Each chapter provides in-depth discussions and this volume serves as an invaluable resource for Developmental or educational psychology researchers, scholars, and students.
Includes chapters that highlight some of the most recent research in the area of Positive Youth DevelopmentEach chapter provides in-depth discussionsAn invaluable resource for developmental or educational psychology researchers, scholars, and students

Social Theories of Aging: A Brief Synopsis introduces students to a broad spectrum of social theories on aging. Each theory is categorized as first, second, or third generation according to three theoretical levels: micro-level (individual aging theories), macro-level (societal aging theories), and micro-macro-level (emerging theories). The book provides students not only with a synopsis of key theories but with the agency to create their own knowledge and search for answers within the gerontology discipline. Over the course of six chapters, students explore a variety of generational theories. Each overview presents a theory's level, intellectual origins, and basic tenets. The theories span many fields and subfields of gerontology including social gerontology, sociology, anthropology, public administration, psychology, social work, and geriatrics. Activity Theory, Disengagement Theory, Modernization Theory, Continuity Theory, Exchange Theory, Age Stratification, Social Constructionist, and Transformative Learning Theory are just a few of the theories addressed in the text. Highly accessible and concise in nature, Social Theories of Aging is an ideal textbook for introductory gerontology courses. It can also be used in graduate level courses to remind students of the theoretical underpinnings of gerontology.

What if neoclassical economics addressed the question of class? This accessible overview of economic theory launches this investigation The COVID-19 pandemic exposed the economic inequalities pervading every aspect of society-- and then multiplied them to a staggering degree. A mere nine months into the lockdown, the net worth of the infamous Forbes 400 increased by one trillion dollars; In a single year the US poverty rate rose by the largest amount ever since record-keeping began sixty years ago. At the same time, mass unemployment imperiled or erased the fragile right to quality health care for a substantial number of people living in states without Medicaid. In Inequality, Class, and Economics, Eric Schutz illumines the pillars undergirding the monstrous polarities which define our times-- and reveals them as the very same structures of power at the foundations of the class system under today's capitalism. Employing both traditional and novel approaches to public policy, Inequality, Class, and Economics offers prescriptions that can genuinely address the steepening and hardening of class boundaries. This book pushes past economists' studied avoidance of the problem of class as a system of inequality based in unequal opportunity, and exhorts us to tackle the heart of the problem at long last.

The digitalization of society is constructed as a necessary leap that governments and citizens need to take. However, with many older people lacking adequate digital competences to support their full participation in today's digitalized society, how is the marginalisation of older people in digital society socially constructed? How can we promote older people's digital inclusion and agency? Presenting case studies from Finland, one of the top performers in the supply and demand of digital public services, Older People in a Digitalized Society outlines internationally relevant implications for promoting the social construction of older people's agency. Delving into their digital competences, and use and non-use of Internet and eHealth technologies, Rasi-Heikkinen showcases the potential exclusionary effects of digitalization, and highlights the implications for digital inclusion practice and policy. Contesting the dominant discourses which suggest digital technologies and media play central roles in the learning, well-being, everyday life, and participation in society for individuals throughout their lifespan, Older People in a Digitalized Society addresses the digital gap faced by older generations that do not welcome digitalization, or even see it as a positive marginality: a choice that they have consciously made. Paying attention to how digitalization is a contested issue constructed with various, ambivalent, and paradoxical representations, Rasi-Heikkinen shines an important light on how older people are constructed as being on the margins of digitalization by researchers and the media.

Useful and inspiring cases illustrate participatory placemaking practices and strategies. How Spaces Become Places tells stories of place makers who respond to daunting challenges of affordable housing, racial violence, and immigration, as well as community building, arts development, safe streets, and coalition-building. The book's thirteen contributors share their personal experiences tackling complex and contentious situations in cities ranging from Brooklyn to Los Angeles and from Paris to Detroit. These activists and architects, artists and planners, mediators and gardeners transform ordinary spaces into extraordinary places. These place makers recount working alongside initially suspicious residents to reclaim and enrich the communities in which they live. Readers will learn how place makers listen and learn, diagnose local problems, convene stakeholders, build trust, and invent solutions together. They will find instructive examples of work they can do within their own communities. In the aftermath of the pandemic and the murder of George Floyd, the editor argues, these accessible practice stories are more important than ever.

After a 35 year-long career on worldwide TV screens, Lieutenant Columbo has become one of the most famous fictional detectives. Lilian Mathieu shows that the Columbo series owes its success to its implicit but formidable political dimension, as each episode is structured as a class struggle between a rich, famous, cultured or powerful criminal and an apparently humble and blunderer police officer dressed in a crumpled raincoat and driving an antique car. Highlighting the contentious context that gave birth to the series in 1968, he shows that the sociology of culture offers intellectual tools to understand how a TV detective story can be appreciated as a joyful class revenge.

From 1326 to 1402, Bursa, known to the Byzantines as Prousa, served as the first capital of the Ottoman Empire. It retained its spiritual and commercial importance even after Edirne (Adrianople) in Thrace, and later Constantinople (Istanbul), functioned as Ottoman capitals. Yet, to date, no comprehensive study has been published on the city's role as the inaugural center of a great empire. In works by art and architectural historians, the city has often been portrayed as having a small or insignificant pre-Ottoman past, as if the Ottomans created the city from scratch. This couldn't be farther from the truth. In this book, rooted in the author's archaeological experience, Suna Cagaptay tells the story of the transition from a Byzantine Christian city to an Islamic Ottoman one, positing that Bursa was a multi-faith capital where we can see the religious plurality and modernity of the Ottoman world. The encounter between local and incoming forms, as this book shows, created a synthesis filled with nuance, texture, and meaning. Indeed, when one looks more closely and recognizes that the contributions of the past do not threaten the authenticity of the present, a richer and more accurate narrative of the city and its Ottoman accommodation emerges.

A precise scientific exploration of the differences between boys and girls that breaks down damaging gender stereotypes and offers practical guidance for parents and educators.

In the past decade, we've come to accept certain ideas about the differences between males and females--that boys can't focus in a classroom, for instance, and that girls are obsessed with relationships. In Pink Brain, Blue Brain, neuroscientist Lise Eliot turns that thinking on its head. Calling on years of exhaustive research and her own work in the field of neuroplasticity, Eliot argues that infant brains are so malleable that small differences at birth become amplified over time, as parents and teachers--and the culture at large--unwittingly reinforce gender stereotypes. Children themselves intensify the differences by playing to their modest strengths. They constantly exercise those "ball-throwing" or "doll-cuddling" circuits, rarely straying from their comfort zones. But this, says Eliot, is just what they need to do, and she offers parents and teachers concrete ways to help. Boys are not, in fact, "better at math" but at certain kinds of spatial reasoning. Girls are not naturally more empathetic; they're allowed to express their feelings. By appreciating how sex differences emerge--rather than assuming them to be fixed biological facts--we can help all children reach their fullest potential, close the troubling gaps between boys and girls, and ultimately end the gender wars that currently divide us.

Issues in Religion and Education, Whose Religion? is a contribution to the dynamic and evolving global debates about the role of religion in public education. This volume provides a cross-section of the debates over religion, its role in public education and the theoretical and political conundrums associated with resolutions. The chapters reflect the contested nature of the role of religion in public education around the world and explore some of the issues mentioned from perspectives reflecting the diverse contexts in which the authors are situated. The differences among the chapters reflect some of the particular ways in which various jurisdictions have come to see the problem and how they have addressed religious diversity in public education in the context of their own histories and politics.

The Yearbook of International Religious Demography presents an annual snapshot of the state of religious statistics around the world. Every year large amounts of data are collected through censuses, surveys, polls, religious communities, scholars, and a host of other sources. These data are collated and analyzed by research centers and scholars around the world. Large amounts of data appear in analyzed form in the World Religion Database (Brill), aiming at a researcher's audience. The Yearbook presents data in sets of tables and scholarly articles spanning social science, demography, history, and geography. Each issue offers findings, sources, methods, and implications surrounding international religious demography. Each year an assessment is made of new data made available since the previous issue of the yearbook. Contributors are: Todd Johnson, Gina Zurlo, Peter Crossing, Juan Cruz Esquivel, Fortunato Mallimaci, Annalisa Butticci, Brian Grim, Philip Connor, Ken Chitwood, Vegard Skirbekk, Marcin Stonawski, Rodrigo Franklin de Sousa, Davis Brown, Juan Carlos Esparza Ochoa, and Maria Concepcion Servin Nieto.

Our years between 45 and 65 are no longer a time for decline into old age. Ideally, once the awareness of our 40th 50th or 60th birthday hits, or the last child leaves home, a number of new opportunities arise, allowing us to savor what we have accomplished so far, create new directions, explore where we fit in the larger scheme of things, and determine what we ultimately want from our lives. In Finding Meaning, Facing Fears: Living Fully Twixt Midlife and Retirement, clinical psychologist Jerrold Lee Shapiro invites you to re-envision this unique time in your life and discover opportunities to stretch in your capacities, face and conquer old demons, and meet new challenges with fresh resources. Dr. Shapiro will help you discover which alternatives will best serve your relationships, career goals, personal growth objectives, and even spiritual quests. The text offers answers to inevitable life questions like: "Is that all there is?" "Where do I go from here?" "Is it too late to change my life?" "Why aren't I happier?" The book features real-life vignettes from 45-65-year old women and men who are exceedingly open and honest about their lives. Thoughtful and empowering, Finding Meaning, Facing Fears offers fresh perspective on a previously uncharted life transition.

Research has shown the important role of religious social networks in fostering benevolence, but some questions have remained: Why are people who frequently pray or attend church more generous with their time and money? Why does one religious group rather than another get involved in certain forms of outreach? Drawing on an extensive survey of 1,200 Christian men and women across the United States, as well as 120 in-depth interviews, Matthew T. Lee, Margaret M. Poloma, and Stephen G. Post offer a deeper and more nuanced study of religion and benevolence, finding that it is the experience of God as loving that activates religious networks and moves people to do good for others. Lee, Poloma and Post show that, for many Americans, love underlies both authoritative and benevolent images of God. The authors discover that encounters with God's love are frequent-eight out of ten respondents to the survey said that that they had felt God's love increasing their compassion for others-and that such experiences take on very different meanings depending on social context. These encounters can be intensely transformative, both for individuals and their communities. The book provides countless examples of how receiving God's love, loving God, and expressing this love impacted the lives of the Christians they interviewed. Some began to provide community service, others to strive for social justice, still others to seek to redefine religion and the meaning of "church " in America. Many of the interviewees discarded the judgmental image of God they knew as children in favor of a loving and accepting representation of God that is more consistent with their direct, personal, and affectively intense experiences. The Heart of Religion will be an invaluable resource for anyone interested in how perceptions of God affect communities in America.

The chapters in Urban Educational Leadership for Social Justice: International Perspectives constitute a collection of works that explore dynamics related to equity in multiple contexts. Authors examined these issues in Turkey, Egypt the United States, Thailand and at a global level by comparing and contrasting school leadership practice across borders. Considered as a whole, these papers explore various topics that will be at the forefront of educational research for years to come. Increasingly, educationalleadership understand that there are important lessons to be learned internationally and globally. This book includes important research conceived from these perspectives. Our hope is that individually and collectively, they might contribute to our understanding of international and global issues in educational leadership and that they will extend, challenge and deepen extant lines of inquiry and begin others.

Across Rampart Street from the French Quarter, the Faubourg Treme neighborhood is arguably the most important location for African American culture in New Orleans. Closely associated with traditional jazz and "second line" parading, Treme is now the setting for an eponymous television series created by David Simon (best known for his work on The Wire). Michael Crutcher argues that Treme's story is essentially spatial-a story of how neighborhood boundaries are drawn and take on meaning and of how places within neighborhoods are made and unmade by people and politics. Treme has long been sealed off from more prominent parts of the city, originally by the fortified walls that gave Rampart Street its name, and so has become a refuge for less powerful New Orleanians. This notion of Treme as a safe haven-the flipside of its reputation as a "neglected" place-has been essential to its role as a cultural incubator, Crutcher argues, from the antebellum slave dances in Congo Square to jazz pickup sessions at Joe's Cozy Corner. Treme takes up a wide range of issues in urban life, including highway construction, gentrification, and the role of public architecture in sustaining collective memory. Equally sensitive both to black-white relations and to differences within the African American community, it is a vivid evocation of one of America's most distinctive places.

Rural areas are a key sector in every nation's economy due to a sizeable majority of the population living therein, as well as their impact on global agriculture and food security. Rural development transcends the availability of infrastructure, technology, and industrialization to also encompass the enviro-cultural and psycho-social needs of its inhabitants. The necessity for greater and deliberate efforts targeting all aspects of development of these rural areas is required to sustain growth. The Handbook of Research on Rural Sociology and Community Mobilization for Sustainable Growth is an essential reference source investigating how global trends, state policies, and grassroots movements affect contemporary rural areas in both developed and developing countries. Featuring research on topics such as gender and rural development, micro-financing, and water resource management, this book is ideally designed for government officials, policy makers, professionals, researchers, and students seeking coverage on the sustainable development of rural areas.