Social Structures and Human Lives


Book Description

Social Structures and Human Lives consists of papers from the 1986 American Sociological Association annual meeting selected to reflect the rich and diverse array of conceptual, methodological, and substantive reports presented there. Leading academics and researchers in the field offer information about aging over the life course; the relationship between aging and the changing structure of families, firms, state, and society as a whole; and implications for equality of opportunity for people of differing age, gender, race and socioeconomic status. A final chapter links selected topics from previous chapters to established sociological concerns and clarifies the broad scope of the book's central the










Moon-face and Other Stories


Book Description

JACK LONDON (1876-1916), American novelist, born in San Francisco, the son of an itinerant astrologer and a spiritualist mother. He grew up in poverty, scratching a living in various legal and illegal ways -robbing the oyster beds, working in a canning factory and a jute mill, serving aged 17 as a common sailor, and taking part in the Klondike gold rush of 1897. This various experience provided the material for his works, and made him a socialist. "The son of the Wolf" (1900), the first of his collections of tales, is based upon life in the Far North, as is the book that brought him recognition, "The Call of the Wild" (1903), which tells the story of the dog Buck, who, after his master ́s death, is lured back to the primitive world to lead a wolf pack. Many other tales of struggle, travel, and adventure followed, including "The Sea-Wolf" (1904), "White Fang" (1906), "South Sea Tales" (1911), and "Jerry of the South Seas" (1917). One of London ́s most interesting novels is the semi-autobiographical "Martin Eden" (1909). He also wrote socialist treatises, autobiographical essays, and a good deal of journalism.




Durkheim Today


Book Description

There has been a growing interest in Durkheim, founding father of sociology, since the 1970s. This volume takes a look at the current stage of Durkheimian studies, pointing out paths scholars are now following as they examine the various themes of study that Durkheim opened up to the academic world. They clearly demonstrate the continuing importance of Durkheim's works and the benefits to be derived from re-reading them in the light of contemporary social developments.




Five Black Scholars


Book Description




Performing Justice


Book Description

After seizing power in 1917, the Bolshevik regime faced the daunting task of educating and bringing culture to the vast and often illiterate mass of Soviet soldiers, workers, and peasants. As part of this campaign, civilian educators and political instructors in the military developed didactic theatrical fictions performed in workers' and soldiers' clubs in the years from 1919 to 1933. The subjects addressed included politics, religion, agronomy, health, sexuality, and literature. The trials were designed to permit staging by amateurs at low cost, thus engaging the citizenry in their own remaking. In reconstructing the history of the so-called agitation trials and placing them in a rich social context, Elizabeth A. Wood makes a major contribution to rethinking the first decade of Soviet history. Her book traces the arc by which a regime's campaign to educate the masses by entertaining and disciplining them culminated in a policy of brute shaming.Over the course of the 1920s, the nature of the trials changed, and this process is one of the main themes of the later chapters of Wood's book. Rather than humanizing difficult issues, the trials increasingly made their subjects (alcoholics, boys who smoked, truants) into objects of shame and dismissal. By the end of the decade and the early 1930s, the trials had become weapons for enforcing social and political conformity. Their texts were still fictional—indeed, fantastical—but the actors and the verdicts were now all too real.




The State of Sociology


Book Description

Sixteen distinguished sociologists reflect on broad developments in their areas of interest over the past two or three decades -- the questions that have been asked, the data and methods used, the knowledge generated, and possible future developments in such fields as the sociology of science, racial and ethnic relations, and biosociology. S N Eisenstadt reviews the various theoretical schools, and other contributors discuss broad issues such as: why is sociological knowledge not more cumulative? `In many ways this work does for the cohort that entered the discipline in those decades (60s and 70s) what Merton's Sociology Today did for the cohorts of the 1940s and 1950s, and will, I believe, be seen to have comparable merit.




Feminisms in Geography


Book Description

In this innovative reader, Pamela Moss and Karen Falconer Al-Hindi present a unique, reflective approach to what feminist geography is and who feminist geographers are. Their carefully crafted textbook invigorates feminist debates about space, place, and knowledges with a fine balance among teaching chapters, reprints, and original essays. Offering an anthology that actually questions the very purpose of an anthology, the editors create and then negotiate a tension between reinforcing and destabilizing scholarly authority. They challenge the idea that there is one set of works that acts as the vision, interpretation, voice, and feel of feminist geography while both reproducing key previously published works and including fresh essays from a number of feminist geographers in a single volume. The first chapter frames feminism, geography, and knowledge as a m lange of ideas, principles, and practices. Each of the three major sections of the volume begins with an introductory essay that places individual contributions into the overarching argument about the construction of feminist geography. Each introduction is then followed by a combination of reprints and original essays that contribute both to understanding how feminist geographical knowledge is constructed differently in different places and to showing what feminist geographers do wherever they are. The final chapter extends the anti-anthology arguments and raises questions that feminisms in geographies have yet to address. Students and scholars will find both the approach and the discussion essential for a full and nuanced understanding of feminist geography. Contributions by: Sybille Bauriedl, Kath Browne, Joos Droogleever Fortuijn, Kim England, Karen Falconer Al-Hindi, Anne-Fran oise Gilbert, Melissa R. Gilbert, Ellen Hansen, Susan Hanson, Audrey Kobayashi, Clare Madge, Michele Masucci, Janice Monk, Pamela Moss, Ann M. Oberhauser, Linda Peake, Geraldine Pratt, Parvati Raghuram, Bernadette Stiell, Amy Trauger, Dina Vaiou, The Sangtin Writers: Anupamlata, Ramsheela, Reshma Ansari, Vibha Bajpayee, Shashi Vaish, Shashibala, Surbala, Richa Singh, and Richa Nagar




Wetland Planting Guide for the Northeastern United States


Book Description

This guide provides current and available information (characteristics, appearance, wildlife benefits, and hydrology) for most of the trees, shrubs, herbaceous emergents, and submerged and floating aquatic vegetation that dominate the tidal and nontidal wetlands of the northeastern United States. It is organized to be of maximum utility to those individuals that are developing the designs (plans and specifications) for wetland construction, enhancement, and restoration projects.