Eve E. Buckley's study of twentieth-century Brazil examines the nation's hard social realities through the history of science, focusing on the use of technology and engineering as vexed instruments of reform and economic development. Nowhere was the tension between technocratic optimism and entrenched inequality more evident than in the drought-ridden Northeast sertao, plagued by chronic poverty, recurrent famine, and mass migrations. Buckley reveals how the physicians, engineers, agronomists, and mid-level technocrats working for federal agencies to combat drought were pressured by politicians to seek out a technological magic bullet that would both end poverty and obviate the need for land redistribution to redress longstanding injustices. Scientists planned and oversaw huge projects including dam construction, irrigation for small farmers, and public health initiatives. They were, Buckley shows, sincerely determined to solve the drought crisis and improve the lot of poor people in the sertao. Over time, however, they came to the frustrating realization that, despite technology's tantalizing promise of an apolitical means to end poverty, political collisions among competing stakeholders were inevitable. Buckley's revelations about technocratic hubris, the unexpected consequences of environmental engineering, and constraints on scientists as agents of social change resonate with today's hopes that science and technology can solve society's most pressing dilemmas, including climate change.

Environmental reform by governmental, intergovernmental agencies, private firms and industries and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) is a worldwide phenomenon. This definitive collection showcases an introduction to Ecological Modernisation Theory; state-of-the-art review essays by key international scholars and a selection of the key articles from a quarter-century of social science scholarship. It is aimed at students, researchers and policymakers interested in a deep understanding of contemporary environmental issues

In the past decade, the field of memory has been dramatically reconfigured. Global conditions have powerfully impacted on memory debates, and at the same time, claims to memory are negotiated globally. This is a fundamental shift, as until recently, the dynamics of memory production unfolded primarily within the bounds of the nation-state; coming to terms with the past was largely a national project. Under the impact of processes of globalization, this has changed fundamentally. Today it has become impossible to understand the trajectories of memory outside a global frame of reference. This book offers an innovative inroad into the various problematics of memory in a global age. It presents analytical categories to chart the terrain, and it supplies richly documented case studies that illustrate the complexities of contemporary ways of appropriating the past. Written from different cultural positions and from different disciplinary backgrounds, the collection of essays emphasizes the positionality of memory production as it is negotiated locally and globally.

This book gives a general view of sequence analysis, the statistical study of successions of states, events or actions, one of the most promising venues of social science methodology.It includesinnovative contributions on life course studies, transitions into and out of work, contemporaneous and historical careers, time use, residential trajectories and political careers. The approach presented in this book is now central to the life-course perspective and the study of other social processes.

This book promotes the dialogue between approaches to sequence analysis that developed separately, within traditions contrasted in space and disciplines. It includes the latest developments about sequential concepts, coding, atypical datasets and time patterns, optimal matching and alternative algorithms, survey optimization and visualization. Field studies include original sequential material related to parenting in 19th-century Belgium, higher education and work in Finland and Italy, family formation before and after German reunification, French Jews persecuted in occupied France, long-term trends in electoral participation and regime democratization.

Overall the book reassesses the classical uses of sequences as well as it promotes new ways of collecting, formatting, representing and processing them. The introduction provides basic sequential concepts and tools, as well as a history of the method. Chapters are presented in a way that is both accessible to the beginner and informative to the expert."

Researchers in the new field of literary-and-cultural studies look at social issues - especially issues of change and mobility - through the lens of literary thinking. The essays range from cultural memory and migration to electronic textuality and biopolitics.

An introduction to the critical theory of the Frankfurt School, providing an assessment of thinkers such as Pollock, Marcuse, Horkheimer, Adorno, Neumann, Lowenthal, Fromm, Kirchheimer and Habermas, and the political and intellectual context in which they worked. The account considers the political context of the formative work of the School against the background of the Weimar Republic and of Nazi Germany. It contrasts this with the very different background of 1950s Germany in which Habermas embarked on his academic career, and goes on to discuss the enduring relevance of critical theory to the contemporary political agenda. In particular, Stirk illustrates the continuing validity of the Frankfurt School's criticism of positivist, metaphysical, and, more recently, postmodernist views, and its members' attempts to incorporate psychological perspectives into broader theories of social dynamics. He assesses the School's contribution to key areas of contemporary debate including morality, interest, individual and collective identity and the analysis of authoritarian and democratic states.

While Georg Simmel is widely known, the impact of his work has been far from straightforward, with the ways in which his ideas have been taken up by later thinkers as complex and diverse as the ideas themselves. The Simmelian Legacy is a comprehensive study of the work of this influential sociologist and philosopher and its reception in the Anglophone, German, and French intellectual worlds. By returning to Simmel and his legacy, this text gives voice to a corpus of vast significance and great potential that has lived too much in the shadows. It examines how his relational mode of thought transforms the landscape of sociological problems to subvert conventional conceptions of Simmel's oeuvre as well as of sociology's history. It not only rediscovers key dimensions of Simmel's thought, but also explores its gradual and uneven re-emergence within subsequent scholarship. This is an engaging and lucid, intellectually illuminating and thoroughly accessible overview of the thought of one of sociology's key thinkers that will be essential reading for both scholars and students of sociology and social theory.

A PDF version of this book is available for free in open access via the OAPEN Library platform, www.oapen.org. Cyborgs in Latin America explores the ways cultural expression in Latin America has grappled with the changing relationships between technology and human identity. The book takes a literary and cultural studies approach in examining narrative, film and advertising campaigns from Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Mexico and Uruguay by such artists as Ricardo Piglia, Edmundo Paz SoldAn, Carmen Boullosa and Alberto Fuguet among others.Using and criticizing theoretical models developed by Katherine Hayles, Donna Haraway, Gilles Deleuze and Michel Foucault, the book will appeal to specialists and students of Latin American Studies; Posthuman Theory; and Literature, Science, and Technology Studies.

In this elegantly written book, Mark S. Cladis invites us to reflect on the nature and place of the public and private in the work of Rousseau and, more generally, in democratic society. Listening closely to the religious pitch in Rousseau's voice, he convincingly shows that Rousseau, when attempting to portray the most characteristic aspects of the public and private, reached for a religious vocabulary. Cladis skillfully leads the reader on an exploration of the conflicting claims with which Rousseau wrestled - prerogatives and obligations to self, friends, family, vocation, civic life, and to humanity. At the juncture of diverse theological and secular traditions, Rousseau forged a vision of human happiness found not exclusively in the public or private, but in a complex combination of the two.

This book offers a critique of the dominant conceptualization of heritage found in policy, which tends to privilege the white, middle and upper classes. Using Britain as an illustration, Waterton explores how and why recent policies continue to lean towards the predictable melding of cultural diversity with tendencies of assimilation.

Edward Shils was a central figure in twentieth century social thought. He held appointments both at Chicago and Cambridge and was a crucial link between British and American intellectual life. This volume collects essays by distinguished contributors which deal with the major facets of Shils' thought, including his relations with Michael Polanyi, his parallels with Michael Oakeshott, his defense of the traditional university, his fundamental philosophical anthropology, and his important work on such topics as tradition, civility, and the nation. As an introduction to this complex and original thinker, it will be of interest to scholars and students in a number of fields, including sociology and social theory, but also to anyone interested in the intellectual life as it was lived in the mid-twentieth century, in the face of the Cold War and ideological struggle. -- .

This is a major work by three international scholars at the cutting edge of new research that investigates the emerging set of complex relationships between creativity, design, research, higher education and knowledge capitalism. It highlights the role of the creative and expressive arts, of performance, of aesthetics in general, and the significant role of design as an underlying infrastructure for the creative economy. This book tracks the most recent mutation of these serial shifts - from postindustrial economy to the information economy to the digital economy to the knowledge economy to the 'creative economy' - to summarize the underlying and essential trends in knowledge capitalism and to investigate post-market notions of open source public space. The book hypothesizes that creative economy might constitute an enlargement of its predecessors that not only democratizes creativity and relativizes intellectual property law, but also emphasizes the social conditions of creative work. It documents how these profound shifts have brought to the forefront forms of knowledge production based on the commons and driven by ideas, not profitability per se; and have given rise to the notion of not just 'knowledge management' but the design of 'creative institutions' embodying new patterns of work.

This distinctive text makes social theory accessible to and usable by students. Whereas social theory is often seen as abstract, esoteric and separate from our understanding of the social world, here it is shown to be a flexible and practical resource for anyone wanting to explain social phenomena. This expanded and updated second edition actively encourages readers to develop and practice their own capacities for social explanation: - Providing readers with a powerful 'tool kit' of five social theoretical concepts - Individuals, Nature, Culture, Action and Social Structure - that are fundamental to social explanation; - Drawing on a historically and geographically wide range of examples of social phenomena to show how these theoretical concepts operate and why they're important; - Offering end of chapter questions that enable readers to put theory into practice and begin theorising for themselves. Explaining Social Life is ideal for anyone interested in social theory, including students of sociology, anthropology and related social sciences - both those engaging with social theory for the first time, and more advanced students looking to build upon their understanding.

Control Systems Theory, a newly developing theoretical perspective in the field of sociology, starts from an important insight into human behavior: that people attempt to control the world around them as they perceive it. This volume brings together for the first time all of the best-known sociologists who have contributed to the development of this flexible and wide-ranging theoretical paradigm.

The book suggests that social capital is a feature of the community in terms of their norms, mutual trust, reciprocal obligations, and social networks. When successful, development organizations can harness the social capital and embody it in village or community organizations and subsequently guide these organizations to participate and engage in collective action for poverty alleviation and enhancing community welfare. For our in-depth case study, we utilize varied quantitative and qualitative research methods, including anthropological research and the use of control villages for comparison. The authors also document the importance of understanding history and culture for the process of harnessing social capital.

We constantly hear about 'the consumer'. The 'consumer' has become a ubiquitous person in public discourse and academic research, but who is this person? The Making of the Consumer is the first interdisciplinary study that follows the evolution of the consumer in the modern world, ranging from imperial Britain to contemporary Papua New Guinea, and from the European Union to China. It makes a novel contribution by broadening the study of consumption from a focus on goods and symbols to the changing role and identity of consumers. Offering a historically informed picture of the rise of the consumer to its current prominence, authors discuss the consumer in relation to citizenship and ethics, law and economics, media, work and retailing.Contributors include:Donald Winch (University of Sussex)Frank Trentmann (Birkbeck College, University of London)Vanessa Taylor (Birkbeck College, University of London)Marie-Emmanuelle Chessel (CNRS: Centre de Recherches Historiques, cole des Hautes tudes en Sciences Sociales, Paris)Michelle Everson (Birkbeck College, University of London)Erika Rappaport (University of California, Santa Barbara)Uwe Spiekermann (Georg-August University, Gttingen)Jos Gamble (Royal Holloway University)Stephen Kline (Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, Canada)Frank Mort (University of Manchester)Ina Merkel (Philipps-Universitt, Marburg, Germany)James G. Carrier (Indiana University and Oxford Brookes University)Ben Fine (SOAS: School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London)

Globalization and changes to statehood challenge our understanding of space and territory. This book argues that we must understand that both the modern state and globalisation are based on a cartographic reality of space. In consequence, claims that globalization represents a spatial challenge to state territory are deeply problematic.

This book is an introduction to the philosophical ideas of Plato, Rene Descartes, Baruch Spinoza, and Immanuel Kant on the role of reason which have contributed to the evolution of sociological thought. Reason, according to Rickman, has a relevance to sociology that has not been explored. Because he is interested in the philosophical reflections which proved influential for understanding the social world, he deals systematically with the four philosophers' central arguments and one or more of their most important and easily available texts. The book's bibliography lists books quoted and referred to in the text and offers suggestions for further reading in the philosophy of the social sciences.

Globalization and consumerism are two of the buzzwords of the early twenty-first century. In Consuming Cultures, renowned scholars explore the links between modernity and consumption. The book fills a gap in contemporary thinking on the subject by approaching it from a truly global point-of-view. It draws on case studies from around the world, with Africa, Asia and Central America featuring as prominently as Western countries. A transnational perspective allows the authors to investigate the diversity of consumer cultures and the interaction between them. The authors look at the genealogy of the modern consumer and the development of consumer cultures, from the porcelain trade and consumption in Britain and China in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, to post Second World War developments in America and Japan, and the contemporary consumer politics of cosmopolitan citizenship. Challenging and pioneering, Consuming Cultures problematizes popular accounts of globalization and consumerism, decentring the West and concentrating on putting history back into these accounts.

Can society operate without gender and even biological sex classifications? Queer Post-Gender Ethics argues that we could exist, formulate our relationships and be sexual in more androgynous ways. Outlining a political vision for how a post-gender sociality might be achieved, it presents queer social practices for a truly gender neutral world.

Environmental argument is 'about' far more than meets the eye. How people (mis)under-stand each other during environmental debates is affected by conflicts between values and ways of life which may not be directly connected with the environment at all. This book offers sociological evidence from three contrasting societies - Ireland, Germany and China - to explore how diversity of cultural context affects deliberation about the physical world. What can we discover by examining environmental debates through the lens of interculturality? When people disagree about flood management, building motorways or extracting gas, what difference does it make if they have diverse experiences of neighbourly relations, how to use time or how to imagine a good life? What is going on at intersections between cultures to influence the trajectories of environmental debates? The book disinters taken-for-granted practices, feelings and social relationships which affect environmental arguments, in scientific and artistic debate as well as in politics and policy-making. Importantly, the book makes visible the effects of cultural difference on people's approaches to arguing itself. If public arguing is shaped by specific habits of feeling or imagination, how does that impact on theories of democracy? Do we need new kinds of arguing to cope with environmental crises? What elements of arguing are decisive in the ways people come to see environmental decisions as wise choices?

The focus of this volume is on the further development of the Quality of Life Theory and the means to measure the concept. The volume summarizes Michalos' fundamental assumptions about the nature of quality of life or human well-being and explains in detail the two variable theory of the quality of life. It gives an update of the journal Social Indicators Research after forty years, an explanation of the role of community indicators in connecting communities, and a critical review of the much publicized Stiglitz, Sen and Fitoussi report. It deals with the multiple discrepancies theory (MDT), the empirical theory designed to provide the foundation of the pragmatic theory of value. Other concepts discussed in this volume are the stability, sensitivity, and other different features of measures of domain and life satisfaction and happiness, measures of arts-related activities and beliefs, measures of knowledge, attitudes and behaviour concerning sustainable development, and the role of quality of life in sustainable development research. The volume concludes with discussions on connections between social indicators and communities, aspects of community quality of life in Prince George, British Columbia and Jasper, Alberta, and British Columbians' expectations and attitudes going into the third millennium.

This wide-reaching handbook offers a new perspective on the sociology of health, illness and medicine by stressing the importance of social theory. Examining a range of classic and contemporary female and male theorists from across the globe, it explores various issues including chronic illness, counselling and the rising problems of obesity.

What ought the political role of the intellectual to be? What challenges does the post-structuralist project present for Marxist accounts of the intellectual? What is the relationship between the university and the wider society of which it is part? This text, which includes important contributions from authors such as Warren Montag and Sean Sayers, considers different attempts by Marxist and post-Marxist writers to theorize these and other important related questions.