Financial sustainability is one of the key challenges confronting Europe's universities today. Despite the fact that universities are at the centre of knowledge creation and development, which itself is seen as one of the main engines of economic growth, public funding of higher education in most countries is not increasing or at least not increasing enough in real terms. "Democratisation of higher education" has led to the fact that the higher education budgets per student are relatively low in most European countries compared to Europe's competitors. Despite declarations of intent to increase spending on higher education and research, it is not very likely that public expenditure will grow significantly on average in Europe and therefore be able to keep up with rapidly inflating costs in the years to come. One of the reasons for this is that higher education and research have to compete with other priorities in public budgets (e.g., security, health, etc.). Furthermore, the recent economic downturn has contributed to the decision in many European countries to decrease the levels of investment in higher education and research. Such trends are particularly worrisome for universities across Europe, whose continuing dependence on public funding puts their future sustainability under pressure. New funding schemes and incentives have been discussed and introduced in many European higher education systems, including competitive funding schemes for research under the name of "excellence" policies. Despite the different national institutional configurations in Europe, higher education systems face similar demands of promoting sustainable funding models, maintaining high academic standards, and equality. Thus, financial sustainability is not an end in itself; it aims to ensure that the public university's goals are reached by guaranteeing that the institution produces sufficient income to enable it to invest in high quality education and produce equitable outcomes. For these reasons, this book analyses funding reforms from a multidimensional approach.

Have you ever wondered why some women behave in unpredictable ways as if there are no rules governing their behavior? Have you been puzzled by a sudden, seemingly illogical change in your woman s mood? If so then this book is for you. This latest attempt at solving the eternal puzzle of understanding women is backed by twenty years of research, investigation, and in-depth analysis. We have finally cracked the eternal puzzle.

Unlike other relationship books that teach do(s) and don t(s), this book sheds the light on the root cause of inexplicable female behavior, thus providing the reader with the tools to analyze it, understand it and deal with it effectively.

Unfortunately, a lot of experienced men who acquired similar knowledge the hard way would not share it with the young because they are in direct competition with them. Young people have the asset of youth, while older people have the advantage of experience. The combination of youth and experience should provide the reader with a competitive edge that each group on its own does not enjoy. Author Anastasio Nasa opens up his hands-on findings to your benefit with "Commodity Women: A Daring Journey into the Mind-Set of Some Women."

Urban renewal has been the dominant approach to revitalizing industrialized communities that fall into decline. A national, community-based organization, the Skillman Foundation sought to engage in a joint effort with the University of Michigan's School of Social Work to bring six neighborhoods in one such declining urban center, Detroit, back to positions of strength and national leadership. A Twenty-First Century Approach to Community Change introduces readers to the basis for the Foundation's solicitation of social work expertise and the social context within which the work of technical assistance began. Building on research, the authors introduce the theory and practice knowledge of earlier scholars, including the conduct of needs assessments at multiple levels, engagement of community members in identifying problem-solving strategies, assistance in developing community goals, and implementation of social work field instruction opportunities. Lessons learned and challenges are described as they played out in the process of creating partnerships for the Foundation with community leaders, engaging and maintaining youth involvement, managing roles and relationships with multiple partners recruited by the Foundation for their specialized expertise, and ultimately conducting the work of technical assistance within a context of increasing influence of the city's surrounding systems (political, economic, educational, and social). Readers will especially note the role of technical assistance in an evolving theory of change.

A Day of Life: Moments in Time takes mankind as a protagonist on a daily journey through time where one human seven billion days ago counts down to day one and an environment coping with seven billion humans. The author tries to create a conscious awareness within the reader of the five life-forms and the six constants-the imbalance of which has plagued mankind to this day. A Day of Life is meant to encourage the reader to draw his or her own conclusions regarding the life-forms and constants and to make choices as to the immanency of a possible systemic collapse from exponential expansion.

McDowell and Braniff explore the relationship between commemoration and conflict in societies which have engaged in peace processes, attempting to unpack the ways in which the practices of memory and commemoration influence efforts to bring armed conflict to an end and whether it can even reactivate conflict as political circumstances change.

This multidisciplinary volume includes an international roster of contributors who explore how mass hysteria has emerged among people across the globe as a consequence of the COVID-19 pandemic. The contributors provide international perspectives on the effects of this "corohysteria" in areas such as education, healthcare, religion, psychology, mathematics, economics, media, racism, politics, etc. They argue the hysteria, angst, fear, unrest, and difficulties associated with the pandemic are exploited to foster political and social agendas and have led to the undermining of national and global responses to the virus.

This book elaborates on the distinction between societal innovation and social innovation. It provides eight case studies to illustrate the scope, process, outcome, and impact of societal innovation and social innovation. In addition, the book proposes a model for interested parties to maximize their contribution for the common social good in a systematic and effective way. Case studies are used to illustrate concepts for readers to grasp the real essence of the relatively abstract notions of societal innovation and social innovation. In doing so, the book shows how small efforts can bring big benefits for the under privileged and to society as a whole. This book serves as a helpful resource for government officials, social innovation practitioners, social entrepreneurs, Non Profit Organizations, as well as students who would like to contribute to the common social good.

Leading academics take a distinctive new approach to the understanding of public sociology education in this perceptive new resource. Through pedagogical case studies and inter-contributor dialogues, they develop and challenge thinking in the field. Divided into three sections on the publics, knowledges and practices of public sociology education, it looks beyond the boundaries of academia to deliver fresh responses to key disciplinary questions including the purposes and targets of sociological knowledge. For students, academics and practitioners, it is a timely and thought-provoking contribution to debate about public sociology education.

Offering a fresh approach to new explorations of the reconfigurations of sociological thought, this book provides a mix of literature review, original theory and autobiographical material in order to understand formations of sociological knowledge.

Arguing that Antarctica is the most mediated place on earth and thus an ideal location for testing the limits of bio-political management of population and place, this book remaps national and postcolonial methods and offers a new look on a 'forgotten' continent now the focus of ecological concern.

The contemporary tactics of millennial feminists who are part of an active movement for social change In 2014, after a young man murdered six students at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and then killed himself, the news provoked an eye-opening surge of feminist activism. Fueled by the wide circulation of the killer's hateful manifesto and his desire to exact "revenge" upon young women, feminists online and offline around the world clamored for a halt to such acts of misogyny. Despite the widespread belief that feminism is out-of-style or dead, this mobilization of young women fighting against gender oppression was overwhelming. In Finding Feminism, Alison Dahl Crossley analyzes feminist activists at three different U.S. colleges, revealing that feminism is alive on campuses, but is complex, nuanced, and context-dependent. Young feminists are carrying the torch of the movement, despite a climate that is not always receptive to their claims. These feminists are engaged in social justice organizing in unexpected contexts and spaces, such as multicultural sororities, student government, and online. Sharing personal stories of their everyday experiences with inequality, the young women in Finding Feminism employ both traditional and innovative feminist tactics. They use the Internet and social media as a tool for their activism-what Alison Dahl Crossley calls 'Facebook Feminism.' The university, as an institution, simultaneously aids and constrains their fight for gender equality. Offering a stunning and hopeful portrait of today's young feminist leaders, Finding Feminism provides insight into the contemporary feminist movement in America.

Crime is perceived as a perennial problem in society. However, in the one hundred and fifty years or so of criminological study, we have, arguably, learned very little about questions of criminality. The reason for this is that criminology remains largely a modernist empirical discipline with attendant modernist assumptions. Primary among these is the assumption that criminals are pathological in their responses to the world around them. This book demonstrates that this is not the case. In order to do this it deconstructs conventional modernist criminological conceptualizations of the role of individuals in the construction of the world of which they are a part and provides a radically new model of the relationship between humans' way of being in the world and the capacities of society to constrain them.

The Fair Dinkum Economy offers an easy-to-read, easy-to-understand economic guide for everyone. It explores the recent decline in the living standards of developed countries and negative effects of the swing in the balance of power to the Asian and Indian regions. Author Robert Gibson maintains that the way this economic change is happening will not benefit any country. What's more, there is an alternate path we can take that could lead us to a better, more equal world. It is not a nice thought that the twentieth century may have seen the peak in the status and strength of Western Nations. If we keep going the way we are, however, that is what history may record. We need to be encouraged to present our ideas because debate is healthy. New ideas stimulate thinking along different lines, about different possibilities. The Fair Dinkum Economy presents an idea-a plan that is not just about what is good for the richest nations, but that instead works with the global trading system for the betterment of all mankind.

The unexpected and fascinating interspecies relationship between humans and horseshoe crabs. Horseshoe crabs are considered both a prehistoric and indicator species. They have not changed in tens of millions of years and provide useful data to scientists who monitor the health of the environment. From the pharmaceutical industry to paleontologists to the fishing industry, the horseshoe crab has made vast, but largely unknown, contributions to human life and our shared ecosystem. Catch and Release examines how these intersections steer the trajectory of both species' lives, and futures. Based on interviews with conservationists, field biologists, ecologists, and paleontologists over three years of fieldwork on urban beaches, noted ethnographer Lisa Jean Moore shows how humans literally harvest the life out of the horseshoe crabs. We use them as markers for understanding geologic time, collect them for agricultural fertilizer, and eat them as delicacies, capture them as bait, then rescue them for conservation, and categorize them as endangered. The book details the biomedical bleeding of crabs; how they are caught, drained of 40% of their blood, and then released back into their habitat. The model of catch and release is essential. Horseshoe crabs cannot be bred in captivity and can only survive in their own ecosystems. Moore shows how horseshoe crabs are used as an exploitable resource, and are now considered a "vulnerable" species. An investigation of how humans approach animals that are essential for their survival, Catch and Release questions whether humans should have divine, moral, or ethical claims to any living being in their path.

We live in the worlds that we help to create every day. Every activity either supports an existing system or effects some change, however small. But is it possible to consciously create the worlds in which we want to live?

This volume brings together systems theorists and practitioners who have worked on that question for decades. It explores connections between design and systems ideas to explain why some efforts have been more successful than others, and what is needed if we are to move forward. It offers reflections on early and large-scale attempts at impacting societal systems, as well as proposals for taking those ideas into the future. Examples date back to the Club of Rome in the 1960s and look forward to the creation of ecologically sustainable systems in the future. They address the need for collaboration and inclusion in settings from communities to corporations. And while theories are presented as support for the examples, they are explained in practical ways meant to be accessible both to students and to general readers.

How are the ways that race organizes our lives related to the ways gender and class organize our lives? How might these organizing mechanisms conflict or work together? In Digesting Race, Class, and Gender, Ivy Ken likens race, class, and gender to foods - foods that are produced in fields, mixed together in bowls, and digested in our social and institutional bodies. In the field, one food may contaminate another through cross-pollination. In the mixing bowl, each food's original molecular structure changes in the presence of others. And within a meal, the presence of one food may impede or facilitate the digestion of another. At each of these sites, the "foods" of race, class, and gender are involved in dynamic relationships with each other that have implications for the shape - or the taste - of our social order.

Peter L. Berger is arguably the best-known American sociologist living today. Since the 1960s he has been publishing books on many facets of the American social scene, and several are now considered classics. So it may be hard to believe Professor Berger's description of himself as an "accidental sociologist." But that in fact accurately describes how he stumbled into sociology. In this witty, intellectually stimulating memoir, Berger explains not only how he became a social scientist, but the many adventures that this calling has led to.
Rather than writing an autobiography, he focuses on the main intellectual issues that motivated his work and the various people and situations he encountered in the course of his career. Full of memorable vignettes and colorful characters depicted in a lively narrative often laced with humor, Berger's memoir conveys the excitement that a study of social life can bring. The first part of the book describes Berger's initiation into sociology through the New School for Social Research, "a European enclave in the midst of Greenwich Village bohemia." Berger was first a student at the New School and later a young professor amidst a clique of like-minded individuals. There he published "The Social Construction of Reality "(with colleague Thomas Luckmann), one of his most successful books, followed by" The Sacred Canopy" on the sociology of religion, also still widely cited.
The book covers Berger's experience as a "globe-trekking sociologist" including trips to Mexico, where he studied approaches to Third World poverty; to East Asia, where he discovered the potential of capitalism to improve social conditions; and to South Africa, where he chaired an international study group on the future of post-Apartheid society.
Berger then tells about his role as the director of a research center at Boston University. For over two decades he and his colleagues have been tackling such important issues as globalization, the secularization of Europe, and the ongoing dialectic between relativism and fundamentalism in contemporary culture.
What comes across throughout is Berger's boundless curiosity with the many ways in which people interact in society. This book offers longtime Berger readers as well as newcomers to sociology proof that the sociologist's attempt to explain the world is anything but boring.

Were orphanages warehouses of horror for neglected and deprived children as depicted by the arts and the media of the past two centuries? Or were they havens of security in which these children could develop to their maximum capabilities? The author, with successful careers in medicine, law, and the military, in this rather intimate portrayal of his life in an orphanage, makes a case for the latter. With a series of stories, some light hearted and humorous, some tragic, all personal and revealing, the author tells of his maturation from an insecure and fragile nine year old child from a broken home, into an independent-minded teenager at graduation from high school. In these stories is seen the humanity of the caring teachers and disciplinarians as they strived to inculcate within the children in Buckner Orphans Home a value system that stressed a strong work ethic and respect for others. The results of their efforts are registered in the highly successful careers of many who were raised in this orphanage, especially when juxtaposed to their backgrounds before they were taken into the Home.

This book addresses the relationship between the production of social problems in educational policy, the research practices required to inform policy, and the daily production of normalcies and differences in school contexts. It reports on the opportunities and consequences for policy, research, and practice when normalcy is stigmatized at the same level as difference. The book employs a critical analysis combining queer, feminist, and post-representational theories to understand the implications of dominant ways of understanding the division between normal and different subjectivities and how they reiterate structures of inequality in schools.