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Books > Social sciences > Sociology, social studies > Social groups & communities > General
In today's world of instant communication, we often marvel at the ability of a public figure to handle a hostile audience. "Persuasive EncounterS" studies successful persuasion against tough odds. Through the analyzation of specific historical and rhetorical evidence, the events presented here illustrate and sometimes challenge the viability of current abstract models. Detailed studies of encounters involving such diverse figures as Edward R. Murrow, Edward Kennedy, Thomas Szasz, and Ed Koch form the basis of the work. Shorter analyses focus on the sometimes controversial actions of social activists ranging from abolitionst Wendell Phillips to the Beatles' John Lennon. In its scope and assumptions, the book is the first of its kind. Such studies are usually isolated in journals or reduced to short examples in persuasion texts. Persuasive Encounters demonstrates that the understanding of communication processes can never be very far from the analysis of specific settings and events. It goes on to show that confrontations can be positive forces for change. The text is comprised of five instances of persuasion advocacy combined with six shorter case studies. Each chapter includes background information on the immediate and secondary audiences, a summary of significant events that surrounded the situation, and contemporary accounts of public reaction. In addition, a transcript of the remarks or exchanges that actually took place and an analysis of the persuasion are provided. Students of persuasion, communication theory, and discourse analysis will find this work a valuable resource.
The field of network exchange has grown over the last 20 years from a few scattered studies to substantial publications in leading journals. Today network exchange is as advanced as any area of sociology. Willer and his contributors present its most advanced theory, Network Exchange Theory, and, by assembling and supplementing formulations now spread across leading journals, provide scholars with a unique collection. Contributors examine basic issues in theory as well as research. The end product is a well-tested theory which relates social structure to social action under a wide range of conditions, and is proven to be a useful tool for structural analysis at both the micro and macro levels. An important text and guide for researchers and students of social theory, structure, and social psychology.
Current social and political theories, which tend to dismiss religious resurgence as a deviant occurrence in the broad sweep of history, do not provide an adequate framework for the study of the dramatic resurgence of religion as a worldwide political force. This book is the first to address the interplay of religion and politics systematically and on a global scale. Offering interpretive essays as well as quantitative comparative analyses, it develops a comprehensive theoretical framework and presents the most complete comparative account available of the realities of religious politics in the contemporary world. The first of the interpretive chapters focuses on the cultural factor as a means of clarifying the role of religion in the modern world system. The next two chapters examine the concept of the self in the context of globalization and the absence of solidarity as a unifying force in societal systems. The role of ultimate values in politics and the reasons for the emergence of militant religious movements in nation-states is also considered. A worldwide study of religious change between 1900 and 1980 gives a clear picture of contemporary global religious movements and formulates a tentative set of explanations of change based on data analysis. The statistical links between religious beliefs and political views, and between religion and democracy, are explored. The editor's concluding chapter looks at the implications of the authors' findings for general theory in the sociology of religion. The editor stresses the need for reconceptualizing basic theoretical constructs, particularly the concept of religion itself. An important contribution to our understanding of the religious and political forces that are shaping the modern world, this work will be of interest to academics, researchers, and students of world religions, sociology, and political science.
This book examines theories and specific experiences of international migration and social transformation, with special reference to the effects of neo-liberal globalization on four societies with vastly different historical and cultural characteristics: South Korea, Australia, Turkey and Mexico.
The eleven essays in this collection examine the relationship between institutional structures and community integration, offering practical insights to increase social capital and strengthen social institutions. A variety of social institutions are analyzed. Three chapters cover political legal issues, two cover religion, three address education, and two examine the macrostructures of the military and the economy. An important collection for scholars and other researchers interested in the communitarian movement, sociology, and political science, particularly for those in public administration.
Although women's rights, disarmament initiatives, and other contemporary social movements receive substantial critical attention, no new work on American reformism as a whole has been published since the late 1960s. In this wide-ranging history, David De Leon brings us up-to-date and offers fresh insights on the social transformations that continue to reshape our society. He traces the evolution of modern reform movements, analyzing their leadership, goals, and achievements, and presents selections from speeches and writings that vividly capture the reforming spirit.
Environmental ethics presents and defends a systematic and comprehensive account of the moral relation between human beings and their natural environment and assumes that human behaviour toward the natural world can and is governed by moral norms. In contemporary society, film has provided a powerful instrument for the moulding of such ethical attitudes. Through a close examination of the medium, Environmental Ethics and Film explores how historical ethical values can be re-imagined and re-constituted for more contemporary audiences. Building on an extensive back-catalogue of eco-film analysis, the author focuses on a diverse selection of contemporary films which target audiences' ethical sensibilities in very different ways. Each chapter focuses on at least three close readings of films and documentaries, examining a wide range of environmental issues as they are illustrated across contemporary Hollywood films. This book is an invaluable resource for students and scholars of environmental communication, film studies, media and cultural studies, environmental philosophy and ethics.
Historians now mark the years between 1880 and 1915 as the beginning of mass culture in the United States and its consolidation under the ideals and values of private corporations. In this study, Sarah Lyons Watts contends that modern American attitudes toward the relationship between labor and capital, as well toward the place industrial labor was to occupy in the corporate state, coalesced in the debates in popular, business, and professional literature in the decades around the turn of the century. She illustrates how the magnitude and significance of changes in the transmission of cultural authority made these years critical in the evolution of industrialists' labor ideas. Following a detailed introduction that provides an overview of the period and a discussion of cultural hegemony, Watts focuses on three case studies: the Pullman strike, an ideological struggle in which public opinion figured not just in the outcome of the strike, but in the definition of labor's place in the corporate order; modern management, which sought to replace workers' traditional definitions with its own and transform the ethos of modern factory work; and the National Association of Manufacturers' anti-union campaign. These case studies demonstrate how nationwide organizations of businessmen met the charges against concentrated capital made by unionists and reformers, advancing arguments that linked the moral value of capital to civic services, national honor, and progress. A concluding chapter, recounting the dramatic social reorganization that was the ultimate product of this period, and a selected bibliography, complete the work. This book will be a useful reference for courses in American, business, social, and labor history, as well as an important resource for public and academic libraries.
For the past 15 years, Africa has seen remarkable change. New energies, new experiences, a burst of creativity, a courage defying explanation are being manifested by millions of people. Especially in the villages, a silent revolution is underway that is changing the continent's developmental landscape. In tropical Africa, literally millions of farmers have moved to take the future into their own hands and to reclaim the self-reliance that was theirs until the disruption of colonial occupation and the post-independence era of rapid modernization. As a result of the tens of thousands of small village projects that they have initiated, these farmers are improving their living conditions. Because most people outside of Africa know little of these changes, Pradervand has written of a grassroots revolution which could be the greatest sign of hope for Africa today. This unique study, the outgrowth of his four and one-half month, 14,000 kilometer trip through 111 villages in Senegal, Mali, Burkina, Faso, Zimbabwe, and Kenya topples many stereotypes and offers a hopeful view of African development. It describes the numerous self-help projects initiated by peasant farmers including the creating of original savings schemes, the invention of new food storage systems, the distribution of family planning information, the setting up of barter exchanges, the organization of centers for traditional medicine, and the building of indigenous farmers' organizations. The book also lays great emphasis on the cultural dimensions of development and how peasant-farmers are stressing the need to return to their own cultural roots.
Identity and Belonging examines the interplay between self and society and in doing so explores the complex nature of 'who we are' and 'how we come to be' as individuals and as members of various social groups. Investigating issues of identity and belonging as they emerge in contemporary social life and under conditions of globalisation, the book focuses on continuity and change in the formation of identities and communities. Through a variety of examples and case studies, the chapters discuss how elements such as ethnicity, class, gender and sexuality intersect and are experienced both locally and transnationally. As a modern guide to some classic themes and key thinkers in the discipline of sociology, this accessible text can be used to introduce core topics of identity, social divisions and globalisation, as well as to investigate in detail more specific themes and issues such as migration, consumption and digital media. It is a useful and comprehensive resource for both undergraduate and postgraduate students of sociology and related disciplines.
The ideal of democratic socialist egalitarianism was put into practice by the kibbutz. These authors see it as the perfect laboratory for research on egalitarianism. Seeking an answer to the question, Can well planned democratic socialist egalitarian communities thrive economically, govern themselves effectively, and succeed in passing on their value system to successive generations?, The Second Generation presents extensive and systematic research conducted, between 1969 and 1976, by the Givat Haviva Institute for Social Research and the Research Institute of Ichud. Hakvutzot Vehakibbutzim (now part of TAKAM). This study addresses itself primarily to continuity and to a comparison of values and goals between founders and second generation Kibbutz members, while it sheds equal light on many other issues. Its extensive data and rich theoretical discussion will be a valuable resource for social and political scientists as well as moral philosophers. This is a critical study of second generation kibbutz members, their status, personal aspirations, relationship to the kibbutz, their philosophy of life, and their attitude toward the first generation. The future of the kibbutz movement is dependent on answers to these questions--on whether or not the second generation is satisfied with its home. Fourteen essays ask such questions as: How does the second generation define itself in regard to national identity? What are their roles in effecting changes? Are they prepared to forego communal values for the sake of rapid economic progress? Did their kibbutz education prepare them to defend these values? This study's principal concern is to determine the factors that will predict if second generation kibbutz members will remain in their kibbutzim. The book concludes with a theoretical model for predicting attachments.
This two-volume set examines the process of integration of rural society and the establishment of the modern state in China. It attempts to transcend general policy claims by analysing China's rural governance within the state's integration of rural society over the course of the twentieth century. Drawing on contemporary examples of state integration while observing the particular background of the Chinese context, this set systematically examines the entire process of the rural reconstruction of China over the course of the 100 years since the period of the late Qing Dynasty, while analysing the special characteristics of each period as well as current societal trends in the Chinese countryside. The first volume explores state penetration of the countryside and the transformation of the rural population from the point of view of politics, labour and resources, administration, and institutional integration. The second volume examines contemporary state integration via the economic activities of traditional rural societies, alongside fiscal, cultural, social, and technological integration. The conclusion summarizes three characteristics that are evident in the process of rural integration and the establishment of the modern state in China. The two volume set will be essential reading for scholars and students in Chinese Studies, Political Science, Rural Studies, and those who are interested in the rural reconstruction of China in general.
This provocative new volume focuses on the economic features that make Third World social formations distinctive and on non-property characteristics such as religion, ethnicity, and culture, that are central to the survival of these societies. Specifically, the authors look at the significance and revolutionary potential of peasant majorities, who take limited advantage of capitalist modes of production and often manage to maintain their cultural and economic identity and a degree of independence in the process. Following the editors' introduction, which explains the conceptual framework for the study, the historical and structural causes for the weakness of the basic capitalist classes in the periphery (the underdeveloped national regions) are examined. The next several chapters deal with the evolution of classes and institutions in the periphery, the articulation of peasantries within capitalist and socialist societies, and the reasons for the resilience of peasant modes of production. Other topics discussed are the role of the state--capitalist of socialist--in class formation, the relationship between the socialist state and the peasantry, variables in social transformation in the periphery, and the place of the urban poor in Third World development.
Theodore Parker, a great orator of the mid-19th century, was a Unitarian clergyman who directed much of his oratory towards ecclesiastical and social reform. Parker challenged slavery and other social ills. As a volume in the Great American Orators series, the focus is on Parker's oratory and its effect on theology and the social structures of the mid-19th century. Biographical information pertains to those aspects of Parker's life that influenced and shaped his elocution and ideas. Parker's rhetoric and rhetorical techniques are examined. Three of Parker's important speeches are included, each with an introduction that places it in its proper context. This study will appeal to students of rhetoric, theology, and mid-nineteenth-century American religious history. The book is divided into two sections. The first concentrates on Parker's life, his role as an abolitionist, social reformer, and public order. Part Two scrutinizes three of Parker's most famous discourses. The author establishes Parker's place among mid-19th-century preachers.
This analysis of modern Chilean society provides the historical basis for current trends, and serves as good background material for a composite study.
The United States is known as a "melting pot" yet this mix tends to be volatile and contributes to a long history of oppression, racism, and bigotry. Emerging Intersections, an anthology of ten previously unpublished essays, looks at the problems of inequality and oppression from new angles and promotes intersectionality as an interpretive tool that can be utilized to better understand the ways in which race, class, gender, ethnicity, and other dimensions of difference shape our lives today. The book showcases innovative contributions that expand our understanding of how inequality affects people of color, demonstrates the ways public policies reinforce existing systems of inequality, and shows how research and teaching using an intersectional perspective compels scholars to become agents of change within institutions. By offering practical applications for using intersectional knowledge, Emerging Intersections will help bring us one step closer to achieving positive institutional change and social justice.
The focus on the dynamic nature of organizations as living systems is instructive and worthy of consideration. The book provides a unique perspective on the variables that influence the effectiveness of today's organizations. Advanced undergraduates and up. "Choice" Describing his book as a disciplined excursion through the world of organizations, Tracy has developed a unique approach to the study of organizational behavior. Using James G. Miller's living systems theory as his framework, the author describes organizations as living--displaying the same basic function, structures and processes as a plant or animal. "The Living Organization" gives us a milti-level picture of the workings of organizations. The three levels--individual, group, and organization--work simultaneously. Diverging from current theory, the author asks us to treat these levels concurrently, not sequentially. He uses the same set of basic concepts for all three levels. The reader will be stimulated by the interesting juxtaposition of topics in this book. Topics, normally unrelated, form unusual combinations reflecting the author's basic theme that all the topics of organizational behavior are more closely linked than previously realized. This book is excellent reading. It takes a giant step toward providing the field of organizational behavior with a theoretical backbone. Utilizing the living systems approach to its fullest, "The Living Organization" integrates the field of organizational behavior at its three systematic levels and it links these concepts and theories so that connections between needs and motivation and between decision-making and leadership are made clear.
The author has made an intensive study of the early literature of the Pacific. In this book his purpose is to establish the true title to the discovery of the various islands of Polynesia, Melanesia, and Micronesia by abstracting from the original records the relevant topographical, nautical, and other clues and comparing them with the modern data.
An anthropological study that compares a central London neighborhood with a London suburb in terms of family and community life, mobility, social status, and social interaction. The main sources of the authors' information were sample interviews from the two populaces. The main themes of this book are the differences between the London suburb and the East End, and the differences between the middle and working-class residents.
In the 1970s, in his capacity as government representative from the Afghan Institute of Archaeology, Ghulam Rahman Amiri accompanied a joint Afghan-US archaeological mission to the Sistan region of southwest Afghanistan. The results of his work were published in Farsi as a descriptive ethnographic monograph. The Helmand Baluch is the first English translation of Amiri's extraordinary encounters. This rich ethnography describes the cultural, political, and economic systems of the Baluch people living in the lower Helmand River Valley of Afghanistan. It is an area that has received little study since the early 20th Century, yet is a region with a remarkable history in one of the most volatile territories in the world. |
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