A bird's eye-view of the difficulties facing the nation is first presented to the incoming Obama Administration and the new Congress. The specific problems are then described in some detail. Certain solutions, both from the current and futuristic perspective, are presented. An attempt has been made to keep the concepts and solutions explained in an understandable manner by mere mortals. The book has ten chapters, eight of which deal with a specific area of difficulty, its explanation and solutions. For example, in one chapter the issue of infra-structure development is described in detail. The sections in this chapter deal with simply asking the "meaning of change in Washington" to suggesting that the infra-structure of the city of Washington has to change first. This is followed by other terrestrial (bridges, roads, veteran's hospitals etc.) and extra-terrestrial (ground satellite tracking sites and other space related) infra- structure projects creating millions of jobs. This chapter then ends with: One might seriously look to see, if there is enough capacity in our heads to expand the non-governmental population in Washington's midst while creating an exemplary infrastructure underground and above ground for generations to marvel at. A city that looks and feels like the head and the heart of a nation on a planet far away. Tear down some buildings that are hard to maintain and environmentally archaic. This is change that Obama and his generation could be remembered for. Is it possible to ignore the skeptics and start the change that will begin the works programs creating so many opportunities; a new space age shall dawn. The Earth will have traveled through the space, crisscrossing the heavens, and the only sky visible will be from the future. I invite you to take a hard look at this book, dedicated to the founding fathers.

Effective Leadership In Nigeria: Practical Ways To Build an Effective, Inspiring, Transformational and Visionary Leadership and Governance in Nigeria is mostly based on the current apathetic and virtual lack of effective and visionary leadership situation in contemporary Nigeria and distills the golden gems: - principles, processes, procedures and practical applications inherent in effective, inspiring, visionary and enthusiastic leadership. It attempts at instituting, building and encouraging good, effective, and visionary leadership in the nation and that is currently, virtually lacking. From the outset, the author makes it clear that this writing is not designed to model or fit any known leadership paradigm, theory or management style. Rather, based on relevant research on leadership as it impacts the Nigerian situation, the book attempts to explore what it takes for there to be an effective and good leadership to successfully lead and change Nigeria for the better. The book is written and organized in a way that reflects and captures the contemporary experiences, frustrations, psychological emotions, aspirations and hopes of every Nigerian and perhaps of promising politicians and future leaders who are honestly touched by the virtual vacuum of real and effective leadership in the country, their concerns, questions, dreams, and the expectations that have virtually gone unmet in the past more than half a century. Properly elucidating what leadership means, and differentiating it from rulership this book couldn't have come at a better time to assist Nigeria's leadership-struggles A masterpiece, Dr. Nkwocha has taken the current apathetic leadership lull and almost leadership void in the nation and set the leadership principles and processes on the cutting edge. The book is a definitive guide to anyone aspiring to the leadership of Nigeria and is therefore in search of meaningful leadership, its principles, processes and pragmatic applications. The book is a must read

This Open Access book is an anthropological urban study of the Emirate of Dubai, its institutions, and their evolution. It provides a contemporary history of disability in city planning from a non-Western perspective and explores the cultural context for its positioning. Three insights inform the author's approach. First, disability research, much like other urban or social issues, must be situated in a particular place. Second, access and inclusion forms a key part of both local and global planning issues. Third, a 21st century planning education should take access and inclusion into consideration by applying a disability lens to the empirical, methodological, and theoretical advances of the field. By bridging theory and practice, this book provides new insights on inclusive city planning and comparative urban theory. This book should be read as part of a larger struggle to define and assert access; it's a story of how equity and justice are central themes in building the cities of the future and of today.

Social network analysis provides a meaningful lens for advancing a more nuanced understanding of the communication networks and practices that bring together policy advocates and practitioners in their day-to-day efforts to broker evidence into policymaking processes. This book advances knowledge brokerage scholarship and methodology as applied to policymaking contexts, focusing on the ways in which knowledge and research are utilized, and go on to influence policy and practice decisions across domains, including communication, health and education. There is a growing recognition that knowledge brokers - key intermediaries - have an important role in calling attention to research evidence that can facilitate the successful implementation of evidence-informed policies and practices. The chapters in this volume focus explicitly on the history of knowledge brokerage research in these contexts and the frameworks and methodologies that bridge these disparate domains. The contributors to this volume offer useful typologies of knowledge brokerage and explicate the range of causal mechanisms that enable knowledge brokers' influence on policymaking. The work included in this volume responds to this emerging interest by comparing, assessing, and delineating social network approaches to knowledge brokerage across domains. The book is a useful resource for students and scholars of social network analysis and policymaking, including in health, communication, public policy and education policy.

Aimed at those at the forefront of social ecological thinking, this book presents a practice-oriented process to navigate the complex, interdisciplinary challenges of our time. The book brings together insights from the social sciences and beyond to introduce readers to 'adaptive doing' - a continuous and iterative process of experiential learning that provides an accessible structure and process for integrating a range of knowledge and practices. As part of the 'adaptive doing' learning cycle, the authors argue for a common platform, symbolically called 'the agora', where multiple ways of understanding can be discussed. In this space, participants can work from practice and narratives, toward meaning, knowledge formation and practice change. The book demonstrates three reframing tools for social ecological practice that provide readers with multiple ways of holistically entering the social ecological domain and expanding their perspectives with a view to changing practice. 'Adaptive doing' is presented as a catalyst for a new generation of social ecological research, in which participants honour their disciplinary foundations while being ready to collaborate within each new system, and each new engagement: being able to act now, for social ecological recognition and change.

Canada a Nation in Motion is a bold look at issues facing Canada today from the perspective of a Canadian who truly understands the issues. In his special blend of analysis, humor and wit, Samy Appadurai offers up an intelligent discussion of issues ranging from the history of immigration in Canada, the G20 Summit and the Vancouver Olympics to the position of Canada on the world stage. Along with masterful storytelling, Samy provides a detailed analysis and commentary on each subject he covers in a way that anyone can easily understand. The perspective that Samy Appadurai takes is one of a well respected community leader who has dedicated his life to not only serving his community, but also his country. His belief in the importance of learning about the issues that face Canada as a nation is clear. However, he is not afraid to take a stand and provide an alternative point of view in order to spark conversation and debate. Canada is a country that is constantly changing from within and without but Samy Appadurai tells us exactly what it is that keeps Canada moving.

With an emphasis on everyday life, this respected text offers a lively and perceptive account of the key theories and ideas which dominate the field of consumption and consumer culture. This third revised and expanded edition is a major update of the text of the second edition, adding new chapters on youth culture and consumption, retail psychology, gender and consumption, the globalization of food and FairTrade, and digital consumption and platform capitalism. Various theoretical perspectives - such as theories of practice, semiotics, to psychoanalysis - are used to illustrate concepts and trends in consumption, whilst a wide range of engaging and up-to-date case studies are employed throughout to provide historical context and illustrate forms of consumption. Written by an experienced teacher, the book offers an accessible and thought-provoking introduction to the concept of consumption for students in sociology, cultural studies, history, anthropology, and social psychology.

This book addresses the mystery and diversity of urbanization in China, especially with regard to urban villages. The "village in the city" is a unique social phenomenon in the process of Chinese urbanization. A local village society composed of deep-rooted social networks linked by blood, geography, folk beliefs, and folk customs is the outcome of a complex social process, which is accompanied by changes in property rights, restructuring of social networks, and conflicting benefits and values. The end of the village is the epitome of social transformation, and for China as a whole, this change may take a very long time to complete. This book includes various examples of and stories on urban villages, offering readers a wealth of insights into the phenomenon and its significance.

Patrick Barr-Melej here illuminates modern Chilean history with an unprecedented chronicle and reassessment of the sixties and seventies. During a period of tremendous political and social strife that saw the election of a Marxist president followed by the terror of a military coup in 1973, a youth-driven, transnationally connected counterculture smashed onto the scene. Contributing to a surging historiography of the era's Latin American counterculture, Barr-Melej draws on media and firsthand interviews in documenting the intertwining of youth and counterculture with discourses rooted in class and party politics. Focusing on ""hippismo"" and an esoteric movement called Poder Joven, Barr-Melej challenges a number of prevailing assumptions about culture, politics, and the Left under Salvador Allende's ""Chilean Road to Socialism."" While countercultural attitudes toward recreational drug use, gender roles and sexuality, rock music, and consumerism influenced many youths on the Left, the preponderance of leftist leaders shared a more conservative cultural sensibility. This exposed, Barr-Melej argues, a degree of intergenerational dissonance within leftist ranks. And while the allure of new and heterodox cultural values and practices among young people grew, an array of constituencies from the Left to the Right berated counterculture in national media, speeches, schools, and other settings. This public discourse of contempt ultimately contributed to the fierce repression of nonconformist youth culture following the coup.

This book explores how discursive psychology (DP) research can be applied to disability and the everyday and institutional constructions of bodymind differences. Bringing together both theoretical and empirical work, it illustrates how DP might be leveraged to make visible nuanced understandings of disability and difference writ large. The authors argue that DP can attend to how such realities are made relevant, dealt with, and negotiated within social practices in the study of disability. They contend that DP can be used to unearth the nuanced and frequently taken for granted ways in which disability is made real in both everyday and institutional talk, and can highlight the very ways in which differences are embodied in social practices - specifically at the level of talk and text. This book demonstrates that rather than simply staying at the level of theory, DP scholars can make visible the actual means by which disabilities and differences more broadly are made real, resisted, contested, and negotiated in everyday social actions. This book aims to expand conceptions of disability and to deepen the - at present, primarily theoretical - critiques of medicalization.

Sociology and Hip Hop: An Anthology provides students with a carefully curated selection of articles that explore human behavior and society through a variety of scholarly lenses crafted by hip hop-influenced academics. The anthology acknowledges the influence of hip hop on pop culture through music, fashion, dance, art, and more, and demonstrates how sociologists can better explain their work and research through hip hop. The anthology is organized into four distinct parts. The readings in Part I confront stereotypes generally associated with hip hop and provide readers with a greater understanding of the international impact and relevance of hip hop. Part II includes articles that demonstrate the ways in which hip hop culture and art are practiced in countries outside of the United States. In Part III, students read about the participation of women and members of the LGBTQ community in hip hop. The final part of the anthology speaks to hip hop as resistance and features readings that underscore the use of hip hop in contemporary social movements and activism. Designed to help readers understand the usefulness of hip hop within the discipline, Sociology and Hip Hop is an ideal resource for courses and programs in sociology.

How can we understand power in a world of ever-growing complexity? This book proposes that we can do so by rethinking the theory and practice of political hegemony through the resources of complexity theory. Taking Gramsci's understanding of hegemony as its starting point, the book argues that the intricacies of contemporary power can be mapped by applying concepts drawn from complexity theory, such as emergence, self-organisation, metastability, and generative entrenchment. It develops an original account of social complexity, drawing upon critical realist sociology, analytic philosophy of science, Marxist and continental philosophies, and neoliberal and anarchist thought. It then draws out the elements of Gramscian hegemony that already align with complexity concepts, such as the balance of forces, common sense, and the historic bloc. On this basis, the book sets out the different dimensions of complex hegemonic power before using this theory to interpret the nature of the power of neoliberalism since 2008.

Imagine places ideas in society and gets readers thinking critically about their most cherished beliefs and values. The topics are vast and varied. Abortion, immigration, gay rights, love, mentorship, and sustainable development. There is no right answer. We must come to our own conclusions. If we can listen and learn from each other, we can accept our differences. Everyone has ideas on how to make the world a better place and fill humankind with hope. Imagine espouses humanitarian and egalitarian ideals such as every citizen deserves to reach their potential and contribute to society. Imagine is written from the perspective of protecting the people and the planet for current and future generations. You will learn of thought-provoking issues. The book proposes that we are all one and connected by spiritual energy. This will help us look for what we have in common and bring about social peace, social progress, and social change that lights our soul and lifts humanity in one colossal embrace.

This book examines the theoretical, methodological and practical dimensions of Qualitative Research in the study of illness, wellbeing and self-growth in the Indian context. Using wide-ranging narratives, interviews, group discussions, and cultural analyses, it offers a social and psychological understanding of health and therapy.

This book explains the rationale of the changes and challenges of Taiwanese citizenship which emphasizes the various identities in the global and multicultural era. It explores the evolving relationship between the social movements, citizenship, the education of citizens and the young peoples' viewpoints, asking how citizenship has been conceptualised in a dramatic transformation age. How has the curriculum and pedagogy designed to fit the global changes for cultivating young generations with rights and responsibilities to interpret in and adapt for the competence of citizenship? And what outcomes and attainments had the Taiwan's undergraduates' knowledge, attitudes and practices of competency on citizenship?

Antonio Gramsci lived the Great War as a "historic break," a profound experience that left an indelible mark on the development of his political thought. Translated into English for the first time, Alternative Modernities reconstructs and analyses this critical period of Gramsci's intellectual formation through a systematic analysis of his writings from 1915 to 1935. For Gramsci, Soviet Communism, "Americanism," and the "new" Fascist State were the principle responses to the crisis of the old world order. He portrayed them as the three protagonists of twentieth-century modernity, alternatives destined to tragically clash in the worldwide struggle for hegemony. Among the arguments in his Prison Notebooks, Gramsci casts doubt on the political strategy of Soviet Communism and the theoretical underpinnings of "official Marxism." Instead, he suggests a radical revision of Marxism by breathing life into a new interpretation whose fundamental concepts are: politics as the struggle for hegemony, the "passive revolution" as a historical paradigm of modernity, and the philosophy of praxis as the welding between visions of the worlds, historical analyses, and political strategies. Gramsci's intuitions culminate in a new theory of the political subject, supported by a reflection upon the 20th century that still speaks to us today, pointing the way toward a new narrative of world history.