Revealing Britain's Systemic Racism applies an existing scholarly paradigm (systemic racism and the white racial frame) to assess the implications of Markle's entry and place in the British royal family, including an analysis that bears on visual and material culture. The white racial frame, as it manifests in the UK, represents an important lens through which to map and examine contemporary racism and related inequities. By questioning the long-held, but largely anecdotal, beliefs about racial progressiveness in the UK, the authors provide an original counter-narrative about how Markle's experiences as a biracial member of the royal family can help illumine contemporary forms of racism in Britain. Revealing Britain's Systemic Racism identifies and documents the plethora of ways systemic racism continues to shape ecological spaces in the UK. Kimberley Ducey and Joe R. Feagin challenge romanticized notions of racial inclusivity by applying Feagin's long-established work, aiming to make a unique and significant contribution to literature in sociology and in various other disciplines.

This brilliant study opposes the Marxist concept of dialectical materialism and its view that change takes place through the conflict of opposites. Instead, Weber relates the rise of a capitalist economy to the Puritan determination to work out anxiety over salvation or damnation by performing good deeds - an effort that ultimately encouraged capitalism.

During the tech boom, Silicon Valley became one of the most concentrated zones of wealth polarization and social inequality in the United States--a place with a fast-disappearing middle class, persistent pockets of poverty, and striking gaps in educational and occupational achievement along class and racial lines. Low-wage workers and their families experienced a profound sense of exclusion from the techno-entrepreneurial culture, while middle class residents, witnessing up close the seemingly overnight success of a "new entrepreneurial" class, negotiated both new and seemingly unattainable standards of personal success and the erosion of their own economic security.

"The Burdens of Aspiration" explores the imprint of the region's success-driven public culture, the realities of increasing social and economic insecurity, and models of success emphasized in contemporary public schools for the region's working and middle class youth. Focused on two disparate groups of students--low-income, "at-risk" Latino youth attending a specialized program exposing youth to high tech industry within an "under-performing" public high school, and middle-income white and Asian students attending a "high-performing" public school with informal connections to the tech elite--Elsa Davidson offers an in-depth look at the process of forming aspirations across lines of race and class. By analyzing the successes and sometimes unanticipated effects of the schools' attempts to shape the aspirations and values of their students, she provides keen insights into the role schooling plays in social reproduction, and how dynamics of race and class inform ideas about responsible citizenship that are instilled in America's youth.

After decades of the American "war on drugs" and relentless prison expansion, political officials are finally challenging mass incarceration. Many point to an apparently promising solution to reduce the prison population: addiction treatment. In Addicted to Rehab, Bard College sociologist Allison McKim gives an in-depth and innovative ethnographic account of two such rehab programs for women, one located in the criminal justice system and one located in the private healthcare system-two very different ways of defining and treating addiction. McKim's book shows how addiction rehab reflects the race, class, and gender politics of the punitive turn. As a result, addiction has become a racialized category that has reorganized the link between punishment and welfare provision. While reformers hope that treatment will offer an alternative to punishment and help women, McKim argues that the framework of addiction further stigmatizes criminalized women and undermines our capacity to challenge gendered subordination. Her study ultimately reveals a two-tiered system, bifurcated by race and class.

Marriage has come a long way since biblical times. Women are no longer property, and practices like polygamy have long been rejected. The world is wealthier, healthier, and more able to find and form relationships than ever. So why are Christian congregations doing more burying than marrying today? Explanations for the recession in marriage range from the mathematical-more women in church than men-to the economic, and from the availability of sex to progressive politics. But perhaps marriage hasn't really changed at all. Instead, there is simply less interest in marriage in an era marked by technology, gender equality, and secularization. Mark Regnerus explores how today's Christians find a mate within a faith that esteems marriage but in a world that increasingly yawns at it. This book draws on in-depth interviews with nearly two hundred young-adult Christians from the United States, Mexico, Spain, Poland, Russia, Lebanon, and Nigeria, in order to understand the state of matrimony in global Christian circles today. Regnerus finds that marriage has become less of a foundation for a couple to build upon and more of a capstone. Meeting increasingly high expectations of marriage is difficult, though, in a free market whose logic reaches deep into the home today. The result is endemic uncertainty, slowing relationship maturation, and stalling marriage. But plenty of Christians innovate, resist, and wed, and this book argues that the future of marriage will be a religious one.

The social sciences have mostly ignored the role of physical buildings in shaping the social fabric of communities and groups. Although the emerging field of the sociology of architecture has started to pay attention to physical structures, Brenneman and Miller are the first to combine the light of sociological theory and the empirical method in order to understand the impact of physical structures on religious groups that build, transform, and maintain them. Religious buildings not only reflect the groups that build them or use them; these physical structures actually shape and change those who gather and worship there. Religious buildings are all around us. From Wall Street to Main Street, from sublime and historic cathedrals to humble converted storefronts, these buildings shape the global religious landscape, "building faith" among those who worship in them while providing a testament to the shape and duration of the faith of those who built them and those who maintain them. Building Faith explores the social impact of religious buildings in places as diverse as a Chicago suburb and a Guatemalan indigenous Mayan village, all the while asking the questions, "How does space shape community?" and "How do communities shape the spaces that speak for them?"

Adding to the contributions made by Soul Searching and Souls in Transition--two books which revolutionized our understanding of the religious lives of young Americans--Lisa Pearce and Melinda Lundquist Denton here offer a new portrait of teenage faith.
Drawing on the massive National Study of Youth and Religion's telephone surveys and in-depth interviews with more than 120 youth at two points in time, the authors chart the spiritual trajectory of American adolescents and young adults over a period of three years. Turning conventional wisdom on its head, the authors find that religion is an important force in the lives of most--though their involvement with religion changes over time, just as teenagers themselves do. Pearce and Denton weave in fascinating portraits of actual youth to give depth to mere numerical rankings of religiosity, which tend to prevail in large studies. One teenager might rarely attend a service, yet count herself profoundly religious; another might be deeply involved in a church's social world, yet claim to be "not, like, deep into the faith." They provide a new set of qualitative categories--Abiders, Assenters, Adapters, Avoiders, and Atheists--quoting from interviews to illuminate the shading between them. And, with their three-year study, they offer a rich understanding of the dynamic nature of faith in young people's lives during a period of rapid change in biology, personality, and social interaction. Not only do degrees of religiosity change, but so does its nature, whether expressed in institutional practices or personal belief.
By presenting a new model of religious development and change, illustrated with compelling personal accounts of real teenagers, Pearce and Denton offer parents, scholars, and religious leaders a new guide for understanding religious development in teens.

The term "urban ecology" has become a buzzword in various disciplines, including the social and natural sciences as well as urban planning and architecture. The environmental humanities have been slow to adapt to current theoretical debates, often excluding human-built environments from their respective frameworks. This book closes this gap both in theory and in practice, bringing together "urban ecology" with ecocritical and cultural ecological approaches by conceptualizing the city as an integral part of the environment and as a space in which ecological problems manifest concretely. Arguing that culture has to be seen as an active component and integral factor within urban ecologies, it makes use of a metaphorical use of the term, perceiving cities as spatial phenomena that do not only have manifold and complex material interrelations with their respective (natural) environments, but that are intrinsically connected to the ideas, imaginations, and interpretations that make up the cultural symbolic and discursive side of our urban lives and that are stored and constantly renegotiated in their cultural and artistic representations. The city is, within this framework, both seen as an ecosystemically organized space as well as a cultural artifact. Thus, the urban ecology outlined in this study takes its main impetus from an analysis of examples taken from contemporary culture that deal with urban life and the complex interrelations between urban communities and their (natural and built) environments.

This volume presents a detailed ethnographic study of rural Paraiyar communities in South India, focusing on their religions and cultural identity. Formerly known as Dalits, or Untouchables, these are a largely socially marginalised group living within a dynamic and complex social matrix dominated by the caste system and its social and religious implications in India. Through examining Paraiyar Christian communities, the author provides a comprehensive understanding of Paraiyar religious worldviews within the dominant Hindu religious worldview. In contrast to existing research, this volume places the Paraiyars within their wider social context, ascribed and achieved identity, religious symbolism and ritual and negotiation of social boundaries. In arguing that the Paraiyars help us to understand religion as 'lived', the author removes the concept 'religion' from the reified forms it so often obtains in textbooks. Instead, Jeremiah demonstrates that it is only in local and specific contexts, as opposed to essentialised notions, that 'religion' either makes any sense or that theories concerning it can be tested.

Innovations in Adolescent Substance Abuse Interventions focuses on developmentally appropriate approaches to the assessment, prevention, or treatment of substance use problems among adolescents. Organized into 16 chapters, this book begins with an assessment of adolescent substance use; theory, methods, and effectiveness of a drug abuse prevention approach; and problem behavior prevention programming for schools and community groups. Some chapters follow on the community-, family- and school-based interventions for adolescents with substance use problems. Other chapters explain psychopharmacological therapy; the assertive aftercare protocol for adolescent substance abusers; and twelve-step-based interventions for adolescents.

Whenever people from different cultural and religious backgrounds converge, it produces tension and ambivalence. This study delves into conflicts in interreligious educational processes in both theory and practice, presenting the results of empirical research conducted at schools and universities and formulating ground-breaking practical perspectives for interreligious collaboration in various religious-pedagogical settings.

As family structures continue to evolve, aging relatives have caused increasing concern for family members as they attempt to manage complex issues such as health, caregiving, emotional and instrumental support, and intergenerational relationships. This multidisciplinary volume focuses on how aging interacts with family structures and relationship dynamics. Including research from around the globe, the authors address a wide array of topics, including family support networks, elderly care, grandparenthood, marital dynamics and satisfaction, elderly divorce, cohabitation, gender, and intergenerational relationships, and more. Paying homage to the fact that the manners by which aging affects families can vary considerably from one culture to another, this collection makes a crucial contribution by collating research on aging and the family from an international perspective. Providing this wide scope of quality research, the volume equips readers to better assess how aging and its related issues are affecting families from multiple backgrounds.

A history of Catholic social thought Many Americans assume that the Catholic Church is inherently conservative, based on its stances on abortion, contraception, and divorce. Yet there is a longstanding tradition of progressive Catholic movements in the United States that have addressed a variety of issues from labor, war, immigration, and environmental protection, to human rights, women's rights, exploitive development practices, and bellicose foreign policies. These Catholic social movements have helped to shift the Church from an institution that had historically supported incumbent governments and political elites to a Church that has increasingly sided with the vulnerable and oppressed. This book provides a concise history of progressively oriented Catholic Social Thought, which conveys the Catholic Church's position on a variety of social justice concerns. Sharon Erickson Nepstad introduces key papal encyclicals and other church documents, showing how lay Catholics in the United States have put these ideas into practice through a creative and sometimes provocative political engagement. Nepstad also explores how these progressive movements have pressured the religious hierarchy to respond to pressing social issues, such as women's ordination, conscription, and the morality of nuclear deterrence policies. Catholic Social Activism vividly depicts how these progressive movements have helped to shape the religious landscape of the United States, and how they have provoked controversy and debate among Catholics and non-Catholics alike.

The Canyon de Chelly is one of the best Cliff Ruins regions in the United States. This book details the pueblo dwellings in the region, with over a hundred black and white diagrams and photographs. The original index and footnotes have been preserved.

Populations of cities have grown at unprecedented rate, consuming ever more land, placing severe strain on the environment and also on cash-strapped governments. Nature needs to be reintroduced to our cities. This book is focused on urban nature conservation, aspects that will resonate with advisors to local government, people interested in bringing back nature to our cities and anyone with a keen interest in nature. Our ecosystems are under threat and green infrastructure needs to be better managed so that there will be less fragmentation and habitat loss. All of us have to live more towards a sustainable urban nature environment. This book guides all of us how to address nature on our doorsteps. There are 214 photos, 6 tables and 25 illustrations on principles of urban nature conservation. The book informs how to participate and synchronise lifestyles to contribute to sustainable urban nature environments. Urban wetlands, watercourses, riparian zones, buffer zones, ecological corridors and functions are explained. The annexures in the book described owl boxes, bird feeders, earthworm bins and how to produce organic compost. What is important is that more and more people move to cities and city developments encroach upon nature areas. These encroachments can be managed to accommodate ecologically sensitive urban nature areas. These areas can be utilised in ways that it will benefit the environment people live in.

Many of the available resources for teaching courses on feminist spirituality either come from the 1980s to 1990s or are written by the same authors as those earlier texts, thus showing us a progression of spiritual beliefs and practices of 'second-wave' feminists. This is useful, but when addressing this topic with university students it is also important to show the ways in which spirituality has been rethought by 'third-wave' feminists. This rethinking can be found in various small circulation 'zines, but these are not always accessible to a wide audience. This anthology addresses the experiences of third-wave feminists in the construction and reformulation of spirituality. It examines the experiences of young feminists and others who have been influenced by second-wave feminist spirituality and engaged in developing and critiquing themes of Goddess religion, queer theory, protest movements, and popular culture.

What makes a film a teen film? And why, when it represents such powerful and enduring ideas about youth and adolescence, is teen film usually viewed as culturally insignificant? Teen film is usually discussed as a representation of the changing American teenager, highlighting the institutions of high school and the nuclear family and experiments in sexual development and identity formation. But not every film featuring these components is a teen film, and not every teen film is American. Arguing that teen film is always a story about becoming a citizen and a subject, "Teen Film" presents a new history of the genre, surveys the existing body of scholarship, and introduces key critical tools for discussing teen film. Surveying a wide range of films including "The Wild One," "Heathers," "Donnie Darko" and "Buffy the Vampire Slayer," the book's central focus is on what kind of adolescence teen film represents, and on teen film's capacity to produce new and influential images of adolescence.