Most people think of class as a ranking system-the more you have, the higher your class status. In contrast to this view, in this new study author Gus Bagakis demonstrates that class is a tool that explains how the capitalist system works and why the class struggle is invisible.

Capitalism was and is a developing system in which the working class is turned into a commodity, selling its labor power to the capitalist class that owns the factories, businesses, and corporations. While capitalism claims to promote efficiency, wealth, and freedom, it is also a system where the rich are getting richer, the earth and climate are being destroyed, and the poor get more and more desperate with each passing day.

All of this is happening because we live in a system that stunts personality and corrupts human relations by pitting people against one another for economic gain. Through class analysis, Bagakis explains that we must take off the filters that we've been indoctrinated with, so that we can see how personal, social, and international problems develop. Primary among these false filters is the idea that we are all middle class and so there are no class conflicts in our society.

Seeing through the System seeks to help students, workers, social activists, and those interested in understanding the reasons behind many of the problems in the world today. You can come to understand how our society was put together, how it works, and how it can be transformed.

The thesis analyses the role of Muslim voluntary welfare associations in Jordan from the perspective of their religious discourse and the related social activities, to assess whether they contribute to empowerment or reinforce dependency

With extraordinary clarity, blending world history, paradigms, insights, and food recipes for the communal table, the guided exercises of "Recipe For Peace Now" provide tools and advice for transforming relationships, focusing group energy, and demonstrating how each person has the capacity to transform individual and cultural hatreds, develop compassion, and help create more peace in the world. "Recipe For Peace Now" shows readers how communal consumption and communal discussion encourage healing words and actions that help us acknowledge and dissolve barriers, illuminating the way toward tolerance and peace. Illuminating the way toward insight into a wide range of contemporary topics and concerns, from war and the threat of terrorism, to individual anxiety, and the degradation of community understanding. Illuminating the way for the human spirit to prevail. Illuminating the way for you, and for me.

"It hurts to be beautiful" has been a cliche for centuries. What has been far less appreciated is how much it hurts not to be beautiful. The Beauty Bias explores our cultural preoccupation with attractiveness, the costs it imposes, and the responses it demands.
Beauty may be only skin deep, but the damages associated with its absence go much deeper. Unattractive individuals are less likely to be hired and promoted, and are assumed less likely to have desirable traits, such as goodness, kindness, and honesty. Three quarters of women consider appearance important to their self image and over a third rank it as the most important factor.
Although appearance can be a significant source of pleasure, its price can also be excessive, not only in time and money, but also in physical and psychological health. Our annual global investment in appearance totals close to $200 billion. Many individuals experience stigma, discrimination, and related difficulties, such as eating disorders, depression, and risky dieting and cosmetic procedures. Women bear a vastly disproportionate share of these costs, in part because they face standards more exacting than those for men, and pay greater penalties for falling short.
The Beauty Bias explores the social, biological, market, and media forces that have contributed to appearance-related problems, as well as feminism's difficulties in confronting them. The book also reviews why it matters. Appearance-related bias infringes fundamental rights, compromises merit principles, reinforces debilitating stereotypes, and compounds the disadvantages of race, class, and gender. Yet only one state and a half dozen localities explicitly prohibit such discrimination. The Beauty Bias provides the first systematic survey of how appearance laws work in practice, and a compelling argument for extending their reach. The book offers case histories of invidious discrimination and a plausible legal and political strategy for addressing them. Our prejudices run deep, but we can do far more to promote realistic and healthy images of attractiveness, and to reduce the price of their pursuit.

This book explores the adoption of "active ageing" policies by EU15 nations and the impact on older peoples' work and retirement policy options. It explores the labor market policies (including unemployment benefits, active labor market policies and partial pension receipt) and pension policies (pension principles, early retirement and incentives for deferral) adopted by these nations from the mid-1990s onwards, addressing three main questions. First, to what extent was the EU's vision of "active ageing" adopted in EU15 nations between 1995 and 2010? Second, what was the nature of policy reforms in these nations over this time period? Finally, which sub-groups within the older age cohort were subject to active ageing policies in these countries? The data indicate convergence towards the EU-vision of active ageing is complex, with nations adopting a variety of different reforms and policy mixes, which in turn focus on different groups within the older age cohort.

This is a history of the great language controversy that has occupied and empassioned Greeks - sometimes with fatal results - for over two hundred years. It begins in the late eighteenth-century when a group of Greek intellectuals sought to develop a new, Hellenic, national identity alongside the traditional identity supplied by Orthodox Christianity. The ensuing controversy focused on the language, fuelled on the one hand by a desire to develop a form of Greek that expressed the Greeks' relationship to the ancients, and on the other by the different groups' contrasting notions of what the national image so embodied should be. The purists wanted a writing system close to the ancient. The vernacularists - later known as demoticists - sought to match written language to spoken, claiming the latter to be the product of the unbroken development of Greek since the time of Homer. Peter Mackridge explores the political, social, and linguistic causes and effects of the controversy in its many and passionate manifestations. Drawing on a wide range of evidence from literature, language, history, and anthropology, he traces its effects on spoken and written varieties of Greek and shows its impact on those in use today. He describes successive language-planning policies of the state and the efforts by linguistic elites to achieve language standardization and independence from languages, such as Turkish, Albanian, Vlach, and Slavonic, spoken where once Greek was dominant.
This is a timely book. The sense of national and linguistic identity that has been inculcated into generations of Greeks since the start of the War of Independence in 1821 has, in the last 25 years, received blows from whichit may not recover. Immigration from Eastern Europe and elsewhere has introduced new populations whose religions, languages, and cultures are transforming Greece into a country quite different from what it has been and to what it once aspired to be.

2013 Finalist for the Lambda Literary Awards, LGBT Studies category Barton argues that conventional Southern manners and religious institutions provide a foundation for homophobia in the Bible Belt In the Bible Belt, it's common to see bumper stickers that claim One Man + One Woman = Marriage, church billboards that command one to "Get right with Jesus," letters to the editor comparing gay marriage to marrying one's dog, and nightly news about homophobic attacks from the Family Foundation. While some areas of the Unites States have made tremendous progress in securing rights for gay people, Bible Belt states lag behind. Not only do most Bible Belt gays lack domestic partner benefits, lesbians and gay men can still be fired from some places of employment in many regions of the Bible Belt for being a homosexual. In Pray the Gay Away, Bernadette Barton argues that conventions of small town life, rules which govern Southern manners, and the power wielded by Christian institutions serve as a foundation for both passive and active homophobia in the Bible Belt. She explores how conservative Christian ideology reproduces homophobic attitudes and shares how Bible Belt gays negotiate these attitudes in their daily lives. Drawing on the remarkable stories of Bible Belt gays, Barton brings to the fore their thoughts, experiences and hard-won insights to explore the front lines of our national culture war over marriage, family, hate crimes, and equal rights. Pray the Gay Away illuminates their lives as both foot soldiers and casualties in the battle for gay rights.

This volume analyzes changing patterns of authority in the global political economy with an in-depth look at the new roles played by state and non-state actors, and addresses key themes including the provision of global public goods, new modes of regulation and the potential of new institutions for global governance.

Public transport in low-income Asian (LIA) cities fails to meet people's mobility needs, generates high greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and worsens social exclusion. Following successful Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) projects in Bogota and Curitiba, LIA countries promoted BRT in their large to medium-sized cities. However, the political and institutional structure distinctive to LIA cities makes their implementation difficult. This book investigates policy tensions by examining the planning and attempted implementation of BRT projects, taking Bandung and Surabaya in Indonesia as case studies. It analyses BRT to understand how power and communication gaps in institutional relationships between different actors at multiple levels of governance create conflict, and concludes that top-down policies and funding mechanisms cause tension in intergovernmental relationships. It also found that BRT solutions generated socio-political tension arising from the socio-economic realities and local political dynamics that shaped city structure, mobility patterns and capacity in resolving conflicts. The superimposed BRT solution generated discursive tension because conflicting discourses were not aligned with local economic, social, and environmental issues. The book highlights the need to take into consideration the vital role of local social and political actors, institutions and planning processes as they respond to and shape policies that are imposed by higher levels.

This book describes the current environmental changes due to global warming in northern Eurasia, especially focusing on eastern Siberia. Spring flooding, ice-jam movements, and monitoring using remote sensing are included. Additionally, current reindeer herding of indigenous peoples in Siberia and related environmental changes such as waterlogging, rising temperatures, and vegetation changes are addressed. As a summary, the book also introduces readers to adaptation strategies at several governmental levels. The book primarily focuses on 1) introducing readers to global warming and human-nature dynamics in Siberia, with special emphasis on humidification of the region in the mid-2000s, and 2) describing social adaptation to the changing terrestrial ecosystem, with an emphasis on water environments. Adaptation strategies based on vulnerability assessments of environmental changes in northern Eurasia are crucial topics for intergovernmental organizations, such as the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change). Thus, the book offers a valuable resource not only for environmental researchers but also for several stakeholders regarding global environmental change.

This book provides insight into the globally interlinked disability rights community and its political efforts today. By analysing what disability rights activism contributes to a global power apparatus of disability-related knowledge, it demonstrates how disability advocacy influences the way we categorise, classify, distribute, manipulate, and therefore transform knowledge. By unpacking the mutually constitutive relations between (practical) moral knowledge of international disability advocates and (formal) disability rights norms that are codified in international treaties such as the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD), the author shows that the disability rights movement is largely critical of statements that attempt to streamline it. At the same time, cross-cultural disability rights advocacy requires images of uniformity to stabilise its global legitimacy among international stakeholders and retain a common meta-code that visibly identifies its means and aims. As an epistemic community, disability rights advocates simultaneously rely on and contest the authority of international human rights infrastructure and its language. Proving that disability rights advocates contribute immensely to a global culture that standardises what is considered morally and legally 'right' and 'wrong', thereby shaping the human body and the body politic, this book will be of interest to all scholars and students of critical disability studies, sociology of knowledge, legal and linguistic anthropology, social inequality, and social movements.

Bring the spark back into your bedroom and your relationship with gutsy and effective advice from bestselling author Michele Weiner Davis.

It is estimated that one of every three married couples struggles with problems associated with mismatched sexual desire. Do you? If you want to stop fighting about sex and revitalize your intimate connection with your spouse, then you need this book. In "The Sex-Starved Marriage," bestselling author Michele Weiner Davis will help you understand why being complacent or bitter about ho-hum sex might cost you your relationship.

Full of moving firsthand accounts from couples who have struggled with the erosion of sexual desire and rebuilt their passionate connection, "The Sex-Starved Marriage" addresses every aspect of the sexual libido problem:

• If you're the more highly sexed partner, you'll breathe a sigh of relief. At last someone understands your feelings about the void in your marriage. Discover why your pleas for touch have fallen upon deaf ears and why your approach to the lull in your sexual relationship could be a sexual turnoff. Most important, learn new ways to motivate your spouse to take your needs for more physical closeness to heart.
• If you're the spouse with a lagging libido, you're far from alone. You'll learn about the physiological and psychological factors, including unresolved relationship issues, that may contribute to the chill in your bedroom and what you can do to melt the ice. And if you're a man, you'll be surprised to learn that staggering numbers of men, even men whose sexual machinery works just fine, "get headaches" too!

"The Sex-Starved Marriage" will give you and your spouse the inspiration, encouragement, and answers you need.

Contemporary city and suburban dwellers are constantly on the move. Does this mean they lack a sense of belonging to their neighbourhoods, or does enhanced mobility co-exist with feelings of community and belonging? This collection examines these questions through a unique series of neighbourhood-based global case studies.

A volume in International Social Studies Forum: The Series Series Editors Richard Diem, University of Texas at San Antonio and Jeff Passe, University of North Carolina, Charlotte January 2009 marked the 25th anniversary of one of the most famous three minutes of television history. It was during half-time of the 1984 Super Bowl that APPLE show cased its new Macintosh Computer in an avant-guard commercial. In the following three weeks sales of the new computer, in both the public and private sectors, took off leading some to note this occasion as the "true" start of the information age. At the same time schools joined this so-called information revolution and began to use the new technology, in various forms, in a much more serious manner. Given both the changing nature of technology, as well as its classroom applications, over the past quarter century this work's goal is to capture the historical trends of both use and application of information technology in the social studies during this era. This is done by providing a retrospective view, from 1984 through 2009, of where we've been, where we are, and a view of new tools and strategies and possible studies that are emerging that can enhance our understanding of the effects that technology has and will have on the social studies.

A qualified expert provides leaders in government and business a much-needed primer for accomplishing their most vital task: transforming a purpose into policy through the appropriate acquisition and use of power. At a time when corporations are reeling from mismanagement, a large proportion of homeowners are being forced to default on mortgages and the federal government is rapidly extending its formidable reach into the private sector, it is understandable that many Americans no longer trust big business and government institutions. To get the United States back on track and to preclude the same kinds of disasters in the future, it is imperative for corporate and government leaders as well as private citizens to understand the commonality in all of these events-the use and abuse of power. This text examines these critical events within a framework of power to explain what motivated our leaders in business and government to make the policies that resulted in these outcomes, providing valuable insights on the nature and use of power. It then draws lessons today's leaders can use to improve their use of power. Examples from current affairs and modern business are discussed in a lively, compelling way. Cites examples and case studies from current affairs, modern business, and recent history Explains how and why some corporate leaders abused their power and erased the wealth of their companies and the savings of private individuals Provides tables, charts, and other figures for supporting documentation

This edited book contains salient papers presented at the XII World Congress of Rural Sociology held in South Korea in 2008. These papers have been selected for their quality and have undergone a peer review process. The rationale behind this book rests on the desire to share the wealth of research presented at the World Congress with interested individuals who could not attend the event and it reflects the empirical work and thinking characterizing contemporary rural sociology. As this sociological sub-discipline evolves along with society and the rural world, it appears of paramount importance to make available ground-breaking research to the international scientific community. Rural sociology is changing and this volume testifies of this change by documenting the introduction of new themes of research as well as the evolution of established ones. In this regard, it provides a unique and uniquely international view of the most recent advanced production in rural sociology. The volume consists of eighteen chapters representing original pieces of research and an introduction that frames them in the context of the evolution of the discipline.

With 70 per cent of its people under the age of 30, Africa is the world's youngest continent. African youngsters have been largely characterized as either vulnerable victims of the frequent humanitarian crises that plague their homelands, or as violent militarized youth and 'troubled' gang members. Young people's contributions to processes of educational provision, peace building and participatory human development in Africa are often ignored. While acknowledging the profound challenges associated with growing up in an environment of uncertainty and deprivation, African Childhoods sheds light on African children's often constructive engagement with a variety of societal conditions, adverse or otherwise, and their ability to positively influence their own lives and those of others.

Shedding new light on the theme of "crisis" in Husserl's phenomenology, this book reflects on the experience of awakening to one's own naivete. Beginning from everyday examples, Knies examines how this awakening makes us culpable for not having noticed what was noticeable. He goes on to apply this examination to fundamental issues in phenomenology, arguing that the appropriation of naive life has a different structure from the reflection on pre-reflective life. Husserl's work on the "crisis" is presented as an attempt to integrate this appropriation into a systematic transcendental philosophy. Crisis and Husserlian Phenomenology brings Husserl into dialogue with other key thinkers in Continental philosophy such as Descartes, Kant, Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty and Derrida. It is suitable for students and scholars alike, especially those interested in subjectivity, responsibility and the philosophy of history.

In "An Other's Mind" you get a firsthand look at the yet  unaddressed core issue that has rendered the United States a more sharply divided nation than ever. Fact is, we may all share the same longing that ours be a society that is fair, just, free, equal and democratic, but these themes, fundamental as they are, have markedly different contexts for those of us flourishing in the mainstream than for those of us struggling at the margins. An impaired person might for example perceive that it is only fair that at the expense of the rest of us public places be rendered handicapped-accessible so that he or she might have entree to what the rest of us take as a given. Yet a post 60's populace, weaned on New Order, think tank, paradigms, seems to more and more agree that true fairness demands that we all, crippled and able-bodied alike, surmount the same flight of stairs on our own. More so than race, class, culture, politics, language, and so forth, it is this divergence of perception that buries even the most basic and well-intended initiatives of social policy in a maelstrom of heated, discordant ambiance and which constitutes the newest frontier in the battle for social progress and a truly united nation.Recognizing this and the urgent interest that we might yet come to understand one another and thereby reach greater accord as human beings, Luis Quiros delivers, in this unique volume, a first call to arms, by offering you a rich, vivid, personal and visionary look at the inner workings and arcs of critical thought that percolate inside an other's mind.= -Lee Stringer, award-winning author of "Grand Central Winter: Stories From the Street"; "Like shaking Hands With God," and "Sleepaway"" School"," Stories From a Boy's Life."

Aeron Davis takes a close look at the state of elites today. He argues that the Brexit vote and 2017 election outcome are signs of a deeper leadership crisis that has been developing over decades. The great transformations of the 1980s onwards have not only upended societies, they have reshaped elite rule itself. Too many leaders today, regardless of intent, are ignorant, precarious, rootless and self-serving. Although richer, they have lost coherence, influence and control. Increasingly, they are just reckless opportunists, getting what they can amid the chaos they have created. Their failings are not only damaging wider society, they are undermining the very foundations of the Establishment itself. The book, based on interviews with over 350 elite figures, asks: how did we end up producing the leaders that got us here and what can we do about it? -- .

There are people dedicated to improving the way we eat, and people dedicated to improving the way we give birth. A Bun in the Oven is the first comparison of these two social movements. The food movement has seemingly exploded, but little has changed in the diet of most Americans. And while there's talk of improving the childbirth experience, most births happen in large hospitals, about a third result in C-sections, and the US does not fare well in infant or maternal outcomes. In A Bun in the Oven Barbara Katz Rothman traces the food and the birth movements through three major phases over the course of the 20th century in the United States: from the early 20th century era of scientific management; through to the consumerism of Post World War II with its 'turn to the French' in making things gracious; to the late 20th century counter-culture midwives and counter-cuisine cooks. The book explores the tension throughout all of these eras between the industrial demands of mass-management and profit-making, and the social movements-composed largely of women coming together from very different feminist sensibilities-which are working to expose the harmful consequences of industrialization, and make birth and food both meaningful and healthy. Katz Rothman, an internationally recognized sociologist named 'midwife to the movement' by the Midwives Alliance of North America, turns her attention to the lessons to be learned from the food movement, and the parallel forces shaping both of these consumer-based social movements. In both movements, issues of the natural, the authentic, and the importance of 'meaningful' and 'personal' experiences get balanced against discussions of what is sensible, convenient and safe. And both movements operate in a context of commercial and corporate interests, which places profit and efficiency above individual experiences and outcomes. A Bun in the Oven brings new insight into the relationship between our most intimate, personal experiences, the industries that control them, and the social movements that resist the industrialization of life and seek to birth change.

"Deniers of climate change have benefited from political strategies developed by conservative think tanks and public relations experts paid handsomely by the energy industry. With this book, environmental activists can benefit from some scholarly attention turned to their efforts. This book exhibits the best that public scholarship has to offer. Its authors utilize sophisticated rhetorical theory and criticism to uncover the inventional constraints and possibilities for participants at various sites of the Step-It-Up day of climate activism. What makes this book especially valuable is that it is not only directed to fellow communication scholars, but is written in a clear and accessible style to bring the insights of an academic field to a broader public of activists committed to building an environmental social movement." - Prof. Leah Ceccarelli, University of Washington "This is an unusually interesting volume grounded in a sustained and coordinated analysis of the Step It Up campaign. Generating a multifaceted and shared archive for analyzing the SIU campaign on global warming, the volume's multiple authors critically examine intersecting dimensions of the SIU campaign-its persuasive strategies, organizational dynamics, and political practices for everyday citizens-with an eye on implications for enhancing the larger environmental movement. Readers with a practical and theoretical interest in social and political movements will find this book engaging and leavened with heuristic value." - Professor Robert L. Ivie, Indiana University, Bloomington

Analysis of why politicians are driven to create an independent judicial institution with the authority to overrule their decisions. It focuses on a country with no tradition of independent judicial review - Russia. History does not support an independent judiciary here; yet a potentially powerful constitutional court has existed for 20 years.