwellers - whose lives the anthropologist author has followed closely since 1992. Village life is conveyed in vivid detail. The villagers deal with the grinding poverty of village life with humour, charm and reslience. Rural life, despite concerted attempts by the communist regime to eradicate 'backwardness', is still pervaded by the archaic world of customary law, a system whose influence spans dispute settlement, forest rights, marriage arrangement and blood-feuds. In the capital, Tirana, members of the former communist elite are courted by innumerable missionary groups and foreign 'experts'. These groups, with the means and the connections to do so, are seen to be uninhibitedly embracing rentier capitalism. Meanwhile, highland villagers with no means of subsistence after the closure of state enterprises, have descended to squat on undistributed state farmland, there to live under constant threat of eviction. Mass unemployment, widespread lawlessness and government laissez-faire have led to a scale of emigration unparalleled elsewhere in former communist Europe. The shock of nation-wide revolt in 1997 triggered alarm and international intervention. But new reforms were followed all too quickly by a reversion to government laissez-faire and unchecked corruption. Clarissa de Waal's new book is a history of economic, political and social transition based on the author's anthropological research. As such the reader sees the fundamental changes taking place in Albania from the perspective of the participants. Entertaining as well as informative, "Albania Today" will engage not just those interested in Albania and southeast Europe, but equally anyone with an interest in the impact on individuals and families of the economic and political transition.

This book provides readers with a single source reviewing and updating sociological theory in medical or health sociology. The book not only addresses the major theoretical approaches in the field today, it also identifies the future directions these theories are likely to take in explaining the social processes affecting health and disease. Many of the chapters are written by leading medical sociologists who feature the use of theory in their everyday work, including contributions from the original theorists of fundamental causes, health lifestyles, and medicalization. Theories focusing on both agency and structure are included to provide a comprehensive account of this important area in medical sociology.

This book explores mechanisms of inclusion and exclusion involved in practices of community building through an ethnographic study of a neighborhood restaurant in Amsterdam. It presents important insights into the advantages and empowering effects of professional, top down community building in a disadvantaged neighborhood, as well as its tensions and contradictory outcomes. The core argument of the study is that, in spite of the abserved restaurant's well-intended and well-organized attempts to create an inclusive and heterogeneous local community, it instead established one both exclusive and homogeneous. Through a set of community building practices and discourses of "deprivation" and "ethnic and racial otherness," the construction of collective fear for ethnic and racial "others" was indirectly facilitated among the white, working class visitors. As a result, insurmountable barriers were erected for non-white and non-native Dutch residents to become part of the local community. This project speaks to social scientists as well as social workers, governments, and policy-makers concerned with issues of social cohesion, informal networks, and professional community building in disadvantaged urban settings.

This book provides a unique perspective into the world of supplementary schooling, exploring both the social positioning of these schools and the ethnic minority communities they serve. The author presents a close examination of the establishment and functioning of supplementary schools which offers a fresh and novel insight into acculturation processes. Drawing on empirical data gathered from staff interviews, classroom observations and interactive recordings, this book explores the operation of supplementary schools as sites of identity construction where the community identities are preserved, defended, renegotiated and reconstructed. The various modes of construction are indicative of the acculturation experiences of ethnic minority communities and the ways in which these communities negotiate residence in one country whilst having roots in another. This book therefore offers a revealing conceptualization of supplementary schools, not merely as educational spaces, but socio-political enterprises that are situated within and respond to various historical, social and political contexts. This pioneering work will appeal to students and scholars in the fields of education, migration and identity.

Awarded Best Book prize by CIES Globalization and Education SIG Awarded 2nd Prize in the Society of Educational Studies Annual Book Prize Elite schools have always been social choreographers par excellence. The world over, they put together highly dexterous performances as they stage and restage changing relations of ruling. They are adept at aligning their social choreographies to shifting historical conditions and cultural tastes. In multiple theatres, they now regularly rehearse the irregular art of being global. Elite schools around the world are positioned at the intersecting pinnacles of various scales, systems and regimes of social, cultural, political and economic power. They have much in common but are also diverse. They illustrate how various modalities of power are enjoyed and put to work and how educational and social inequalities are shaped and shifted. They, thus, speak to the social zeitgeist. This book dissects this intricate choreography.

Population ageing - a growth in the proportion of a population that is in older age - is now occurring in every region and nearly every country of the world. Indeed, the growth of older populations is among the important global phenomena of the twenty-first century. It poses both opportunities and challenges for societies and policy makers, but these are far from uniform worldwide. Dynamic factors are at work impacting on how ageing will influence people, places and policies and there are large variations in the rate and timing of population ageing across countries, owing to differing social, health and economic circumstances and a variety of policy options from which to choose. Given this variation in the context of global ageing as a backdrop, this edited book focuses on three overarching themes that are among the most critical to understand if societies are to age successfully in the twenty-first century and beyond: Healthy ageing and health care; the ageing workforce, retirement and the provision of pensions; shifting intergenerational relations. These three themes are cross-cut by other dimensions that are intertwined with the dynamic processes of ageing, such as immigration/emigration, contrasting policy regimes and global and national economic forces. This ground-breaking book will be of interest to all scholars, students and policy-makers working within this area of study.

This handbook on social movements, revolution, and social transformation analyzes people's struggles to bring about social change in the age of globalization. It examines the origins, nature, dynamics, and challenges of such movements as they aim to change dominant social, economic, and political institutions and structures across the globe. Departing from a theoretical introduction that explores major classical and contemporary theories of social movements and transformation, the contributions collected here use a class-based approach to examine key cases of social movements, rebellions, and revolutions worldwide from the turn of the twentieth to the early twenty-first centuries. Against this wide-ranging background, the handbook concludes by charting the varied and competing future developments and trajectories of social movements, revolutions, and social transformations.

This book presents a new approach to understanding contemporary personal life, taking account of how people build their lives through a bricolage of 'tradition' and 'modern'. The authors examine how tradition is used and adapted, invented and re-invented; how meaning can leak from past to present; the ways in which people's agencies differ as they make decisions; and the process of bricolage in making new arrangements. These themes are illustrated through a variety of case studies, ranging from personal life in the 1950s, young women and marriage, the rise of cohabitation, female name change, living apart together, and creating weddings. Centrally the authors emphasise the re-traditionalisation involved in de-traditionalisation and the connectedness involved in individualised processes of relationship change. Reinventing Couples will be of interest to students and scholars across a range of disciplines including sociology, social work and social policy.

This book presents a comprehensive discussion of classical ideas, core topics, currents and detailed theoretical underpinnings in medical sociology. It is a globally renowned source and reference for those interested in social dimensions of health and illness. The presentation is enriched with explanatory and illustrative styles. The design and illustration of details will shift the minds of the readers from mere classroom discourse to societal context (the space of health issues), to consider the implications of those ideas in a way that could guide health interventions. The elemental strengths are the sociological illustrations from African context, rooted in deep cultural interpretations necessitated because Africa bears a greater brunt of health problems. More so, the classical and current epistemological and theoretical discourse presented in this book are indicative of core themes in medical sociology in particular, but cut across a multidisciplinary realm including health social sciences (e.g., medical anthropology, health psychology, medical demography, medical geography and health economics) and health studies (medicine, public health, epidemiology, bioethics and medical humanities) in general. Therefore, apart from the book s relevance as a teaching text of medical sociology for academics, it is also meant for students at various levels and all health professionals who require a deeper understanding of social dimensions of health and illness (with illustrations from the African context) and sociological contributions to health studies in general."

investigates the relationship between mining, mine closure and housing policy in post-apartheid South Africa argues that the dependencies created by the mining industry and mine housing policies while a mine is operational causes serious societal problems when it closes applies the concepts of place attachment, asset-based development and social disruption will be of interest to students and scholars researching the social impacts of mining and the extractive industries, social geography and sustainable development, as well as policymakers and practitioners working with mine closure or social impact assessments.

The nature and configuration of borders, and the relationship between state borders and societies, have changed. In the 21st century, internationalism, transnationalism, and super-diversity have further provoked complexities and anxieties. It seems that as border and migration regimes undergo dramatic transformations, their public profile increases. This book revisits borders, bordering practices, and meanings, with a particular focus on the United Kingdom as a case study. Bastian A. Vollmer examines not only the theoretical and historical dimensions of borders but also various empirical data, including extensive text corpora and dozens of in-depth interviews. Expanding on the concept of vernacular security-that is, an everyday understanding of security-he argues that the existential value of borders is not merely physical, but extends into the order and future construction of states and societies. This book demonstrates decisively that the concept of the border has not left the centre stage of philosophy, political theory, and political sociology, but has instead emerged as a focal point for multidisciplinary engagements. It further demonstrates how attention to a vernacular perspective can inform those engagements, yielding vital insights. As such, it should appeal to students and scholars across disciplines interested in the contemporary development and relevance of borders and their discursive cultures.

What lies at the heart of humanity's capacity for evil? Any tenable answer to this age-old question must include an explanation of our penchant for objectifying and dehumanizing our fellow human beings. The Objectification Spectrum: Understanding and Transcending Our Diminishment and Dehumanization of Others draws upon timeless wisdom to propose a new model of objectification. Rather than offering a narrow definition of the term, the author explores objectification as a spectrum of misapprehension running from its mildest form, casual indifference, to its most extreme manifestation, dehumanization. Using vivid examples to clearly demarcate three primary levels of objectification, the author engages in a thoughtful exploration of various dispositional and situational factors contributing to this uniquely human phenomenon. These include narcissism, the ego, death denial, toxic situations, and our perceived boundaries of self, among others. Rector then gives us reason to hope by orienting his model of objectification into a broader continuum of human capability--one that includes a countervailing enlightenment spectrum. Gleaning insights from classic philosophy, the world's five most prominent religious traditions, and current social science research, he examines the best antidotes humankind has devised thus far to move us from casual concern for our fellow human beings toward interconnectedness and, ultimately, unity consciousness. Broad in scope and deeply penetrating, The Objectification Spectrum advances the conversation about the nature of human evil into personally relevant, potentially transformative territory.

This volume presents evidence-based research on citizens' experiences and reactions to the Great Recession in Europe. How did European citizen experience and react to the crisis? How are the experiences of crisis and political responses socially differentiated? Are some social classes and more deprived groups particularly hard hit? How did the crisis impact on political choices? What types of political action did citizens engage in and why? What were the drivers of populist attitudes and protest participation? This country-based book explores these important dynamics as expressed in diverse national contexts, namely France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Poland, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and UK. Each chapter focuses on one of these countries and employs data from the same survey fielded in 2015. This volume is of particular relevance for scholars, students, and practitioners interested in political sociology, comparative politics and European politics.

This edited volume offers a clear in-depth overview of research covering a variety of issues in social search and recommendation systems. Within the broader context of social network analysis it focuses on important and up-coming topics such as real-time event data collection, frequent-sharing pattern mining, improvement of computer-mediated communication, social tagging information, search system personalization, new detection mechanisms for the identification of online user groups, and many more. The twelve contributed chapters are extended versions of conference papers as well as completely new invited chapters in the field of social search and recommendation systems. This first-of-its kind survey of current methods will be of interest to researchers from both academia and industry working in the field of social networks.

In this book, Tim McGettigan and Earl Smith make the unprecedented argument that racism is a remediable form of suggestion-induced sadism. The authors explain in plain terms how societies like the USA construct racism, and put forward a practical plan to eradicate racism in the USA and all over the world.

This book explores local content policies and their role in natural resource management within the realm of energy justice. Based on several country case studies it discusses the role of regional integration for such policies in Sub-Saharan Africa. Energy justice has been widely applied across different aspects of development, but here the principles of justice are specifically integrated with the management and implementation of oil and gas projects. Such an analysis offers novel means of implementing policies in local regions, moving away from a one-size fits all approach that leads to the ineffective transplantation of policies from developed economies to developing Sub-Saharan economies. The book argues that with a regional approach, Sub-Saharan Africa can leverage natural resources, industrial parks, supplier clusters, regional financing mechanisms and regional training facilities which would drive down the costs of production, increase efficiency and integrate the local Sub-Saharan population into the oil and gas industry. This would result in the benefits as well as the environmental concerns and responsibilities intrinsic to these industries, being spread more equally amongst local and none local stakeholders. This book will be a valuable resource for scholars and students as well as policy makers and practitioners in the areas of extractive industry-related disciplines energy governance, and economic development in Africa.

This book follows a physically disabled researcher's journey from stigmatized embodiment on her way to creating accessible storytelling performances. These unique performances function not only as traditional, peer-reviewed forms of critical qualitative research, but also as 'narrative teaching productions' that guide students and their audiences in the pursuit of social justice and equality. The book begins by developing the author's personal standpoint, and provides an evocative discussion of the multiple perceptions and identities experienced by those with disabled bodies. It negotiates how performance research can be created and conducted within the confines of course learning objectives, moves through complications encountered in research design and data collection, and explores a range of insightful responses from community members, social activists, and performance critics, as well as more traditional academic audiences. Critical autoethnographic personal narratives, performance scripts, and poetry are used to illuminate struggles over legitimate methodological practice and storytelling performance pedagogy. Each chapter confronts the fear of mortality that presses us to stigmatize those who remind us of our inescapably vulnerable embodiments and offers hope for an inclusive, adaptable culture. The book will be compelling reading for scholars in Performance Studies, Disability Studies, Cultural Studies, Narrative Methodology, Ethnography, Higher Education, Autoethnography, Creative Nonfiction and everyone interested embodiment and/or storytelling for social change. Please visit www.uncwstorytelling.org/chapter-summaries-1 to access supplementary material for the book.