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Books > Social sciences > Sociology, social studies > Social research & statistics
Contributor spotlight interviews: Dr Kim Lopez: https://youtu.be/vEF71NM_jQc Dr Jocelyn Scott: https://youtu.be/qfjcbgExEJ0 Dr Brian Kumm: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kchW0MDfw44&t=158s, Dr Luc Cousineau: https://youtu.be/IjRvRw3WjgY Now in its second edition, Fostering Social Justice through Qualitative Inquiry, addresses the methods of conducting qualitative research using a social justice paradigm. Qualitative researchers increasingly flock to social justice research to move beyond academic discourse and aid marginalized, oppressed, or less-powerful communities and groups. The book addresses the differences that a social justice stance requires from the researcher, then discusses how major theories and qualitative methodologies are employed to create social justice in both the process and products of qualitative research. Snapshot theory chapters introduce the foundations of theories like feminism, critical race theory, queer theory, and many more. Robust methodological chapters cover grounded theory, phenomenology, ethnography, participatory action research, and other key qualitative designs. Chapters are written by experts in the specific theory or methodology, and exemplars of the authors work illustrate this style of research in action. New to this edition: * Expanded attention to the theories most commonly associated with social justice research by authors who have put it to use * Methodological chapters on autoethnography, collective memory work, digital methods and postqualitative inquiry * Chapter Reflection Questions to help students and their supervisors/instructors apply what they've learned * Recommended readings from each author with annotations to encourage additional exploration This established textbook will be suitable for graduate students and scholars in qualitative inquiry in a range of disciplines, including Education and Gender and Sexuality, Communication, Leisure Studies, and across the social sciences.
America's urban population has been growing while rural areas are declining - especially after the great recession. This is not new as rural decline has been affected by the long-term shift from an agriculturally based economy to a service based economy. However, the preference of many Millennials for urban settings exacerbates the issue and reduces the rural community's ability to replenish the population. Life in Rural America: A Statistical Portrait will present economic and demographic indicators of the rural population and help users understand the community and geographic differences that rural communities experience. The book will be used as a reference source for data users looking to understand community and geographic differences in the rural component of the nation's population.
This book reflects on the contemporary use of ethnography across both social and natural sciences, focusing in particular on organizational ethnography, autoethnography, and the role of storytelling. The chapters interrogate and reframe longstanding ethnographic discussions, including those concerning reflexivity and positionality, while exploring evolving themes such as the experiential use of technologies. The open and honest accounts presented in the volume explore the perennial anxieties, doubts and uncertainties of ethnography. Rather than seek ways to mitigate these 'inconvenient' but inevitable aspects of academic research, the book instead finds significant value to these experiences. Taking the position that collections of ethnographic work are better presented as transdisciplinary bricolage rather than as discipline-specific series, each chapter in the collection begins with a reflection on the existing impact and character of ethnographic research within the author's native discipline. The book will appeal to all academic researchers with an interest in qualitative methods, as well as to advanced undergraduate and postgraduate students.
Health Policy presents the key classic and contemporary articles and will be an important source of reference for health care professionals, academics and policymakers. It sheds light on the values and socio-political factors which underpin health policy, and will be invaluable in helping to assess and compare policymaking processes in different countries. The volume is divided into six sections and within each section the articles are presented chronologically. Thus the selection is suitable for both the beginner and the more advanced student; the beginner will benefit from the earlier readings by observing their cumulative impact on later writings, while the more advanced student may find the more up-to-date articles of particular interest. Section I introduces several basic values which underlie all health policies; section II reviews the socio-economic and political factors in health policy; section III deals with the experience and practice of American health care while section IV offers comparisons with other countries in Europe and also with Japan. Section V examines the opportunities and constraints for countries' learning from each other and finally section VI raises methodological issues and indicates the challenges which must be addressed in the future.
The notion of 'silence' in Politics and International Relations has come to imply the absence of voice in political life and, as such, tends to be scholastically prescribed as the antithesis of political power and political agency. However, from Emma Gonzales's three minutes of silence as part of her address at the March for Our Lives, to Trump's attempts to silence the investigation into his campaign's alleged collusion with Russia, along with the continuing revelations articulated by silence-breakers of sexual harassment, it is apparent that there are multiple meanings and functions of political silence - all of which intersect at the nexus of power and agency. Dingli and Cooke present a complex constellation of engagements that challenge the conceptual limitations of established approaches to silence by engaging with diverse, cross-disciplinary analytical perspectives on silence and its political implications in the realms of: environmental politics, diplomacy, digital privacy, radical politics, the politics of piety, commemoration, international organization and international law, among others. Contributors to this edited collection chart their approaches to the relationship between silence, power and agency, thus positing silence as a productive modality of agency. While this collection promotes intellectual and interdisciplinary synergy around critical thinking and research regarding the intersections of silence, power and agency, it is written for scholars in politics, international relations theory, international political theory, critical theory and everything in between.
The bad news is that our civilisation is collapsing. The good news is that you are already helping create a new and better one. The Ocean in a Drop follows the quest of Roz Savage, a frustrated environmentalist and ocean adventurer, to find out why her own endeavours and the environmental movement more generally have failed to achieve change of the necessary scope, scale and speed. Her journey takes her from the environment through economics and politics into patriarchy and a global culture of domination - the domination of rich over poor, strong over weak, humanity over nature. She examines the tragic psychological flaws in the way we think, and the apparent inevitability of civilisational collapse, and deduces that our best hope is to transcend the current trap of runaway materialism. But how? Exploring cutting-edge theories on the nature of reality and the relationship between matter and consciousness, she peels back the veils of our shared delusions to arrive at a new narrative about what it means to be human in the twenty-first century. She paints a bold, exciting vision of a future in which people and planet thrive.
This volume is a critical exposition of the data and analyses from a full decade of rigorous research into how age-related changes at the individual level, along with other factors, contribute to morbidity, disability and mortality risks at the broader population level. After summarizing the state of our knowledge in the field, individual chapters offer enlightening discussion on a range of key topics such as age trajectory analysis in select and general populations, incidence/age patterns of major chronic illnesses, and indices of cumulative deficits and their use in characterizing and understanding the detailed properties of individual aging. The book features comprehensive statistical analyses of unique longitudinal data sets including the unique resource of the Framingham Heart Study, with its more than 60 years of follow-up. Culminating in penetrating conclusions about the insights gained from the work involved, this book adds much to our understanding of the links between aging and human health.
This open access book examines the question of collecting and disseminating data on ethnicity and race in order to describe characteristics of ethnic and racial groups, identify factors of social and economic integration and implement policies to redress discrimination. It offers a global perspective on the issue by looking at race and ethnicity in a wide variety of historical, country-specific contexts, including Asia, Latin America, Europe, Oceania and North America. In addition, the book also includes analysis on the indigenous populations of the Americas. The book first offers comparative accounts of ethnic statistics. It compares and empirically tests two perspectives for understanding national ethnic enumeration practices in a global context based on national census questionnaires and population registration forms for over 200 countries between 1990 to 2006. Next, the book explores enumeration and identity politics with chapters that cover the debate on ethnic and racial statistics in France, ethnic and linguistic categories in Quebec, Brazilian ethnoracial classification and affirmative action policies and the Hispanic/Latino identity and the United States census. The third, and final, part of the book examines measurement issues and competing claims. It explores such issues as the complexity of measuring diversity using Malaysia as an example, social inequalities and indigenous populations in Mexico and the demographic explosion of aboriginal populations in Canada from 1986 to 2006. Overall, the book sheds light on four main questions: should ethnic groups be counted, how should they be counted, who is and who is not counted and what are the political and economic incentives for counting. It will be of interest to all students of race, ethnicity, identity, and immigration. In addition, researchers as well as policymakers will find useful discussions and insights for a better understanding of the complexity of categorization and related political and policy challenges.
This book deals with the choice of methods to be applied in the decision processes within organizations. It discusses the use of voting procedures for group decision in business organizations, focusing on decision-making contexts. Within this book the reader explores the relevant part of the decision-making process consisting of choosing the voting procedures and recognizing the drawbacks of that procedure. This book includes a unique feature of providing a framework for choosing the voting procedure that is the most appropriate for a particular business decision process. The book is useful for a broad researcher audience dealing with the group decision making processes within business organizations and for practitioners and students working in the group decision and negotiation field.
A one-of-a-kind volume, Learning Statistics Through Playing Cards uniquely utilizes a simple deck of playing cards to explain the important concepts in statistics. Covering many of the topics included in introductory college statistics courses, author Thomas R. Knapp escorts the student through populations and variables, parameters, percentages, probability and sampling, sampling distribution, estimation, hypothesis testing, and two-by-two tables. Each chapter ends with a series of exercises designed to help the student actually manipulate the concept under discussion (the answers are provided at the back of the text). Also included is an annotated bibliography that directs the student toward further readings. This simple approach to teaching the elementary principles of statistics and probabilities makes this an exceptional supplementary text for undergraduates and first-year graduates in the social, behavioral, and health sciences.
By foregrounding a first-person perspective, this text enacts and explores self-reflection as a mode of inquiry in educational research and highlights the centrality of the individual researcher in the construction of knowledge. Engaging in particular with the work of Thomas Merton through a dialogical approach to his writings, Self and Wisdom in Arts-Based Contemplative Inquiry in Education offers rich examples of personal engagement with text and art to illustrate the pervasive influence of the personal in reflective, narrative, and aesthetic forms of inquiry. Chapters consider methodological and philosophical implications of self-study and contemplative research in educational contexts, and show how dialogic approaches can enrich empirical forms of inquiry, and inform pedagogical practice. In its embrace of a contemplative voice within an academic treatise, the text offers a rich example of arts-based contemplative inquiry. This unique text will be of interest to postgraduate scholars, researchers, and academics working in the fields of educational philosophy, arts-based and qualitative research methodologies and Merton studies.
This book addresses the ethical and methodological issues that researchers face while conducting cross-cultural social research. With globalization and advanced means of communication and transportation, many researchers conduct research in cross-cultural, multicultural, and transnational settings. Through a range of case studies, and drawing on a range of disciplinary expertise, this book addresses the ethics, errors, and ethnocentrism of conducting law and crime related research in settings where power differences, as well as stereotypes, may come into play. Including chapters from scholars across cultures and settings - including Greece, Canada, Vienna, South Africa, India, and the United States - this book provides an invaluable survey of the issues attending cross-cultural social justice research today. Engaging issues confronted by all cross-cultural researchers this book will be invaluable to those working across the social sciences as well as professionals in criminal justice and social work.
The last 30 years of African political history has followed a cycle from the euphoria of independence to the depression of economic recession and autocracy to the new era of euphoria as the democracy movement sweeps the continent. This reference handbook offers an analytical survey of research on African political history for this period, 1960-1990. Fifteen leading scholars address overall patterns, changing perspectives, and areas requiring additional research from nine different national and regional viewpoints. This expert assessment of the significant literature on African political affairs should be of great value to political scientists, historians, and specialists in African affairs. The handbook is divided into three parts. The first presents continent-wide responses to political and social change highlighting the work of the first generation of African political scientists. Analyses of studies of development administration and international relations are included in this section. The second part contains five regional surveys covering political history, colonialism, nationalism, the post-colonial state, war, and foreign relations. The regions are Eastern Africa, Southern Africa, Equatorial Africa, Portuguese-speaking Africa, and the Horn. Four country studies make up the third part: Cote d'Ivoire, Ghana, Nigeria, and South Africa. An appendix listing social science research centers in the sub-Saharan area and a general bibliography on African politics complete this fully indexed volume.
This volume examines migration between Africa and Europe, rather than just from Africa to Europe. Based on a unique socio-demographic survey carried out both in origin and destination countries (MAFE survey), it argues that return migration, circulation, and transnational practices are significant. Policy design must also take these factors into account. Comparing in a systematic way three flows of African migrants (from Democratic Republic of Congo, Ghana and Senegal), this study offers a new view on the patterns, determinants, and family and economic effects of migration. By comparing six European countries (Belgium, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain and the UK), it shows that the dynamics of migration differ greatly in new vs. old destination countries. Based on a statistical analysis of life histories, this study provides a dynamic view of migration that will help readers better understand current trends as well as future trajectories. It will appeal to researchers, academics, practitioners, and others interested in taking a deeper look in (im)migration issues.
This book provides a general introduction to Sequential Monte Carlo (SMC) methods, also known as particle filters. These methods have become a staple for the sequential analysis of data in such diverse fields as signal processing, epidemiology, machine learning, population ecology, quantitative finance, and robotics. The coverage is comprehensive, ranging from the underlying theory to computational implementation, methodology, and diverse applications in various areas of science. This is achieved by describing SMC algorithms as particular cases of a general framework, which involves concepts such as Feynman-Kac distributions, and tools such as importance sampling and resampling. This general framework is used consistently throughout the book. Extensive coverage is provided on sequential learning (filtering, smoothing) of state-space (hidden Markov) models, as this remains an important application of SMC methods. More recent applications, such as parameter estimation of these models (through e.g. particle Markov chain Monte Carlo techniques) and the simulation of challenging probability distributions (in e.g. Bayesian inference or rare-event problems), are also discussed. The book may be used either as a graduate text on Sequential Monte Carlo methods and state-space modeling, or as a general reference work on the area. Each chapter includes a set of exercises for self-study, a comprehensive bibliography, and a "Python corner," which discusses the practical implementation of the methods covered. In addition, the book comes with an open source Python library, which implements all the algorithms described in the book, and contains all the programs that were used to perform the numerical experiments.
Reciprocity Rules explores the rich and complicated relationships that develop between anthropologists and research participants over time. Focusing on compensation and the creation of friendship and "family" relationships, contributors discuss what, when, and how researchers and the people with whom they work give to each other in and beyond fieldwork. Through reflexivity and narrative, the contributors to this edited collection, who are in various stages in their professional careers and whose research spans three continents and eight countries, reflect on the ways in which they have compensated their research participants and given back to host communities, as well as the varied responses to their efforts. The contributors consider both material and non-material forms of reciprocity, stories of successes and failures, and the taken-for-granted notions of compensation, friendship, and "helping." In so doing, they address the interpersonal dynamics of power and agency in the field, examine cultural misunderstandings, and highlight the challenges that anthropologists face as they strive to maintain good relations with their hosts even when separated by time and space. The contributors argue that while learning, following, openly discussing, and writing about the local rules of reciprocity are always challenging, they are essential to responsible research practice and ongoing efforts to decolonize anthropology.
Ravi Menon is the Institute of Policy Studies' 9th S R Nathan Fellow for the Study of Singapore. This book is an edited collection of his four IPS-Nathan Lectures, delivered in July 2021, and includes highlights of his question-and-answer segments with our virtual audience.Mr Menon examines how Singapore will come under pressure from four tectonic shifts altering the global landscape. Although still relevant, Singapore's guiding ethos of adaptation, meritocracy, and pragmatism may no longer be sufficient. To secure our future, we will need more innovation, inclusion, and inspiration. What does an innovative economy look like? What does it take to create a more inclusive society? What does it mean to be an inspiring nation? How does it all hold together in a refreshed Singapore Synthesis?The IPS-Nathan Lecture series was launched in 2014 as part of the S R Nathan Fellowship for the Study of Singapore. It seeks to advance public understanding and discussion of issues of critical national interest for Singapore.
Private Lives, Public Histories brings together diverse methods from archaeology and cultural anthropology, enabling us to glean rare information on private lives from the historical record. The chapters span geographic areas to present recent ethnohistorical research that advances our knowledge of the connections between the public and private domains and the significance of these connections for understanding the past as a lived experience, both historically and in a contemporary sense. We discuss how the use of different sources-e.g., public records, personal journals, material culture, the built environment, letters, public performances, etc.-can reveal different types of information about past cultural contexts, as well as private sentiments about official culture and society. Through an exploration of sites as varied as homes, factories, plantations, markets, and tourism attractions we address the public significance of private sentiments, the resilience of bodies, and gendered interactions in historical contexts. In doing so, this book highlights linkages between private lives and public settings that have allowed people to continue to exist within, adapt to, and/or resist dominant cultural narratives.
Poetry can be both political and pedagogical. It is utilised in a variety of ways in research to enhance, critique, analyse, and express different voices. Poetry, Method and Education Research brings together international scholars to explore issues as diverse as neoliberalism, culture, decolonising education, health, and teacher identities. A key strength of the book is its attention to poetry as a research method, including discussions of "how to" engage with poetry in research, as well as including a range of research poems. Poetry is thus framed as both a method and performance. Authors in this book address a wide variety of questions from different perspectives including how to use poetry to think about complex issues in education, where poetry belongs in a research project, how to write poetry to generate and analyse "data", and how poetry can represent these findings. This book is an essential resource for students and researchers in education programmes, and those who teach in graduate research methods courses.
This book sheds light on the management challenges of crisis and emergency response in an arctic environment. It explores how the complexity of the operational environment impacts on the risk of operations and addresses a need for tailor-made emergency response mechanisms. Through case studies of the arctic environment, the book illustrates how factors such as nature, geography, demographics and infrastructure increase the complexity of crises in the Arctic and present a significant danger to life and health, the environment and values in challenging Arctic waters. The case studies lay a special focus on contextual factors including conflicting interests and different stakeholder groups, as well as the institutional platforms influencing crisis response and emergency management. They also explore the implications for the managerial roles, the mode of operations, and the structuring of the organizations responsible for the emergency response. The necessity to facilitate cooperation across organizations and borders and a need for organizational flexibility in large scale operations are also emphasized. Written in an accessible style, this book will make for a useful resource for undergraduate and postgraduate students of disaster and emergency management, as well as for professionals involved in emergency services.
Crafted from a research project that lasted for three years, this book examines the impacts of China's universal two-child policy under the lens of education and focuses specifically on early childhood. This book not only provides number projection, but also the prediction and judgment of the supply and demand of service resources in early childhood education. It attempts to reveal the attitudes and views of families and stakeholders on the universal two-child policy and present the public's policy requirements for the quality of early childhood education. In addition, it analyses possible problems and challenges in current kindergarten layouts and resources allocation. Lastly, it aims to provide references and bases for formulating the plan that adapts to changes of Chinese preschoolers, supply guarantee of future early childhood education and the construction of public service system. Offering rich insights into the current and future status of education in China, this text will be of interest to students, scholars, and researchers of sociology, early childhood education, contemporary China studies, East Asian educational practices and policy.
Divided into two volumes, the Handbook of Special Education Research provides a comprehensive overview of critical issues in special education research. Volume II addresses research-based practices, offering a deep dive into tiered systems of support and advances in interventions and assessments, as well as socially, emotionally, culturally, and linguistically relevant practices. Each chapter features considerations for future research and implications for fostering continuous improvement and innovation. Essential reading for researchers and students of special education, this handbook brings together diverse and complementary perspectives to help move the field forward.
This volume brings together interviews with leading scholars to discuss some of the most important issues associated with radicalization, violent extremism and terrorism. The overall aim of these interviews is to move beyond the 'conventional wisdom' over radicalization and violent extremism best represented by many of its well-known slogans, metaphors, aphorisms alongside various other thought-terminating cliches. A vast range of topics are tackled in these conversations, including issues as diverse as the genealogy of radicalization and violent extremism, the rhetoric of emergency politics ('the language of fear'), the ethics of securitization, mutual radicalization, the challenges arising out of the relationship between cognitive and behavioural radicalization, Islamism bias in research on radicalization, the ethics of espionage (as an integral element of the 'war on terror'), the epistemic dimension of radicalization, the application of the just war conceptual framework to terrorism, and the ethics of exceptional means when addressing security-related issues, to name a few. The unifying assumption of the interviews in the volume is the complex nature of radicalization, violent extremism and conflicting diversity, as well as their interwoven relationship. While radicalization has become one of the 'great buzzwords' of the intelligence and security 'industry', pleas for its very abandonment as a useful analytical category have also started to emerge. This book will be of much interest to students of terrorism studies, radicalisation, violent extremism, security studies and International Relations, in general.
This book examines how young people can be re-engaged with schooling and their own learning beyond the school gates. Despite attempts by successive UK governments to promote engagement with education, there has been a substantial increase in formal and informal exclusions from secondary schools, particularly of underperforming students who come from low income families. The book builds on an ethnographic study carried out in a youth centre based on a secondary school site, exploring the social and cultural worlds of fourteen students as they complete a GCSE teamwork assessment. Analysing the 'translation' process of the students as they relocate their understanding of teamwork into the language of assessment, the author posits that student identity is a holistic individual project, where knowledge is produced within the conditions for the production of the self-narrative. This volume calls to educators to recognise the importance of relational pedagogy rooted in social practices, rather than individual cognitive performance. It is sure to be of value and interest to students and scholars of exclusion in education and relational pedagogy, as well as practitioners and policy makers. |
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