This book seeks to build bridges between neuroscience and social science empirical researchers and theorists working around the world, integrating perspectives from both fields, separating real from spurious divides between them and delineating new challenges for future investigation. Since its inception in the early 2000s, multilevel social neuroscience has dramatically reshaped our understanding of the affective and cultural dimensions of neurocognition. Thanks to its explanatory pluralism, this field has moved beyond long standing dichotomies and reductionisms, offering a neurobiological perspective on topics classically monopolized by non-scientific traditions, such as consciousness, subjectivity, and intersubjectivity. Moreover, it has forged new paths for dialogue with disciplines which directly address societal dynamics, such as economics, law, education, public policy making and sociology. At the same time, beyond internal changes in the field of neuroscience, new problems emerge in the dialogue with other disciplines. Neuroscience and Social Science - The Missing Link puts together contributions by experts interested in the convergences, divergences, and controversies across these fields. The volume presents empirical studies on the interplay between relevant levels of inquiry (neural, psychological, social), chapters rooted in specific scholarly traditions (neuroscience, sociology, philosophy of science, public policy making), as well as proposals of new theoretical foundations to enhance the rapprochement in question. By putting neuroscientists and social scientists face to face, the book promotes new reflections on this much needed marriage while opening opportunities for social neuroscience to plunge from the laboratory into the core of social life. This transdisciplinary approach makes Neuroscience and Social Science - The Missing Link an important resource for students, teachers, and researchers interested in the social dimension of human mind working in different fields, such as social neuroscience, social sciences, cognitive science, psychology, behavioral science, linguistics, and philosophy.

In 1763, the Dutch ship Amstelveen set sail from the Dutch East Indies for Muscat, Oman. Through a tragic combination of human error and rough seas, the ship never made it to port, sinking off the southern coast of Oman. The thirty surviving crew members then faced a terrible trek across a desolate desert landscape to Muscat. Drawing on the logbook of Cornelis Eyks, the ship's only surviving officer,Klaas Doornbos tells the fascinating story of the men's journey across the Gulf of Oman desert, their encounters with the country's inhabitants, and their struggle to survive. Quoting extensively from Eyks's logbook, Doornbos describes how the sailors,barefoot and almost naked, walked hundreds of miles in the blazing sun in the hope of reaching civilization. Some of the men died on the way, while the fate of others is uncertain. It was not until 1766 that Eyks and the remaining men reached Muscat.Throughout Doornbos uses Eyks's logbook - the oldest remaining European account of the area - to reveal much about the desert coast of Oman and its people. Equal parts social history, anthropology, and survival chronicle, this gripping account of the Amstelveen's crew is a thrilling piece of naval history.

Masculinities in a Global Era extends the conversation of masculinity studies by analyzing global masculinities from a psychological perspective. Canvassing a broad array of psychological aspects such as the construction of identity, the negotiation of power, coping with trauma, and sexuality, this volume shows how masculinities are experienced, performed and embodied in geographically dispersed communities. Importantly, Masculinities in a Global Era fulfills a much-needed but elusive need within the study of masculinities: a forum in which the often polarized approaches of pro-feminists and men s rights advocates can begin to move beyond their entrenched historical positions towards a more fruitful and nuanced future.

In his recent work, Guy Standing has identified a new class which has emerged from neo-liberal restructuring with, he argues, the revolutionary potential to change the world: the "precariat." This, according to Standing, is a class-in-the-making, internally divided into angry and bitter factions consisting of a multitude of insecure people, living bits-and-pieces lives, in and out of short-term jobs, without a narrative of occupational development, including millions of frustrated educated youth, millions of women abused in oppressive labour, growing numbers of criminalised tagged for life, millions being categorised as "disabled" and migrants in their hundreds of millions around the world. They are denizens; they have a more restricted range of social, cultural, political and economic rights than citizens around them . This present book explores the nature, shape and context of precariat, evaluating the internal consistency and applications of the concept. Demonstrating the sheer breadth and depth of application, the chapters cover a wide-range of topics, from the relationships between precariat and authoritarianism, multitude (another concept to achieve popular consciousness), and place as well as the nature of precarious identities and subjectivities among those working in immaterial labour. The book concludes with a reply by Standing to reviews of "Precariat."

This book was published as a special issue of Global Discourse."

This study of the German right-extremist movement looks at the three rightist political parties, neo-Nazi groups, skinhead gangs, and New Right intellectuals. It poses the question whether, at a time of global recession, the existing democratic system is resilient enough to meet the challenges posed by the xenophobic and racist groups.

How are the arts important in young people s lives? Youth, Arts and Education offers a groundbreaking theory of arts education. Anna Hickey-Moody explores how the arts are ways of belonging, resisting, being governed and being heard.

Through examples from the United Kingdom and Australia, Anna Hickey-Moody shows the cultural significance of the kinds of learning that occur in and through arts. Drawing on the thought of Gilles Deleuze, she develops the theory of affective pedagogy, which explains the process of learning that happens through aesthetics.

Bridging divides between critical pedagogical theory, youth studies and arts education scholarship, this book:

• Explains the cultural significance of the kinds of learning that occur in and through arts
• Advances a theory of aesthetic citizenship created by youth arts
• Demonstrates ways in which arts practices are forms popular and public pedagogy
• Critiques popular ideas that art can be used to fix problems in the lives of youth at risk

Youth, Arts and Education is the first post-critical theory of arts education. It will be of interest to students and scholars across the social sciences and humanities, in particular in the sociology of education, arts education, youth studies, sociology of the arts and cultural studies."

Can Gandhi be considered a systematic thinker? While the significance of Gandhi's thought and life to our times is undeniable it is widely assumed that he did not serve any discipline and cannot be considered a systematic thinker. Despite an overwhelming body of scholarship and literature on his life and thought the presuppositions of Gandhi's experiments, the systematic nature of his intervention in modern political theory and his method have not previously received sustained attention. Addressing this lacuna, the book contends that Gandhi's critique of modern civilization, the presuppositions of post-Enlightenment political theory and their epistemological and metaphysical foundations is both comprehensive and systematic. Gandhi's experiments with truth in the political arena during the Indian Independence movement are studied from the point of view of his conscious engagement with method and theory rather than merely as a personal creed, spiritual position or moral commitment. The author shows how Gandhi's experiments are illustrative of his theoretical position, and how they form the basis of his opposition to the foundations of modern western political theory and the presuppositions of the modern nation state besides envisioning the foundations of an alternative modernity for India, and by its example, for the world.

Religious conversion - a shift in membership from one community of faith to another - can take diverse forms in radically different circumstances. As the essays in this volume demonstrate, conversion can be protracted or sudden, voluntary or coerced, small-scale or large. It may be the result of active missionary efforts, instrumental decisions, or intellectual or spiritual attraction to a different doctrine and practices. In order to investigate these multiple meanings, and how they may differ across time and space, this collection ranges far and wide across medieval and early modern Europe and beyond. From early Christian pilgrims to fifteenth-century Ethiopia; from the Islamisation of the eastern Mediterranean to Reformation Germany, the volume highlights salient features and key concepts that define religious conversion, particular the Jewish, Muslim and Christian experiences. By probing similarities and variations, continuities and fissures, the volume also extends the range of conversion to focus on matters less commonly examined, such as competition for the meaning of sacred space, changes to bodies, patterns of gender, and the ways conversion has been understood and narrated by actors and observers. In so doing, it promotes a layered approach that deepens inquiry by identifying and suggesting constellations of elements that both compose particular instances of conversion and help make systematic comparisons possible by indicating how to ask comparable questions of often vastly different situations.

Social relations are crucial for understanding diverse economic actions and a network perspective is central to that explanation. Simple exchanges involving money, labor, and commodities combine into complexly connected systems. Economic networks span many levels of analysis, from persons (consumers, employees), to groups (households, workteams), organizations (corporations, interest groups), populations (industries, markets) and the rapidly expanding global economic system.

David Knoke blends network theories from a range of disciplines and empirical studies of domestic and international economies to illuminate how economic activity is embedded in and constrained by social ties among economic actors. Social capital, in the form of connections to others holding valuable resources, is vital for finding a job, buying a car, creating a new industry, or triggering a global financial crisis. In nontechnical terms the author explicates the core network concepts, measures, and analysis methods behind these phenomena. The book also includes many striking network diagrams to provide visual insights into complex structural patterns.

This accessible book offers an invaluable critique for both undergraduate and graduate students in economic sociology and social network analysis courses who seek a better understanding of the multifaceted economic webs in which we are all entangled.

This book provides an international, multi-disciplinary empirical account of pole classes and how they fit into wider discourses about bodies and gender, and age and fitness. In particular, the book explores how women initiate agency and espouse liberation and empowerment through something as seemingly problematic as pole classes.

This book examines the structural dynamics of HIV among populations at heightened vulnerability to infection as the result of stigma, discrimination and marginalization. It first examines how the socio-structural context shapes HIV risk and how affected populations and national governments and programs have responded to these structural constraints. Chapters focus on structural determinants of HIV risk among transgender women in Guatemala, migrant workers in Mexico, Nigeria and Vietnam, and people who inject drugs in Tanzania. Next, the book examines resilience and community empowerment and mobilization among key populations such as female sex workers in the Dominican Republic and India, and young women and girls in Botswana, Malawi and Mozambique. A third set of chapters explores how national responses to HIV have addressed the role of structural factors in diverse political, geographic and epidemic settings including: Brazil, South Africa, Ukraine and the USA. Ultimately, effective and sustainable responses to HIV among marginalized groups must be grounded in an in-depth understanding of the factors that create vulnerability and risk and impede access to services. Throughout, this book brings together a rigorous social science research perspective with a strong rights-based approach to inform improvements in HIV programs and policies. It offers new insights into how to better address HIV and the health and human rights of historically excluded communities and groups.

Climate Change Adaptation and Human Capabilities explores learning, health, mobility, and play as climate capabilities and produces new insights into the depth of climate change impact on social life.

Volume 13 relaunches the book series after a 9-year hiatus and addresses new directions in the field of educational ethnography. The authors in the book share methodological similarities, but their applications, contexts, treatments, and contributions to the field as evidenced here are unique and vary considerably. The diversity of views and perspectives of ethnographic theory and method in educational settings are on full display, from the street to urban and suburban classrooms and to college settings, where gender, race, class, and power dynamics impact learners, teachers, parents, and communities. Taken together, the chapters reinvigorate and redirect a new set of possibilities and opportunities in ethnographic research, while highlighting shifts, problems and new directions for the field.

Social movements around the world have used a wide variety of protest tactics to bring about enormous social changes, influencing cultural arrangements, public opinion, and government policies in the process. This concise yet in-depth primer provides a broad overview of theoretical issues in the study of social movements, illustrating key concepts with a series of case studies. It offers engaging analyses of the protest cycle of the 1960s, the women's movement, the LGBT movement, the environmental movement, right-wing movements, and global social justice movements. Author Suzanne Staggenborg examines these social movements in terms of their strategies and tactics, the organizational challenges they faced, and the roles that the mass media and counter-movements played in determining their successes and failures.

In Burning Words I talk about a variety of topics. As the title may suggest, I do not chew my words in the book. I do not write to please or to displease someone out there. I simply write about topics I feel important to write about. Again, Burning Words covers quite a few topics and like any of my books, it is A MUST read.