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In the last twenty-five years, Americans have gained considerable freedom in thier personal lives. Relationships are now more flexible, and self-development has become a primary goal for both men and women. Most scholars have criticized this trend to greater freedom, arguing that it undermines family bonds and promotes selfishness and extreme independence, Francesca Cancian is more optimistic. In this book she shows that many American couples succeed in combining self-development with commitment, and that interdependence, not independence, is their ideal. In interdependent relationships, love and self-development do not conflict, but reinforce each other. Love in America compares 'traditiona...
Are women naturally better caregivers than men? Can paid care in an institutuion be good care? Can voluntary community care replace government welfare? Is the caring family disappearing? What role should government play in supporting or regulating families? Is day care for children as good as home care? Using engaging case studies and research findings, this lively new book from the Gender Lens Series explores these and other questions and controversies, challenging the notion that caregiving is a "natural" pattern and demonstrating how it is thoroughly social. Written in an inviting and readable style, the authors address complex issues about caring, making them accessible to undergraduate students and lay people. The book shows those who will enter diverse caregiving professions how to see their particular occupation as influenced by the larger society and broader social relations of caring. It also shows how beliefs about gender and family shape caregiving, and how caregiving affects gender inequality.
Care Work is a collection of original essays on the complexities of providing care. These essays emphasize how social policies intersect with gender, race, and class to alternately compel women to perform care work and to constrain their ability to do so. Leading international scholars from a range of disciplines provide a groundbreaking analysis of the work of caring in the context of the family, the market, and the welfare state.
Winner of the Barrington Moore Jr. Prize for the Best Book in Comparative and Historical Sociology from the American Sociological AssociationWinner of the Best Book Award in the Comparative Democratization Section from the American Political Science Association Despite their many similarities, Central American countries during the twentieth century were characterized by remarkably different political regimes. In a comparative analysis of Guatemala, El Salvador, Costa Rica, Honduras, and Nicaragua, James Mahoney argues that these political differences were legacies of the nineteenth-century liberal reform period. Presenting a theory of "path dependence," Mahoney shows how choices made at cruc...
Why are all U.S. Presidents white men? Why does technology enchant us? Why do some people commit suicide? Why are sports so important to Americans? How will the Internet change society? Why do people ′do good′? This very teachable and short new introductory text explores these and other ′riddles′ to stir students′ sociological curiosity and promote active learning as the sure path toward mastering the fundamentals of the discipline. "Once again, Pine Forge Press has done us Intro teachers a great service with The Riddles of Human Society. The authors have produced a remarkable text, designing it from the point of view of how students actually acquire sociological tools and imagination when reflecting on their social world. ... It is written as a conversation with readers, yet is organized with learning tools like chapter summaries, discussion questions, and an in-text glossary. It considers a broad range of topics from micro to macro levels, thus uniquely blending the best of a shorter textbook and a monograph. It will serve very well as a main text for introductory sociology courses. I recommend it highly." Stephen Sharkey, Department of Social Science, Alverno College
Rumba music starts and a floor full of dancers alternate clinging to one another and turning away. Here, Julia Ericksen, a competitive ballroom dancer herself, takes the reader onto the competition floor exploring the allure of this hyper-competitive, difficult, and often expensive activity.
This long-awaited fourth edition has the same goal as the preceding editions: to understand families in terms of the kinds of interaction through which family life is constructed. The changes in the family as an institution have influenced these processes, just as they have influenced the ways we understand and write about them. But even in these "postmodern" circumstances, an underlying premise of the volume is that two partners establish a family because they have selected each other as distinctively meaningful to one another. They will affirm, modify, elaborate, or retreat from various aspects of the relationship through interaction over time and in changing circumstances. This volume con...
The experience of men and women in later life varies enormously, not only along the lines of gender but also due to ethnicity, class, sexual orientation, and race. Calasanti and Slevin explore these differences, their genesis, their meaning to men and women, and their treatment in the policy arena.
The Geography of Genocide offers a unique analysis of over sixty genocides in world history, explaining why genocides only occur in territorial interiors and never originate from cosmopolitan urban centers. This study explores why genocides tend to result from emasculating political defeats experienced by perpetrator groups and examines whether such extreme political violence is the product of a masculine identity crisis. Author Allan D. Cooper notes that genocides are most often organized and implemented by individuals who have experienced traumatic childhood events involving the abandonment or abuse by their father. Although genocides target religious groups, nations, races or ethnic groups, these identity structures are rarely at the heart of the war crimes that ensue. Cooper integrates research derived from the study of serial killing and rape to show certain commonalities with the phenomenon of genocide. The Geography of Genocide presents various strategies for responding to genocide and introduces Cooper's groundbreaking alternatives for ultimately inhibiting the occurrence of genocide.
Do men and women experience participation in social movements differently? Are gender roles reproduced or undermined during a struggle for liberation? In this brief text examining gender roles in social movements, M. Bahati Kuumba shows how liberation struggles are viewed through women's eyes and how gender affects women's mobilization, strategies, and outcomes in social movement organizations. Using two well-known examples, the American civil rights movement and the South African national liberation movement, Kuumba documents the circumscribed roles of women, the unheralded role of movement leaders such as Ella Baker and Frances Baard, and how gender affected movement activities and results. Gender and Social Movements is the ideal text to introduce a sophisticated view of race and gender into social movement courses.