Culture, once a center-stage concept in anthropology, is now being discussed by talk show personalities and journalists and included in a wide range of academic disciplines. In view of the myriad uses and abuse of the concept, "The Relevance of Culture" sets the record straight through a careful survey of the development of the concept of culture, and the arguments and continuing relevance of it to theoretical discussions. The authors illustrate its roles in such diverse areas as risk and technology, nursing and health care, evolution, criminology, information, economy, geography, and even the uneven the understanding of suicide.

Noted shcolars apply their wit and wisdom to illustrate and analyze the role of culture, creating a definitive picture for scholars, beginning students of cultural anthroplogy, and related social sciences.

When contrasted with the miners' dramatic strike victories in 1972 and 1974, the shattering industrial defeat suffered by British miners in 1985 has been seen as evidence of the further weakening of working-class solidarity. Undertaken with complete unity, the strikes of 1972 and 1974 brought the miners substantial material gains, contributed to the downfall of a government, and reinforced the National Union of Mineworkers' position at the core of the British labour movement. In contrast, the strike in Britain in 1984/85 was marked by internal division and by the miners' attempt to resist the pit closure programme of the Thatcher government, and it ended in bitter defeat.

A revolutionary new understanding of the precarious modern human-nature relationship and a path to a healthier, more sustainable world.
Amidst all the wondrous luxuries of the modern world--smartphones, fast intercontinental travel, Internet movies, fully stocked refrigerators--lies an unnerving fact that may be even more disturbing than all the environmental and social costs of our lifestyles. The fragmentations of our modern lives, our disconnections from nature and from the consequences of our actions, make it difficult to follow our own values and ethics, so we can no longer be truly ethical beings. When we buy a computer or a hamburger, our impacts ripple across the globe, and, dissociated from them, we can't quite respond. Our personal and professional choices result in damages ranging from radioactive landscapes to disappearing rainforests, but we can't quite see how.
Environmental scholar Kenneth Worthy traces the broken pathways between consumers and clean-room worker illnesses, superfund sites in Silicon Valley, and massively contaminated landscapes in rural Asian villages. His groundbreaking, psychologically based explanation confirms that our disconnections make us more destructive and that we must bear witness to nature and our consequences. "Invisible Nature "shows the way forward: how we can create more involvement in our own food production, more education about how goods are produced and waste is disposed, more direct and deliberative democracy, and greater contact with the nature that sustains us.

Contrary to the stereotype which depicts them as economic successes, Asian workers have a high incidence of underemployment when compared to white workers. This book integrates immigration and labor market trends into an analysis of the economic assimilation of Asians in the U.S. It examines four forms of underemployment (unemployment, part-time employment, working poverty, and job mismatch) for Asian Indian, Filipino, and Vietnamese men and women. This study shows that Asian underemployment rates are consistently higher than for non-Hispanic whites, with Asian Indians having the highest rate. Each Asian group displayed varied effects of human capital, family and household, industry, and assimilation variables on the different underemployment categories. Important implications of the findings show that ethnic group variation in underemployment appears stronger than differences by gender.
(Ph.D. dissertation, Pennsylvania State University, 1994; revised with new preface and index)

Walter analyzes the history of American radicals of the left (socialists, communists, and radical liberals) from their emergence as an opinion-shaping force during the Great Depression to the present, and concludes that theirs is a fundamentally negative view of American social and political history. Walter argues that radical leftists have blunted reasonable political policy and prevented the achievement of desirable social goals, and that their dissidence combines a naive faith in revolutionary leaders, an unrealistic hope for perfect social justice, and an implacable hatred of free enterprise. According to Walter, radical leftists, despite often noble intentions, have been a destructive force in American history.

"The Rise and Fall of Leftist Radicalism in America" attempts to understand left-wing radicalism by viewing the movement as a whole, as it reacted to the central national and international events of the last sixty years. In particular, Walter discusses labor agitation in the 1930s and 1940s; radical leftist support of the Soviet Union, Cuba, and China; McCarthyism; opposition to the war in Vietnam; and today's pre-eminent radical cause, environmentalism. This volume is recommended for political scientists, historians, and political philosophers.

Race and the Assemblies of God Church chronicles the treatment of African Americans by the largest, predominantly white, Pentecostal denomination in the United States. The formation of the Assemblies of God in 1914, brought an end to the interracial focus of the Pentecostal movement that characterized the revival from its inception in Los Angeles, California, at an abandoned warehouse on Azusa Street in 1906. Dr. Newman utilizes the extensive archival holdings of the Flower Pentecostal Heritage Center, housed in the international headquarters of the Assemblies of God in Springfield, Missouri, to support his contention that Assemblies of God leaders deliberately engaged in racist efforts to prevent African American participation in Assemblies of God activities because the denominational leaders feared the reaction of its ministers and congregations in the American South. In addition, a concerted effort to refer African Americans interested in the Assemblies of God to African American groups, such as the Church of God in Christ, was approved at the highest levels of Assemblies of God leadership. Ultimately, efforts to exclude African Americans from the denomination led to official decisions to refuse them ordination and approved resolutions to support the establishment of a separate, unrelated Pentecostal denomination specifically for African Americans. Assemblies of God attitudes regarding racial issues changed only as a result of the civil rights movement and its effect upon American society during the 1960s and 1970s. The treatment of race in church groups with European origins was compared to that of the Assemblies of God and the influence of African and slave religions upon the rise of the Pentecostal movement. Finally, the author provides an analysis of the 1994 event known as the "Miracle of Memphis" in which white Pentecostal denominations dissolved the racially segregated Pentecostal Fellowship of North America in favor of a new organization, the Pentecostal and Charismatic Churches of North America. The book concludes that although current Assemblies of God leaders have embraced the concept of an integrated church fellowship that no longer excludes African Americans, there is virtually no evidence of wide acceptance of this concept at the local church level in the denomination.

With the ethnic, cultural and religious diversity that is a feature of European societies today, pluralism is experienced in new and challenging ways. In many places, an urban cosmopolitan mix sits side by side with group-based expressions of faith and culture. The debate about the types of 'acceptance' that these situations require tend to follow new patterns. Increasing openness and respect for some may rest upon a reinforced intolerance towards others. This complicates and challenges our understanding of what it means for societies to be accepting, tolerant or respectful of cultural diversity in its various forms. This volume seeks to meet this challenge with perspectives that consider new dynamics towards tolerance, intolerance and respect.

Michael Grimes looks at the voluminous scholarly literature published by American social scientists in the twentieth century and provides an overview and critique of the major theories, conceptualizations, and measurements of class inequality. No book published since the late fifties has had such scope. This volume assembles a framework for interpreting and understanding the changing character of the theories and methodologies used by scholars to study class inequality based on two schools of social theory--order and conflict--each with different assumptions about human nature and society, and about the unique role(s) that class plays in society. Grimes contends that theoretical perspectives result from the interaction of the unique biographies of theorists with the sociohistorical, ideological, and disciplinary settings within which they work, and that the relative popularity of perspectives on the subject within the discipline has varied over time as the setting has changed.

Part I of the book assesses the diverse perspectives on class inequality of early American sociologists. Part II examines the rise of functionalism within American sociology and its subsequent application to the issue of class inequality. Two conflict perspectives on inequality--labeled neo-Weberian and neo-Marxist theories--are discussed in Part III, while Part IV provides a summary and concludes that there is evidence of a convergence of sorts among contemporary perspectives on class inequality within the discipline. The colume is organized to facilitate use by graduate students and advanced undergraduate students as well as by professional social scientists--particularly sociologists.

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

Lawyer, doctor, scientist--these are the jobs Americans commonly cite when asked to list the most prestigious occupations. The word "professional" today implies expertise, authority, and excellence. To do a job professionally is to do it well. Yet in a society in which knowledge has become a prized asset and an advanced degree the ticket to wealth and power, the rise of professionalism has a darker, more ominous side.
Power in the Highest Degree, one of the most comprehensive studies of professionals ever undertaken, exposes professionalism as a double-edged sword; it illustrates how experts have come to "own" and control knowledge, much like the wealthy control capital, thereby transforming capitalist and socialist society, both for better and for worse. Knowledge long predates money as a source of power and wealth in human society, and professionals are only the most recent in a long succession of powerful knowledge classes that have included shaman, witchdoctors, and the Confucian mandarins who ruled China for over a thousand years.
Drawing on interviews with over 1,000 practicing professionals, the authors show how, by dispensing self-interested and morally colored judgements as scientific truth, modern professionals are consolidating a monopoly over what passes for objective knowledge. Experts discredit the ordinary knowledge of the general public to generate a vast market of dependent clients. The result is a powerful professional class that creates vital new knowledge and life-saving services, but also wields growing influence over a population deeply insecure about its ability to manage private and public affairs without "expert" guidance.
This sweeping study also reveals that more and more experts are abandoning private practice to work for corporations, becoming junior partners in a new "Mandarin capitalism." While often outspoken advocates of a more socially responsible business world, professionals have joined big business to produce one of the most pronounced divisions of mental and manual work in history, creating a new dispossessed majority, the uncredentialed. We learn of an experiment at Polaroid to give machine operators more responsibility which is cancelled when managers and engineers decided that they "just didn't want operators that qualified." The authors argue that, as this new "mandarin" class radically transforms the social order, it helps to reform some of the traditional scourges of the business world, but also poses a new threat to equality in America. To reverse this trend, they propose a post-professional society that de-emphasizes skill hierarchies and substantially democratizes knowledge.
A bold and incisive new work of social criticism, this book provides a fascinating look at the modern professional and provokes Americans to think in a new way about democracy in the age of experts.

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

Modern Germany explores life, society, and history in this comprehensive thematic encyclopedia, spanning such topics as geography, pop culture, the media, and gender. Germany and its capital, Berlin, were the fulcrum of geopolitics in the twentieth century. After the Second World War, Germany was a divided nation. Many German citizens were born and educated and continued to work in eastern Germany (the former German Democratic Republic). This title in the Understanding Modern Nations series seeks to explain contemporary life and traditional culture through thematic encyclopedic entries. Themes in the book cover geography; history; politics and government; economy; religion and thought; social classes and ethnicity; gender, marriage, and sexuality; education; language; etiquette; literature and drama; art and architecture; music and dance; food; leisure and sports; and media and pop culture. Within each theme, short topical entries cover a wide array of key concepts and ideas, from LGBTQ issues in Germany to linguistic dialects to the ever-famous Oktoberfest. Geared specifically toward high school and undergraduate German students, readers interested in history and travel will find this book accessible and engaging. Provides examples of how the post-war division of Germany continues to play a role in German society Discusses German politics as well as the nation's role in the European Union Contains contemporary, first-person accounts of everyday life in Germany in a "Day in the Life" appendix Illuminates the text through photos that illustrate key topics Provides fun facts and anecdotal information in sidebars, helping to engage readers

View the Table of Contents. Read the Preface.

"This splendid collection of essays by leading legal scholars, on topics ranging from constitutional law to tax law and policy, draws on the best recent scholarship to illuminate how and why contemporary American law addresses--and fails to address--persistent problems caused by the maldistribution of wealth and income in the United States. Accessible to non-specialists, the essays are full of provocative insights and arguments."
--Mark Tushnet, Carmack Waterhouse Professor of Constitutional Law, Georgetown University Law Center

"A brilliant collection of essays--each one brisk and authoritative. Altogether they show that class--the increasingly unbridgeable gap between rich and poor--is the biggest challenge to our national and global dreams of freedom and equality. Not only does the volume avoid the unevenness that plagues most groups of essays, but they are uniformly lively and interesting."
--Barbara Allen Babcock, Judge John Crown Professor, Emerita, Stanford Law School

"In this much-needed book, twenty-five specialists reveal how the growing gulf between Haves and Have-nots has distorted their fields of law--invariably to the advantage of the Haves. If you are concerned at the injustice of putting our lawmaking institutions up for sale to the highest bidders, this book is for you. If you are not concerned, where have you been?"
--Kenneth L. Karst, David G. Price and Dallas P. Price Professor of Law Emeritus, University of California, Los Angeles

In Law and Class in America, a group of leading legal scholars reflect on the state of the law from the end of the Cold War to the present, grappling with a centralquestion posed to them by Paul D. Carrington and Trina Jones: have recent legal reforms exacerbated class differences in America? In a substantive introduction, Carrington and Jones assert that legal changes from the late-20th century onward have been increasingly elitist and unconcerned with the lives of poor people having little access to the legal system. Contributors use this position as a springboard to review developments in their own particular fields and to assess whether or not legal decisions and processes have contributed to a widening gap between privileged and unprivileged people in this country.

From antitrust and bankruptcy to tax and election law, the essays in this unique volume invite readers to reflect thoughtfully on socio-economic justice in the new century, and suggest that a lack of progressive reform in all areas of law may herald a form of undiagnosed class dominance reminiscent of America's Gilded Age.

Contributors: Margaret A. Berger, M. Gregg Bloche, David L. Callies, Paul D. Carrington, Paul Y. K. Castle, Lance Compa, James D. Cox, Paula A. Franzese, Marc Galanter, Julius G. Getman, Lawrence O. Gostin, Joel F. Handler, Trina Jones, Thomas E. Kauper, Sanford Levinson, John Linehan, Joseph D. McNamara, Burt Neuborne, Jeffrey O'Connell, Judith Resnik, Richard L. Schmalbeck, Danielle Sarah Seiden, Richard E. Speidel, Gerald Torres, David M. Trubek, Elizabeth Warren, and Lawrence A. Zelenak.

Since World War II, development projects have invested more than two trillion dollars towards health services, poverty alleviation, education, food security, and environmental initiatives around the world. Despite these efforts, 20% of the world still lives on less than $1.50 a day and the environment within which all live declines dramatically. There are clear limits to what further investments at this rate can achieve. This book advances the thesis that a more effective and universal foundation for social change and environmental restoration is not money, but human energy.

Using this approach Tibet recovered from being nearly deforested to having over 40% of its land area protected under conservation management. Using principles outlined in this book mothers in northeast India implemented a package of life-changing actions that halved child mortality. They parallel the way New York City has created a citywide conservation program over three-and-a-half centuries. Each of these examples is particular to its time and place, yet a shared set of principles is at work in all of them.

Improving the quality of life for a community starts by strengthening successes already operating. It involves local knowledge and a relatively simple set of principles, tasks, and criteria designed to empower communities. This highly readable account demonstrates how a comprehensive process for social change harnesses the energy of a community and scales it up with a rising number of participants becoming invested in increasingly high-quality work. Richly illustrated with photographs and stories of innovative people and programs in communities ranging from Nepal to Afghanistan to the South Bronx, it provides practical, proven guidelines for creating profound and sustained social change that begins in individual communities and grows to scale.

This pioneering study focuses on an area of Soviet and socialist studies until now largely neglected in the literature: social change. The author contends that while most standard analyses of communist regimes purport to be about social change, they are in fact analyzing economic and political developments rather than transformation in the class structure of society. Because economic and political factors are the least stable, Brucan argues, they are therefore the least explanatory and predictive factors if we are to understand long term trends in the evolution of socialism. Brucan instead explores the social forces at work in the Soviet Union, China, and Eastern Europe--classes, professional groups, and so on--tracing the evolution of class and class policy from the time of the 1917 revolution through the present leadership of Gorbachev. Students of international affairs and sociology will find in Brucan's work important new insights into the likely future direction of the world's major communist societies.

Beginning with a detailed historical analysis of class and class policy in the East, Brucan examines issues such as forced collectivization, the new working class, wage policy, the state take-over, and KhruscheV's openings. Turning to a discussion of the relationship between social structure and the scientific-technological revolution, the author shows that communist regimes in the Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, and China have demonstrated a deliberate and systematic pattern of overvaluation of manual work and undervaluation of scientific and technical work--explaining their lack of preparation for rapid scientific and technical change. Brucan relates the historical analysis of social change to questions about whether reforms in the East can be achieved, arguing that no analysis of the East's economic and political history can be fully understood without considering social structure. In the final section, the author addresses the current period of perestroika, suggesting that GorbacheV's real challenge will be to dislodge the current social structure that was consolidated in the late 1970s. He concludes that a new class alignment in socialism has led to a crisis of the communist party itself.

This study presents a picture of Columbia which serves as both an introduction to the country and as background to further study. The final chapter brings the reader up to date.

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