Best of
Social-Change

2011

Dignity: The Essential Role It Plays in Resolving Conflict


Donna Hicks - 2011
    It is a motivating force behind all human interaction—in families, in communities, in the business world, and in relationships at the international level. When dignity is violated, the response is likely to involve aggression, even violence, hatred, and vengeance. On the other hand, when people treat one another with dignity, they become more connected and are able to create more meaningful relationships. Surprisingly, most people have little understanding of dignity, observes Donna Hicks in this important book. She examines the reasons for this gap and offers a new set of strategies for becoming aware of dignity's vital role in our lives and learning to put dignity into practice in everyday life.Drawing on her extensive experience in international conflict resolution and on insights from evolutionary biology, psychology, and neuroscience, the author explains what the elements of dignity are, how to recognize dignity violations, how to respond when we are not treated with dignity, how dignity can restore a broken relationship, why leaders must understand the concept of dignity, and more. Hicks shows that by choosing dignity as a way of life, we open the way to greater peace within ourselves and to a safer and more humane world for all.

Gone: A Photographic Plea For Preservation


Nell Dickerson - 2011
    Her passion for forgotten and neglected buildings became a plea for preservation. Gone is a unique pairing of modern photographs and historical novella. Foote offers a heartbreaking look at one man's loss as Union troops burn his home in the last days of the Civil War. Dickerson shares fascinating and haunting photographs, shining a poignant light on the buildings which survived Sherman's burning rampage across the Confederacy, only to fall victim to neglect, apathy and poverty. GONE is a powerfully moving volume that will change how you see the forgotten buildings that hide in obscurity across the Southern landscape.

Awake in the World: Teachings from Yoga and Buddhism for Living an Engaged Life


Michael Stone - 2011
    Stone explains that the practices of yoga and meditation are not about escaping reality but about living fully in the here and now, opening to our experience, and gaining access to stillness within the flow of life. The essence of yoga and Buddhist practice is opening the heart—our own and the heart of the world. With that awareness, Stone encourages us to get involved in our communities, to speak out when we see wrongdoing, and to find ways of helping others.

Ours to Master and to Own: Workers' Control from the Commune to the Present


Immanuel Ness - 2011
    With specific examples drawn from every corner of the globe and every period of modern history, this pathbreaking volume comprehensively traces this often underappreciated historical tradition. Ripe with lessons drawn from historical and contemporary struggles for workers’ control, Ours to Master and to Own is essential reading for those struggling to create a new world from the ashes of the old.Immanuel Ness is professor of political science at Brooklyn College, City University of New York, and edits WorkingUSA.Dario Azzellini is a writer, documentary director, and political scientist at Johannes Kepler University in Linz.

My Uncle Martin's Words for America: Martin Luther King Jr.'s Niece Tells How He Made a Difference


Angela Farris Watkins - 2011
    Focusing on important words and phrases from his speeches, such as justice, freedom, and equality, Watkins uses King’s language to expose young readers to important events during the civil rights era. The simple yet striking text, along with a timeline and glossary, makes this book an accessible tool for helping a young audience learn about the importance of Martin Luther King Jr.’s message of nonviolence and his contributions to American history.

Parenting For Social Change Transform Childhood, Transform The World


Teresa Graham Brett - 2011
    In this compelling call for change, Teresa Graham Brett addresses the work parents must do to free themselves, the children who share their lives, and the world from these harmful messages. Using current research, she debunks the myth that controlling children is necessary to ensure that they grow into healthy and responsible adults. She also shares her own parenting journey away from controlling and dominating children and provides strategies for letting go of harmful control. Through her experiences as a social justice educator, she demonstrates how changing our parent-child relationships plays a critical role in creating social change.

Entering the Healing Ground: Grief, Ritual and the Soul of the World


Francis Weller - 2011
    He reveals the hidden vitality in grief, uncovered when the heart welcomes the sorrows of our life and those of the world. We are ripened in times of loss, made more human by the rites of grief. Through story, poetry, and insightful reflections, Francis offers a meditation on the healing power of grief."

Cities for People, Not for Profit: Critical Urban Theory and the Right to the City


Neil Brenner - 2011
    It has also given new impetus to the struggles of urban social movements emphasizing the injustice, destructiveness and unsustainability of capitalist forms of urbanization. This book contributes analyses intended to be useful for efforts to roll back contemporary profit-based forms of urbanization, and to promote alternative, radically democratic and sustainable forms of urbanism.The contributors provide cutting-edge analyses of contemporary urban restructuring, including the issues of neoliberalization, gentrification, colonization, "creative" cities, architecture and political power, sub-prime mortgage foreclosures and the ongoing struggles of "right to the city" movements. At the same time, the book explores the diverse interpretive frameworks - critical and otherwise - that are currently being used in academic discourse, in political struggles, and in everyday life to decipher contemporary urban transformations and contestations. The slogan, "cities for people, not for profit," sets into stark relief what the contributors view as a central political question involved in efforts, at once theoretical and practical, to address the global urban crises of our time.Drawing upon European and North American scholarship in sociology, politics, geography, urban planning and urban design, the book provides useful insights and perspectives for citizens, activists and intellectuals interested in exploring alternatives to contemporary forms of capitalist urbanization.

Trust in the Land: New Directions in Tribal Conservation


Beth Rose Middleton - 2011
    The Earth says that God tells me to take care of the Indians on this earth; the Earth says to the Indians that stop on the Earth, feed them right. . . . God says feed the Indians upon the earth.” —Cayuse Chief Young Chief, Walla Walla Council of 1855 America has always been Indian land. Historically and culturally, Native Americans have had a strong appreciation for the land and what it offers. After continually struggling to hold on to their land and losing millions of acres, Native Americans still have a strong and ongoing relationship to their homelands. The land holds spiritual value and offers a way of life through fishing, farming, and hunting. It remains essential—not only for subsistence but also for cultural continuity—that Native Americans regain rights to land they were promised. Beth Rose Middleton examines new and innovative ideas concerning Native land conservancies, providing advice on land trusts, collaborations, and conservation groups. Increasingly, tribes are working to protect their access to culturally important lands by collaborating with Native and non- Native conservation movements. By using private conservation partnerships to reacquire lost land, tribes can ensure the health and sustainability of vital natural resources. In particular, tribal governments are using conservation easements and land trusts to reclaim rights to lost acreage. Through the use of these and other private conservation tools, tribes are able to protect or in some cases buy back the land that was never sold but rather was taken from them.Trust in the Land sets into motion a new wave of ideas concerning land conservation. This informative book will appeal to Native and non-Native individuals and organizations interested in protecting the land as well as environmentalists and government agencies.

The Cambridge Companion to Gandhi


Judith M. Brown - 2011
    His intellectual and moral legacy - encapsulated in works such as Hind Swaraj - as well as the example of his life and politics serve as an inspiration to human rights and peace movements, political activists, and students in classroom discussions throughout the world. This book, comprised of essays by renowned experts in the fields of Indian history and philosophy, traces Gandhi's extraordinary story. The first part of the book, the biography, explores his transformation from a small-town lawyer during his early life in South Africa into a skilled political activist and leader of civil resistance in India. The second part is devoted to Gandhi's key writings and his thinking on a broad range of topics, including religion, conflict, politics, and social relations. The final part reflects on Gandhi's image - how he has been portrayed in literature and film - and on his legacy in India, the West, and beyond.

Sustained Dialogue in Conflicts: Transformation and Change


Harold H. Saunders - 2011
    Saunders. Believing that the energies and capacities of citizens outside government are the greatest untapped resources for meeting the challenges of the twenty-first century, Saunders argues that sustained dialogue is a critical instrument for citizens to use in marshaling those resources to develop the relationships essential to peace, efficient organizations, and democratic political and economic development. Beyond that, sustained dialogue offers a creative diplomacy appropriate to the twenty-first century.

Why Civil Resistance Works: The Strategic Logic of Nonviolent Conflict


Erica Chenoweth - 2011
    By attracting impressive support from citizens, whose activism takes the form of protests, boycotts, civil disobedience, and other forms of nonviolent noncooperation, these efforts help separate regimes from their main sources of power and produce remarkable results, even in Iran, Burma, the Philippines, and the Palestinian Territories.Combining statistical analysis with case studies of specific countries and territories, Erica Chenoweth and Maria J. Stephan detail the factors enabling such campaigns to succeed and, sometimes, causing them to fail. They find that nonviolent resistance presents fewer obstacles to moral and physical involvement and commitment, and that higher levels of participation contribute to enhanced resilience, greater opportunities for tactical innovation and civic disruption (and therefore less incentive for a regime to maintain its status quo), and shifts in loyalty among opponents' erstwhile supporters, including members of the military establishment.Chenoweth and Stephan conclude that successful nonviolent resistance ushers in more durable and internally peaceful democracies, which are less likely to regress into civil war. Presenting a rich, evidentiary argument, they originally and systematically compare violent and nonviolent outcomes in different historical periods and geographical contexts, debunking the myth that violence occurs because of structural and environmental factors and that it is necessary to achieve certain political goals. Instead, the authors discover, violent insurgency is rarely justifiable on strategic grounds.

Norman Granz: The Man Who Used Jazz for Justice


Tad Hershorn - 2011
    I loved jazz, and jazz was my way of doing that,” Norman Granz told Tad Hershorn during the final interviews given for this book. Granz, who died in 2001, was iconoclastic, independent, immensely influential, often thoroughly unpleasant—and one of jazz’s true giants. Granz played an essential part in bringing jazz to audiences around the world, defying racial and social prejudice as he did so, and demanding that African-American performers be treated equally everywhere they toured. In this definitive biography, Hershorn recounts Granz’s story: creator of the legendary jam session concerts known as Jazz at the Philharmonic; founder of the Verve record label; pioneer of live recordings and worldwide jazz concert tours; manager and recording producer for numerous stars, including Ella Fitzgerald and Oscar Peterson.

The Elephantine Papyri in English: Three Millennia of Cross-Cultural Continuity and Change


Bezalel Porten - 2011
    

Coping with the Human Condition - Living an Examined, a Disciplined and a Charitable Life


Socrates - 2011
    People approach thier lives from a variety of directions some of which are more adaptive than others. Those who live egocentric and disolute lives often later in life rue the day that they have been so foolish. If one looks to the great minds of the past such as Socrates (whose bust at the Lourve graces the cover of this book) and St. Paul and others, however, he will find guidelines that may make his life easier and perhaps even fulfilling - so that whether he looks forward to a life after death or only to "the dying of the light," he will have few grounds for regret.

Helping Teens Stop Violence, Build Community, and Stand for Justice


Allan Creighton - 2011
    It is also a training manual for adults who want to become effective allies to young people and develop the skills needed so that they can facilitate community building among youth. Adults are encouraged to see young people not as a problem but the key to the solution. The authors have decades of experience in youth education and social justice activism and provide a clear theoretical framework for their approach to social justice education. On the practical level, workshop guidelines and outlines are included for facilitating discussion and sharing around sensitive topics of oppression, the "isms" — racism, sexism, adultism — as well as gender issues, immigration, religion, ability and access. This program presents a positive framework that draws out the experience, strength, and idealism of young people while speaking to the issues they care about today.