This definitive study concentrates on one fundamental aspect of complex organizations, the organization-environment relationship. Numerous theoretical frameworks are described and evaluated which are directly or indirectly relevant to this focus, and included are several chapters that deal with various aspects of this complex relationship.

Slavery and the University is the first edited collection of scholarly essays devoted solely to the histories and legacies of this subject on North American campuses and in their Atlantic contexts. Gathering together contributions from scholars, activists, and administrators, the volume combines two broad bodies of work: (1) historically based interdisciplinary research on the presence of slavery at higher education institutions in terms of the development of proslavery and antislavery thought and the use of slave labor; and (2) analysis on the ways in which the legacies of slavery in institutions of higher education continued in the post-Civil War era to the present day. The collection features broadly themed essays on issues of religion, economy, and the regional slave trade of the Caribbean. It also includes case studies of slavery's influence on specific institutions, such as Princeton University, Harvard University, Oberlin College, Emory University, and the University of Alabama. Though the roots of Slavery and the University stem from a 2011 conference at Emory University, the collection extends outward to incorporate recent findings. As such, it offers a roadmap to one of the most exciting developments in the field of U.S. slavery studies and to ways of thinking about racial diversity in the history and current practices of higher education.

This collection of eleven original essays interrogates the concept of freedom and recenters our understanding of the process of emancipation. Who defined freedom, and what did it mean to nineteenth-century African Americans, both during and after slavery? Some of the essays disrupt the traditional story and time-frame of emancipation.

Housing fulfills a basic human need for shelter. It protects us from the weather and from hostile intruders. Often it is an expression of personal identity and social status. A home is a major personal financial investment and housing is an important part of the economy. The home is also invested with profound psychological and social meaning. It helps meet our needs to feel rooted and to belong. It is a center of privacy, a refuge from the world, and at the same time the place where we interact with our family, friends, and acquaintances. As such the home is an important factor in personal and social development, particularly in childhood.

Because of the complex role of housing in human life, residential environments are an important area of study in a wide variety of fields, including anthropology, architecture, economics, environmental design, geography, psychology, and sociology. The dwelling is the nucleus around which the discourse about residential environments is articulated, but it is not its only component. Residential environments also involve other elements such as the neighborhood, neighbors, and the larger urban community. This multidisciplinary study of residential environments conveys the complex nature of people's experiences with thier residences, neighborhoods, and communities.

Zopf provides a compelling answer in his social demographic study of why and how women fall into poverty. . . . Zopf is an articulate guide through [a] forest of data. He uses these statistics effectively to analyze structural flaws in the American socioeconomic system that result in excess rates of poverty for independent women of all races. Zopf is particularly effective in showing hte link between gender inequality and women's and children's poverty, exploring trends in poverty status over time, relating variation in individual earnings and unemployment to family poverty, and explaining the differences between long-term and short-term (but recurrent) poverty. . . . Zopf offers an accessible but scholarly presentation of a mass of statistical information with both current interest and long-term importance. Choice Exacerbated by changes in family patterns and reduced public commitment to aid those who fall below the poverty threshold, the increasing feminization of poverty in the United States has been documented and explored only minimally despite the obvious importance of the problem. This book is the first systematic examination of the subject. Combining demographic and sociological analysis with humanistic insights and concerns, it offers thorough statistical documentation and comparative data on population groups, geographic areas, and specific factors associated with female poverty in the United States. Zopf argues that the poverty of women must be addressed across a broad range of issues. It cannot be dealt with effectively without a clear commitment to promoting economic, political, and social equality; strengthening the family; providing adequate education, health care, and housing; reforming the welfare system; and coming to grips with the problem of domestic violence. Zopf first looks at the way poverty is officially defined and how it is measured. He analyzes the characteristics of women family heads and individuals who are classified as poor, comparing the poverty situations of women and men and presenting variations by age, race, ethnicity, farm and nonfarm residence, and urban and nonurban residence. The geographic distribution of poverty by states, regions, counties, and cities is discussed and a map and tables are supplied to illustrate both small and large scale patterns. The study takes into account a variety of factors related directly or indirectly to poverty status, including the presence or absence of dependent children, levels of education, employment status, work experience, work disability, retirement, and homemaking. The situations of the poorest of the poor and the near-poor are assessed, and trends in both female and overall poverty are analyzed as far back as 1959. The author explores the social, economic, and political causes and effects of the problem by emphasizing defects in the social system rather than individual character flaws. He concludes with some practical suggestions for change. This book will be of particular interest to professionals, academics, and students dealing with women's studies, marriage and the family, population, social problems, family services, poverty, welfare policy, and related areas.

The Dred Scott suit for freedom, argues Kelly M. Kennington, was merely the most famous example of a phenomenon that was more widespread in antebellum American jurisprudence than is generally recognized. The author draws on the case files of more than three hundred enslaved individuals who, like Dred Scott and his family, sued for freedom in the local legal arena of St. Louis. Her findings open new perspectives on the legal culture of slavery and the negotiated processes involved in freedom suits. As a gateway to the American West, a major port on both the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers, and a focal point in the rancorous national debate over slavery's expansion, St. Louis was an ideal place for enslaved individuals to challenge the legal systems and, by extension, the social systems that held them in forced servitude. Kennington offers an in-depth look at how daily interactions, webs of relationships, and arguments presented in court shaped and reshaped legal debates and public at titudes over slavery and freedom in St. Louis. Kennington also surveys more than eight hundred state supreme court freedom suits from around the United States to situate the St. Louis example in a broader context. Although white enslavers dominated the antebellum legal system in St. Louis and throughout the slaveholding states, that fact did not mean that the system ignored the concerns of the subordinated groups who made up the bulk of the American population. By looking at a particular example of one group's encounters with the law and placing these suits into conversation with similar en counters that arose in appellate cases nationwide Kennington sheds light on the ways in which the law responded to the demands of a variety of actors.

The 21st century is often characterized as the age of globalization, with the world's economies becoming more and more interconnected at an unprecedented rate. And while the phenomenon of globalization isn't necessarily new, it has taken on a drastically different form since the 1980s: competition amongst multinational and global organizations is more intense, and non-Western multinationals are now emerging as important players in the global economy. Today, professional managers need to reconcile the opportunities and challenges associated with the rapid growth of Asian, Eastern European, and Latin American countries. To do so, adopting what's called 'the global mindset' is becoming an essential skill for managers within these global organizations. The key advantages of developing a global mindset are many. In Global Organizations: Challenges, Opportunities, and the Future, authors Rabi S. Bhagat, Annette S. McDevitt, and B. Ram Baliga offers an insightful and comprehensive overview of the most important issues today for managers looking to develop and nurture their own global mindset for their company's future. Global Organizations expertly provides readers with research- and evidence-based knowledge on the significance of developing a sophisticated global mindset regardless of national identity or geographic locale.

The anthropological approach to the expulsion of the foreign women from the post-exilic community argues that it was the result of a witch-hunt. Its comparative approach notes that the community responded to its weak social boundaries in the same fashion as societies with similar social weaknesses. This book argues that the post-exilic community's decision to expel the foreign women in its midst was the direct result of the community's inability to enforce a common morality among its members. This anthropological approach to the expulsion shows how other societies with weak social moralities tend to react with witch-hunts, and it suggests that the expulsion in Ezra 9-10 was precisely such an activity. It concludes with an examination of the political and economic forces that could have eroded the social morality of the community.

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Read the Preface.

"Possibly the best title of the season."--"Books to Watch out For"

"A thrilling, imaginative, and brilliant reading of contemporary cultural politics from one of the freshest voices in the field today. Dwight McBride's graceful prose, sharp wit, and sound judgments leap from every page. His essays sparkle with abundant intelligence--and a striking personal investment--as they lead the reader through a complex array of ideas, practices, and situations without losing sight of the ultimate intellectual and political liberation at which they aim. Bravo!"
--Michael Eric Dyson, author of The Michael Eric Dyson Reader

aA fair warning from an intelligent, well-informed writera
--Alter Magazine

"McBride has emerged as one of the most eloquent public voices in both queer studies and black studies. In this wide-ranging book--written with intelligence, passion, and humor--he brings the insights of each field to the blind spots of the other. We all have something to learn from him."
--Michael Warner, Rutgers University

"McBride's heady collection is an accessible think piece, starting with its agreeable title and its pointed essay of the same name."
--"Time Out New York"

"This collection breaks new ground for contemporary cultural criticism. McBride's look at homophobia in traditional African-American studies is an emphatic but penetrating critique of the discipline, and his explication of the ghettoization of black men in gay male porn is truly original work with ramifications well outside of queer studies."
--"Publishers Weekly"

"McBride's prose is smart, on-target, and very readable. These essays are notsimply illuminating, but some of the most eye-opening commentaries on gay culture to be published in years."
--"Between the Lines"

"This is one thought-provoking book."
--" HX/HOMO XTRA"

"Dwight A. McBride writes eloquently about the issues of race and homosexuality."
--"Philadelphia Gay News"

"McBridge expends more intellectual energy justifying his dislike of the popular clothing chain than perhaps any other person on the planet."
--"Evenings Out Chronicle"

"Eloquent collection...engagingly- and, for an academic, unorthodoxly- autobiographical."
--"San Francisco Bay Time"

"McBride's volume is a provacative and wide ranging exploration of a range of issues relating to race and sexuality."--"Bay Area Reporter"

"The book's namesake essay- a scathingly detailed and systematic study of the history, advertising practices, and hiring policies that comprise the "cult of Abercrombie"- makes the collection a mindblowing must-read...timely, disconcerting, and riveting in a way that academic writing should be, but rarely is."--"Girlfriends"

"Working across cultural studies, gay and lesbian studies, and race, ethnicity, and feminist studies, McBride attempts to ponder, address, and, where possible, rescue both African American studies and queer theory from the pitfalls of ignoring each other. This project is admirable to the extent that, not unlike black feminists a decade or more ago, scholars and intellectuals of McBride's generation refuse to make choices between race and sexuality- especially when that sexuality is considered deviant."
--"GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies"

Why hate Abercrombie? In a world rife with human cruelty andoppression, why waste your scorn on a popular clothing retailer? The rationale, Dwight A. McBride argues, lies in "the banality of evil," or the quiet way discriminatory hiring practices and racist ad campaigns seep into and reflect malevolent undertones in American culture.

McBride maintains that issues of race and sexuality are often subtle and always messy, and his compelling new book does not offer simple answers. Instead, in a collection of essays about such diverse topics as biased marketing strategies, black gay media representations, the role of African American studies in higher education, gay personal ads, and pornography, he offers the evolving insights of one black gay male scholar.

As adept at analyzing affirmative action as dissecting "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy," McBride employs a range of academic, journalistic, and autobiographical writing styles. Each chapter speaks a version of the truth about black gay male life, African American studies, and the black community. Original and astute, Why I Hate Abercrombie & Fitch is a powerful vision of a rapidly changing social landscape.

Praise for "Impossible Witnesses":

"A necessary and compelling work.
--Toni Morrison

"McBride teases out complexity and depth heretofore overlooked. Don't miss this important text!"
--Cornel West

"Ambitious and thought-provoking."
--The Journal of American History

Imagined Communities: Constructing Collective Identities in Medieval Europe offers a series of studies focusing on the problems of conceptualisation of social group identities, including national, royal, aristocratic, regional, urban, religious, and gendered communities. The geographical focus of the case studies presented in this volume range from Wales and Scotland, to Hungary and Ruthenia, while both narrative and other types of evidence, such as legal texts, are drawn upon. What emerges is how the characteristics and aspirations of communities are exemplified and legitimised through the presentation of the past and an imagined picture of present. By means of its multiple perspectives, this volume offers significant insight into the medieval dynamics of collective mentality and group consciousness. Contributors are Daniel Bagi, Mariusz Bartnicki, Zbigniew Dalewski, Georg Jostkleigrewe, Bartosz Klusek, Pawel Kras, Wojciech Michalski, Martin Nodl, Andrzej Pleszczynski, Euryn Rhys Roberts, Stanislaw Rosik, Joanna Sobiesiak, Karol Szejgiec, Michal Tomaszek, Tomasz Tarczynski, Przemyslaw Tyszka, Tatiana Vilkul, and Przemyslaw Wiszewski.

The management of interpersonal social conflict within the American judicial system is changing. Of particular interest is the trend toward informal, decentralized alternatives to the courts for the resolution of many civil disputes. A manifestation of this trend, Neighborhood Dispute Resolution or NDR offers a means of resolving conflicts in a voluntary, peaceable manner without the intervention of attorneys. Proponents of NDR say that it is economical, efficient and fair. NDR, however, may not be the panacea it appears to be on the surface, argues the author. A Marxist interpretation of recent developments in state-sponsored alternatives to courts for the resolution of disputes, this book devises a framework for exploring the relationship between disruptions in reproducing the social order of American capitalism and transformations in the capitalist state that make these dispute mechanisms possible.

The last few decades has seen a prolonged debate over the nature and importance of social class as a basis for ideology, class voting and class politics. The prevailing assumption is that, in western societies, class inequalities are no longer important in determining political behaviour. In The End of Class Politics? leading scholars from the US, UK and Europe argue that the evidence on which the assumptions about the decline importance of class is based is unfounded. Instead, the book argues that the class basis of political competition has to some degree evolved, but not declined. Furthermore, the social basis of political competition and sweeping claims about the new politics of postindustrial society need to be re-examined.

There is a crisis in America revolving around social and political life, and the contributors to this essay collection believe it has provoked a renewed attention to the issue of community in political thought. The 14 essays approach the question of community and political thought from a variety of perspectives, ranging from political philosophy to social theory. All the essays, however, share the concern of the opening essay by Hertzke and McRorie about moral ecology, or determining what is required for a vital and free social and political life and preserving it from erosion by individualism in its various forms.

Two of the essays, by Jardine and Stier, deal with understanding the communitarian impulse. Three, by Frohnen, Stone, and Woolfolk, evaluate perhaps the first major contribution to the communitarian movement, "Habits of the Heart." While McClay's chapter seeks to restore the connection between federalism and communitarianism, Sharpe's essay connects the liberal-communitarian debate to the classic works of de Tocqueville and Arendt. Two essays, by Knippenberg and Lawler, criticize the quirky communitarianism of America's leading professor of philosophy, Richard Rorty. Lawler also criticizes Bloom for his similarity to Rorty, joining Nichols in her discussion of BlooM's excessive debt to Rousseau. McDaniel and Mahoney present unfashionable appreciations, not without criticism, of the achievement of Leo Strauss's illiberal if not exactly communitarian thought. Finally, Anderson discusses Raymond Aron's prudent opposition to the oxymoronic global community. This is a unique and significant collection for all students and researchers interested in contemporary social and political thought.

The movement of research animals across the divides that have separated scientist investigators and research animals as Baconian dominators and research equipment respectively might well give us cause to reflect about what we think we know about scientists and animals and how they relate to and with one another within the scientific coordinates of the modern research laboratory. Scientists are often assumed to inhabit the ontotheological domain that the union of science and technology has produced; to master 'nature' through its ontological transformation. Instrumental reason is here understood to produce a split between animal and human being, becoming inextricably intertwined with human self-preservation. But science itself is beginning to take us back to nature; science itself is located in the thick of posthuman biopolitics and is concerned with making more than claims about human being, and is seeking to arrive at understandings of being as such. It is no longer relevant to assume that instrumental reason continues to hold a death grip on science, nor that it is immune from the concerns in which it is deeply embedded. And, it is no longer possible to assume that animal human relationships in the lab continue along the fault line of the Great Divide. This book raises critical questions about what kinship means, or might mean, for science, for humanimal relations, and for anthropology, which has always maintained a sure grip on kinship but has not yet accounted for how it might be validly claimed to exist between humanimals in new and emerging contexts of relatedness. It raises equally important questions about the position of science at the forefront of new kinships between humans and animals, and questions our assumptions about how scientific knowing is produced and reflected upon from within the thick of lab work, and what counts as 'good science'. Much of it is concerned with the quality of humanimal relatedness and relationship. For the Love of Lab Rats will be of great interest to scientists, laboratory workers, anthropologists, animal studies scholars, posthumanists, phenomenologists, and all those with an interest in human-animal relations.

The Handbook of Social Status Correlates summarizes findings from nearly 4000 studies on traits associated with variations in socioeconomic status. Much of the information is presented in roughly 300 tables, each one providing a visual snapshot of what research has indicated regarding how a specific human trait appears to be correlated with socioeconomic status. The social status measures utilized and the countries in which each study was conducted are also identified.

Probing at the very core of the American political consciousness from the colonial period through the early republic, this thorough and unprecedented study by Larry E. Tise suggests that American proslavery thought, far from being an invention of the slave-holding South, had its origins in the crucible of conservative New England. Proslavery rhetoric, Tise shows, came late to the South, where the heritage of Jefferson's ideals was strongest and where, as late as the 1830s, most slaveowners would have agreed that slavery was an evil to be removed as soon as possible. When the rhetoric did come, it was often in the portmanteau of ministers who moved south from New England, and it arrived as part of a full-blown ideology. When the South finally did embrace proslavery, the region was placed not at the periphery of American thought but in its mainstream.

Whenever we open our mouths to speak, we provide those who hear us, chosen interlocuters or mere bystanders, with a wealth of data, linguistic clues others use to position us within a specific social strata. Our particular uses of language mark us geographically, ethnically, by age or sex, and, especially in stratified societies, according to class or caste. This collection of papers by researchers in cultural and linguistic anthropology examine these concepts as well as many others. Linguists, anthropologists, and others concerned with the formal study of the social uses and functions of language are concerned with documenting the implications of such judging on the lives of various peoples around the world and among the classes within their own societies. What linguistic features of speech are used to form stereotypical impressions about the social identity (as well as the character) of others? How are linguistic features linked to ethnicity, to gender, to race, and to class? This collection of papers by researchers in cultural and linguistic anthropology examine these concepts as well as many others.

The idea of community involvement and empowerment has become central to politics in recent years. Governments, keen to reduce public spending and increase civic involvement, believe active communities are essential for tackling a range of social, economic and political challenges, such as crime, sustainable development and the provision of care. Public Policy in the Community examines the way that community and the ideas associated with it - civil society, social capital, mutuality, networks - have been understood and applied from the 1960s to the present day. Marilyn Taylor examines the issues involved in putting the community at the heart of policy making, and considers the political and social implications of such a practice. Drawing on a wide range of relevant examples from around the world, the book considers the success of existing approaches and the prospects for further developments. Thoroughly updated to reflect advances in research and practice, the new edition of this important text gives a state-of-the-art assessment of the place of community in public policy.

Economakis analyzes the processes of proletarianization and urbanization undergone by St. Petersburg's industrial working class from its inception in the early 19th century up until 1914. Attention is focused on the severing of workers' ties to the village and the land. The book examines local conditions in sending areas and traces the history of factory work in St. Petersburg by workers from different provinces. Economakis finds that a majority of the factory workforce was objectively proletarianized by 1914.

Although much has been written about how organizations renew themselves, little attention has been given to why they go into decline. Mary Guy's groundbreaking new study looks at both sides of the issue, first analyzing the symptoms of and reasons for organizational decline, and then exploring the requirements for renewal. Drawing upon her own original research and a detailed examination of case studies in both the public and private sector, Guy takes as her conceptual framework the theories that have informed organizational development research. She traces the decline-followed-by-renewal process, proposing an integrated model of organizational decline that includes certain identifiable stages of health and resilience common to all organizations in turmoil.

Guy's analytical framework can be effectively used to pinpoint the position of any organization--large or small, public or private, old or new. She explains how people behave in organizations under stress and outlines the enduring characteristics of organizations in the decline and renewal stages. Numerous examples illustrate the actual process of decline and renewal in real-world settings--small businesses, large corporations, hospitals, schools, voluntary agencies, and government agencies, including the Johnson White House during the Vietnam War. An entire chapter is devoted to tracing the path of decline within NASA's manned space flight program and looking toward its future. Students of organizational development and management theory will find here important new insights into the dynamics of organizational decline and the period of renewed vigor that often follows.

A collection of edited life story interviews conducted with 25 current and past residents of Wentworth, Durban, that illustrates the social history of this historically ‘çoloured’ township.

This history from below documents the formation of the townships in the late 1950s and its history through the life experiences of the 25 residents during various periods. The book illustrates the wide diversity of the members of this black South African community in terms of origin, ancestry, class, educational qualifications, political outlook, self-identification, primary concerns, political activism, contribution to society, social impediments suffered, etc. that refute generalisations made about the ‘race’ to which they belong.

The life stories also illustrate the impact of major transformations, such as the advent of democracy, on members of this community.