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Books > Social sciences > Sociology, social studies > Social groups & communities > General
"Waldren's engaging book is carefully crafted . . . a superior guide to both the structure and meaning of community and the pleasures of daily life." . Choice ." . . solid accounts of the concepts and social practices related to the casa . . . patronage, and social hierarchy . . . Waldren] also devotes attention to some less traditional concerns, such as gender, conceptions of social space, tourism, and economic development." . American Anthropologist The indigenous population of Deia has lived side by side with increasing numbers of foreigners over the past century, and what has occurred there over this period offers an example of how the population of one Mediterranean village has gained full advantage from the economic opportunities opened up by foreign investments, without losing the fabric of social relations, the meaning and values of their culture. Deia has been able to continue as a community with its own symbolic boundaries and identity, not in spite of the outsiders (some of whom are well-known literary personalities, artists and musicians) but because of their presence. This study shows how, under the impact of wars, migration, national politics, global economic and technological developments and especially tourism, the categories of Insider and Outsider are contracted and expanded, and reinterpreted to fit the constantly changing "reality" of the society; they assume different meanings at different times. The conflicts and resulting compromises over a hundred-year period have provided a sense of history that allows each group to define, develop, adapt and sustain their sense of belonging to their own communities.
Taiwan has been hailed as a successful case of democratization. Compared with many other nations, the transition from authoritarian rule occurred in a rather orderly fashion. Group consciousness emerged as a reaction to the decades-long suppression of cultural diversity under martial law as different social groups competed fiercely to exert their political subjectivity. This volume is the first study to examine the politics of difference in Taiwan. It aims to go beyond ethnic identity as the sole concern for group boundary, to acknowledge the interests of other marginalized groups, and to look behind reified group boundaries in order to discover group differences as mediated social relations based on overlapping boundaries rather than exclusive opposition. In exploring the politics of difference among minority groups and the problems arising from their struggle over political recognition, the book challenges the assumptions that groups are ontologically given, that groups are internally homogenous, and that the particularistic identities have no overlap. The chapters offer a broad coverage of major social groups including ethnic minorities, recent migrants, gay and lesbian groups, and marginalized workers. They offer perspective analyses of the ongoing struggles by minority groups to overcome subordination. .
The contributors to this edited volume explore the effects of various development strategies and associated macroeconomic policies on women's well-being and progress towards gender equality. Detailed analyses of major UN reports on gender reveal the different approaches to assessing absolute and relative progress for women and the need to take into account the specifics of policy regimes when making such assessments. The book argues that neoliberal policies, especially the liberalization of trade and investment, make it difficult to close gender wage and earnings gaps, and new gender sensitive policies need to be devised. These and other issues are all examined in more detail in several gendered development histories of countries from Latin America and Asia.
In the past decade, there has been a convergence of transdisciplinary thought characterized by geography s engagement with the humanities, and the humanities integration of place and the tools of geography into its studies. GeoHumanities maps this emerging intellectual terrain with thirty cutting edge contributions from internationally renowned scholars, architects, artists, activists, and scientists. This book explores the humanities rapidly expanding engagement with geography, and the multi-methodological inquiries that analyze the meanings of place, and then reconstructs those meanings to provoke new knowledge as well as the possibility of altered political practices. It is no coincidence that the geohumanities are forcefully emerging at a time of immense intellectual and social change. This book focuses on a range of topics to address urgent contemporary imperatives, such as the link between creativity and place; altered practices of spatial literacy; the increasing complexity of visual representation in art, culture, and science and the ubiquitous presence of geospatial technologies in the Information Age. GeoHumanties is essential reading for students wishing to understand the intellectual trends and forces driving scholarship and research at the intersections of geography and the humanities disciplines. These trends hold far-reaching implications for future work in these disciplines, and for understanding the changes gripping our societies and our globalizing world.
This text is an exploration of the power dimensions of participatory development and research, and an attempt to look at the shifts in power within communities and institutions which are needed for participatory ideas to be effective. The aim of the book is to connect theory and practice. It looks at the theoretical basis to participatory development work, drawing on related debates in anthropology, development studies and feminism. Case studies of participatory research techniques are drawn from sites as far apart as development theatre in Mali and video-making with homeless people in the UK. Further chapters examine the relative power of the researcher or development agent vis-a-vis the community.;After reviewing participatory research and development within communities, the book extends the debate by questioning the shifts in power needed if institutions are to operate in a participatory manner.;This text is intended to be of use to academics, students, and all involved with courses in development studies, anthropology and sociology. In addition it should prove useful to agencies and practitioners involved in participatory-style development or research initiatives world-wide.
Powerlessness, marginality, and dispossession are found in all corners of the world. The aim of this book is to enable facilitators from inside, as well as outside, communities to empower those people who are frequently omitted from the decision-making process.;The book explores participatory approaches to development and offers innovative, collaborative tools for working with local groups and communities. The tools described here, are sensitive to cultural and social differences, and have been designed to increase the capacities of local communities, NGOs, and public sector agencies by integrating applied and analytical methods for consciousness-raising, data-gathering, community decision-making, advocacy and development activities.;The book focuses on participatory capacity-building in ways that address the practical needs and strategic interests of the disadvantaged and disempowered, and it pays particular attention to gender issues. Other issues examined by this book include how differences in class, ethnicity, race, caste, religion, age and status may also lead to the "politics of exclusion" that this book aims to avoid.;In addition to being a tool book, the contributors also address some of the issues raised through working in a participatory way, such as: the ends and means of participation, uneven relations of power among participants, temporal context, spatial scale, and the array of organizations involved.
Examining the genral character and key issues of local politics, People, Power and Place discusses the effect of local government policieson the general population and identifies those who gain or lose under them. Based on a comparitive investigation of Britain and the United States, the book explores the changing influences of institutions and individuals in local political systems and activity. This perspective, first published in 1991, illustrates the role of national, international and historical factors in the evolution of local government as well as outlining the practice of local politics in both countries.
Some communities exist for tens, even hundreds, of years. Others short-lived. What, then, makes for communal 'success'? Bary Shenker, who lived on a Kibbutz for a number of years, compares the Hutterites, the Kibbutzim and therapeutic communities -- and argues that there is no simple formula. Through historical and sociological analysis, combined with personal experience and insight, the author provides fresh thoughts on a form of a social life which fascinates us all. First published in 1986.
Originally published in 1990, this work analyses the use of contemporary computer models to simulate urban systems. The work deals with the two significant traditions of model-building: a firstly the building of integrated models following the seminal research of Lowry first published in 1964, but with relatively simple submodels; and secondly, intensive research on particular submodels with a variety of techniques. This volume constructs a model-building exercise which integrates the two traditions: an integrated model (in a modular form with alternative components) using the most advanced submodels. The book concludes with a presentation of an example of an operational model of this type.
First published in 1968, Demographic Analysis was written to provide a comprehensive account of demographic methods for those with a need to understand population movements. The book provides an introduction to some of the key tools used by demographers and the principal sources of population data. Beginning with an overview of the scope, content and use of the population census, it then examines methods for measuring births, deaths, and migration before setting out the methodology for determining the contributions of these elements to population change and estimating past or future changes. The book also explores sickness as a population characteristic and a way of better understanding mortality variations.
"For courses in Inequality, Social Stratification, and Social Problems." A thoughtful compilation of readings on inequality in the United States. The main objective of this text is to introduce students to the subject of social stratification as it has developed in sociology. The central focus is on domestic inequality in the United States with some attention to the broader international context. The primary goal of the text is to offer an understanding of the history and context of debates about inequality, and a secondary goal is to give some indication as to what issues are likely to arise in the future. Note: MySearchLab does not come automatically packaged with this text. To purchase MySearchLab, please visit: www.mysearchlab.com or you can purchase a ValuePack of the text + MySearchLab with Pearson eText (at no additional cost). ValuePack ISBN-10: 0205811604 / ValuePack ISBN-13: 9780205811601
Roman Villas explores the social structures of the Roman world by analysing the plans of buildings of all sizes from slightly Romanized farms to palaces. The ways in which the rooms are grouped together; how they intercommunicate; and the ways in which individual rooms and the house are approached, reveal various social patterns, which question traditional ideas about the Roman family and household. J. T. Smith argues that virtually all houses were occupied by groups of varying composition, challenging the received wisdom that they were single family houses whose size reflected only the owner's wealth and number of servants. Roman Villas provides a meticulously documented and scholarly examination of the relationship between the living quarters of the Roman and their social and economic development which introduces a new area in Roman studies and a corpus of material for further analysis. The inclusion of almost 500 ground plans, drawn to a uniform scale, allows the reader to compare the similarities and differences between house structure as well as effectively illustrating the arguments.
This book explores the symbolic connections between Christianity and Heavy Metal music in the context of the secular West. Heavy Metal uses symbols and imagery taken from Christianity, even if the purpose is to critique religion. This usage creates a positive connection with an interpretation of Christianity as a form of cultural critique. Given that Metal and Christianity are associated with Western culture, this book explores how Christianity and Heavy Metal function within the context of secularity as a form of ideological critique. Using the ideas of Emile Durkheim, Max Weber, and Charles Taylor as a starting point, this book explores the religious nature of secularism in the West interpreted in the immanent processes of politics and economics. In this connect, both Christianity and Heavy Metal provide a cultural critique through images of death, the grotesque, and sacrifice. By bringing this religious interpretation of secularism into conversation with the ideas of Georges Batailles, Slavoj Zizek, and Jurgen Moltmann, this book will demonstrate the positive relationship between Christianity and Heavy Metal.
There is no escaping the fact that the island biogeography of the North Atlantic Region is singularly peculiar. Sitting in the north of the Atlantic Ocean, these islands have been subjected to largescale shifts in climate over the last few million years, unlike the other island groups further south which were likely more buffered from the vicissitudes of Quaternary climate changes. Uniquely for a group of islands there is only one documented extinction in the North Atlantic (the Great Auk), and those in the insects are local events relating to species that are distributed throughout the Palaearctic region. Over half the insect species in Iceland and Greenland are introduced. The faunas, excluding Greenland, are predominantly of Palaearctic origin and have close affinities with the faunas of Scandinavia and the British Isles and. These unique physical and biological characteristics have interested biologists and biogeographers for centuries. The key debates concerning the biogeography of the North Atlantic islands still rumble on: Do the biota reflect cryptic refugia or otherwise, or tabula rasa and recolonization? How important were human communities in shaping the existing biota and biogeographical patterns? Throw into this mix current concerns over global warming, and we can now ask, how resilient is the biota to change, either natural or anthropogenic? This volume draws together a range of researchers with longstanding research interests in the region, from diverse academic backgrounds, to evaluate some of these questions.
An essential work that advances an acute awareness of our responsibility to make society equitable for all. Library Journal, Starred Review In this provocative book, the authors connect the regulation of African American people in many settings into a powerful narrative. Completely updated throughout, the book now includes a new chapter on policing black athletes' bodies, and expanded coverage of the Black Lives Matter movement, policing trans bodies, and policing Black women's bodies.
The New African Diaspora in North America brings together sociologists, social workers, geographers, economists, anthropologists and others to explore the African immigrant experience from a multi-disciplinary perspective. The contributors shed light on the factors behind the increasing wave in African immigration to the U.S. and Canada, the socio-economic characteristics of African immigrants, their spatial distribution, obstacles, and contributions. Despite their increasing presence, African immigrant groups in the U.S. and Canada have engendered relatively little scholarly research on their pre- and post-migration experience. This collection helps fill that void, and will be valuable reading for anyone interested in African Diaspora studies.
There has been a strong recent trend towards incorporating evidence into Social Work practice in general, and into group work in particular. This trend has focused on the education of students in the use of evidence, development of evidence-based interventions, and discussion of how evidence can be used to improve practice. A limitation of most of this literature is that it has been written by researchers for the consumption of practitioners, limiting the ability of evidence-based practices to be incorporated into unique community settings and with specific populations. In spite of this difficulty, implementation of evidence-based practices continues quietly in practice settings. This book describes efforts to integrate evidence into community settings, which have two foci. The first part details group models developed through collaborations between researchers and community agencies. Each chapter details efforts to implement, research, or review programs in community settings. The second part deals with issues around instruction and dissemination of evidence-based group work into practice settings. The volume makes a significant contribution to the discussion about evidence-based group work. This book was published as a special issue of Social Work with Groups.
First published in 1952, the International Bibliography of the Social Sciences (anthropology, economics, political science, and sociology) is well established as a major bibliographic reference for students, researchers & librarians.
On the eve of the invasion of Iraq, President G.W. Bush argued that if setting up democracy in Japan and Germany after WW II was successful, then it should also be successful in Iraq. This book provides a detailed comparison of the reconstruction of Japan from 1945 to 1952 with the current reconstruction of Iraq, evaluating the key factors affecting the success or failure of such projects. The book seeks to understand why American officials believed that extensive social reengineering aiming at seeding democracy and economic development is replicable, through identifying factors explaining the outcome of U.S.-led post-conflict reconstruction projects. The analysis reveals that in addition to the effective use of material resources of power, the outcome of reconstruction projects depends on a variety of other intertwined factors, and Bridoux provides a new analytical framework relying on a Gramscian concept of power to develop a greater understanding of these factors, and the ultimate success or failure of these reconstruction projects. Appraising the effectiveness of American power in the contemporary international structure, this work is a significant contribution to the field and will be of great interest to all scholars of foreign policy, international relations and conflict studies.
In the twenty-first century, more than ever, everything and everybody seems to be on the move. Global flows of people, goods, food, money, information, services and media images are forming an intensely mobile background to everyday life. Social scientists, too, are on the move, seeking new analytical purchase on these important aspects of the social world by trying to move with, and to be moved by, the fleeting, distributed, multiple, non-causal, sensory, emotional and kinaesthetic. Mobile Methods addresses the challenges and opportunities of researching mobile phenomena. Drawing on extensive interdisciplinary discussion, the book brings together a collection of cutting-edge methodological innovations and original research reports to examine some important implications of the mobilities turn for the processes of 'research', and the realm of the empirical. Through analysis that addresses questions such as 'how are social relationships and social institutions made in and through mobility?', and 'how do people experience mobility in twenty-first century world cities?', the authors mobilize sociological analysis, bringing new insights and opening up new opportunities for engagement with contemporary challenges. This book is a key text for undergraduate and postgraduate students of disciplines including Human Geography, Social Policy, Sociology and Research Methods.
Old sergeants say, "we're here to defend democracy, not to practice it!" But are they right? The special mandate with which defence and security organizations are tasked imposes unique constraints with respect to the accommodation of diversity which differs from those faced by any other public or private organization. Yet, the compound effect of demographic, political, economic, social and legal pressures is making diversity as inevitable in the defence and security sector as in any other organization in advanced industrialized democracies. Owing in part to a dearth of research on the way the defence and security sectors can leverage diversity to enhance their functional imperatives, such sectors have been reticent about diversity. The chapters in this volume strive to enlighten the debate by laying out the concepts, clarifying theoretical issues, and providing empirical evidence. The case studies draw on Canada, Guyana, the Netherlands, South Africa, and the United Kingdom. They examine ethno-cultural, gender, and sexual-minority diversity in a variety of missions, including Bosnia-Herzegovina and Afghanistan. The chapters are notable for their methodological pluralism and interdisciplinary range including political science, sociology, anthropology, and psychology. Although scholarly in nature, the book is readily accessible to professionals and practitioners alike. This book was published as a special issue of Commonwealth and Comparative Politics.
From civilisational frontier risks associated with new challenges like disruptive technologies, to the shifting nature of great-power conflicts and subversion, the 21stcentury requires a new approach to statecraft. In 21st-Century Statecraft, Professor Nayef Al-Rodhan proposes five innovative statecraft concepts. He makes the case for a new method of geopolitical analysis called 'meta-geopolitics', and for 'dignity-based governance'. He shows how, in an interdependent and interconnected world, traditional thinking must move beyond zero-sum games and focus on 'multi-sum and symbiotic realist' interstate relations. This requires a new paradigm of global security premised on five dimensions of security, and a new concept of power, 'just power', which highlights the centrality of justice to state interests. These concepts enable states to balance competing interests and work towards what the author calls 'reconciliation statecraft'. Throughout, Professor Al-Rodhan brings his philosophical and neuroscientific expertise to bear, providing a practical model for conducting statecraft in a sustainable way.
Social inequality is a worldwide phenomenon. Globalization has exacerbated and alleviated inequality over the past twenty-five years. This volume offers analytical and comparative insights from current case studies of social inequality in more than ten countries within all the major regions of the world. Contributors provide an assessment of the overall social globalization phenomenon in the global world as well as an outlook of transformations of global social inequality in the future. This book will be a timely addition for students and scholars of globalization studies, social inequality, sociology, and cultural and social anthropology.
Russia's Skinheads: Exploring and Rethinking Subcultural Lives provides a thorough examination of the phenomenon of skinheads, explaining its nature and its significance, and assessing how far Russian skinhead subculture is the 'lumpen' end of the extreme nationalist ideological spectrum. There are large numbers of skinheads in Russia, responsible for a significant number of xenophobic attacks, including 97 deaths in 2008 alone, making this book relevant to Russian specialists as well as to sociologists of youth subculture. It provides a practical example of how to investigate youth subculture in depth over an extended period - in this case through empirical research following a specific group over six years - and goes on to argue that Russian skinhead subculture is not a direct import from the West, and that youth cultural practices should not be reduced to expressions of consumer choice. It presents an understanding of the Russian skinhead as a product of individuals' whole, and evolving, lives, and thereby compels sociologists to rethink how they conceive the nature of subcultures.
This book is designed to be the definitive statement on social equity theory and practice in public administration. Social equity is often referred to as the "third pillar" in PA, after efficiency and economy. It concerns itself with the fairness of the organization, its management, and its delivery of public services. H. George Frederickson is widely recognized as the originator of the concept and the person most associated with its development and application. The book's introduction and chapters 1-4 offer general descriptions of social equity in terms of its arguments and claims in changing political, economic, and social circumstances, and trace the development of the concept over the past forty years. Chapters 5-9 provide applications of social equity theory to particular policy arenas such as education, or to specific public administration issues such as the range of administrative discretion, the legal context, the research challenges, and social equity in the context of time and generations. Chapters 10 and 11 describe the current state of social equity and look towards the future. |
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