Imagined Communities: Constructing Collective Identities in Medieval Europe offers a series of studies focusing on the problems of conceptualisation of social group identities, including national, royal, aristocratic, regional, urban, religious, and gendered communities. The geographical focus of the case studies presented in this volume range from Wales and Scotland, to Hungary and Ruthenia, while both narrative and other types of evidence, such as legal texts, are drawn upon. What emerges is how the characteristics and aspirations of communities are exemplified and legitimised through the presentation of the past and an imagined picture of present. By means of its multiple perspectives, this volume offers significant insight into the medieval dynamics of collective mentality and group consciousness. Contributors are Daniel Bagi, Mariusz Bartnicki, Zbigniew Dalewski, Georg Jostkleigrewe, Bartosz Klusek, Pawel Kras, Wojciech Michalski, Martin Nodl, Andrzej Pleszczynski, Euryn Rhys Roberts, Stanislaw Rosik, Joanna Sobiesiak, Karol Szejgiec, Michal Tomaszek, Tomasz Tarczynski, Przemyslaw Tyszka, Tatiana Vilkul, and Przemyslaw Wiszewski.

In 1991, Dr. Lorraine Monroe founded the Frederick Douglass Academy, a public school in Harlem, in the belief that caring instructors, a disciplined but creative environment, and a refusal to accept mediocrity could transform the lives of inner-city kids. Her experiment was a huge success. Today the Academy is one of the finest schools in the country, sending graduates to Ivy League colleges and registering the third highest SAT scores in New York City. The key to its success: a unique leadership method Monroe calls the "Monroe Doctrine," which she developed through decades as a teacher and principal in some of America's toughest schools. In this book Monroe tells her own remarkable story and explains her "Doctrine" through pithy, memorable rules and observations and a host of wonderful true stories. This is an inspiring read for both new and experienced educators--and for anyone who wants to succeed in the face of seemingly impossible odds.

This book focuses on the crucial role that relationships play in the lives of teenagers. The authors particularly examine the ways that healthy relationships can help teenagers avoid such common risk behaviours as substance abuse, dating violence, sexual assault and unsafe sexual practices. Addressing the current lack of effective prevention programmes for teenagers, they present new strategies for encouraging healthy choices. The book first traces differences between the 'rules of relating' for boys and girls and discusses typical and atypical patterns of experimentation in teenagers. The authors identify the common link among risk behaviours: the relationship connection. In the second part of the book, they examine the principles of successful programmes used by schools and communities to cultivate healthy adolescent development. An illuminating conclusion describes the key ingredients for engaging adolescents, their parents, teachers and communities, in the effort to promote healthy, non-violent relationships among teenagers.

This multidisciplinary study of Scientology examines the organization and the controversies around it through the lens of popular culture, referencing movies, television, print, and the Internet-an unusual perspective that will engage a wide range of readers and researchers. For more than 60 years, Scientology has claimed alternative religious status with a significant number of followers, despite its portrayals in popular culture domains as being bizarre. What are the reasons for the vital connections between Scientology and popular culture that help to maintain or challenge it as an influential belief system? This book is the first academic treatment of Scientology that examines the movement in a popular-culture context from the perspective of several Western countries. It documents how the attention paid to Scientology by high-profile celebrities and its mention in movies, television, and print as well as on the Internet results in millions of people being aware of the organization-to the religious organization's benefit and detriment. The book leads with a background on Scientology and a discussion of science fiction concepts, pulps, and movies. The next section examines Scientology's ongoing relationship with the Hollywood elite, including the group's use of celebrities in its drug rehabilitation program, and explores movies and television shows that contain Scientology themes or comedic references. Readers will learn about how the Internet and the mainstream media of the United States as well as of Australia, Germany, and the UK have regarded Scientology. The final section investigates the music and art of Scientology. Discusses Scientology within the framework of popular culture, which is how most people outside the religion come in contact with it Approaches the study of Scientology from multiple viewpoints, enabling readers to have an informed, multicultural perspective on the religious group's beliefs and practices from which to form their own opinion Presents information about Scientology derived from one of the largest university archive collections on the subject worldwide, with a number of documents never before having been referenced in scholarship

What is 'fun' about the Hollywood version of girlhood? Through re-evaluating notions of pleasure and fun, The Aesthetic Pleasures of Girl Teen Film forms a study of Hollywood girl teen films between 2000-2010. By tracing the aesthetic connections between films such as Mean Girls (Waters, 2004), Hairspray (Shankman, 2007), and Easy A (Gluck, 2010), the book articulates the specific types of pleasure these films offer as a means to understand how Hollywood creates gendered ideas of fun. Rather than condemn these films as 'guilty pleasures' this book sets out to understand how they are designed to create experiences that feel as though they express desires, memories, or fantasies that girls supposedly share in common. Providing a practical model for a new approach to cinematic pleasures The Aesthetic Pleasures of Girl Teen Film proposes that these films offer a limited version of girlhood that feels like potential and promise but is restricted within prescribed parameters.

The last few decades has seen a prolonged debate over the nature and importance of social class as a basis for ideology, class voting and class politics. The prevailing assumption is that, in western societies, class inequalities are no longer important in determining political behaviour. In The End of Class Politics? leading scholars from the US, UK and Europe argue that the evidence on which the assumptions about the decline importance of class is based is unfounded. Instead, the book argues that the class basis of political competition has to some degree evolved, but not declined. Furthermore, the social basis of political competition and sweeping claims about the new politics of postindustrial society need to be re-examined.

Based on extensive research, recent events, and numerous first-person accounts, this revealing book illuminates both the challenges and triumphs of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender youth, and offers effective strategies for combating LGBT marginalization in our nation's schools and communities. Safe Spaces: Making Schools and Communities Welcoming to LGBT Youth is the first book to offer a comprehensive view of the complex lives of LGBT youth of all ages, from kindergarten through college. Drawing on a wealth of research collected from first-person accounts of students, family, educators, and community members, the authors not only chronicle the struggles of LGBT youth but also describe models of inclusive school and community environments. The authors address the breadth of experiences of LGBT youth-in and out of the classroom, at home and in the community, and in personal interactions with allies and antagonists. They also reveal how these young people, their friends and families, teachers, and dedicated allies stem the tide of LGBT exclusion. Most important, Safe Spaces offers action steps for readers who want to make their own homes, schools, and communities safe and welcoming spaces for LGBT youth. More than 80 real-life narratives, drawn from the stories of 100 people, including students, family members, educators, and community leaders A "Queerossary" of dozens of key terms, including multiple definitions for terms with specific meanings within the LGBT community A bibliography of academic, policy, and news materials related to LGBT issues More than 50 action steps readers can use to create safe spaces for LGBT youth Reflection Points provide questions and statements that offer readers an opportunity to reflect upon the ways a particular topic or issue relates to their lives An appendix listing LGBT resources

The dramatically increasing aging population of Hong Kong has elicited new risks and opportunities to facilitate a positive life for older adults. This book offers a holistic review of gerontological theories and literature, and constructs a conceptual framework of social support networks, coping and positive aging. In light of the implications of the convoy model of social support to depict an indigenous landscape of positive aging in Hong Kong, this is one of the very few empirical studies that adopts both quantitative research and qualitative research. The research consisted of a pilot study of in-depth interviews with 16 older Hong Kong Chinese and a main study surveying 393 older members of District Elderly Community Center. The results of the study indicate that family and peer support constitute the mainstay of support networks of the elderly, and that family and peer support are associated with positive aging. Moreover, the study shows that it is the depth of emotional closeness, namely, close interaction and intimacy with social partners that makes the greatest contribution to positive aging. Additionally, problem coping and emotion coping are found to mediate the relationship between social support networks and positive aging. There is potential in bringing more domestic helpers into elderly care and improving the service quality such that the goal of Aging in Place can be promoted in Hong Kong. Intended for researchers in social work, gerontology and positive psychology, it is also essential reading for graduates and social work professionals interested in this area. This book makes a valuable contribution to social gerontological research among Hong Kong older adults and the promotion of wellbeing in the elderly via the construct of positive aging in the culture of Chinese society.

Designed for both academic and lay audiences, this book identifies the characteristics of ritual and, via multiple examples, details how ritual works on the human body and brain to produce its often profound effects. These include enhancing courage, effecting healing, and generating group cohesion by enacting cultural-or individual-beliefs and values. It also shows what happens when ritual fails.

Margaret Morgan was born in freedom's shadow. Her parents were slaves of John Ashmore, a prosperous Maryland mill owner who freed many of his slaves in the last years of his life. Ashmore never laid claim to Margaret, who eventually married a free black man and moved to Pennsylvania. Then, John Ashmore's widow sent Edward Prigg to Pennsylvania to claim Margaret as a runaway. Prigg seized Margaret and her children--one of them born in Pennsylvania--and forcibly removed them to Maryland in violation of Pennsylvania law. In the ensuing uproar, Prigg was indicted for kidnapping under Pennsylvania's personal liberty law. Maryland, however, blocked his extradition, setting the stage for a remarkable Supreme Court case in 1842.

In "Prigg v. Pennsylvania," the Supreme Court considered more than just the fate of a single slavecatcher. The Court's majority struck down the free states' personal liberty laws and reaffirmed federal supremacy in determining the procedures for fugitive slave rendition. H. Robert Baker has written the first and only book-length treatment of this landmark case that became a pivot point for antebellum politics and law some fifteen years before Dred Scott.

Baker addresses the Constitution's ambivalence regarding slavery and freedom. At issue were the reach of slaveholders' property rights into the free states, the rights of free blacks, and the relative powers of the federal and state governments. By announcing federal supremacy in regulating fugitive slave rendition, Prigg v. Pennsylvania was meant to bolster what slaveholders claimed as a constitutional right. But the decision cast into doubt the ability of free states to define freedom and to protect their free black populations from kidnapping.

Baker's eye-opening account raises crucial questions about the place of slavery in the Constitution and the role of the courts in protecting it in antebellum America. More than that, it demonstrates how judges fashion conflicting constitutional interpretations from the same sources of law. Ultimately, it offers an instructive look at how constitutional interpretation that claims to be faithful to neutral legal principles and a definitive original meaning is nonetheless freighted with contemporary politics and morality. "Prigg v. Pennsylvania" is a sobering lesson for those concerned with today's controversial issues, as states seek to supplement and preempt federal immigration law or to overturn Roe v. Wade.

The common wisdom that business contributions to the common good are counterproductive in the new competitive global marketplace does not hold up to empirical research. In fact, doing good is good for business, and a majority of businesses do provide some form of community support, which Besser discovered in her exhaustive survey of the Iowa business community. Business owners and managers often act out of a sense of community spirit and a certain obligation to better the common good. While the increasingly globalized economy has encouraged a number of large corporations to become freewheelers, the vast majority of companies are firmly rooted in place and look at their locales with more than just a utilitarian eye.

Extensive interviews with Iowa business owners, managers, and business and community leaders are combined with findings from prior studies of corporate citizenship, and the evidence clearly indicates that the majority of businesses provide some form of community support. Most owners feel they should do more than just make a profit, so they often seek ways to give back to their communities, a move that is usually nurtured within the business community itself. However, corporate altruism carries risks. Many business owners have unwittingly offended customers and clients by their acts of civic spirit. Besser concludes her book by addressing the potential threats to business social responsibility posed by globalization and recommends steps to enhance socially responsible capitalism. Anybody interested in the complex interaction of businesses and the communities they reside in will enjoy reading this positive revisitation of the mutually supportive relationship between trade and polity.

This book examines how the shifts in the early 19th century in New York City affected children in particular. Indeed, one could argue that within this context, that "children" and "childhood" came into being. In order to explore this, the skeletal remains of the children buried at the small, local, yet politically radical Spring Street Presbyterian Church are detailed. Population level analyses are combined with individual biological profiles from sorted burials and individual stories combed from burial records and archival data. What emerges are life histories of children-of infants, toddlers, younger children, older children, and adolescents-during this time of transition in New York City. When combined with historical data, these life histories, for instance, tell us about what it was like to grow up in this changing time in New York City

Solution-oriented therapy focuses on eliciting, evoking, and highlighting the strengths of clients, as opposed to their pathology and deficits. Here, Robert Bertolino explains his great success in applying this model to the treatment of adolescents. He describes how to work with these young clients to help empower them to change their life scripts.

Based on extended, intensive fieldwork in an Australian high school, Challenging the System illuminates issues faced on a daily basis by teachers and educational administrators in many parts of the world. Forsey highlights the tensions arising between neo-liberal emphasis on individual school communities as the engine for competitive excellence in education, and the need for those responsible for running public education to maintain some degree of equity across the whole system. He shows that reforms based purely on market forces are not only undesirable, they are imposible to achieve. Governments do not want to lose control of highly significant cultural and political

Culture maverick Jim Goad presents a thoroughly reasoned, darkly funny, and rampagingly angry defense of America's most maligned social group -- the cultural clan variously referred to as rednecks, hillbillies, white trash, crackers, and trailer trash. As The Redneck Manifesto boldly points out and brilliantly demonstrates, America's dirty little secret isn't racism but classism. While pouncing incessantly on racial themes, most major media are silent about America's widening class rifts, a problem that negatively affects more people of all colors than does racism. With an unmatched ability for rubbing salt in cultural wounds, Jim Goad deftly dismantles most popular American notions about race and culture and takes a sledgehammer to our delicate glass-blown popular conceptions of government, religion, media, and history.

This book presents new insights into the consequences of the impending growth in and impact of the older segment of Latino aging adults across distinctive regions of the Americas. It uses a comparative research framework to further understanding of current issues in health and aging in the transnational context of the health and migratory experiences of the U.S.- Mexican population. It provides an important contribution to the interdisciplinary investigation of chronic diseases and functional impairments, social care and medical services, care-giving and intervention development, and neighborhood factors supporting optimal aging, using new conceptual and methodological approaches (inter-group comparisons). Specifically, the chapters employ different methodologies that investigate trends in aging health and services related to immigration processes, family and household structure, macroeconomic changes in the quality of community life, and focus on the new realities of aging in Latino families in local communities. The book focuses on measurement, data-quality issues, new conceptual modeling techniques, and longitudinal survey capabilities, and suggests needed areas of new research. As such it is of interest to researchers and policy makers in a wide range of disciplines from social and behavioral sciences to economics, gerontology, geriatrics, and public health.

This book examines the active role of urban citizens in constructing alternative urban spaces as tangible resistance towards capitalist production of urban spaces that continue to encroach various neighborhoods, lanes, commons, public land and other spaces of community life and livelihoods. The collection of narratives presented here brings together research from ten different Asian cities and re-theorises the city from the perspective of ordinary people facing moments of crisis, contestations, and cooperative quests to create alternative spaces to those being produced under prevailing urban processes. The chapters accent the exercise of human agency through daily practices in the production of urban space and the intention is not one of creating a romantic or utopian vision of what a city "by and for the people" ought to be. Rather, it is to place people in the centre as mediators of city-making with discontents about current conditions and desires for a better life.

At the beginning of the 21st century, there is a growing global consciousness of the issues affecting children and a commitment to address them. The "Statistical Handbook on the World's Children" responds to the significant need for a comprehensive collection of international statistical material on children that can be quickly accessed and easily understood by the general researcher.

Organized into eight sections covering such general subject areas as demography, education, health and nutrition, disease, economics, social life, and crime, the "Handbook" offers data on some of the most important aspects of these broad-ranging topics. Each section begins with a general introduction and explanation of indicators to help the user make sense of the data, which is drawn from a wide range of recognized sources including: the United Nations, the World Health Organization, the International Criminal Police Organization, the U.S. Census Bureau, the World Bank, as well as regional and government reports, studies from nongovernmental organizations, and private research papers. Care has been taken to capture the latest available data for all indicators and Web citations, where available, are included in the source notes. More than just another statistical reference, the "Handbook" concludes with an appendix containing the text of several of the most important international documents related to children as well as a glossary of useful terms, and a list of key organizations devoted to children.