Uprooting and Social Change


Book Description

Study in reference to West Punjabi refugees, conducted in 1967-68.




Uprooting and Development


Book Description

Uprooting has to do with one of the fundamental properties of human life-the need to change-and with the personal and societal mecha nisms for dealing with that need. As with the more general problems of change, uprooting can be a time of human disaster and desolation, or a time of adaptation and growth into new capacities. The special quality of uprooting is that the need to change is faced at a time of separation from accustomed social, cultural, and environ mental support systems. It is this separation from familiar supports that either renders the uprooted vulnerable to the destructive conse quences of change, or creates freedoms for their evolution into new and constructive patterns of life. Whether the outcomes will be destruc tive or constructive will be determined by the forces at work: the nature and power of the uprooting forces versus the personal and societal capacities for coping with them. Uprooting events are so widespread as to be compared with the major rites of life, but with the difference that dislocation is involved. Uprooting reaches from self-imposed movements such as rural-to urban migration, running away, and traveling abroad for schooling, to natural and man-made disasters such as earthquakes, political oppres sion, and war. The impacts vary from the need to adapt to. a new culture for an interim period of study to the desolating consequences of the total loss of family, friends, home, and country.




Ways of Social Change


Book Description

"Ways of Social Change is very readable and has great discussion questions and suggested activities. It is one of the few books where I have had students volunteer praise for the book!" - Connie Robinson, Central Washington University The world is at our fingertips, but understanding what is going on has never been more daunting. Ways of Social Change is a primer for making sense of both rapidly moving events and the cultural and structural forces on which social life is built, while teaching critical thinking skills needed to understand social change. With an approach that is fresh, timely, challenging, and engaging, Ways of Social Change shows students how social change is both a lived experience and the result of our actions in the world. It invites the reader into the realm of social science, where clarification, understanding, and inquiry provide for both informed opinions and a path to effective involvement. The core of the book focuses on five forces that powerfully influence the direction, scope and speed of social change: science and technology, social movements, war and revolution, large corporations, and the state. A concluding chapter encourages students to examine their own perspectives and offers ways to engage in social change, now and in their lifetime.




Radical Markets


Book Description

Revolutionary ideas on how to use markets to achieve fairness and prosperity for all Many blame today's economic inequality, stagnation, and political instability on the free market. The solution is to rein in the market, right? Radical Markets turns this thinking on its head. With a new foreword by Ethereum creator Vitalik Buterin and virtual reality pioneer Jaron Lanier as well as a new afterword by Eric Posner and Glen Weyl, this provocative book reveals bold new ways to organize markets for the good of everyone. It shows how the emancipatory force of genuinely open, free, and competitive markets can reawaken the dormant nineteenth-century spirit of liberal reform and lead to greater equality, prosperity, and cooperation. Only by radically expanding the scope of markets can we reduce inequality, restore robust economic growth, and resolve political conflicts. But to do that, we must replace our most sacred institutions with truly free and open competition—Radical Markets shows how.




Identity and Social Change


Book Description

Identity and Social Change examines the thorny problem of modern identity. Trenchant critiques have come from identity politics, focusing on the construction of difference and the solidarity of minorities, and from academic deconstructions of modern subjectivity. This volume places identity in a broader sociological context of destabilizing and reintegrating forces. The contributors first explore identity in light of economic changes, consumerism, and globalization, then focus on the question of identity dissolution. Zygmunt Bauman examines the effects of consumerism and considers the constraints these place on the disadvantaged. Drawing together discourses of the body and globalization, David Harvey considers the growth of the wage labor system worldwide and its consequences for worker consciousness. Mike Featherstone outlines a rethinking of citizenship and identity formation in light of the realities of globalization and new information technologies. Part two opens with Robert Dunn's examination of cultural commodification and the attenuation of social relations. He argues that the media and marketplace are part of a general destabilization of identity formation. Kenneth Gergen maintains that proliferating communications technologies undermine the traditional conceptions of self and community and suggest the need for a new base for building the moral society. In the final chapter, Harvie Ferguson argues that despite the contemporary infatuation with irony, the decline of the notion of the self as an inner depth effectively severs the long connection between irony and identity.




Uprooting Racism


Book Description

In 2008 the United States elected its first black president, and recent polls show that only twenty-two percent of white people in the United States believe that racism is a major societal problem. On the surface, it may seem to be in decline. However, the evidence of discrimination persists throughout our society. Segregation and inequalities in education, housing, health care, and the job market continue to be the norm. Post 9/11, increased insecurity and fear have led to an epidemic of the scapegoating and harassment of people of color. Uprooting Racism offers a framework for understanding institutional racism. It provides practical suggestions, tools, examples, and advice on how white people can intervene in interpersonal and organizational situations to work as allies for racial justice. Completely revised and updated, this expanded third edition directly engages the reader through questions, exercises, and suggestions for action, and takes a detailed look at current issues such as affirmative action, immigration, and health care. It also includes a wealth of information about specific cultural groups such as Muslims, people with mixed-heritage, Native Americans, Jews, recent immigrants, Asian Americans, and Latinos. Previous editions of Uprooting Racism have sold more than fifty thousand copies. Accessible, personal, supportive, and practical, this book is ideal for students, community activists, teachers, youth workers, and anyone interested in issues of diversity, multiculturalism, and social justice. Paul Kivel is an award-winning author and an accomplished trainer and speaker. He has been a social justice activist, a nationally and internationally recognized anti-racism educator, and an innovative leader in violence prevention for over forty years.




The Palgrave Handbook of Social Movements, Revolution, and Social Transformation


Book Description

This handbook on social movements, revolution, and social transformation analyzes people’s struggles to bring about social change in the age of globalization. It examines the origins, nature, dynamics, and challenges of such movements as they aim to change dominant social, economic, and political institutions and structures across the globe. Departing from a theoretical introduction that explores major classical and contemporary theories of social movements and transformation, the contributions collected here use a class-based approach to examine key cases of social movements, rebellions, and revolutions worldwide from the turn of the twentieth to the early twenty-first centuries. Against this wide-ranging background, the handbook concludes by charting the varied and competing future developments and trajectories of social movements, revolutions, and social transformations.




Social Change and Modernity


Book Description




Collective Violence, Contentious Politics, and Social Change


Book Description

Charles Tilly is among the most influential American sociologists of the last century. For the first time, his pathbreaking work on a wide array of topics is available in one comprehensive reader. This manageable and readable volume brings together many highlights of Tilly’s large and important oeuvre, covering his contribution to the following areas: revolutions and social change; war, state making, and organized crime; democratization; durable inequality; political violence; migration, race, and ethnicity; narratives and explanations. The book connects Tilly’s work on large-scale social processes such as nation-building and war to his work on micro processes such as racial and gender discrimination. It includes selections from some of Tilly’s earliest, influential, and out of print writings, including The Vendée; Coercion, Capital and European States; the classic "War Making and State Making as Organized Crime;" and his more recent and lesser-known work, including that on durable inequality, democracy, poverty, economic development, and migration. Together, the collection reveals Tilly’s complex, compelling, and distinctive vision and helps place the contentious politics approach Tilly pioneered with Sidney Tarrow and Doug McAdam into broader context. The editors abridge key texts and, in their introductory essay, situate them within Tilly’s larger opus and contemporary intellectual debates. The chapters serve as guideposts for those who wish to study his work in greater depth or use his methodology to examine the pressing issues of our time. Read together, they provide a road map of Tilly’s work and his contribution to the fields of sociology, political science, history, and international studies. This book belongs in the classroom and in the library of social scientists, political analysts, cultural critics, and activists.




Refugees and the Transformation of Societies


Book Description

The refusal or reception of refugees has had serious implications for the social policies and social realities of numerous countries in east and west. Exploring experiences, interpretations and practices of 'refugees,' 'the internally displaced' and 'returnees' in or emerging from societies in violent conflict, this volume challenges prevailing orthodoxies and encourages new developments in refugee studies. It also addresses the ethics and politics of interventions by professionals and policy makers, using case studies of refugees from or in South Asia, the Middle East, North Africa, Europe and the Americas. These illustrate the dynamic nature of situations where refugees, policy- makers and practitioners interact in trying to construct new livelihoods in transforming societies. Without a proper understanding of this dynamic nature, so the volume argues overall, it is not possible to develop successful strategies for the accommodation and integration of refugees.