Monographs & Edited Collections (5,095 posts)

Aboriginal rights do not belong to the broader category of universal human rights because they are grounded in the particular practices of aboriginal people. So argues Peter Kulchyski in this provocative book from the front lines of indigenous people’s struggles to defend their culture from the ongoing conquest of their traditional lands. Kulchyski shows that some differences are more different than others, and he draws a border between bush culture and mall culture, between indigenous people’s mode of production and the totalizing push of state-led capitalism.

From Tahrir Square to Occupy, from the Red Shirts in Thailand to the Teachers in Oaxaca, protest camps are a highly visible feature of social movements’ activism across the world. They are spaces where people come together to imagine alternative worlds and articulate contentious politics, often in confrontation with the state. Drawing on over fifty different protest camps from around the world over the past fifty years, this book offers a ground-breaking and detailed investigation into protest camps from a global perspective – a story that, until now, has remained untold.

It has become increasingly accepted that important digital data must be retained and shared in order to preserve and promote knowledge, advance research in and across all disciplines of scholarly endeavor, and maximize the return on investment of public funds.

In November 1999 the first protests associated with the ‘anti-globalisation movement’ took place in Seattle, and came to be seen as the starting point for globalised resistance to neoliberal capitalism. Despite initial optimism, the following years have seen little progress in formulating a coherent alternative to neoliberalism, a failure that has become particularly poignant in the aftermath of the recent credit crisis. Now, the neoliberal mandate that appeared to be in ‘crisis’ in just 2008 has reinvented itself through the guise of a new ‘era of austerity’.

When thousands marched through ice and snow against a copyright treaty, their cries for free speech on the Internet shot to the heart of the European Union and forced a political U-turn. The mighty entertainment industries could only stare in dismay, their back-room plans in tatters. This highly original analysis of three attempts to bring in new laws to defend copyright on the Internet – ACTA, Ley Sinde and the Digital Economy Act – investigates the dance of influence between lobbyists and their political proxies and unmasks the sophistry of their arguments. Copyright expert Monica Horten outlines the myriad ways that lobbyists contrived to bypass democratic process and persuade politicians to take up their cause in imposing an American corporate agenda. In doing so, she argues the case for stronger transparency in copyright policy-making.

This study presents a first comprehensive summary of the current knowledge on the scale of health inequalities in Poland, the measurement methods used to assess them, and the risk of health inequalities in different age groups, populations and regions. The numerical data are supplemented by numerous accounts of preventive initiatives aimed at tackling health inequalities.

The study covers the determinants of inequalities at both macro and individual levels, and looks at two specific populations, children and adults. It ends with a set of recommendations on strategy and policy formulation, monitoring and coordination, on actions to improve the socioeconomic status of the population, and on public health interventions. This study is an important step in realizing the health potential of the Polish population and in contributing to a more fair and sustainable society, thereby reflecting the key values and goals of the new European policy for health, Health 2020.

This study, globally the first comprehensive review of independent human rights institutions for children, takes stock of more than 20 years of their experience.The report provides practitioners with an extensive discussion of the issues as well as a series of regional analyses from around the world. The aim is to help readers understand the purpose and potential of independent human rights institutions for children, what it is they do and how they operate. This review covers institutions created by law or decree that are independent at least in principle. It includes institutions performing activities related to children’s rights operating at the national or local level. The report is organized into two major parts: a series of thematic chapters, drawing out lessons from practice on the distinctive principles and features underlying the function of child rights institutions; and an overview of their international development, looking at the work of institutions by region.

People in the WHO European Region consume the most alcohol per head in the world. In the European Union (EU), alcohol accounts for about 120 000 premature deaths per year: 1 in 7 in men and 1 in 13 in women. Most countries in the Region have adopted policies, strategies and plans to reduce alcohol-related harm. In 2012, the WHO Regional Office for Europe collected information on alcohol consumption and related harm, and countries policy responses to contribute to the Global Information System for Alcohol and Health; this report presented a selection of the results for 35 countries – EU Member States and candidate countries, Norway and Switzerland – individually and in groups distinguished by their drinking patterns and traditions.

Every day in the United States, children and adolescents are victims of commercial sexual exploitation and sex trafficking. Despite the serious and long-term consequences for victims as well as their families, communities, and society, efforts to prevent, identify, and respond to these crimes are largely under supported, inefficient, uncoordinated, and unevaluated.

This new report uses information gathered in 2011 to update key indicators on alcohol consumption, health outcomes and action to reduce harm across the European Union (EU). It gives an overview of the latest research on effective alcohol policies, and includes data from the EU, Norway and Switzerland on alcohol consumption, harm and policy approaches.

The New York City Teachers Union shares a deep history with the American left, having participated in some of its most explosive battles. Established in 1916, the union maintained an early, unofficial partnership with the American Communist Party, winning key union positions and advocating a number of Party goals. Clarence Taylor recounts this pivotal relationship and the backlash it created, as the union threw its support behind controversial policies and rights movements. Taylor’s research reaffirms the party’s close ties with the union—yet it also makes clear that the organization was anything but a puppet of Communist power.

On July 26, 2011, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services issued an advance notice of proposed rulemaking (ANPRM) with the purpose of soliciting comments on how current regulations for protecting research participants could be modernized and revised. The rationale for revising the regulations was as follows: this ANPRM seeks comment on how to better protect human subjects who are involved in research, while facilitating valuable research and reducing burden, delay, and ambiguity for investigators.

Since the early days of the AIDS epidemic, many bizarre and dangerous hypotheses have been advanced to explain the origins of the disease. In this compelling book, Nicoli Nattrass explores the social and political factors prolonging the erroneous belief that the American government manufactured the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) to be used as a biological weapon, as well as the myth’s consequences for behavior, especially within African American and black South African communities.

Marcia B. Cohen and Cheryl A. Hyde’s book, Empowering Workers and Clients for Organizational Change, prepares students to successfully engage in organizational change practice. The editors focus on “low power actors”—students, line staff, volunteers, clients, social workers—who can utilize their experience and knowledge gained from client and community interaction to initiate broadscale change. These workers are often the most informed about the clients’ needs and are well positioned to collaborate with clients, constituents, supervisors, and managers in ways that can empower everyone.

How does one make the right choices when faced with ethical dilemmas? Social service professionals use a unique set of principles to guide their decisions within a broad and complex array of situations. Straight Talk about Professional Ethics, Second Edition provides readers with the guidelines that will help them make decisions in a manner that is clinically and ethically effective.

This compendium is part of an international project entitled Ethical Research Involving Children. The project has been motivated by a shared international concern that the human dignity of children is honoured, and that their rights and well-being are respected in all research, regardless of context. To help meet this aim, the compendium acts as a tool to generate critical thinking, reflective dialogue and ethical decision-making, and to contribute to improved research practice with children across different disciplines, theoretical and methodological standpoints, and international contexts. Emphasis is placed on the need for a reflexive approach to research ethics that fosters dynamic, respectful relationships between researchers, children, families, communities, research organizations, and other stakeholders.

Summary of a workshop convened in June 2013 by the Forum on Aging, Disability, and Independence of the Institute of Medicine and the National Research Council to examine the financing of long-term services and supports for working-age individuals with disabilities and among individuals who are developing disabilities as they age. The workshop covered both older adults who acquire disabilities and younger adults with disabilities who may acquire additional impairments as they age, the target population of the Forum’s work.

Covers assessment and diagnosis, testing and psychometrics, treatment and psychotherapy, biology and pharmacotherapy, self-help resources, ethical and legal issues, forensic practice, financial and insurance matters, and prevention and cosultation.

325 astute and practical ideas, insights, tips and strategies address the complex issues parents face during this crucial period of transition for their child with Asperger Syndrome (Autism Spectrum Disorder).

Peter Maguire and Mike Ritter are the first historians to document this underground industry, the only record of its existence rooted in the fading memories of its elusive participants. Drawing on hundreds of interviews with smugglers and law enforcement agents, the authors recount the buy, delivery, voyage home, and product offload. They capture the eccentric personalities of the men and women who transformed the Thai marijuana trade from a GI cottage industry into a professionalized business moving the world’s most lucrative commodities, unraveling a rare history from the smugglers’ perspective.

Offers a modern approach to building effective career skills in macro practice. Author Steve Burghardt inspires students by tracing the careers of macro-practitioners from grass roots organizers to agency executives.

Feminism is so last century. Surely in today’s world the idea is irrelevant and unfashionable?

Wrong. Since the turn of the millennium a revitalised feminist movement has emerged to challenge these assumptions. Based on a survey of over a thousand feminists, Reclaiming the F Word reveals the what, why and how of today’s feminism, from cosmetic surgery to celebrity culture, from sex to singleness and now, in this new edition, the gendered effects of possibly the worst economic crisis ever.

A comprehensive public health approach to mental disorders and mental health

Offers an interdisciplinary approach to child advocacy, nurturing key skills through a proven six-step process that has been used to train child advocates and create social change around the world. The approach is applicable for micro-advocacy for one child, mezzo-advocacy for a community or group of children, and macro-advocacy at a regional, national, or international level.

In this eye-opening and often scathing book, Walden Bello provides a forensic dissection of contemporary capitalism’s multiple crises. Trenchant but constructive, Bello’s analysis of the collapse of the global real economy, covering such issues as the Wall Street meltdown, the disintegration of the Greek economy, and the rise of China, emphasizes the ever more pressing need to engage in a radical process of deglobalization towards a decentralized, pluralistic world system. Only then will we be able to construct a fairer and more equitable society.

The growth and spread of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) at local and international levels has attracted considerable interest and attention from policy-makers, development practitioners, academics and activists around the world. But how has this phenomenon impacted on struggles for social and environmental justice? How has it challenged – or reinforced – the forces of capitalism and colonialism? And what political, economic, social and cultural interests does this serve?

This unprecedented study of sex trafficking, forced labor, organ trafficking, and sex tourism across twenty-four nations highlights the experiences of the victims, perpetrators, and anti-traffickers involved in this brutal trade. Combining statistical data with intimate accounts and interviews, journalist Stephanie Hepburn and justice scholar Rita J. Simon create a dynamic volume sure to educate and spur action.

Georges Vigarello maps the evolution of Western ideas about fat and fat people from the Middle Ages to the present, paying particular attention to the role of science, fashion, fitness crazes, and public health campaigns in shaping these views. While hefty bodies were once a sign of power, today those who struggle to lose weight are considered poor in character and weak in mind. Vigarello traces the eventual equation of fatness with infirmity and the way we have come to define ourselves and others in terms of body type.

The persecution of people in Africa on the basis of their assumed or perceived homosexual orientation has received considerable coverage in the popular media in recent years. Gay-bashing by political and religious figures in Zimbabwe and Gambia; draconian new laws against lesbians and gays and their supporters in Malawi, Nigeria and Uganda; and the imprisonment and extortion of gay men in Senegal and Cameroon have all rightly sparked international condemnation. However, much of the analysis has been highly critical of African leadership and culture without considering local nuances, historical factors and external influences that are contributing to the problem. Such commentary also overlooks grounds for optimism in the struggle for sexual rights and justice in Africa, not just for sexual minorities but for the majority population as well.

Numbers dominate global politics and as a result our everyday lives. Credit ratings steer financial markets and can make or break the future of entire nations. GDP drives our economies. Stock market indices flood our media and national debates. Statistical calculations define how we deal with climate change, poverty and sustainability. But what is behind these numbers? By what processes are they created?

Grounded in the personal narratives of twenty interracial couples with multiracial children, this volume uniquely explores interracial couples’ encounters with racism and discrimination, partner difference, family identity, and counseling and therapy. It intimately portrays how race, class, and gender shape relationship dynamics and a partner’s sense of belonging.

Revolting Subjects is a groundbreaking account of social abjection in contemporary Britain, exploring how particular groups of people are figured as revolting and how they in turn revolt against their abject subjectification. The book utilizes a number of high-profile and in-depth case studies – including ‘chavs’, asylum seekers, Gypsies and Travellers, and the 2011 London riots – to examine the ways in which individuals negotiate restrictive neoliberal ideologies of selfhood. In doing so, Tyler argues for a deeper psychosocial understanding of the role of representational forms in producing marginality, social exclusion and injustice, whilst also detailing how stigmatization and scapegoating are resisted through a variety of aesthetic and political strategies.

A scholar who knew Butler personally and professionally, W. Andrew Achenbaum follows this pioneer’s significant contributions to the concept of healthy aging and the notion that aging is not synonymous with physical and mental decline. Emphasizing the progressive aspects of Butler’s approach and insight, Achenbaum affirms the ongoing relevance of his work to gerontology, geriatrics, medicine, social work, and related fields.