As pressures on public resources increase, more consideration is given to the role of private foundations in responding to the needs of the elderly--our fastest-growing population sector. Focusing on the philanthropic funding of social science research on aging, this study looks at the potential of the private sector and suggests strategies for addressing the research priorities posed by a rapidly aging population. Sontz begins by examining the contributions of modern philanthropy to the growth of social science. She summarizes the evolution of major American foundations and their impact on the academic expansion of anthropology, sociology, and social work, and she discusses the recent growth of late-age studies in these disciplines. Based on a survey of the research plans and funding requirements of social gerontology scholars, Sontz evaluates the present underdeveloped role of foundation grant making in supporting studies relating to the elderly. She notes that most foundations continue to adhere to a mandate that encompasses social reform. Foundations need, however, to show marked interest in sponsoring interdisciplinary approaches to aging within the social sciences. In her final chapter, Sontz suggests possible research areas in social and cultural gerontology that could attract grant funding and increase the effectiveness of foundation programming, especially to researchers in university settings. Written by a social science scholar with extensive experience in foundation management, this study addresses the interests of foundations, university planners and administrators, and researchers in gerontology and related policy studies.

This book presents the narratives and voices of young, mostly male practitioners of hip hop culture in Delhi, India. The author suggests that practitioners understand hip hop as both a thing that can be appropriated and authenticated, made real, in the local and global context and as a way that enables them to transform their lives and futures in the rapidly globalising urban environments of Delhi. The dancers, artists, musicians and cultural theorists that feature in this book construct a multitude of voices in their narratives to formulate their 'own' transcultural voices within global hip hop. Through a combination of linguistic ethnography, sociolinguistics and discourse studies, the book addresses issues including gender and sexuality, identity construction and global culture.

Poverty alleviation is a central aim of economic and social policy, and yet there is no consensus about what poverty means or how it is best measured. Often, the households below an income poverty line are counted as poor, but there may be no firm basis for concentrating on that particular income level. There may also be wide variations among the households below any income poverty line in terms of their actual living standards. This book explores what poverty means in developed countries, and shows that understanding and measuring it requires widening the focus beyond current income. By using broader measures of resources and information on living patterns and concrete indicators of deprivation, it shows how those who are effectively excluded from participation in society due to lack of resources can be more accurately identified, and the processes producing such exclusion better understood. The core issue of this book is how to define and measure poverty in relatively rich countries in a way which is valid, meaningful in the context, and valuable for policy-making. Extensive analysis of data from a specially designed survey of a large representative sample of Irish households is used to illustrate the arguments.

This study focuses on a sample of occupational groups representative of the Mittelstand in the city of Hamburg - white-collar workers, artisans, retailers, civil servants and house owners - and examines the strains imposed by the infaltionary conditions on each group, seriously questioning the commonly-held interpretation of the Infaltion's effects and chronology.

[T]he book is splendid. Wortzel combines his expertise in Sinology with his meticulous attention to epistemology and methodology in studying the class structure and stratification in Maoist China, accomplishing the rare feat of freeing himself from ideological bias and parochial ethnic subjectivity. . . . It is indeed refreshing to read Wortzel's realistic book. Journal of Third World Studies Although the hierarchy of class is said to have been replaced with distinctions between the friends and enemies of Communism, Larry Wortzel argues that the Chinese Communist Party has in reality evolved into a ruling class which serves its own interests. Drawing on literature from dissident Marxists and using analyses of writings from underground journals and the Beijing publication People's Literature, the author examines perceptions of social stratification and finds that the determinants of social and economic standing now appear to depend on lines of management and authority, residence in urban or rural areas, and Party membership, especially when combined with positions of authority This work presents one of the first comprehensive analyses of the class system in socialist China as it exists in practice rather as conceived in theory.

This elegantly written book offers an unexpected and unprecedented account of blindness and sight. Legally blind since the age of eleven, Georgina Kleege draws on her experiences to offer a detailed testimony of visual, impairment -- both her own view of the world and the worlds view of the blind. "I hope to turn the reader's gaze outward, to say, not only Heres what I see but also 'Here's what you see, to show both what's unique and what's universal", Kleege writes.

Kleege describes the negative social status of the blind, analyzes stereotypes of the blind that have been perpetuated by movies, and discusses how blindness has been portrayed in literature. She vividly conveys the visual experience of someone with severely impaired sight and explains what she can see and what she cannot (and how her inability to achieve eye contact -- in a society that prizes that form of connection -- has affected her). Finally she tells of the various ways she reads, and the freedom she felt when she stopped concealing her blindness and acquired skills, such as reading braille, as part of a new, blind identity. Without sentimentality or cliches, Kleege offers us the opportunity to imagine life without sight.

Internationalism is generally considered to be a major feature of the labour movement, and to hold a far more powerful appeal for workers' organizations than national identity. However, this revisionist book argues that, in fact, it is the national dimension which is of utmost importance to workers' organizations, and that national questions have often compelled workers to engage in struggles on different levels. Through detailed case studies of trade union involvement in Northern Ireland, Italy, Spain, Belgium, Austria and Europe generally, contributors tackle subjects long neglected by labour historians and overturn the accepted wisdom that nationalism and the labour movement are irreconcilably opposed. This analysis of how international agendas are influenced by nationalist politics is unique, and the case-studies offer a dynamic description of the different ways in which nationalist values meet with trade union ideas and practices.The high standard of scholarship and the combination of historical and contemporary material make this book essential reading for students and researchers of labour history, politics, political theory and area studies.

Social scientists have generally remained impervious to a major economic and cultural adaptation--namely, the peripatetic lifestyle--although this adaptation has been an integral part of developments within the socioeconomic and cultural networks that social scientists study. This lack of interest derives perhaps from the ambiguous integration of peripatetics into these networks as well as the often negatively charged constructs -Gypsies, outsiders, or marginal others--imposed on peripatetics by dominant cultures. As peddlers of the strange to borrow a phrase from Clifford Geertz, peripatetics are situated at the fringes of their host societies and many students of the social ecological and behavioral sciences still continue to overlook the roles of peripatetic peoples.

This collection presents the latest in cross-cultural comparative research on the nature of peripatetic peoples. Contributors examine the place of peripatetic peoples in the everyday lives and diverse cognitive maps of client communities. Relying on Georg Simmel's construct of The Stranger, the contributors to this volume suggest that peripatetic peoples are simultaneously outsiders and insiders, but most important, they are entrepreneurial middlemen traders par excellence. All told, the essays provoke vital reassessments of the anthropological focus on the role and status of cultural brokers and go-betweens in political, economic, and social interactions.

An examination of A. Paul Hare's findings about groups, teams, and social interaction, this book shows how these findings can be placed in the context of several theories, and discusses some applications that can be constructed for the analysis of various kinds of social situations. Part I brings together the literature on small workgroups, especially discussion groups and problem-solving groups, from laboratory studies by social psychologists and practitioners in organizational development.

The seven chapters cover basic concepts, characteristics of groups and teams, group and team development, problem solving and consensus, managing conflict, consultation, and team building with SYMLOG (a method of group evaluation developed by Freed Bales of Harvard University). Part II presents four theories of social interaction with examples of applications: functional, dramaturgical, exchange, and SYMLOG. The final chapter brings together features of these theories in a category system for the observation of groups.

This book is available as open access through the Bloomsbury Open Access programme and is available on www.bloomsburycollections.com. Clare Saunders' book is an important contribution to the literature on social movements and environmentalism. Using the concept of 'environmental networks', it explores the extent to which social movement theory helps us understand how a broad range of environmental organizations interact. It considers the practicalities of social movement theories and it goes on to relate them to the practices of environmental networks. Theoretically and empirically rich, the book draws on extensive survey material with 144 UK environmental organizations, as diverse as not-in-my-backyard (NIMBY) groups, reformists, conservationists and radicals; interviews with more than 40 key campaigners and extensive participant-observation, particularly in London. Focussing particularly on the crucial question of networking dynamics, the book reveals that there are broad ranging network links across the movements' spatial and ideological dimensions. Combined with inevitable ideological clashes and a degree of sectarian rivalry, these links helps produce vibrant environmental networks that together work to protect and/or preserve the environment. This book is an invaluable resource for anyone concerned with environmental issues, politics and movements.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.