The Transformation of Work


Book Description

Sociologists draw on recent developments in economic and organizational sociology to analyze exactly how work is changing as the economy moves into a post-industrial phase. Their topics include organizations, occupations, and the structuration of work; technical knowledge, rainmaking, and gender among finance executives; faculty responses to the transformation of knowledge and its uses in the life sciences; the social construction of overtime; relations in production at a cooperative workplace in Mexico; negotiating strategies and consequences of reduced-hours careers in medicine; and the flexibilization of labor in the Australian hotel industry. There is no index. c. Book News Inc.




Travel As Transformation


Book Description

Based on the author's own travel and resulting self-discovery, this book encourages moving beyond the boundaries of comfort to experience new climates, interesting scenery, and different cultures, thereby enabling self-growth and transformation toward a global consciousness.




Karl Polanyi


Book Description

Karl Polanyi’s The Great Transformation is generally acclaimed as being among the most influential works of economic history in the twentieth century, and remains as vital in the current historical conjuncture as it was in his own. In its critique of nineteenth-century ‘market fundamentalism’ it reads as a warning to our own neoliberal age, and is widely touted as a prophetic guidebook for those who aspire to understand the causes and dynamics of global economic turbulence at the end of the 2000s. Karl Polanyi: The Limits of the Market is the first comprehensive introduction to Polanyi’s ideas and legacy. It assesses not only the texts for which he is famous – prepared during his spells in American academia – but also his journalistic articles written in his first exile in Vienna, and lectures and pamphlets from his second exile, in Britain. It provides a detailed critical analysis of The Great Transformation, but also surveys Polanyi’s seminal writings in economic anthropology, the economic history of ancient and archaic societies, and political and economic theory. Its primary source base includes interviews with Polanyi’s daughter, Kari Polanyi-Levitt, as well as the entire compass of his own published and unpublished writings in English and German. This engaging and accessible introduction to Polanyi’s thinking will appeal to students and scholars across the social sciences, providing a refreshing perspective on the roots of our current economic crisis.




The Limits to Growth


Book Description

Examines the factors which limit human economic and population growth and outlines the steps necessary for achieving a balance between population and production. Bibliogs




North Africa


Book Description

This volume provides a comprehensive overview of the contemporary Maghreb. It includes profiles of individual countries, and regional issues such as migration, gender, economics and war in Western Sahara.




China Transformed


Book Description

The assumption still made in much social science research that Europe provides a universal model of development is fundamentally mistaken, according to R. Bin Wong. The solution is not, however, simply to reject Eurocentric norms but to build complementary perspectives, such as a Sinocentric one, to evaluate current understandings of European developments. A genuinely comparative perspective, he argues, will free China from wrong expectations and will allow those working on European problems to recognize the distinct character of Western development.




The Limits of Logic


Book Description

The International research Library of Philosophy collects in book form a wide range of important and influential essays in philosophy, drawn predominantly from English-language journals. Each volume in the library deals with a field of enquiry which has received significant attention in philosophy in the last 25 years and is edited by a philosopher noted in that field.




The Limits


Book Description

The Limits is my first work in English, with English as my second language. It dates back to1994. It has been my first intellectual attempt since I came to the U.S. in 1985. My first try in 1994 was a very hard work which, at that time, went nowhere, because of my language limitations, and because my general knowledge was not to the level of this task. However, at the beginning of 1995, I abandoned this writing as a literary work and turned toward upgrading my scientific knowledge through personal study. In 2000, I made a new attempt, and the result was the original draft of the Seven Essays on Creation, which is my second book with AuthorHouse. In 2001, I abandoned this new work and continued with my science study. A special conjecture in 2003 made me publish the first book with AuthorHouse, which was Multiple Harmonics Create the Patterns of Real World from Chaos. After publishing this at the beginning of 2004, when I threw away mountains of old papers, I discovered the Seven Essays, and I decided to give to it another chance. In three months, it became another book, which was the Seven Essays on Creation, which was also published in 2004. In September 2005, while searching among some old papers, I discovered the original draft of The Limits, and I decided to do something about it. I have to say that The Limits has been on my mind for more than ten years, and I adored this old work. However, I was afraid that I would never be again be capable of writing the way I did in 1994. In the meantime, I was happy that, at the present, I had the answer to the philosophy that I wondered about eleven years ago. It was the nonlinear thinking that changed me a lot over the years. It was real, and I decided to rewrite The Limits. I tried to preserve as much as possible from the old draft, and I inserted in each chapter some nonlinear wisdom.




South Africa: Limits To Change


Book Description

Drawing on the rich structural and political understandings of radical South African intellectuals, this book explains why the South African government has been unable to breach the boundaries of change erected by the privileged classes. It reveals why it has adopted conservative economic policies, and why the country's popular movement has failed to press home more radical opinions. Hein Marais compellingly probes the hidden dynamics of South Africa's transition, arguing that the democratic breakthrough was much less open-ended than generally believed.




Themistius: On Aristotle Physics 5-8


Book Description

Themistius' treatment of Books 5-8 of Aristotle's Physics shows this commentator's capacity to identify, isolate and discuss the core ideas in Aristotle's account of change, his theory of the continuum, and his doctrine of the unmoved mover. His paraphrase offered his ancient students, as they will now offer his modern readers, an opportunity to encounter central features of Aristotle's physical theory, synthesized and epitomized in a manner that has always marked Aristotelian exegesis but was raised to a new level by the innovative method of paraphrase pioneered by Themistius. Taking selective but telling accounts of the earlier Peripatetic tradition (notably Theophrastus and Alexander of Aphrodisias), this commentator creates a framework that can still be profitably used by Aristotelian scholars today.