Best of
Social-Science

1991

There are No Children Here: The Story of Two Boys Growing Up in the Other America


Alex Kotlowitz - 1991
    This is the moving and powerful account of two remarkable boys struggling to survive in Chicago's Henry Horner Homes, a public housing complex disfigured by crime and neglect.

Savage Inequalities: Children in America's Schools


Jonathan Kozol - 1991
    National Book Award-winning author Jonathan Kozol presents his shocking account of the American educational system in this stunning "New York Times" bestseller, which has sold more than 250,000 hardcover copies."An impassioned book, laced with anger and indignation, about how our public education system scorns so many of our children." -- New York Times Book Review

Generations: The History of America's Future, 1584 to 2069


William Strauss - 1991
    Their bold theory is that each generation belongs to one of four types, and that these types repeat sequentially in a fixed pattern. The vision of Generations allows us to plot a recurring cycle in American history—a cycle of spiritual awakenings and secular crises—from the founding colonists through the present day and well into this millenium.Generations is at once a refreshing historical narrative and a thrilling intuitive leap that reorders not only our history books but also our expectations for the twenty-first century.

The Eyes on the Prize Civil Rights Reader: Documents, Speeches, and Firsthand Accounts from the Black Freedom Struggle


Clayborne Carson - 1991
    Included are speeches by Martin Luther King Jr, and his "Letter from Birmingham City Jail", an interview with Rosa Parks, selections from "Malcolm X Speaks"; Black Panther Bobby Seale's "Seize the Time", a piece by Herman Badillo on the infamous Attica prison uprising; addresses by Harold Washington, Jesse Jackson, Nelson Mandela and much more.

In the Absence of the Sacred: The Failure of Technology & the Survival of the Indian Nations


Jerry Mander - 1991
    "Will interest all readers concerned about our environment and quality of life."-- Publishers Weekly.

The True and Only Heaven: Progress and Its Critics


Christopher Lasch - 1991
    Opposing this materialist view is the idea that condemns a boundless appetite for more and better goods and distrusts "improvements" that only feed desire. Tracing the opposition to the idea of progress from Rousseau through Montesquieu to Carlyle, Max Weber and G.D.H. Cole, Lasch finds much that is desirable in a turn toward moral conservatism, toward a lower-middle-class culture that features egalitarianism, workmanship and loyalty, and recognizes the danger of resentment of the material goods of others.

Deterring Democracy


Noam Chomsky - 1991
    The major shifts in global politics that came about with the dismantling of the Eastern bloc have left the United States unchallenged as the preeminent military power, but American economic might has declined drastically in the face of competition, first from Germany and Japan ad more recently from newly prosperous countries elsewhere. In Deterring Democracy, the impassioned dissident intellectual Noam Chomsky points to the potentially catastrophic consequences of this new imbalance. Chomsky reveals a world in which the United States exploits its advantage ruthlessly to enforce its national interests--and in the process destroys weaker nations. The new world order (in which the New World give the orders) has arrived.

Witness for the Defense: The Accused, the Eyewitness, and the Expert Who Puts Memory on Trial


Elizabeth F. Loftus - 1991
    In the next few years I wrote dozens of papers about how memory works and how it fails, but unlike most researchers studying memory, my work kept reaching out into the real world. To what extent, I wondered, could a person's memory be shaped by suggestion? When people witness a serious automobile accident, how accurate is their recollection of the facts? If a witness is questioned by a police officer, will the manner of questioning alter the representation of the memory? Can memories be supplemented with additional, false information?"The "passion" Loftus describes in the lines above led her to a teaching career at the University of Washington and, perhaps more importantly, into hundreds of courtrooms as an expert witness on the fallibility of eyewitness accounts. As she has explained in numerous trials, and as she convincingly argues in this absorbing book, eyewitness accounts can be and often are so distorted that they no longer resemble the truth.

Situated Learning


Jean Lave - 1991
    The authors maintain that learning viewed as situated activity has as its central defining characteristic a process they call legitimate peripheral participation. Learners participate in communities of practitioners, moving toward full participation in the sociocultural practices of a community. Legitimate peripheral participation provides a way to speak about crucial relations between newcomers and oldtimers and about their activities, identities, artifacts, knowledge and practice. The communities discussed in the book are midwives, tailors, quartermasters, butchers, and recovering alcoholics, however, the process by which participants in those communities learn can be generalized to other social groups.

The Development Dictionary: A Guide to Knowledge as Power


Wolfgang Sachs - 1991
    Exposing their historical obsolescence and intellectual sterility, the authors call for a bidding farewell to the whole Eurocentric development idea. This is urgently needed, they argue, in order to liberate people’s minds - in both North and South - for bold responses to the environmental and ethical challenges now confronting humanity.These essays are an invitation to experts, grassroots movements and students of development to recognize the tainted glasses they put on whenever they participate in the development discourse.

In the House of the Riddle Mother: The Most Common Archetypal Motifs in Women's Dreams


Clarissa Pinkola Estés - 1991
    Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estes compares each one to a riddle. Once solved, it can provide a surprising answer to an unresolved question buried within the psyche. On In the House of the Riddle Mother, Estes surveys the most common archetypal patterns women experience while dreaming. Based on 20 years of work, this audio seminar is a dense, poetic storehouse of information about the dream life of women. Information is divided into 17 instructive sections, each devoted to analyzing distinct dream motifs.

The Satir Model: Family Therapy and Beyond


Virginia Satir - 1991
    In clear, plain terms, it details her theoretical position, her strategy in therapy, and how she tailored her interventions to address people's particular issues.

Understanding the Human Being: The Importance of the First Three Years of Life


Silvana Q. Montanaro - 1991
    The Importance of the First Three Years of Life

Inequality Reexamined


Amartya Sen - 1991
    He argues for concentrating on higher and more basic values: individual capabilities and freedom to achieve objectives. By concentrating on the equity and efficiency of social arrangements in promoting freedoms and capabilities of individuals, Sen adds an important new angle to arguments about such vital issues as gender inequalities, welfare policies, affirmative action, and public provision of health care and education.

Powerful Days: Civil Rights Photography of Charles Moore


Andrew Young - 1991
    Powerful Days is powerful stuff. The freedom marchers look as heroic as Iwo Jima Marines fighting their way up a mountain--which just about what they had to do.--Newsweek Mr. Moore's stark, crisp photos of freedom marchers beset by police dogs and fire hoses . . . helped to shape the nation's conscience. . . . [This book] contains many images that will be wrenchingly familiar to those who lived through the proud moral turning point in American history, and that might serve to inspire younger generations.--New York Times Book Review Every once in a while we receive a well-documented treasure of American history. This collection is such a treasure. . . . [Moore's] black-and-white photos of that era are classics of photojournalism, and as Powerful Days documents, those classics have lost none of their force and energy.--Southern Living

The Forest and the Trees


Allan G. Johnson - 1991
    It is about what that insight is and why it matters that we understand it, use it, and pass it on. It is about the future of a discipline whose influence and credibility will stand or fall on the ability to foster a clear and widespread understanding of what it means to think sociologically."An inspiring resource. . . . I highly recommend this book as a very useful teaching aid for introductory sociology in the Berger and Mills traditions."The Canadian Review of Sociology and Anthropology"Johnson’s discussion is masterful."Choice

On Justification: Economies of Worth


Luc Boltanski - 1991
    Individuals, however, often misread situations, and many disagreements can be explained by people appealing, knowingly and unknowingly, to different principles. On Justification is the first English translation of Luc Boltanski and Laurent Thévenot’s ambitious theoretical examination of these phenomena, a book that has already had a huge impact on French sociology and is likely to have a similar influence in the English-speaking world.In this foundational work of post-Bourdieu sociology, the authors examine a wide range of situations where people justify their actions. The authors argue that justifications fall into six main logics exemplified by six authors: civic (Rousseau), market (Adam Smith), industrial (Saint-Simon), domestic (Bossuet), inspiration (Augustine), and fame (Hobbes). The authors show how these justifications conflict, as people compete to legitimize their views of a situation.On Justification is likely to spark important debates across the social sciences.

Black-On-Black Violence: The Psychodynamics of Black Self-Annihilation in Service of White Domination


Amos N. Wilson - 1991
    Author, Amos N. Wilson. Criminology, Psychology, African Studies. Afrikan World Infosystems, New York, Publishers. Printed in the USA. Fourth Printing, Feb. 1994. Total 204 pages. Glossy covers (red & white boards with black and white lettering). The pages are clean and the spine is tight and straight. Very light shelf wear. Excellent book! "The psychodynamics of black self annihilation in service of white domination." Contents include: "The sociopolitical necessity of black criminality; Quantifying a myth: Statistics and black criminality; American society - crimogenic society; The creation of the black on black criminal; The identity crisis of the black on black criminal; Self alienation; Inculcating the beast; Chasing the American Mirage; Dreams without means; Suicide; Cosmic causation; and The neutralization of black on black violence and more. "This is a revolutionary book." Not easily found in just any used book store. Don't let this one get away! Priced right! *8BC2

Voices of the First Day: Awakening in the Aboriginal Dreamtime


Robert Lawlor - 1991
    In this absorbing work, Lawlor explores the essence of their culture as a source of and guide to transforming our own world view. While not romanticizing the past or suggesting a return to the life of the hunter/gatherer, Voices of the First Day enables us to enter into the mentality of the oldest continuous culture on earth and gain insight into our own relationship with the earth and to each other.This book offers an opportunity to suspend our values, prejudices, and Eurocentrism and step into the Dreaming to discover:• A people who rejected agriculture, architecture, writing, clothing, and the subjugation of animals• A lifestyle of hunting and gathering that provided abundant food of unsurpassed nutritional value • Initiatic and ritual practices that hold the origins of all esoteric, yogic, magical, and shamanistic traditions • A sexual and emotional life that afforded diversity and fluidity as well as marital and social stability • A people who valued kinship, community, and the law of the Dreamtime as their greatest "possessions." • Language whose richness of structure and vocabulary reveals new worlds of perception and comprehension. • A people balanced between the Dreaming and the perceivable world, in harmony with all species and living each day as the First Day. Voices of the First Day is illustrated throughout with more than 100 extraordinary photographs, bark paintings, line drawings and engravings. Many of these photographs are among the earliest ever made of the Aboriginal people and are shown here for the first time.

Formations of Violence: The Narrative of the Body and Political Terror in Northern Ireland


Allen Feldman - 1991
    . . . Simply put, this book is a feast for the intellect"—Thomas M. Wilson, American Anthropologist"One of the best books to have been written on Northern Ireland. . . . A highly imagination and significant book. Formations of Violence is an important addition to the literature on political violence."—David E. Schmitt, American Political Science Review

Mama Lola: A Vodou Priestess in Brooklyn


Karen McCarthy Brown - 1991
    She explores the importance of women's religious practices along with related themes of family and of social change. Weaving several of her own voices--analytic, descriptive, and personal--with the voices of her subjects in alternate chapters of traditional ethnography and ethnographic fiction, Brown presents herself as a character in Mama Lola's world and allows the reader to evaluate her interactions there. Startlingly original, Brown's work endures as an important experiment in ethnography as a social art form rooted in human relationships. A new preface, epilogue, bibliography, and a collection of family photographs tell the story of the effect of the book's publication on Mama Lola's life.

The Wages of Whiteness: Race and the Making of the American Working Class


David R. Roediger - 1991
    The author surveys criticisms of his work, accepting many such criticisms while challenging others, especially the view that the study of working-class racism implies a rejection of Marxism and radical politics.

Advanced Microeconomic Theory


Geoffrey Alexander Jehle - 1991
    Complex theory is patiently and carefully developed, then clearly explained and illustrated. Because even the well-prepared students profit from more math. Careful explanations, efficient theorem-proof organization, and many examples and exercises make this a uniquely effective text for advanced courses. Students will appreciate the clear writing and accessible style. *NEW! Chapter on Auction and Mechanism Design. One of the hottest areas in economics today! *NEW! Math Appendix. Even well prepared students profit from additional math training. *Thoroughly updated throughout to reflect the latest data and theories. *An easily accessible style. *Presents core mathematics, neoclassical theory, game theory, and information economics needed to access the modern professional literature.

A History of the Spanish Language


Ralph Penny - 1991
    This edition also contains a glossary of technical terms, guidance on further reading and suggested topics for discussion.

Order Without Law: How Neighbors Settle Disputes


Robert C. Ellickson - 1991
    He demonstrates that people largely govern themselves by means of informal rules--social norms--that develop without the aid of a state or other central coordinator. Integrating the latest scholarship in law, economics, sociology, game theory, and anthropology, Ellickson investigates the uncharted world within which order is successfully achieved without law.The springboard for Ellickson's theory of norms is his close investigation of a variety of disputes arising from the damage created by escaped cattle in Shasta County, California. In "The Problem of Social Cost"--the most frequently cited article on law--economist Ronald H. Coase depicts farmers and ranchers as bargaining in the shadow of the law while resolving cattle-trespass disputes. Ellickson's field study of this problem refutes many of the behavioral assumptions that underlie Coase's vision, and will add realism to future efforts to apply economic analysis to law.Drawing examples from a wide variety of social contexts, including whaling grounds, photocopying centers, and landlord-tenant relations, Ellickson explores the interaction between informal and legal rules and the usual domains in which these competing systems are employed. Order without Law firmly grounds its analysis in real-world events, while building a broad theory of how people cooperate to mutual advantage.

The Person and the Situation: Perspectives of Social Psychology


Lee Ross - 1991
    How does the situation we're in influence the way we behave and think? Professors Ross and Nisbett eloquently argue that the context we find ourselves in substantially affects our behavior in this timely reissue of one of social psychology's classic textbooks.

Pedagogy Of The City


Paulo Freire - 1991
    Freire describes the everyday struggles, political as well as administrative, fought in the urban schools of Sao Paulo during Freire's recent 10-year tenure as minister of education.

A Different Hunger: Writings on Black Resistance


Ambalavaner Sivanandan - 1991
    A collection of Sivanandan's work charting the history of post war black struggles against British racism

The Nature of the Firm: Origins, Evolution, and Development


Oliver E. Williamson - 1991
    Coase published The Nature of the Firm, a classic paper that raised fundamental questions about the concept of the firm in economic theory. Coase proposed that the comparative costs of organizing transactions through markets rather than within firms are the primary determinants of the size and scope of firms. Coase won the 1991 Nobel Prize in Economics for this work. This volume derives from a conference held in 1987 to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of Coase's classic article. The first chapter affords an overview of the volume. It is followed by a republication of the 1937 article, and by the three lectures Coase presented at the conference. These lectures provide a lively and informative history of the origins and development of his thought. Subsequent chapters explore a wide-range of theoretical and empirical issues that have arisen in the transaction cost economic tradition. They illustrate the power of the transaction cost approach to enhance understanding not only of business firms, but of problems of economic organization generally. In addition to Coase's work, contributors include Sherwin Rosen, Paul Joskow, Oliver Hart, Harold Demsetz, Scott Masten, Benjamin Klein, as well as the volume's editors, Oliver E. Williamson, and Sidney G. Winter. The Nature of the Firm includes Coase's acceptance speech for his Nobel Prize in Economics.

Revolution and Rebellion in the Early Modern World


Jack A. Goldstone - 1991
    Moreover, he contends that the causes of the great revolutions of Europe—the English and French revolutions—were similar to those of the great rebellions of Asia, which shattered dynasties in Ottoman Turkey, China, and Japan.The author observes that revolutions and rebellions have more often produced a crushing state orthodoxy than liberal institutions, leading to the conclusion that perhaps it is vain to expect revolution to bring democracy and economic progress. Instead, contends Goldstone, the path to these goals must begin with respect for individual liberty rather than authoritarian movements of 'national liberation.'Arguing that the threat of revolution is still with us, Goldstone urges us to heed the lessons of the past. He sees in the United States a repetition of the behavior patterns that have led to internal decay and international decline in the past, a situation calling for new leadership and careful attention to the balance between our consumption and our resources.Meticulously researched, forcefully argued, and strikingly original, Revolutions and Rebellions in the Early Modern World is a tour de force by a brilliant young scholar. It is a book that will surely engender much discussion and debate.

The Foucault Effect: Studies in Governmentality


Michel Foucault - 1991
    In these lectures, Foucault examines the art or activity of government both in its present form and within a historical perspective as well as the different ways governmentality has been made thinkable and practicable.Foucault's thoughts on political discourse and governmentality are supplemented by the essays of internationally renowned scholars. United by the common influence of Foucault's approach, they explore the many modern manifestations of government: the reason of state, police, liberalism, security, social economy, insurance, solidarity, welfare, risk management, and more. The central theme is that the object and the activity of government are not instinctive and natural things, but things that have been invented and learned.The Foucault Effect analyzes the thought behind practices of government and argues that criticism represents a true force for change in attitudes and actions, and that extending the limits of some practices allows the invention of others. This unique and extraordinarily useful collection of articles and primary materials will open the way for a whole new set of discussions of the work of Michel Foucault as well as the status of liberalism, social policy, and insurance.

The Nervous System


Michael Taussig - 1991
    Based on anthropological fieldwork in Australia and Colombia, this collection of essays uses the workings of the human nervous system to illustrate concepts of culture.

Post-Modernism and the Social Sciences: Insights, Inroads, and Intrusions


Pauline M. Vaillancourt Rosenau - 1991
    In this comprehensive assessment of post-modernism, Pauline Rosenau traces its origins in the humanities and describes how its key concepts are today being applied to, and are restructuring, the social sciences. Serving as neither an opponent nor an apologist for the movement, she cuts through post-modernism's often incomprehensible jargon in order to offer all readers a lucid exposition of its propositions. Rosenau shows how the post-modern challenge to reason and rational organization radiates across academic fields. For example, in psychology it questions the conscious, logical, coherent subject; in public administration it encourages a retreat from central planning and from reliance on specialists; in political science it calls into question the authority of hierarchical, bureaucratic decision-making structures that function in carefully defined spheres; in anthropology it inspires the protection of local, primitive cultures from First World attempts to reorganize them. In all of the social sciences, she argues, post-modernism repudiates representative democracy and plays havoc with the very meaning of left-wing and right-wing. Rosenau also highlights how post-modernism has inspired a new generation of social movements, ranging from New Age sensitivities to Third World fundamentalism. In weighing its strengths and weaknesses, the author examines two major tendencies within post-modernism, the largely European, skeptical form and the predominantly Anglo-North-American form, which suggests alternative political, social, and cultural projects. She draws examples from anthropology, economics, geography, history, international relations, law, planning, political science, psychology, sociology, urban studies, and women's studies, and provides a glossary of post-modern terms to assist the uninitiated reader with special meanings not found in standard dictionaries.

Action and Knowledge: Breaking the Monopoly with Participatory Action Research


Orlando Fals Borda - 1991
    PAR is an innovative approach to economic and social change, which goes beyond usual institutional boundaries in development by actively involving the people in generating knowledge about their own condition and how it can be changed. PAR requires a strong commitment by participating social scientists to deprofessionalize their expertise and share it with the people, while recognizing that the communities directly involved have the critical voice in determining the direction and goals of change as subjects rather than objects. PAR has its origins in the work of Third World social scientists more than three decades ago as they brought new ways to empower the oppressed by helping them to acquire reliable knowledge on which to construct countervailing power. It has since spread throughout the world, as reflected in this book with contributions from Asia, Africa Latin America and North America in the form of case studies of actual experience with the PAR approach. PAR is not static and fixed but dynamic and enduring, as the case studies and the theoretical chapters that precede and follow the case studies amply reveal.

Taming the Wind of Desire: Psychology, Medicine, and Aesthetics in Malay Shamanistic Performance


Carol Laderman - 1991
    These healing ceremonies, formerly viewed by Western anthropologists as exotic curiosities, actually reveal complex multicultural origins and a unique indigenous medical tradition whose psychological content is remarkably relevant to contemporary Western concerns.Accepted as apprentice to a Malay shaman, Carol Laderman learned and recorded every aspect of the healing seance and found it comparable in many ways to the traditional dramas of Southeast Asia and of other cultures such as ancient Greece, Japan, and India. The Malay seance is a total performance, complete with audience, stage, props, plot, music, and dance. The players include the patient along with the shaman and his troupe. At the center of the drama are pivotal relationships—among people, between humans and spirits, and within the self. The best of the Malay shamans are superb poets, dramatists, and performers as well as effective healers of body and soul.

Geography and Trade


Paul Krugman - 1991
    Krugman observes that his own shortcomings in ignoring economic geography have been shared by many professional economists, primarily because of the lack of explanatory models. In Geography and Trade he provides a stimulating synthesis of ideas in the literature and describes new models for implementing a study of economic geography that could change the nature of the field. Economic theory usually assumes away distance. Krugman argues that it is time to put it back - that the location of production in space is a key issue both within and between nations.

The Complexity of Cooperation: Agent-Based Models of Competition and Collaboration


Robert Axelrod - 1991
    He is a leader in applying computer modeling to social science problems. His book The Evolution of Cooperation has been hailed as a seminal contribution and has been translated into eight languages since its initial publication. The Complexity of Cooperation is a sequel to that landmark book. It collects seven essays, originally published in a broad range of journals, and adds an extensive new introduction to the collection, along with new prefaces to each essay and a useful new appendix of additional resources. Written in Axelrod's acclaimed, accessible style, this collection serves as an introductory text on complexity theory and computer modeling in the social sciences and as an overview of the current state of the art in the field.The articles move beyond the basic paradigm of the Prisoner's Dilemma to study a rich set of issues, including how to cope with errors in perception or implementation, how norms emerge, and how new political actors and regions of shared culture can develop. They use the shared methodology of agent-based modeling, a powerful technique that specifies the rules of interaction between individuals and uses computer simulation to discover emergent properties of the social system. The Complexity of Cooperation is essential reading for all social scientists who are interested in issues of cooperation and complexity.

Border Crossings: Cultural Workers and the Politics of Education


Henry A. Giroux - 1991
    With discussions of topics including the struggle over academic canon, the role of popular culture in the curriculum and the cultural war the New Right has waged on schools, Giroux identified the most pressing issues facing critical educators at the turn of the century. In this revised edition, Giroux reflects on the limits and possibilities of border crossings in the 21st century. "Borders" in our post 9/11 world have not been collapsing, he argues, but vigorously rebuilt. In order to have a truly critically engaged citizenry the challenges of these new "borders"- such as the increased militarization of public spaces, the rise of neo-liberalism, and the war in Iraq- must play a vital role in any debate on school and pedagogy.

The Old Man Told Us


Ruth Holmes Whitehead - 1991
    Her publications include Six Micmac Stories, The Mi'kmaq, How Their Ancestors Lived Five Hundred Years Ago, Micmac Quillwork, and Elitekey.

Rival States, Rival Firms: Competition for World Market Shares


John M. Stopford - 1991
    They show how global structural changes often impel governments to seek the cooperation of managers of multinational enterprises, but within the constraints of each country's economic resources, social structures and history. Using research into the experience of over fifty multinationals and one hundred investment projects in Brazil, Malaysia and Kenya, the authors develop a matrix of agendas. They present the impact on projects of the multiple factors affecting the bargaining relationships between the government and the foreign firm at different times and in a variety of economic sectors.

Cosmic Crystal Spiral


Ronald Bonewitz - 1991
    

Talk and Social Structure: Studies in Ethnomethodology and Conversation Analysis


Deirdre Boden - 1991
    This collection of original essays offers a new and different perspective that sees talk as the fundamental framework of social interaction and social institutions.

Motives For Writing


Robert Keith Miller - 1991
    Including detailed guides to understanding and composing for motives such as analyzing texts, analyzing images, and writing arguments, this text features a wide range of high-interest readings and provides a rhetorically grounded approach to academic writing and research.

Milagros: Votive Offerings from the Americas: Votive Offerings from the Americas


Martha Egan - 1991
    This book traces the use and artistry of these small objects, which are offered to saints and other popular deities by Latin Americans in return for favors or answered prayers. The book contains sixteen color and fifty black-and-white photographs, as well as numerous line illustrations.

Animals and Society: The Humanity of Animal Rights


Keith Tester - 1991
    It attempts to raise far-reaching questions about the philosophy, history and politics of animal rights.

The Trouble with Confucianism


William Theodore de Bary - 1991
    In the face of such complications, only a scholar of Theodore de Bary's stature could venture broad answers to the question of the significance of Confucianism in today's world.