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This book delves into the multifaceted concept of sustainability, placing a particular emphasis on the social dimension and its intersection with economic and environmental considerations. It examines how individuals, corporations, and institutions can adapt their behaviors to align with sustainable practices. Through a global perspective, the book explores various aspects of behavior changes required for sustainability, highlighting diverse approaches adopted in different regions around the world. One of the central themes explored in this book is the notion of equity in sustainability. While it is acknowledged that complete equality is unattainable, the book argues that achieving fairness in outcomes is essential for the stability and longevity of sustainable practices. Without equity, there is a risk of social unrest and instability, which could undermine the sustainability agenda. Drawing on contributions from scholars representing diverse international backgrounds, the book offers fresh perspectives and innovative solutions to the challenges of sustainability. Rooted in the tradition of the Social Responsibility Research Network (SRRNet), this book embodies the network's ethos of promoting dialogue, sharing best practices, and seeking relevant solutions. It aims to inspire new thinking and action toward a more sustainable and equitable future for all, presenting a blend of academic rigor and practical insights. Through its exploration of sustainability from a social perspective, this book contributes to the ongoing discourse on how to address the pressing global challenges of our time.

The interconnections of economy, society and politics so obviously determine socio-economic and political structures and problem situations, current ways of thinking and acting as well as the collective perception of solution options that their still low attention in university teaching and school education is surprising. Phenomena such as pandemics, climate change, migration or authoritarianism make the close, complex and contradictory connections between economy, society and politics tangible. Against this background, socioeconomic research, teaching and education are urgently needed. The theme volume aims to contribute to this by presenting research contributions on problem complexes such as economy and democracy, perspectivity and multiperspectivity, situation, interest and politics, subject and subjectification, and discipline and curriculum.

This short book focuses on the Disappearances that occurred during the Troubles in Northern Ireland. Using in-depth interviews with thirteen families of those individuals who were abducted, murdered and secretly buried from the 1970's onwards, this book examines the experience of the families and communities left behind. Through an exploration of the historic and cultural origins of the contemporary IRA and how they came to be in the position of power within Catholic/Nationalist communities during the troubles, the context to the disappearances are presented. This book reviews the journey undertaken by the families, from the initial disappearance of their loved one and the suffocating silence that followed, through their coming together as a self-help group. It follows their lobbying on a national and international basis leading to the return of the bodies of some of their loved ones and the solidarity which leads them to fight on as a group to recover the bodies that remain missing. It also examines the involvement of the British and Irish and American governments in the set up of the International Commission for the Location of Victim's Remains and tells the story of the Clinton's personal involvement in supporting the families in their ongoing quest for recovery. It is written accessibly for researchers and practitioners.

This handbook provides a comprehensive, interdisciplinary overview of key theoretical, analytical and normative approaches, topics and debates in contemporary scholarship about gender and citizenship. It demonstrates how diverse historical, social, political, economic and legal dimensions have shaped the evolution of gendered citizenship in different parts of the world, as well as how these dimensions transform the interrelations between individuals, social groups and communities across time, place and space. Bringing together insights from scholars across gender studies, political science, law, sociology, philosophy and cultural studies, this book demonstrates how intersectional and transnational approaches can provide us with theoretical and methodological tools to understand gendered inequalities and injustices in societies. Chapters examine relations between gender, sexuality, populism and nationalism; transnational feminism during times of #MeToo and Black Lives Matter; the increasing political and popular support of LGBTQ+ claims as human rights issues; trans/gender citizenship; gendered indigenous citizenship; and the intersections of gender, religion and citizenship, among others. The handbook concludes with future directions for research guided by the main debates about intersectional and transnational approaches in the field of gender and citizenship. This handbook will be valuable reading for scholars, researchers, and policymakers around the globe in Gender Studies, Citizenship Studies, Sociology, Law, Political Science, and Cultural Studies.

​This book offers a comprehensive analysis of social protection in Latin America, its origins, institutions, and outcomes. The chapters are organised in three groups. The earlier chapters discuss in turn appropriate methods, an analytical framework, and core institutions. The book advocates a causal inference approach to the study of the institutions that have dominated social protection in the region: occupational insurance, individual retirement savings, and social assistance. The middle chapters study social protection's main stratification effects, focussing on stratification effects on employment, protection, and worker incorporation. The later chapters then assess social protection outcomes and identify country groupings including their evolution over time. The book, and its approach and findings, contributes to the advancement of a theory of social protection amongst late industrialisers.This is an open access book.

This book delves into the values, attitudes, and behaviours of Koreans over the course of the past twenty years. Compiled by leading Korean scholars, the book uses the Korean General Social Survey (KGSS), the most comprehensive source of information detailing recent continuity and change in Korea, and addresses a diverse, wide-range of topics such as nationalism, familyism, social inequality, politics, religion, welfare, trust, attitudes towards North Korea, and attitudes towards sex. These issues, in continuously shaping and influencing the lives of Koreans, deserve further examination so as to fully grasp a deeper understanding of Korean contemporary culture. Each chapter covers an overview of background information about the chapter subject and then compares Korean attitudes to those of other countries, drawing on cross-national data derived from sources such as the International Social Survey Programme (ISSP) and the East Asian Social Survey (EASS). It collates this data and then unpacks it to demonstrate trends and how they are impacted by stability or change. Despite the rapid economic development and democratization in Korea, it remains difficult to pinpoint common denominators regarding recent social trends in Korea, and there are surprisingly few books that present a current, nuanced, and empirically substantiated scholarly depiction of Koreans and their social issues. This book fills this gap in serving as an indispensable reference for students and scholars interested in the diverse issues in Korean society.

Dieses Buch setzt sich kritisch mit einer Reihe von provokanten Fragen auseinander: Warum sind die heutigen Gesellschaften so abhängig von den konstruktiven und destruktiven Auswirkungen der Individualisierung? Ist dieses Phänomen nur mit der'zweiten'oder'späten'Moderne verbunden? Kann das Konzept der Individualisierung produktiv für die Entwicklung einer soziologischen Diagnose unserer Zeit genutzt werden? Die innovativen Antworten, die in diesem Buch vorgeschlagen werden, konzentrieren sich auf zwei Arten von Herausforderungen, die den Anstieg der Individualisierung begleiten. Erstens, dass sie durch umstrittene Veränderungen in den sozialen Strukturen und Handlungsmustern verursacht wird. Zweitens, dass die Auswirkungen der Individualisierung Varianten des Gemeinwohls in Frage stellen. Beide Herausforderungen haben eine lange Geschichte, haben aber in den fortgeschrittenen Gesellschaften der Gegenwart im Kontext der aktuellen Globalisierung eine kritische Intensität erreicht.

In this book, Hannes Charen presents an alternative examination of kinship structures in political theory.Employing a radically transdisciplinary approach, On the Politics of Kinship is structured in a series of six theoretical vignettes or frames. Each chapter frames a figure, aspect, or relational context of the family or kinship. Some chapters are focused on a critique of the family as a state-sanctioned institution, while others cautiously attempt to recast kinship in a way to reimagine mutual obligation through the generation of kinship practices understood as a perpetually evolving set of relational responses to finitude. In doing so, Charen considers the ways in which kinship is a plastic social response to embodied exposure, both concealed and made more evident in the bloated, feeble, and broken individualities and nationalities that seem to dominate our social and political landscape today.On the Politics of Kinship will be of interest to political theorists, feminists, anthropologists, and social scientists in general.

This book contributes to emerging debates about Levelling Up the UK Economy, considering these alongside the nature of, and trends in, both the political economy and spatial disparities. Drawing on a complex systems framing, the book pulls together a range of evidence to provide insights about the agenda from macro, meso and micro levels of analyses, including utilising qualitative data from a small scoping study with Directors of Regeneration across several ‘left behind'places and 25 residents of ‘left behind'Redcar & Cleveland in Teesside. The book outlines phases in capitalism's development, particularly the shift from post-war capitalism to a post-industrial and neoliberal society and the implications for spatial inequalities. The 2022 Levelling Up White Paper is analysed alongside a focus on the role of local government relative to the agenda. The book offers an empirical case study of ‘left behind'Redcar & Cleveland, exposing deindustrialisation, insecure employment, crime, anti-social behaviour and sentiments on a North South divide and Levelling Up. We suggest that only a transformative change in the political economy, including significant and sustained investment at different spatial levels, is likely to achieve the ambition to Level Up.

Garantir à tout citoyen un revenu minimum sans aucune condition. Telle est l'idée du revenu de base universel : un même montant quelle que soit la composition du ménage, que l'on soit riche ou pauvre et sans la moindre exigence d'effort en contrepartie. Bonne idée? La proposition fait des adeptes de plus en plus nombreux, à gauche comme à droite. Ce petit ouvrage pédagogique poursuit un double objectif. Il familiarise d'abord le lecteur avec le concept de revenu de base universel, au sujet duquel les malentendus restent nombreux. Il expose clairement de quoi il s'agit, en quoi le revenu de base se distingue des dispositifs de sécurité sociale en place et quels sont les principaux arguments en sa faveur.Le livre s'engage ensuite dans le débat sur le bien-fondé de l'idée et y prend position. Concrète, la discussion est située surtout sur le plan des implications pratiques du revenu de base universel. Tout en soutenant que la proposition n'a rien d'absurde, l'auteur expose les raisons de son scepticisme persistant et formule des contre-propositions, alimentées par sa connaissance fine du droit de la sécurité sociale et de ses tourments.Le livre s'ouvre par une préface d'Olivier De Schutter, rapporteur spécial des Nations Unies sur les droits de l'homme et l'extrême pauvreté. Il se clôt par un échange entre Daniel Zamora Vargas (sociologue), opposant résolu au revenu de base, et Philippe Defeyt (économiste), promoteur de longue date de l'idée.À PROPOS DE L'AUTEURJuriste et philosophe de formation, Daniel Dumont est professeur de droit de la sécurité sociale à l'Université libre de Bruxelles (ULB) et chercheur au sein du Centre de droit public et social de cette université.

This interdisciplinary book consists of three parts which examine the European Union policies on research and innovation, education and life-long learning, as well as the European Union Pillar on social rights and youth policies. In the first part, high-level experts analyze the European Research Area and its current enhancement, with emphasis on mobility and employability of researchers, especially in times of crises.In the second part, the governance architecture of the European Education Area(s) is explored and the new objectives of the Bologna Process, as well as the EU institutional framework of the recognition of skills and qualifications, are analyzed. Life-long learning is also important for the individual development of human capital especially for socially vulnerable people who could also benefit from literacy policies and skills development. The second part concludes with the evaluation of the EU education and training policy based on social indicators in theframework of the EU 2020 Strategy.In the third part, the book turns to Social Europe and the balancing between ordo-liberalism and ordo-socialism. It examines the EU Pillar of Social Rights and its impact on youth policies. It analyzes the EU youth policies e.g. on youth credit and their interaction with young people's employment and education possibilities, with emphasis on the young people'not in education, employment or training'(NEETs).

This book explores the fundamental shift that has occurred in America and Britain as elites accumulate unprecedented capital and influence and a meritocracy has emerged to manage national affairs, a change that means opportunity, affluence, and power have migrated away from most of the population. Arguing the following four points: Geography accounts for the accumulating influence of metropolitan regions, at the expense of smaller cities and rural communities of the heartland. Occupational groups, particularly lawyers, physicians, and financiers, have constructed professional cartels to secure rents at the expense of the prosperity of the public. Think tanks and universities have become the necessary pathways to attain leadership in public affairs. The internationalization of commerce has contributed to a parallel network of economic institutions and think tanks sharing ideas and personnel to lobby for policies favorable to their sponsors. Stoesz connects present and past to look at the progressive-era, the history of professions, and questions of welfare state reform, post-neoliberalism, and marketization. His book will be of great interest to students of sociology, political science, public administration, social policy, history, and economics. Scholars in think tanks and universities as well as political consultants will also find it invaluable.

This book outlines a recommended Icelandic security force as part of the country's defence against sub-strategic threats such as human trafficking by criminals or border incursions by other states. It also tests the recommended security force through the development of four different hypothetical scenarios in the year 2030 designed to show the force's successful implementation. Melting of the Arctic ice pack, and the opening of the Transpolar Sea Route around 2025 could lead to an increase in traffic into the North Atlantic from the Pacific (and vice versa). That movement is predicted to bring a massive influx of tourists, business interests, and government entities into the region. Along with legitimate uses of the new shipping lanes, the opportunity for terrorists, criminals, and rogue states to travel in and around the Arctic could lead to increased smuggling, violence, and sovereignty disputes (i.e., seizing uninhabited terrain). A review of Iceland'scurrent security policies indicates that the parliament provided the legal framework to create the recommended security force with the 2016 Parliamentary Resolution establishing a National Security Policy for Iceland. Many scholars and government officials believe that the Iceland public would not support a security force culturally. Yet, recent surveys reveal that many Icelanders could accept a security force to protect them from sub-strategic threats, especially if the increased security could be attained without the intervention of foreign military forces. The recommended security force utilizes Icelandic search-and-rescue volunteers and Reservists to increase the protection of the country funded by its full NATO contribution.

This open access collection is devoted to an in-depth, qualitative analysis of practices of cross-national solidarity in response to the current political and social crises, from citizens'initiatives to networks of cooperation among civil society actors. The book analyses existing informal groups at the grassroots, furthering transnational solidarity in three thematic areas: disability, unemployment and immigration. Contributions assess how civic groups respond to the various crises affecting Europe, especially the economic and refugee crises, presenting new findings from a systematic comparative study conducted in eight European countries (Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Poland, Switzerland, and the UK). The research will be of interest to scholars, students, journalists, policy-makers and activists interested in civil society, social movements, charitable actions, altruism and solidarity, as well as European studies and the socio-economic challenges of current European crises.

This book first presents an overview of the history of a national character survey by the Institute of Statistical Mathematics that has been conducted for more than 65 years. The Japanese National Character Survey, launched in 1953, is a rare longitudinal survey in the world of survey research based on rigorous statistical sampling theory, motivating other countries to launch similar longitudinal surveys, including the General Social Survey (GSS), the Allgemeine Bevölkerungsumfrage der Sozialwissenschaften (ALLBUS, German General Social Survey (GGSS)), Eurobarometer, and others. Since the early 1970s, the Japanese survey has been extended as a cross-national survey for more advanced research of the Japanese national character in a comparative context. Second, the book explains the paradigm of cross-national studies called the Cultural Manifold Analysis (CULMAN), developed in the longitudinal and cross-national surveys, with practical examples of analysis. This explanation will helphelps a wide range of readers to better understand the cross-national comparative surveys of attitudes, opinion, and social values as basic information for evidence-based policymaking and research.

Die Verflechtungen von Wirtschaft, Gesellschaft und Politik bestimmen so offensichtlich die sozioökonomischen und politischen Strukturen und Problemlagen, die gegenwärtigen Denk- und Handlungsweisen sowie die kollektive Wahrnehmung von Lösungsoptionen, dass ihre immer noch geringe Beachtung in Hochschullehre und Schulbildung verwundert. Phänomene wie Pandemien, Klimawandel, Migration oder Autoritarismus machen die engen, komplexen und widersprüchlichen Zusammenhänge von Wirtschaft, Gesellschaft und Politik aktuell erfahrbar. Vor diesem Hintergrund ist Aufklärung durch sozioökonomische Forschung, Lehre und Bildung dringend geboten. Dazu will der Themenband beitragen, indem er Forschungsbeiträge zu Problemkomplexen wie Wirtschaft und Demokratie, Perspektivität und Multiperspektivität, Situation, Interesse und Politik, Subjekt und Subjektivierung sowie Disziplin und Curriculum präsentiert.

Through a practical introduction to the policies of the American welfare state—a wide-ranging subject much discussed but seldom described—this concise volume details the four main areas of social welfare policy: housing assistance, nutrition assistance, income assistance, and medical assistance.In plain, approachable language, author Brian J. Glenn explains, for example, how Section 8 housing vouchers function, what the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program is, how Medicare has developed, and what Temporary Aid for Needy Families does. Especially in the era of Covid-19 and a recession, there is a need for citizens and students to understand the American social safety net. The American Welfare State is written in a manner that allows a complete novice to understand these programs in a brisk and comprehensive fashion that is both short enough to read over a couple of nights in a course and yet detailed enough for the programs to be understood at quite a nuanced level.In this thoroughly updated second edition, author Brian J. Glenn outlines the ways in which social welfare programs differ, sometimes dramatically, from locality to locality. To help students understand how these policies function, Glenn looks at the support households receive in five cities: Boston, Houston, Kansas City, Los Angeles, and New Orleans. This approach provides not only a geographic spread but also an examination of the variability of support, giving the reader a feel for the range of funding levels and also the variety of ways programs can be implemented. In short, this book is a fully updated and handy teaching and learning tool that fills a huge gap in the literature on a subject that many want to teach but often lack the resources to do.

Die vorliegende Studie nimmt mittels einer spezifisch soziologischen Perspektive auf die juridische Konstruktion Europas einen bislang in der Theoriebildung und Analyse vernachlässigten Blickwinkel ein und rückt die Europäerinnen und Europäer selbst ins Zentrum, indem sie fragt, wie dieser neu entstehende europäische Rechtsraum zur Ressource individuellen Handelns wurde und mit welchen Konsequenzen dies für den politischen Integrationsprozess verbunden war. Im Ergebnis schließt das die Frage nach den gesellschaftlichen Folgen der Europäischen Integration mit ein.

This book is the first attempt to introduce the current status of archival practices in Japan as well as the basic views of the populace on making records accessible to English readers. In general, Japan has not paid sufficient attention to keeping and utilizing records except in the field of historical research. This book thus examines Japanese attitudes about history, records management, information acts, the status of archivists of the constitution, and genealogical research practices and a description of archives. Consequently, such investigations clarify how both private and public archives function or fail to do so in those spheres of Japanese society. In addition, this book presents the efforts in wartime record keeping in Australia, which is significantly different from how the Japanese deal with such records. This book therefore provides a clear and concrete picture of the status of current archival practices in Japan and the thinking that underlies them. On the basis of suchexaminations, this book enables readers to understand to what extent and how the past affects the present through archives, to recognize the importance of archives, and to respect the past in order to maintain and develop perspectives in people's lives.

In its much-debated Human Development Report 2020, the United Nations Human Development Program attempted to present indicators of development which are planetary pressures-adjusted. In the present book by Arno Tausch, the author presents further reflections in this important and evolving field, vital for any informed debate about the Paris Climate Accord. Tausch adjusts the development achievements and setbacks of the countries of the world by ecological footprint per capita. With the hitherto existing globalized political economy in ruins in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic and the ensuing global economic depression, a new societal contract has to emerge which combines well-being with a minimum of energy inputs, thus reducing planetary pressures. Tausch attempts to answer vital questions, raised by the debates on the Paris climate accords, and the recent UNDP Human Development Index. Is a liberal economy, based on economic freedom, compatible with the attempt to “deliver” a maximum amount of democracy, economic growth, gender equality, human development, research and development, and social cohesion with a minimum of planetary pressure? Tausch looks at the cross-national drivers and bottlenecks of “smart development,” using standard comparative cross-national data. The book shows that those attempting to reduce planetary pressure and to work towards fulfilling the Paris Climate Accords have to start thinking about such issues as gender justice, economic freedom, globalization, population density, and migration, if they really want to bring about development with a minimum of planetary pressure.

Having started out as a new and alternative way of thinking about policy making and governing more broadly, governance is now established as a dominant paradigm in understanding national, subnational and global politics.The long-awaited second edition of this textbook takes into account the significant growth and proliferation of the field in recent years and offers a state of the art introduction to how governance is being theorised and studied today.Written by two leading political scientists, Governance, Politics and the State considers how societies are being, and can be, steered in a complex world where states must increasingly interact with and influence other actors and institutions to achieve results. It is a valuable book for all students of governance.New to this Edition:- A fully updated and revised set of chapters, including four new chapters – on multilevel governance, global governance, metagovernance and populism and governance. - A postscript on how to study governance

A obra discute a crise capitalista e das medidas que têm sido usadas para recuperá-lo, sob a supremacia do capital financeiro. Evidencia a profunda reforma regressiva e antidemocrática do Estado e seu caráter de classe, desvelando as estratégias ultraliberais que subordinam os países periféricos ao sistema financeiro internacional e atacam os direitos dos trabalhadores. Aborda também as formas contemporâneas de organização e resistência dos setores subalternos em nível nacional e internacional.

Mass starvation's causes may seem simple and immediate: crop failure, poverty, outbreaks of violence, and poor governance. But famines are complex, and scholars cannot fully understand what causes them unless they look at their numerous social and environmental precursors over long arcs of history and over long distances. Famine in the Remaking examines the relationship between the reorganization of food systems and large-scale food crises through a comparative historical analysis of three famines: Hawaii in the 1820s, Madagascar in the 1920s, and Cambodia in the 1970s. This examination identifies the structural transformations—that is, changes to the relationships between producers and consumers—that make food systems more vulnerable to failure. Moving beyond the economic and political explanations for food crisis that have dominated the literature, Stian Rice emphasizes important socioecological interactions, developing a framework for crisis evolution that identifies two distinct temporal phases and five different types of causal mechanisms involved in food system failure. His framework contributes to current work in famine prevention and, animated by a commitment to social justice, offers the potential for early intervention in emerging food crises.

This open access book examines the comparative evolution of social protection in Australia and New Zealand from 1890 to the present day, focusing on the relationship between employment relations and social policy. Utilising longstanding and more recent developments in historical institutionalist methodology, Ramia investigates the relationship between these two policy domains in the context of social protection theory. He argues that treating employment relations as dynamic, and as inextricably intertwined with changes in the welfare state over time, allows for more accurate portrayal of similarity and difference in social protection. The book will be of most interest to researchers, advanced undergraduate and postgraduate students in social policy, employment relations, public policy, social and political history, and comparative politics.

This book is concerned with developing an in-depth understanding of contemporary political and spatial analyses of cities. In the three-part development of the book's overall argument or premise, the reader is taken in Part I through a range of contemporary critical and political understandings of urban securitizing. This is followed by an historical urban landscape of emerging liberalism and neo-liberalism, in nineteenth-century Britain and twentieth-century United States, respectively. These case-study historical chapters enable the introduction of key political issues that are more critically assayed in Parts II and III. With Part II, the reader is introduced in depth to a series of spatial analyses undertaken by Michel Foucault that have been crucial for especially late-twentieth and twenty-first century urban theory and political geography. With Part III the full ramifications of a paradigmatic shift are explored at the level of rethinking territory, population and design. This book is timely and useful for readers who want to develop a stronger understanding of what the book's researchers term a new political paradigm in urban planning, one ultimately governed by global economic forces that define the end of probability.

In 2008, the European Commission relaunched the policy idea of active inclusion, with the aim of facilitating the integration of people into sustainable and quality employment. Over ten years later, and in the aftermath of one of the most trying periods in Europe's recent economic history, this book provides a critical and timely reassessment. The Political Economy of Policy Ideas contributes to the growing scholarly literature on ideational political economy and labour market regulation by providing a systematic analysis of the idea of active inclusion and its three core principles: activation, conditionality and personalization. The research breaks new ground by detailing how divergent interpretations of these principles, by relevant social actors in different contexts, have shaped their implementation. The book is of interest to scholars and students across comparative political economy, economic sociology, welfare and industrial relations studies.

​This book explains the basic concepts of the performance management, including the achievement of government goals, management capacity, administrative efficiency and policy effects. Taking Hangzhou, one of the largest cities in China, as an example, the book offers readers a new dimension through which the government can be understood and reformed—performance. Performance management has become an important component of public administration in China, and its use is beneficial in evaluating performance and social benefit. It also incentivizes civil servants to become more motivated and innovative, prevents the development of a bureaucratic atmosphere and facilitates communication between the public sector and the people. The book first introduces the concept of the performance management, providing a detailed description of its history, basic theories and its development. It then discusses the evolution of the system (from objective-based responsibility system evaluation to “vote for excellence”), its three basic areas (performance management on the national, local and municipal levels) and its key components: openness, democracy, accountability and performance. This book allows readers to gain a deeper understanding of the importance of government performance management in China and its contribution to the modernization of state governance and political legitimacy.

This book presents an in-depth look at the state of transnational education and comparative perspectives on education systems between Germany and other nation states. It explores how a transnational education identity in secondary and tertiary institutions has developed in the German and other national contexts and which lessons can be learned from current challenges and successes of education systems. It uses detailed case studies to promote critical rethinking of current educational practices in high schools and universities, specifically of race, gender, religion and learner ability in educational settings. It understands learning and teaching as an arena to discuss transnational education opportunities in the 21st century as an emerging or evolving discourse on contemporary forms of transnationalism.

This accessible introductory text discusses how people in a pluralistic society such as ours can accept a common social ethic - a publicly justified morality. It presents analyses of the basic concepts, including justifications of liberty, harm to others, private property rights, distributive justice, environmental harms, help to others and offensive behaviour. Gaus acquaints the reader with the major figures in social philosophy - John Stuart Mill, Jeremy Bentham, Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, David Hume, John Rawls, David Gauthier, and Joel Feinberg - as well as recent communitarian philosophers. The basic technical aspects of social philosophy are also introduced: game theory, social choice theory, the ideas rational action, rational bargaining, and public goods. Throughout, helpful short examples and stories are used to illustrate the material.

The responsiveness to societal demands is both the key virtue and the key problem of modern democracies. On the one hand, responsiveness is a central cornerstone of democratic legitimacy. On the other hand, responsiveness inevitably entails policy accumulation. While policy accumulation often positively reflects modernisation and human progress, it also undermines democratic government in three main ways. First, policy accumulation renders policy content increasingly complex, which crowds out policy substance from public debates and leads to an increasingly unhealthy discursive prioritisation of politics over policy. Secondly, policy accumulation comes with aggravating implementation deficits, as it produces administrative backlogs and incentivises selective implementation. Finally, policy accumulation undermines the pursuit of evidence-based public policy, because it threatens our ability to evaluate the increasingly complex interactions within growing policy mixes. The authors argue that the stability of democratic systems will crucially depend on their ability to make policy accumulation more sustainable.

In this timely collection, contributors from a number of disciplines discuss neoliberal visions of success, and the subsequent effects they have on the construction of the lifecycle. Frequently mentioned in popular political discourse, the notion of neoliberalism is often deployed as shorthand for the consensus that austerity is necessary and the hard-working individual can survive it. This volume unpicks and interrogates the term by engaging with the interface between the political ubiquity of neoliberal forms and its lived experience in neoliberal societies, cutting across a multiplicity of factors including gender, age, and access to education. Impressive in its wide scope and analysis, Interrogating the Neoliberal Lifecycle presents an informed discussion not only of the limits of the neoliberal paradigm but also of possible alternatives.

This book probes the complex interweaving, across time and cultures, of violence and non-violence from the perspective of the present. One of the first of its kind, it offers a comprehensive examination of the interpenetration of violence and non-violence as much in human nature as in human institutions with reference to different continents, cultures and religions over centuries. It points to the present paradox that even as violence of unprecedented lethality threatens the very survival of humankind, non-violence increasingly appears as an unlikely feasible alternative. The essays presented here cover a wide cultural–temporal spectrum — from Vedic sacrifice, early Jewish–Christian polemics, the Crusades, and medieval Japan to contemporary times. They explore aspects of the violence–non-violence dialectic in a coherent frame of analysis across themes such as war, jihad, death, salvation, religious and philosophical traditions including Buddhism, Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism, Islam, mysticism, monism, and Neoplatonism, texts such as Ramayana, Mahabharata and Quran, as well as issues faced by Dalits and ethical imperatives for clinical trials, among others. Offering thematic width and analytical depth to the treatment of the subject, the contributors bring their disciplinary expertise and cultural insights, ranging from the historical to sociological, theological, philosophical and metaphysical, as well as their sensitive erudition to deepening an understanding of a grave issue. The book will be useful to scholars and researchers of history, peace and conflict studies, political science, political thought and cultural studies, as well as those working on issues of violence and non-violence.

Martina Lizarazo López beleuchtet den Wandel von der traditionellen zur modernen Demographiepolitik in Frankreich zwischen dem Ende des Baby-Booms und dem erneuten Geburtenanstieg ab der Mitte der 1990er Jahre, als wesentliche demographische, sozio-ökonomische, gesellschaftliche und rechtliche Transformationsprozesse eine Anpassung der traditionellen demographiepolitischen Strategien erforderten. Sie stellt dar, dass das demographiepolitische Selbstverständnis in Frankreich, die Bevölkerungsentwicklung durch entsprechende Maßnahmen in der Familien- und der Einwanderungspolitik aktiv zu beeinflussen, auf der grundlegenden Überzeugung beruht, dass die demographischen Prozesse kein unabwendbares Schicksal bedeuten und mittels geeigneter Maßnahmen korrigiert bzw. gestaltet werden können.

This book provides an account of fatherhood and changing parental roles in Sweden and Poland. It uses a comparative perspective to show what men understand a father's role to be, and how they seek to live up to it. Fathering, the author argues, is a social phenomenon grounded in cultural patterns of parenting, gender roles and models of masculinity, and also shaped by family policy. Being a father today, she demonstrates, is longer connected solely with being the main breadwinner. Rather, it has become increasingly common for fathers to take on duties traditionally regarded as the domain of women. This means that men often face conflicting expectations based on different models of fatherhood. The aim of this thought-provoking book is to track these models, analysing their origins and their consequences for gender order. It will appeal to students and scholars of gender studies, the sociology of families and social policy studies.

This edited collection addresses a paradox at the heart of the European Union: if it is a constantly enlarging empire of governance, how can almost thirty member states design policies as an administrative whole, whilst narrowly approaching all political issues from one economic point of view? The contributors to this collection approach this by studying knowledge production, policy formation and policy implementation in the union. The topics covered include the history of the union, its nature as an empire in the making compared to historical successors as well as current USA and China, formation of union level statistical data and policy documents, paradoxes of fiscal governance, social innovation policy, youth and education policy, energy policy and foreign policy with particular regard to Russia. The concluding chapter outlines five alternative future scenarios for the union extending from collapse and marginalization to the emergence of a federal empire. The book is essential reading for anybody interested in the EU, including students and scholars across a range of disciplines, including sociology, political science, international relations, economics, management studies, public and social policy, science and technology studies, and environmental policy.

This study looks at the tiny but growing volume of consumer advertising even in countries such as the Soviet Union, which had detailed central planning, and substantially more in the recently decentralised Hungarian economy and pre-invasion Czechoslovakia. And of course, outside the Soviet orbit there was the relatively market-oriented and Westernised Yugoslav economy. This suggested that there were after all some interesting questions to answer: Why did an administrative economy like the Soviet one have any domestic consumer advertising at all, and why was it, apparently, growing? What did evidence from Hungary and Yugoslavia suggest about the scale and functions of advertising in more decentralised socialist economies? This title was first published in 1974.

Modern families are economic institutions of great productivity. They contribute as much to a society's economic well-being as does worker productivity in formal markets. In Citizens, Families, and Reform, Stein Ringen shows how long-standing inequalities of income and class are flexible and changing in post-industrial societies. Such inequalities respond to structural changes such as social mobility and to public policies such as those of the welfare state. His book is a study of the process from careful statistical analysis to specific policy recommendations.The book draws on two strands of research, one on children and families and the other on social inequality. Both summarize detailed statistical analysis. Ringen's basic premise is that prudent social policy should start from investment in families. Progress and reform in society, such as extended access to education, tends to modify social divisions and stimulate open opportunity, particularly in the area of higher education. The book addresses the situation of children, who have a surprisingly lower standard of living than adult population groups by most measures of well-being. Ringen attributes this disparity to flaws in the distribution of power, which leads to the disenfranchisement of children as citizens. He addresses this problem by discussing children and voting rights, building a case for realizing the ideal of one person, one vote, by extending the vote to children.Real democracies are necessarily imperfect. Ringen argues for the classical liberal theory of social progress through economic growth and equality of opportunity and warns against the'terrible temptation towards perfection.'His new introduction reviews the debates sparked by the book's original publication in 1997 and suggests areas in which his arguments have been vindicated.

Alexander Wohnig stellt mittels einer Studie einen Katalog von Bedingungen einer Verbindung von sozialem und politischem Lernen auf, der als Teil einer Konzeption politischer Bildung entworfen ist – vor dem Hintergrund der Frage, wie politisches Lernen im Anschluss an schulisch organisierte Projekte bürgerlichen Engagements gelingen kann. Eine kritisch-theoretische und gegenwartsanalytische Sichtweise berücksichtigt u. a. den aktuellen gesellschaftlichen und politischen Kontext von zivilgesellschaftlichem Engagement. Die Bedingungen formulieren eine didaktische Anleitung für schulische und außerschulische politische Bildung mit dem Anspruch, soziale Erfahrungen junger Menschen im Rahmen schulisch organisierter Projekte durch politische Lernprozesse zu erweitern.

The author analyses competition as one of four coordinating mechanisms helping agents mutually to orientate their actions, avoid chaos, and produce social order. Competition is a key dimension of developed societies. It helps to structure and is also conducive to social change. Competing agents constrain one another, making it hard for anyone to change their position. They discover new routines the best of which may later be institutionalized. Competition is a solvent of power but only in relatively equal societies. Entrenched wealth or status restricts competition, thus impoverishing social order. The author also evaluates the theory of competition to explore such topics as corporate social responsibility, relations between government, business and civil society, and reflexivity in social sciences.

Although philosophers debate the morality of open borders, few social scientists have explored what would happen if immigration were no longer limited. This book looks at three examples of temporarily unrestricted migration in Miami, Marseille, and Dublin and finds that the effects were much less catastrophic than opponents of immigration claim.

In seinem Buch geht Michael Ochsner der Frage nach, inwieweit Wohlfahrtsleistungen zur Legitimierung des Staates beitragen. Der Autor weist in seiner empirischen Studie anhand von Ländern aus der ganzen Welt nach, dass der Zusammenhang zwischen den Wohlfahrtsleistungen und der Legitimität des Staates nicht generell gültig ist, sondern sich vielmehr in verschiedenen'kulturellen Settings'unterscheidet. Der Autor integriert sozialdemokratische, machtkritische und werteorientierte Positionen in sein theoretisches Rahmenkonzept und stellt diese in einen historisch-kulturellen Kontext. Er zeigt, dass das westliche Gesellschaftsmodell mit seiner Legitimitätsbeschaffung durch Wohlfahrtsleistungen historisch besonders ist und sich nicht einfach auf Gesellschaften in anderen historischen und kulturellen Kontexten generalisieren lässt.

The contributors assess to what extent regional organizations in Europe and Latin America provide a space for the regulation and provision of social policies in the area of social protection, higher education and health. They analyse the impact of regional organizations on social citizenship following political struggle and contestation.

In this study, an international and multidisciplinary team take stock of the promise and shortfalls of'Social Europe'today, examining the response to the Eurocrisis, the past decade of social policy in the image of the Lisbon Agenda, and the politics that derailed a more Delorsian Europe from ever emerging.

This book explores and analyzes governance and policy issues in South, Southeast, and East Asia. It maps governance challenges and analyzes current trends from the perspectives of democracy, public policy, and public institutions. Regional public administration and governance systems have undergone some phenomenal changes over the last three decades and have played a key role in the economic progress of the area, especially in the Southeast and East Asian nations. Rich with country-specific evidence and analyses, the chapters in the book apply empirical and other research methods to examine shifting paradigms and best practices. This book develops an understanding of changes in the forms, process and practices of governance, both within the context of each nation and in a comparative perspective. The book will appeal to scholars, academics, students, and practitioners of public administration, political science, and policy issues.

This book is about both the symbolic and the real struggles for the control of the EU's agenda on participatory democracy in the last fifteen years. The book analyzes how civil society organizations contributed to an agenda which has implications for the regulation of interest groups to the institutions and for the democratic legitimacy of the EU.

This volume presents in-depth insights into the polity, politics and policies of the Brazilian political system. It reassesses the processes of change since the country's return to democracy in the 1980s, in the light of autocratic societal structures and suboptimal institutional design, on the one hand, and the political and economic achievements observed, on the other. In their contributions, top Brazilian and international scholars critically examine the development of the political system with a focus on the Lula and Rousseff administrations, and place their actions and failures in the socio-political and economic context so as to uncover the underlying institutional structures, constellations and diverging interests of actors on various decision-making levels and in different political fields. It is the central aim of this book to present a differentiated portrait of the current political landscape and remaining contradictions in Latin America's largest country.

This volume examines developmentality and the archeology of its social practices, unfolding systemic failures that muffle progress. Economic, climate, and social justice are the areas of focus for this analysis of human-social development in the fog of ideological-institutional meltdowns.

Providing a unique critical perspective to debates on slavery, this book brings the literature on transatlantic slavery into dialogue with research on informal sector labour, child labour, migration, debt, prisoners, and sex work in the contemporary world in order to challenge popular and policy discourse on modern slavery.

This volume focuses on describing the social dialogue system in organizations from an Human Resources Management perspective. Based on the NEIRE model for industrial relations, key factors are determined contributing to creative social dialogue in European organizations. Actual data from surveys and interviews from more than 700 CEO and HR managers in eleven European countries give insights in the experiences with and expectations of employers of social dialogue. The volume offers a comprehensive introduction to the historical context and current situation in social dialogue in these countries. This context helps to understand the current major challenges in each country when it comes to a vital social dialogue. Using good practices from many organizations, this book offers an agenda for innovative and cooperative social dialogue in organizations.