This volume examines the shifting role of the state and social organizations (e.g. NGOs) in providing social services in contemporary China. A series of case studies identifies a dynamic whereby the state increasingly withdraws from social service provision with social organizations taking up the slack. An interdisciplinary line up of contributors explore this dynamic, and how it affects the state-society relationship and the quality of social services provided. Based on current research, this book engages existing debates over state-society relations offering a new thematic framework to evaluate this relationship. Drawing on the framework, each chapter explores a particular aspect of social service provision including orphan care, migrant labor protection and infectious disease control. Differentiating between case studies of crisis and non-crisis social service provision situations, this volume argues that state and social organizations engage in ongoing negotiations to achieve shared social service provision goals - a dynamic largely controlled by the state. However during crises, the controlled relationship may alter as the priority becomes addressing the immediate demand for essential social services. The result is the potential for a rapid change in relations between the state and social organizations.

This volume examines the shifting role of the state and social organizations (e.g. NGOs) in providing social services in contemporary China. A series of case studies identifies a dynamic whereby the state increasingly withdraws from social service provision with social organizations taking up the slack. An interdisciplinary line up of contributors explore this dynamic, and how it affects the state-society relationship and the quality of social services provided.

Based on current research, this book engages existing debates over state-society relations offering a new thematic framework to evaluate this relationship. Drawing on the framework, each chapter explores a particular aspect of social service provision including orphan care, migrant labor protection and infectious disease control. Differentiating between case studies of crisis and non-crisis social service provision situations, this volume argues that state and social organizations engage in ongoing negotiations to achieve shared social service provision goals ? a dynamic largely controlled by the state. However during crises, the controlled relationship may alter as the priority becomes addressing the immediate demand for essential social services. The result is the potential for a rapid change in relations between the state and social organizations.

Indie romantic drama about a young couple separated by bureaucracy. Felicity Jones plays Anna, a British student who goes to study in Los Angeles for a year. There she meets American student Jacob (Anton Yelchin), and the two fall for each other almost immediately. They spend a blissful summer together but when Anna outstays her student visa, she is denied access to return to the United States. The lovers now find themselves separated by distance and seemingly insurmountable bureaucracy. Can they possibly make their relationship work with all the odds stacked against them?

Marina del Rey attorney Tom McGuire learns that a credit card he never applied for has just been used to buy a new car that winds up in the middle of a 'turf' war outside Santa Barbara, at an idyllic Central California beach called Point Sal. Tom's girlfriend Maria is in danger of being charged with murder and Tom himself is once again betrayed by a former U.S. Attorney's Office co-worker who is in deeper than anyone imagined. Tom's Mafia contacts have retired and opened an Italian Deli/Cooking school called La Cosa Nostra, in which they give cooking classes under the watchful eye of the Federal Organized Crime Strike Force. Tom attends several of these classes. Recipes taught at the cooking school are collected at the back of the book.

Tom McGuire is on stage in a comedy club, pursuing his dream as a stand-up wannabe. A disturbance in the audience leads to the discovery that one of Maria's 'clients' at her County job is the aged mother of a Russian caviar smuggler in big trouble with the FBI. Tom represents the smuggler, with disastrous results. A stock promoter Tom prosecuted while working at the US Attorney's office has put Tom's friend and dock neighbor Murray Markoff up to promoting a bogus public company on the Internet, touting the stock of a cold fusion company through a variety of misleading screen-name personae. Throughout, the action is punctuated by Tom's comedy performances and nights in stand-up comedy workshop, and well-informed descriptions of stand-up technique, and the culture of comedy and comedians The author describes the step-by-step process of a classic 'pump and dump' stock scheme, and how promoters have learned to use Internet chat rooms to generate buying momentum

Marina del Rey attorney Tom McGuire must defend his client against a charge of carjacking and murder, rescue a proctologist-turned-plastic-surgeon, and battle with a government administrator of the Federal Witness Protection Program. Tom also runs into a modern-day Indian tribe that inhabits a high-rise office building, and some militant environmentalists who have unique methods of combating a Malibu real estate development. The action is set in and around Marina del Rey, California, with excursions to Topanga Canyon and Catalina Island's tiny settlement, Isthmus Cove. Also included are confrontations at sea between Tom's aging Chris-Craft and a Mafia offshore racer. Throughout, attorney McGuire's description of the action that takes place in this novel is a sense of humor that could only come from a person who has performed standup comedy, as author Jonathan Schwartz has.