![]() |
Welcome to Loot.co.za!
Sign in / Register |Wishlists & Gift Vouchers |Help | Advanced search
|
Your cart is empty |
||
|
Books > Social sciences > Sociology, social studies > Social groups & communities > General
Russia is one of the few countries in the world where intellectuals existed as a social group and shared a unique social identity. This book focuses on one of the most important and influential groups of Russian intellectuals - the 1960s generation of shestidesyatniki - often considered the last embodiment of the classical tradition of the intelligentsia. They devoted their lives to defending 'socialism with a human face', authored Perestroika, and were subsequently demonised when the reforms failed. It investigates how these intellectuals were affected by the transition to the new post-Soviet Russia, and how they responded to the criticism. Unlike other studies on this subject, which view the Russian intelligentsia as simply an objectively existing group, this book portrays the intelligentsia as a cultural story or myth, revealing that the intelligentsia's existence is a function of the intellectuals' abilities to construct moral arguments. Drawing from extensive original empirical research, including life-story interviews with the Russian intellectuals, it shows how the shestidesyatniki creatively mobilised the myth as they attempted to repair their damaged public image.
In contemporary European and American urban policy and politics and in academic research it is typically assumed that spatial concentrations of poor households and/or ethnic minority households will have negative effects upon the opportunities to improve the social conditions of those who are living in these concentrations. Since the level of concentration tends to be correlated with the level of spatial segregation the 'debate on segregation' is also linked to the social opportunity discussion. This book explores the central questions in urban and housing studies:
This issue has offered a locus for multi-disciplinary
investigations on both sides of the Atlantic, and this volume
demonstrates the rich geographical, sociological, economic and
psychological dimensions of this issue.
Clusters have become a key focus of urban and regional policy in advanced economies as regional specialisation in particular industries has come to be regarded as advantageous in the context of debates about globalization and the knowledge economy. In particular, spatial proximity between associated firms and organisations facilities is claimed to stimulate processes of innovation and learning. Consequently, governments have promoted dynamic clusters as a means of generating competitive advantage in particular cities and regions. In this collection, these claims are critically assessed by drawing upon the work of leading specialists from Western Europe and North America. Going beyond the celebrated 'hot-spots' of economic development, the book draws upon evidence from a broader range of cities and regions to help fill some important gaps in our knowledge of how clusters operate within the contemporary global economy. Cluster dynamics are situated in time and space; interrogating both how firms, organisations and actors within clusters adapt to changes over time, and how clusters are embedded within broader spatial divisions of labour at regional, national and international scales. This book was previously published as a special issue of the journal Urban Studies.
While immigrants are still predominantly choosing urban areas to locate to, there is now increasing evidence of immigration to rural areas which poses its own challenges for those relocating, from the scarcity of high quality jobs to the provision of public and private services. Addressing the shortcomings in current research, this book employs an innovative approach by exploring this relationship from a cross-national, comparative, global perspective. It draws lessons from case studies across a range of geographical and political contexts, including Canada, the USA, Ireland, Scotland, Greece and Russia. Bringing together migration experts from a range of academic disciplines, International Migration and Rural Areas contributes to conceptual developments and also identifies policy concerns which can be pursued at national, sub-national and supra-national levels. As such, it will appeal to policy makers, as well as scholars across a range of disciplines, including geography, politics, demography, social policy, sociology and anthropology.
This text explores the possibility of drawing upon a punk ethos to inspire and invigorate sociology. It uses punk to think creatively about what sociology is and how it might be conducted and aims to fire the sociological imaginations of sociologists at any stage of their careers, from new students to established professors.
Public spaces have long been the focus of urban social activity, but investigations of how public space works often adopt only one of several possible perspectives, which restricts the questions that can be asked and the answers that can be considered. In this volume, Anthony Orum and Zachary Neal explore how public space can be a facilitator of civil order, a site for power and resistance, and a stage for art, theatre, and performance. They bring together these frequently unconnected models for understanding public space, collecting classic and contemporary readings that illustrate each, and synthesizing them in a series of original essays. Throughout, they offer questions to provoke discussion, and conclude with thoughts on how these models can be combined by future scholars of public space to yield more comprehensive understanding of how public space works.
A fascinating, unflinching and forensic work of non-fiction by Cato
Pedder, the great-grand daughter of Jan Smuts, the South African prime
minister responsible for heralding the age of apartheid.
The history of human civilizations is also the history of human displacements. From ancient times to the contemporary age, every year millions of people flee from their homes and lands in the face of imminent persecution for physical, social and cultural traits, which they cannot control, or exercising their religious or political beliefs. Large-scale 'development' projects as well as natural calamities have also caused large-scale displacements followed by ill-managed rehabilitation regimes. As a result, over one percent of the world's total population today consists of refugees and internally displaced persons. South Asia is the fourth largest refugee producing region in the world. There is a close link between state formation and forced migration in this region. Ethnic violence, development work, natural calamities and climatic changes also make people, especially the indigenous ones, flee and settle in extremely unbearable new and foreign conditions. Women and children constitute the bulk of the displaced population. 'Refugee Watch', in its decade-long 30-volume journey, has sought to capture the agony, tension and struggle of the refugees and internally displaced in South Asia in its different dimensions. The present Selections are a sincere attempt to grasp the multi-dimensionality of the journal within two covers.
The conviction that we all have, possess or inhabit a discrete culture, and have done so for centuries, is one of the more dominant default assumptions of our contemporary politico-intellectual moment. However, the concept of culture as a signifier of subjectivity only entered the modern Anglo-U.S. episteme in the late nineteenth century. Culture and Eurocentrism seeks to account for the term's relatively recent emergence and movement through the episteme, networked with many other concepts - nature, race, society, imagination, savage, and civilization- at the confluence of several disciplines. Culture, it contends, doesn't describe difference but produces it, hierarchically. In so doing, it seeks to recharge postcoloniality, the critique of eurocentrism.
What is Anthropology? Why should you study it? What will you learn? And what can you do with it? "What Anthropologists Do" answers all these questions. And more. Anthropology is an astonishingly diverse and engaged field of study that seeks to understand human social behavior. "What Anthropologists Do" presents a lively introduction to the ways in which anthropology's unique research methods and cutting edge thinking contribute to a very wide range of activities: environmental issues, aid and development, advocacy, human rights, social policy, the creative arts, museums, health, education, crime, communications technology, design, marketing, and business. In short, a training in Anthropology provides highly transferable skills of investigation and analysis. The book will be ideal for any readers who want to know what Anthropology is all about and especially for students coming to the study of Anthropology for the first time.
What is Anthropology? Why should you study it? What will you learn? And what can you do with it? "What Anthropologists Do" answers all these questions. And more. Anthropology is an astonishingly diverse and engaged field of study that seeks to understand human social behavior. "What Anthropologists Do" presents a lively introduction to the ways in which anthropology's unique research methods and cutting edge thinking contribute to a very wide range of activities: environmental issues, aid and development, advocacy, human rights, social policy, the creative arts, museums, health, education, crime, communications technology, design, marketing, and business. In short, a training in Anthropology provides highly transferable skills of investigation and analysis. The book will be ideal for any readers who want to know what Anthropology is all about and especially for students coming to the study of Anthropology for the first time.
Why do so many Turkish migrants choose to make their fortune in America when the proximity of Europe makes it a less costly risk? Here Lisa DiCarlo offers us new insights into the study of identity and migration. She draws on research and the history of the Black Sea region going back to the early years of the modern Turkish Republic, to explain current Turkish labor migration trends. The forced ethnic migration between Greece and Turkey at the end of the Ottoman Empire stripped the Black Sea region of its artisans and merchants, weakening the economy and resulting in a trend of migration from this area. Through extensive field research Lisa DiCarlo reveals the kinship between Greeks and Turks originally from the Black Sea region. She argues current transnational chain migration from this area is led by regional identity over ethnicity. This strong regional bond leads Turkish migrants from the Black Sea region to follow Greek Black Sea migrants across the Atlantic to America, rather than their Turkish compatriots to Europe.
The development and inequalities of society have traditionally been analysed in terms of stratification and class. Raymond Murphy argues that important inequalities of power remain unanalysed by traditional social theories, and that the concept of social closure, suggested by Max Weber, provides a means of capturing the common and essential features of types of subordination that appear quite different on the surface. Seemingly unrelated forms of domination based on private property, the bureaucratic Communist Party, credentials, status, race, language, and gender, are tied together by Weber's notion of social closure as the underlying principle of all systems of inequality in power. The book suggests improvements to the conceptions of closure, power, and social class, and turns closure theory back on itself to analyse the scholarly field. It develops a conceptualization of the rules of social closure and their transformation, and compares the Weberian concept of closure with the Marxian concept of exploitation. Raymond Murphy examines the way in which Western society, in the elusive pursuit of mastery and control, has transformed its codes of social closure by the process of formal rationalization. He shows how this formal rationalization of monopolization and exclusion has led to substantively irrational results. Professor Murphy's conclusion - that Weber's theories of social closure and rationalization provide a conceptual basis for going beyond a narrow focus on one particular means of monopolization to an analysis of monopolization and exclusion per se - marks an important and original advance in the development of the ideas of Weber and in social theory generally.
Numerous historical studies use the term "community'" to express or comment on social relationships within geographic, religious, political, social, or literary settings, yet this volume is the first systematic attempt to collect together important examples of this varied work in order to draw comparisons and conclusions about the definition of community across early modern Europe. Offering a variety of historical and theoretical approaches, the sixteen original essays in this collection survey major regions of Western Europe, including France, Geneva, the German Lands, Italy and the Spanish Empire, the Netherlands, England, and Scotland. Complementing the regional diversity is a broad spectrum of religious confessions: Roman Catholic communities in France, Italy, and Germany; Reformed churches in France, Geneva, and Scotland; Lutheran communities in Germany; Mennonites in Germany and the Netherlands; English Anglicans; Jews in Germany, Italy, and the Netherlands; and Muslim converts returning to Christian England. This volume illuminates the variety of ways in which communities were defined and operated across early modern Europe: as imposed by community leaders or negotiated across society; as defined by belief, behavior, and memory; as marked by rigid boundaries and conflict or by flexibility and change; as shaped by art, ritual, charity, or devotional practices; and as characterized by the contending or overlapping boundaries of family, religion, and politics. Taken together, these chapters demonstrate the complex and changeable nature of community in an era more often characterized as a time of stark certainties and inflexibility. As a result, the volume contributes a vital resource to the ongoing efforts of scholars to understand the creation and perpetuation of communities and the significance of community definition for early modern Europeans.
Jungian Analysts Working Across Cultures: From Tradition to Innovation gives a fascinating account of the wide variety of experiences of Jungian analysts working in different cultures across the world. They describe and reflect on experiences of both offering and receiving training within these cross-cultural partnerships. This is a book not only about training but is also an enlightening cultural commentary for our times. The powerful bi-directionality of cultural influence and discovery is apparent in different ways in every chapter, prompting a re-appraisal of concepts essential to the core values of Jungian practice which show an outdated adherence to culture-bound attitudes. The publication of this book is a timely reminder that when Jungian analysis as we know it is floundering in some Western countries, new projects in countries seeking to develop an analytic culture give hope for sustaining our professional practice.
Adolescents in Humanitarian Crisis investigates the experiences of adolescents displaced by humanitarian crisis. The world is currently seeing unprecedented levels of mass displacement, and almost half of the world's 70 million displaced people are children and adolescents under the age of 18. Displacement for adolescents comes with huge disruption to their education and employment prospects, as well as increased risks of poor psychosocial outcomes and sexual and gender-based violence for girls. Considering these intersectional vulnerabilities throughout, this book explores the experiences of adolescents from refugee, internally displaced persons and stateless communities in Bangladesh, Ethiopia, Jordan, Lebanon, Palestine and Rwanda. Drawing on innovative mixed-methods research, the book investigates adolescent capabilities, including education, health and nutrition, freedom from violence and bodily integrity, psychosocial wellbeing, voice and agency, and economic empowerment. Centring the diverse voices and experiences of young people and focusing on how policy and programming can be meaningfully improved, this book will be a vital guide for humanitarian students and researchers, and for practitioners seeking to build effective, evidence-based policy. The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/e/9781003167013, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.
1 Introduction: Scope and Need for an Ecology of Subtle Human Effects and Populated Areas.- Section I The Human Factor: Perception and Processes.- 2 The History and Present Entanglements of Some General Ecological Perspectives.- 3 An Exceptionally Powerful Biotic Factor.- 4 Environmental Change: The Human Factor.- 5 The Iceberg and the Titanic: Human Economic Behavior in Ecological Models.- 6 Ecosystems and Human Actions.- 7 The Human Component of Ecosystems.- Section II Approaches to the Study of Humans as Components of Ecosystems.- 8 Discovery of the Subtle.- 9 Land-use History and Forest Transformations in Central New England.- 10 Variability in Lake Ecosystems: Complex Responses by the Apical Predator.- 11 Humans as a Component of the Lake Titicaca Ecosystem: A Model System for the Study of Environmental Deterioration.- 12 Nitrogen Loading of Rivers as a Human-Driven Process.- 13 Humans: Capstone Strong Actors in the Past and Present Coastal Ecological Play.- 14 Modification of Nitrogen Cycling at the Regional Scale: The Subtle Effects of Atmospheric Deposition.- 15 The Application of the Ecological Gradient Paradigm to the Study of Urban Effects.- 16 The Process of Plant Colonization in Small Settlements and Large Cities.- 17 Ecological Implications of Landscape Fragmentation.- Section III Implications for Ecosystem Management and Construction.- 18 Integration of Social and Ecological Factors: Dynamic Area Models of Subtle Human Influences on Ecosystems.- 19 Human Influences on Ecosystems: Dealing With Biodiversity.- 20 "Natural" or "Healthy" Ecosystems: Are U.S. National Parks Providing Them?.- 21 Restoration as a Technique for Identifying and Characterizing Human Influences on Ecosystems.- 22 Biosphere 2 and the Study of Human/Ecosystem Dynamics.- Section IV Overview.- 23 Part I: A Social Scientist's Perspective.- II: A Human Ecologist's Perspective.- III: A Marine Ecologist's Perspective-Humans as Capstone-Species.- IV: A Theoretical Ecologist's Perspective: Toward a Unified Paradigm for Subtle Human Effects and an Ecology of Populated Areas.- 24 Humans as Components of Ecosystems: A Synthesis.
This book is a major contribution to our understanding of the
condition of the immigrant and it will transform the reader's
understanding of the issues surrounding immigration. Sayad's book
will be widely used in courses on race, ethnicity, immigration and
identity in sociology, anthropology, cultural studies, politics and
geography.
In South Asia and beyond, human development continues to be in a state of crisis. Each successive Human Development Report (HDR) and the pervasive global failure to achieve the Millennium Development Goals are constant reminders of this crisis. An equally, and even more distressing dimension of human development is its great unevenness. Even in countries with high levels of human development it was noted that gender differences were significant. Levels of educational attainment and incomes remain significantly unequal between social groups, constituted along other categories of difference such as race, ethnicity and religion, as do levels of economic and political participation. This book explores the unevenness of human development with respect to the question of difference. The author develops a conceptual framework that focuses on social power, whereby human development is seen as a process/es of reconstruction of the matrices of social power. The approach builds on three main components: a relational rather than an identity-centric view of difference; a transformative notion of social justice - as opposed to a distributive understanding of justice; and the notion of agency. These are applied to the South Asian reality, where important insights into structural aspects of human development can be obtained in terms of religion, gender and caste. Written accessibly and lucidly, this book will be of interest to students and researchers in development studies, political economy, political science, public policy, governance, security studies, human rights, social and religious studies and South Asia.
Choice Outstanding Academic Title 2009 Relational Theory for Social Work Practice introduces social workers to the burgeoning feminist scholarship on relational theories and the practical application of these theories with diverse populations. It emphasizes the practical application of the basic relational concepts in a readable and comprehensive way, developing an approach to practice which is useful for both male and female social workers and clients. Relational theory argues that the fundamental feature of healthy human development is the ability to form connections through relationships. Within this perspective, growth is seen as occurring within relationships rather than apart from them. Full case studies viewed through a feminist lens are integrated throughout the book. This work builds explicitly on the professional foundation of social work: mission, theory, practice skills, ethics, and values. Helpful pedagogical features include a list of best practices for the social worker and a relational questionnaire. It will be of interest to students, researchers and professionals of social work.
Nations are more than simply geo-political bodies. More than collections of people and institutions within defined sovereign territories, nations are discursive constructs. In recent years scholars have increasingly recognized that discourses of national identity are gendered and racialized in ways that both mirror and mould power relations. This book examines links between gender, race and national identity by analyzing a range of mass mediated and pop-cultural 'texts' in four nations, Australia, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States. This notable book is an original and important contribution to the theorizing of national identity. With a broad empirical base, it offers an analysis using the techniques of traditional content analysis, critical discourse analysis, comparative sociology and feminist cultural studies. As such, it is suited to a wide range of courses, both optional and core, and will have deserved wide appeal.
Telling Stories to Change the World is a powerful collection of essays about community-based and interest-based projects where storytelling is used as a strategy for speaking out for justice. Contributors from locations across the globe-including Uganda, Darfur, China, Afghanistan, South Africa, New Orleans, and Chicago-describe grassroots projects in which communities use narrative as a way of exploring what a more just society might look like and what civic engagement means. These compelling accounts of resistance, hope, and vision showcase the power of the storytelling form to generate critique and collective action. Together, these projects demonstrate the contemporary power of stories to stimulate engagement, active citizenship, the pride of identity, and the humility of human connectedness.
On October 3, 1807, Thomas Jefferson was contacted by an unknown traveler urgently pleading for a private "interview" with the President, promising to disclose "a matter of momentous importance". By the next day, Jefferson held in his hands two astonishing manuscripts whose history has been lost for over two centuries. Authored by Muslims fleeing captivity in rural Kentucky, these documents delivered to the President in 1807 were penned by literate African slaves, and written entirely in Arabic. Jefferson's Muslim Fugitives reveals the untold story of two escaped West Africans in the American heartland whose Arabic writings reached a sitting U.S. President, prompting him to intervene on their behalf. Recounting a quest for emancipation that crosses borders of race, region and religion, Jeffrey Einboden unearths Arabic manuscripts that circulated among Jefferson and his prominent peers, including a document from 1780s Georgia which Einboden identifies as the earliest surviving example of Muslim slave authorship in the newly-formed United States. Revealing Jefferson's lifelong entanglements with slavery and Islam, Jefferson's Muslim Fugitives tracks the ascent of Arabic slave writings to the highest halls of U.S. power, while questioning why such vital legacies from the American past have been entirely forgotten.
The rapid development of democracy and political freedoms has created new and sophisticated psychology-based methods of influencing the way voters choose, as well as political systems based on free market principles. A Cross-Cultural Theory of Voter Behavior uses advanced empirical testing to determine whether the behavior of voters in established and emerging democracies around the world is predictable. The results of the testing suggest the theory is a ground-breaking cross-cultural model with theoretical and strategic global implications. This unique book examines the many facets of political marketing and its direct relationship with the voter. A comprehensive theory meticulously tested in the dynamic political waters of the U.S. and Europe, this text bridges the latest theoretical developments in the emerging and advanced democracies. A Cross-Cultural Theory of Voter Behavior offers an innovative and seldom seen international perspective that integrates up-to-date literature in political science with advanced political marketing to provide readers with useable, unified information. In addition, the text is replete with detailed references and illustrated with a wealth of informative tables and graphics to made pertinent data accessible and easily understood. Some of the topics discussed in A Cross-Cultural Theory of Voter Behavior include politics in an age of manufactured images, partisanship and party identification, candidate-centered politics, political cognition, social categorization of politicians, the role of advertising and emotion, among others. An ideal text for students, academics, and researchers, the information presented in A Cross-Cultural Theory of Voter Behavior is also a vital resource for political practitioners such as consultants, candidates, lobbyists, political action committees, fund-raisers, pollsters, government officials, ad specialists, journalists, public relations executives, and congressional aides.
A 'dwelling', or the physical space we call a house, is full of meaning for us. It can be implacable, in that it can work for or against us, depending on how we are able to access and use it. This means that we have to learn to accept dwelling as it is and find some accommodation with our surrounding environment. This book develops a new approach to looking at dwelling and how we use it. It explores the manner in which we use housing to exclude others and so protect our privacy. It also argues we need to exclude others in order to protect and nurture our loved ones. The book combines philosophical analysis and literary and film criticism to put forward an innovative and insightful new approach to looking at housing. It draws on the work of thinkers as diverse as Aristotle, Derrida, Kierkegaard, Nussbaum and Scruton and the films of Chaplin, Bergman, Lynch, Tarr, Teshigahara and Van Sant to construct a new theoretical approach to housing research. |
You may like...
Gendered And Sexual Lives Of South…
Floretta Boonzaier, Simone Peters
Paperback
In Whose Place? - Confronting Vestiges…
Hilton Judin, Arianna Lissoni, …
Paperback
|