Download or read book Postindustrial Peasants written by Kevin Leicht and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2006-08-18 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: By most accounts the economic vigor of the United States is unprecedented. Despite this collective wealth, the American middle class is struggling to live the American dream. Indeed, there are many similarities between the modern middle class, peasants in feudal societies, and sharecroppers in agrarian societies. Postindustrial Peasants describes the current plight of the middle class, then offers a multi-level recommendation designed to encourage an active response to the development of the modern "postindustrial peasant." This new work can used in a variety of classes, including Intro to sociology, social problems, culture, history, and American studies.
Download or read book A Debtor World written by Ralph Brubaker and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2012-09-25 with total page 325 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Debtor World contains a collection of contributions about the societal implications of private debt. The essays comprising this volume are authored by dozens of leading U.S. and international academics who have written about debt or issues related to debt in a wide range of disciplines including law, sociology, psychology, history, economics, and more. The goal of this collection is to explore debt neither as a problem nor a solution but as a phenomenon and to promote the exchange of knowledge to better comprehend why consumers and businesses decide to borrow money. It asks what happens to businesses and consumers under a heavy debt load, and what legal norms and institutions societies need to encourage the efficient use of debt while promoting a greater understanding of the global phenomenon of increased indebtedness and societal dependence.
Download or read book Why Nations Go to War written by Mark P. Worrell and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2011 with total page 82 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: First Published in 2011. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.
Download or read book The Political Economy of the Spectacle and Postmodern Caste written by John Asimakopoulos and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2019-10-01 with total page 247 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In The Political Economy of the Spectacle and Postmodern Caste, John Asimakopoulos analyzes the political economy of the society of the spectacle, a philosophical concept developed by Guy Debord and Jean Baudrillard. Using the analytical tools of social science, while historicizing, Asimakopoulos reveals that all societies in every epoch have been and continue to be caste systems legitimized by various ideologies. He concludes there is no such thing as capitalism (or socialism)—only a caste system hidden behind capitalist ideology. Key features of the book include its broad interdisciplinary-nonsectarian approach with quantitative and qualitative data. The Political Economy of the Spectacle and Postmodern Caste is well written and clear, making it accessible to the general public.
Download or read book Collaborating for Our Future written by Barbara Gray and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2018-02-22 with total page 356 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Organizations turn to multistakeholder partnerships (MSPs) to meet challenges that they cannot handle alone. By tapping the resources of diverse stakeholders, MSPs develop the capability to address complex issues and problems, such as health care delivery, poverty, human rights, watershed management, education, sustainability, and innovation. This book provides a comprehensive understanding of MSPs, why they are needed, the challenges partners face in working together and how to design them effectively. Through the process of collaboration partners combine their differing strengths, vantage points and expertise to craft innovative responses to pressing societal concerns. The book offers valuable advice for leaders about how to design and scale up effective partnerships and how to address potential obstacles that partners may face. Drawing on three comprehensive cases and countless shorter examples from around the world, the book offers both practical advice for organization embarking on an MSP as well as a theoretical understanding of how partnerships function. Using an institutional theory lens, it explains how partnerships can effect change in institutional fields by reducing turbulence and negotiating a common set of norms and routines to govern partners' future interactions within the field of concern.
Download or read book Institutions under Siege written by John L. Campbell and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2022-12-31 with total page 277 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Much of the research on institutional change shows how systems shift slowly and incrementally. Yet, in the case of former President Donald Trump, change was rapid and radical. In Institutions Under Siege, leading political sociologist John L. Campbell offers new insights for understanding the legacy of the Trump presidency. The book examines Trump's attack on the 'deep state' through the lens of institutional change theory, and demonstrates how he capitalized on tipping points and distinct leadership tactics to inspire, make deals with, and threaten people to get what he wanted. The book also assesses where the damage caused by the Trump administration is most likely to endure and where long-lasting damage was prevented. Sharp and insightful, Institutions Under Siege contrasts existing social science literature to draw attention to the unique significance of tipping points and the characteristics of particular leaders.
Download or read book Power Politics and Society written by Betty A Dobratz and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2015-10-14 with total page 401 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Power, Politics & Society: An Introduction to Political Sociology discusses how sociologists have organized the study of politics into conceptual frameworks, and how each of these frameworks foster a sociological perspective on power and politics in society. This includes discussing how these frameworks can be applied to understanding current issues and other "real life" aspects of politics. The authors connect with students by engaging them in activities where they complete their own applications of theory, hypothesis testing, and forms of inquiry.
Download or read book The Student Loan Mess written by Joel Best and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2014-05-02 with total page 246 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This illuminating investigation uncovers the full dimensions of the student loan disaster. A father and son team—one a best-selling sociologist, the other a former banker and current quantitative researcher—probes how we’ve reached the point at which student loan debt—now exceeding $1 trillion and predicted to reach $2 trillion by 2020—threatens to become the sequel to the mortgage meltdown. In spite of their good intentions, Americans have allowed concerns about deadbeat students, crushing debt, exploitative for-profit colleges, and changing attitudes about the purpose of college education to blind them to a growing crisis. With college costs climbing faster than the cost of living, how can access to higher education remain a central part of the American dream? With more than half of college students carrying an average debt of $27,000 at graduation, what are the prospects for young adults in the current economy? Examining how we’ve arrived at and how we might extricate ourselves from this grave social problem, The Student Loan Mess is a must-read for everyone concerned about the future of American education. Hard facts about the student loan crisis: • Student loan debt is rising by more than $100 billion every year. • Among recent college students who are supposed to be repaying their loans, more than a third are delinquent. • Because student loans cannot be discharged through bankruptcy, the federal government misleadingly treats student loan debt as a government asset. • Higher default rates, spiraling college costs, and proposals for more generous terms for student borrowers make it increasingly likely that student loan policies will eventually cost taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars.
Download or read book Middle Class Meltdown in America written by Kevin T Leicht and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-12-17 with total page 195 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In accessible prose for North American undergraduate students, this short text provides a sociological understanding of the causes and consequences of growing middle class inequality, with an abundance of supporting, empirical data. The book also addresses what we, as individuals and as a society, can do to put middle class Americans on a sounder footing.
Download or read book American Hometown Renewal written by Gary A. Mattson and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-09-13 with total page 889 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Before the interstates, Main Street America was the small town’s commercial spine and served as the linchpin for community social solidarity. Yet, during the past three decades, a series of economic downturns has left many of the great small cities barely viable. American Hometown Renewal is the first book to combine administrative, budgetary, and economic analysis to examine the economic and fiscal plight currently facing America’s small towns. Featuring a blend of theory, applications, and case studies, it provides a comprehensive, single-source textbook covering the key issues facing small town officials in today’s uncertain economy. Written by a former public manager, university professor, and consultant to numerous small towns in the Heartland, this book demonstrates the ways in which contemporary small towns throughout the nation are facing economic challenges brought about by the financial shocks that began in 2008. Each chapter explores a theme related to small town revival and provides a related tool or technique to enable small town officials to meet the challenges of the 21st Century. Encouraging local small town officials to look at the economic orbit of communities in a similar manner as a town’s budget or a family’s personal wealth, examining its specific competitive advantages in terms of relative assets to those of competing communities, this book provides the reader with step-by-step instructions on how to conduct an asset inventory and apply key asset tools to devise a strategy for overcoming the challenges and constraints imposed upon spatially-fixed communities. American Hometown Renewal is an essential primer for students studying city management, economic community development, and city planning, and will be a trusted handbook for city managers, geographers, city planners, urban or rural sociologists, political scientists, and regional microeconomists.
Download or read book After the Soviet Empire written by and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2015-10-05 with total page 426 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The break-up of the Soviet Union is a key event of the twentieth century. The 39th IIS congress in Yerevan 2009 focused on causes and consequences of this event and on shifts in the world order that followed in its wake. This volume is an effort to chart these developments in empirical and conceptual terms. It has a focus on the lands of the former Soviet Union but also explores pathways and contexts in the Second World at large. The Soviet Union was a full scale experiment in creating an alternative modernity. The implosion of this union gave rise to new states in search of national identity. At a time when some observers heralded the end of history, there was a rediscovery of historical legacies and a search for new paths of development across the former Second World. In some parts of this world long-repressed legacies were rediscovered. They were sometimes, as in the case of countries in East Central Europe, built around memories of parliamentary democracy and its replacement by authoritarian rule during the interwar period. Some legacies referred to efforts at establishing statehood in the wake of the First World War, others to national upheavals in the nineteenth century and earlier. In Central Asia and many parts of the Caucasus the cultural heritage of Islam in its different varieties gave rise to new markers of identity but also to violent contestations. In South Caucasus, Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan have embarked upon distinctly different, but invariably contingent, paths of development. Analogously core components of the old union have gone through tumultuous, but until the last year and a half largely bloodless, transformations. The crystallization of divergent paths of development in the two largest republics of that union, i.e. Russia and Ukraine, has ushered in divergent national imaginations but also in series of bloody confrontations.
Download or read book Democracy Participation and Contestation written by Emmanuelle Avril and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-08-07 with total page 323 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The establishment of democracy on both sides of the Atlantic has not been a smooth evolution towards an idealized presumed endpoint. Far from it, democratization has been marked by setbacks and victories, a process often referred to as ‘contested democracy’. In view of recent mobilizations such as the Arab Spring and the Occupy movement, in which new technologies have played a key role, there is a need for a renewed analysis of the long-term evolution of US and UK political systems. Using new areas of research, this book argues that the ideals and the practices of Anglo-American democracy can be best understood by studying diverse forms of participation, which go beyond classical expressions of contestation and dissent such as voting. The authors analyze political parties, social movements, communications and social media, governance, cultural diversity, identity politics, public-private actors and social cohesion to illustrate how the structure and context of popular participation play a significant role in whether, and when, citizens ́ efforts have any meaningful impact on those who exercise political power. In doing so, the authors take crucial steps towards understanding how a vigorous public sphere and popular sovereignty can be made to work in today’s global environment. This book will be of interest to students and scholars of political science, British and US history, democracy, political participation, governance, social movements and politics.
Download or read book States and Nations Power and Civility written by Francesco G. Duina and published by University of Toronto Press. This book was released on 2019-01-01 with total page 344 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Civility in national and international politics is under siege. In this volume, twelve distinguished sociologists and historians from North America, Europe, and China reflect on the nature and preservation of civility in and between nation states and empires in a set of geographically and historically wide-ranging chapters. Civility protects individual self-determination and expression, promotes productive economic activity and wealth, and is central to political stability and peace within and across political communities. Yet power, always concentrated and endemic in nation states and imperial settings, poses great risks to civility. Guided by the perspective of John A. Hall, who has done more to identify and investigate the intricate relationships between states, nations, the power they hold, and civility than any other contemporary social scientist, States and Nations, Power and Civility offers a set of crisp, in-depth investigations regarding the specific mechanisms of civility and how it may be protected.
Download or read book Not Keeping Up with Our Parents written by Nan Mooney and published by Beacon Press. This book was released on 2008 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Drawing on more than a hundred interviews with people all across America,(Not) Keeping Up with Our Parentsexplores how stagnant wages, debt, and escalating costs for tuition, health care, and home ownership are jeopardizing the finances and futures of today's educated middle class. Despite this sobering reality, Nan Mooney offers concrete ideas on how we can arrest this downward spiral.
Download or read book Wilding of America written by Charles Derber and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2009-12-14 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The American dream champions individualism. But at what price? In the fully updated fifth edition of The Wilding of America, Charles Derber chronicles the latest incidents of wilding -acts of self-interested violence or greed that weaken the social fabric. The new edition examines such topics as the recent doping scandals in sports; government-sponsored torture; new threats to our public space, social infrastructure, and natural environment; the effects of the Obama administration on wilding behavior; and in an all-new chapter, the 2008 Wall Street meltdown. Book jacket.
Download or read book Introduction to Sociology written by George Ritzer and published by SAGE Publications. This book was released on 2015-08-28 with total page 1678 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Join the conversation with one of sociology’s best-known thinkers. The Third Edition of Introduction to Sociology, thoroughly revised and updated, continues to show students the relevance of the introductory sociology course to their lives. While providing a rock-solid foundation, George Ritzer illuminates traditional sociological concepts and theories, as well as some of the most compelling contemporary social phenomena: globalization, consumer culture, the Internet, and the “McDonaldization” of society. As technology flattens the globe, students are challenged to apply a sociological perspective to their world, and to see how “public” sociologists are engaging with the critical issues of today.
Download or read book Markets On Trial written by Michael Lounsbury and published by Emerald Group Publishing. This book was released on 2010-07-07 with total page 405 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Since the mid-20th century, organizational theorists have increasingly distanced themselves from the study of core societal power centers and important policy issues of the day. This title addresses the global financial crisis debates and struggles around how to organize economies and societies around the world.
