Download or read book Fragile Social Fabric written by Raymond Breton and published by McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP. This book was released on 2004 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: While conventional assessments of the national quality of life focus on the economic and material dimensions of our society, A Fragile Social Fabric? expands that evaluation to include the social covenant of rights and obligations. from their society - fairness, recognition for their contribution to society, trust that others will not take advantage of them, and a sense of belonging - and what is expected from them - a sense of indebtedness to society that reflects an appreciation of how they have benefited as members of their society, a sense of obligation to help others, and a willingness to contribute to the functioning of the community and society. Based on this analysis, the authors identify a number of steps that can be taken to strengthen the Canadian social fabric. This study is especially pertinent today given the pervasive market culture that is eroding the civic culture underlying the social covenants in contemporary Western societies. It goes beyond conventional assessments that focus on economic and material dimensions of our society.
Download or read book Social Fabrics of the Mind written by Michael Chance and published by Psychology Press. This book was released on 2015-06-19 with total page 342 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Originally published in 1988, this book outlines a new evolutionary paradigm for understanding human society and mental structure, originating from the editor's work in primate ethology. It is supported and further elaborated by the contributors. Chance argues that two modes of social interaction, the agonic and hedonic, underlie social life and corresponding mentality. In the agonic mode we are concerned with self-security and our attention is much taken up with being accepted by a group. This mode is based on a recently discovered state of inhibited (braked) mental arousal. Social behaviour is either authoritarian or authority subservient, and has a tendency to control or be controlled. It curbs intelligence and restricts personality development. In the hedonic mode we are freer to form a network of personal relationships that are typically mutually supportive. The hedonic mode leads to the development of self-confidence and a relaxed empathic and collaborative personality with intelligence enhanced. The volume will still be of interest to all concerned with human affairs including those working in ethology, primatology, anthropology, social psychology, psychiatry and political sociology.
Download or read book The Fragile Fabric of Union written by Brian D. Schoen and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 2009-10-01 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner, 2010 Bennett H. Wall Award, Southern Historical Association In this fresh study Brian Schoen views the Deep South and its cotton industry from a global perspective, revisiting old assumptions and providing new insights into the region, the political history of the United States, and the causes of the Civil War. Schoen takes a unique and broad approach. Rather than seeing the Deep South and its planters as isolated from larger intellectual, economic, and political developments, he places the region firmly within them. In doing so, he demonstrates that the region’s prominence within the modern world—and not its opposition to it—indelibly shaped Southern history. The place of “King Cotton” in the sectional thinking and budding nationalism of the Lower South seems obvious enough, but Schoen reexamines the ever-shifting landscape of international trade from the 1780s through the eve of the Civil War. He argues that the Southern cotton trade was essential to the European economy, seemingly worth any price for Europeans to protect and maintain, and something to defend aggressively in the halls of Congress. This powerful association gave the Deep South the confidence to ultimately secede from the Union. By integrating the history of the region with global events, Schoen reveals how white farmers, planters, and merchants created a “Cotton South,” preserved its profitability for many years, and ensured its dominance in the international raw cotton markets. The story he tells reveals the opportunities and costs of cotton production for the Lower South and the United States.
Download or read book Liberalism and Leadership written by Emile Lester and published by University of Michigan Press. This book was released on 2019-10-22 with total page 259 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Most scholars and pundits today view Franklin Delano Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy as aggressive liberal leaders, while viewing Schlesinger’s famous histories of their presidencies as celebrations of their steadfast progressive leadership. A more careful reading of Schlesinger’s work demonstrates that he preferred an ironic political outlook emphasizing the virtues of restraint, patience, and discipline. For Schlesinger, Roosevelt and Kennedy were liberal heroes and models as much because they respected the constraints on their power and ideals as because they tested traditional institutions and redefined the boundaries of presidential power. Aggressive liberalism involves the use of inspirational rhetoric and cunning political tactics to expand civil liberties and insure economic equality. Schlesinger’s emphasis on the crucial role that irony has played and should play in liberalism poses a challenge to the aggressive liberalism advocated by liberal activists, political thinkers, and pundits. That his counsel was grounded in conservative insights as well as liberal values makes it accessible to leaders across the political spectrum.
Download or read book The Social Fabric of Cities written by Vinicius M. Netto and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2016-09-19 with total page 267 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Bringing together ideas from the fields of sociology, economics, human geography, ethics, political and communications theory, this book deals with some key subjects in urban design: the multidimensional effects of the spatial form of cities, ways of appropriating urban space, and the different material factors involved in the emergence of social life. It puts forward an innovative conceptual framework to reconsider some fundamental features of city-making as a social process: the place of cities in encounters and communications, in the randomness of events and in the repetition of activities that characterise societies. In doing so, it provides fresh analytical tools and theoretical insights to help advance our understanding of the networks of causalities, contingencies and contexts involved in practices of city-making. In a systematic attempt to bring urban analysis and research from the social sciences together, the book is organised around three vital yet relatively neglected dimensions in the social and material shaping of cities: (i) Cities as systems of encounter: an approach to urban segregation as segregated networks; (ii) Cities as systems of communication: a view of shared spaces as a means to association and social experience; (iii) Cities as systems of material interaction: explorations on urban form as an effect of interactivity, and interactivity as an effect of form. Visit the author’s website at: http://socialfabric.city/
Download or read book Cultures in Babylon written by Hazel V. Carby and published by Verso. This book was released on 1999-08-17 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For a decade and a half, since she first appeared in the Birmingham Centre’s collective volume The Empire Strikes Back, Hazel Carby has been on the frontline of the debate over multicultural education in Britain and the US. This book brings together her most important and influential essays, ranging over such topics as the necessity for racially diverse school curricula, the construction of literary canons, Zora Neale Hurston’s portraits of “the Folk,” C.L.R. James and Trinidadian nationalism and black women blues artists, and the necessity for racially diverse school curricula. Carby’s analyses of diverse aspects of contemporary culture are invariably sharp and provocative, her political insights shrewd and often against the grain. A powerful intervention, Culture in Babylon will become a standard reference point in future debates over race, ethnicity and gender.
Download or read book Women Transforming Politics written by Cathy Cohen and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 1997-07 with total page 622 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Contains over thirty essays which explore the complex contexts of political engagement--family and intimate relationships, friendships, neighborhood, community, work environment, race, religious, and other cultural groupings--that structure perceptions of women's opportunities for political participation.
Download or read book Societal Dynamics and Fragility written by Alexandre Marc and published by World Bank Publications. This book was released on 2012-10-12 with total page 246 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Societal Dynamics and Fragility aims to address the social dimensions of fragility. Prepared as a complement to the 2011 World Development Report, this book frames fragility as a problem not only of state capacity, but also of relationships in society. Drawing on analytical work in Liberia, Central African Republic, Yemen, Indonesia (Aceh) and Haiti, it recommends placing social cohesion at the center of development efforts in fragile environments by cultivating an in-depth understanding of the societal dynamics at play in each context and adapting programs to address the sources of division that hinder state building. Specifically, the book advocates a focus on perceptions of injustice at least as much as measurable inequalities, and for creating space to facilitate constructive connections between institutions, especially between customary and state structures as well as often-nascent civil society institutions.
Download or read book Fragile Spaces written by Steven E. Aschheim and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2018-09-24 with total page 416 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book consists of a range of essays covering the complex crises, tensions and dilemmas but also the positive potential in the meeting of Jews with Western culture. In numerous contexts and through the work of fascinating individuals and thinkers, the work examines some of the consequences of political, cultural and personal rupture, as well as the manifold ways in which various Jewish intellectuals, politicians (and occasionally spies!) sought to respond to these ruptures and carve out new, sometimes profound, sometimes fanciful, options of thought and action. It also delves critically into the attacks on liberal and Enlightenment humanism. In almost all the essays the fragility of things is palpably present and the book touches on some of the ironies, problematics and functions of responses to that condition. The work mirrors the author's ongoing fascination with the always fraught, fragile and creatively fecund confrontation of Jews (and others) with European modernity, its history, politics, culture and self-definition. In a time of increasing anxiety and feelings of fragility, this work may be helpful in understanding how people at an earlier (and sometimes contemporary) period sought to come to terms with a similar predicament.
Download or read book Ruth Jonah Esther written by Eugene F. Roop and published by MennoMedia, Inc.. This book was released on 2010-07-01 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In three of the Bible’s most compelling short stories, Eugene F. Roop draws attention to the distinctive narrative characteristics of these magnificent dramas. Such scrutiny opens new vistas of interpretation that can undergird the faith, life, and neighborly relations of the church. As we enter the world of these struggles and events, we will experience in the stories sorrow and laughter, hope and loyalty, and God’s mercy and grace.
Download or read book The Mauritian Paradox written by Ramola Ramtohul and published by African Books Collective. This book was released on 2018-04-11 with total page 293 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Speaking of Mauritius as an economic miracle has become a clich, and with good reason: Its development since Independence in 1968 can easily be narrated as a rags-to-riches story. In addition, it is a stable democracy capable of containing the conflict potential inherent in its complex ethnic and religious demography. This book brings together some of the finest scholarship, domestic as well as foreign, on contemporary Mauritius, offering perspectives from constitutional law, cultural studies, sociology, archaeology, economics, social anthropology and more. While celebrating the indisputable, and impressive, achievements of the Mauritian nation on its fiftieth birthday, this book is far from toothless. Looking back inevitably implies looking ahead, and in order to do so, critical self-scrutiny is essential, to be able to learn from the mistakes of the past. The contributors raise fundamental questions concerning a broad range of issues, from the dilemmas of multiculturalism to the marginal role of women in public life, from the question of constitutional reform and the continued problem of corruption to the slow destruction of Mauritius joy and pride, namely the beauty and purity of its natural scenery. Taking stock of the first fifty years, this book also looks ahead to the next fifty years, giving some cues as to where Mauritius can and should aim in the next decades.
Download or read book Empowerment Through Economic Transformation written by Meshack M. Khosa and published by HSRC Press. This book was released on 2001 with total page 498 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This, the third title in a trilogy studying transformation in post-apartheid South Africa, follows on two studies published in 2000: Infrastructure mandates for change and empowerment through service delivery.
Download or read book The Fragility of Modern Societies written by Nico Stehr and published by SAGE. This book was released on 2001-05-14 with total page 234 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book argues that knowledge is now central to the modern economy and its productive processes. It is also essential for social relations, social cohesion and conflict resolution. We have moved from a society based around heavy commodities to symbolic goods, from situated markets to non-place-specific locations, from machines to software and from things to ideas. These changes produce new forms of social interaction and new perspectives on identity, practice and association. This penetrating book slices through the cliches and blind alleys of discussions around the knowledge society to reveal the tendons of contemporary change. Written with insight and panache the book explains the momentous nature of the changes associated with the knowledge society.
Download or read book China s Economy The Hidden Truths written by Aaron Ken Lee and published by Global Era Public Interest Info Network. This book was released on 2015-03-24 with total page 385 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: FREE BOOK: 62 pages of "China's Faustian Bargains" as Part I of this book (Click Preview this book) What happens in China is increasingly having repercussions impacting economies around the world. This book reveals a multitude of information hidden in the layers of China’s economy, drawing a wealth of information from materials published only in the Chinese language, in-print and on Chinese-language websites, and previously not accessible to the English-speaking world. Anyone who holds a mutual fund/pension fund may, nowadays, have a portfolio that is subject to repercussions originating from what is going on in China. The story of how Caterpillar fell victim, in 2013, to Enron-like accounting fraud in China, and incurred a loss of a startling US$ 580 million, is by no means an isolated event, but a thing that ordinary investors in the western world need to know about. Nowadays, an ordinary Joe’s investment might be impacted by things that are taking shape in China. Could some Chinese companies, listed on the New York Stock Exchange, possibly become the next Enron-like development? An American professor of financial accounting points out how a peculiar corporate structure used by certain companies originated from China may be a worrisome untoward design. This book enables readers to gain insights into the above noted, as well as many other, important events. This book illustrates how the 135% corporate debt to GDP ratio (the highest among the world’s major economies), vast overcapacity, gigantic property glut, together with the country’s pro-cyclical fiscal structure, may bring China’s GDP annual growth to below 4%, sooner than you can imagine. China has, in 2014, overtaken the United States, not in its size of GDP, but in its size of total corporate debt, and also in the ratio of total corporate debt to GDP, which is 135% as of July 2014. This ratio way exceeds the threshold of 80% that the OECD considers as the maximum safe level for a nation’s corporate-debt-to-GDP ratio. China’s corporate-debt-to-GDP ratio is now a whopping 81% larger than that of the US (which is 75%). This book illustrates how China’s economy is now prone to destabilization from the above, and other factors, such as China’s ongoing bad debt trap, and China’s uniquely pro-cyclical fiscal structure. And, such ominously destabilizing setting is now made worse by China’s already extremely high debt-to-GDP ratio, of 282%. Said pro-cyclical fiscal structure is a key issue almost entirely overlooked hitherto, in studies on China in the English-speaking world. China has an income tax base that is constituted by only less than 2% of the country’s population. Consequently, such fiscal structure is overly reliant on sales taxes and corporate taxes, and this makes China’s economy so much more prone to destabilization than any other major economies in the world. As, in macroeconomics, income tax being counter-cyclical (and hence is congenial to stabilizing the economy) and sales tax/corporate tax being pro-cyclical, effecting a feedback loop that further destabilizes the economy. Such structurally predicated menace is now more debilitating, given China’s extremely high debt-to-GDP ratio. This book elucidates on how, in the decade prior to 2008, causes of China’s double-digit economic growth can be identified as being the initial stage of development, in the nature of a Faustian Bargain. There has been an array of expediencies practiced by Beijing, in the past, that significantly boosted China’s GDP in the short run, but these were at the expense of the economy's long-run sustainable growth. This author identifies said expediencies as China’s Faustian Bargains at work, in the forms of monetized state landlordism, over-leveraging to pursue profligate investments funded by financial repression of household savers, and the decades of perilous expensing-out of the nation’s environmental endowments. All these said expedient GDP boosters bear Faustian consequences, and this book shows how they are now increasingly surfacing, and making the aforesaid significant lowering of GDP growth highly probable. This book illustrates: how China's sub-standard accounting/auditing practices, and the country’s grossly ineffective legal system, may have repercussions, unbeknownst to you, for your investments. How China’s economy fares will have important repercussions for the world. In this era of globalization, China is becoming “everybody’s
Download or read book The Chessboard and the Web written by Anne-Marie Slaughter and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2017-01-01 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Cover -- Half-title -- Title -- Copyright -- Dedication -- Contents -- Introduction -- I: The World of the Web -- ONE. Of Great Powers and Globalization -- TWO. Networks Everywhere -- THREE. Seeing in Stereo -- II: Strategies of Connection -- FOUR. Resilience Networks -- FIVE. Task Networks -- SIX. Scale Networks -- III: Power, Leadership, and Grand Strategy -- SEVEN. Network Power -- EIGHT. A Different Way to Lead -- NINE. A Grand Strategy -- CONCLUSION: The Rise of Webcraft -- Notes -- Acknowledgments -- Illustration Credits -- Index -- A -- B -- C -- D -- E -- F -- G -- H -- I -- J -- K -- L -- M -- N -- O -- P -- R -- S -- T -- U -- V -- W -- Y -- Z
Download or read book Render Unto Rome written by Jason Berry and published by Crown. This book was released on 2012-06-12 with total page 434 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: AN INVESTIGATION OF EPIC FINANCIAL INTRIGUE, RENDER UNTO ROME EXPOSES THE SECRECY AND DECEIT THAT RUN COUNTER TO THE VALUES OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH. The Sunday collection in every Catholic church throughout the world is as familiar a part of the Mass as the homily and even Communion. There is no doubt that historically the Catholic Church has been one of the great engines of charity in history. But once a dollar is dropped in that basket, where does it go? How are weekly cash contributions that can amount to tens of thousands of dollars accounted for? Where does the money go when a diocese sells a church property for tens of millions of dollars? And what happens when hundreds of millions of dollars are turned over to officials at the highest ranks, no questions asked, for their discretionary use? The Roman Catholic Church is the largest organization in the world. The Vatican has never revealed its net worth, but the value of its works of art, great churches, property in Rome, and stocks held through its bank easily run into the tens of billions. Yet the Holy See as a sovereign state covers a mere 108 acres and has a small annual budget of about $280 million. No major book has examined the church’s financial underpinnings and practices with such journalistic force. Today the church bears scrutiny by virtue of the vast amounts of money (nearly $2 billion in the United States alone) paid out to victims of clergy abuse. Amid mounting diocesan bankruptcies, bishops have been selling off whole pieces of the infrastructure—churches, schools, commercial properties—while the nephew of one of the Vatican’s most powerful cardinals engaged in a lucrative scheme to profiteer off the enormous downsizing of American church wealth.
Download or read book Architectural Research Addressing Societal Challenges Volume 1 written by Manuel Jorge Rodrigues Couceiro da Costa and published by CRC Press. This book was released on 2017-09-19 with total page 1320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The EAAE/ARCC International Conference, held under the aegis of the EAAE (European Association for Architectural Education) and of the ARCC (Architectural Research Centers Consortium), is a conference organized every other year, in collaboration with one of the member schools / universities of those associations, alternatively in North America or in Europe. The EAAE/ARCC Conferences began at the North Carolina State University College of Design, Raleigh with a conference on Research in Design Education (1998); followed by conferences in Paris (2000), Montreal (2002), Dublin (2004), Philadelphia (2006), Copenhagen (2008), Washington (2010), Milan (2012) and Honolulu (2014). The conference discussions focus on research experiences in the field of architecture and architectural education, providing a critical forum for the dissemination and engagement of current ideas from around the world.
