New emphasis has been given to complexity, networks, and patterns of organisation, leading to a novel kind of 'systemic' thinking. This volume integrates the ideas, models, and theories underlying the systems view of life into a single coherent framework. Taking a broad sweep through history and across scientific disciplines, the authors examine the appearance of key concepts such as autopoiesis, dissipative structures, social networks, and a systemic understanding of evolution. The implications of the systems view of life for health care, management, and our global ecological and economic crises are also discussed. Written primarily for undergraduates, it is also essential reading for graduate students and researchers interested in understanding the new systemic conception of life and its implications for a broad range of professions - from economics and politics to medicine, psychology and law.

    Over five years, business professor Pietra Rivoli traveled from a Texas cotton field to a Chinese factory to a used clothing market in Africa, to investigate compelling questions about the politics, economics, ethics, and history of modern business and globalization. Using the story of the t-shirt to illustrate the major issues of the globalization debate, this uniquely entertaining business book offers a surprising, enlightening, and balanced look at one of the major topics of our time. It has won the prize or award - Business Book of the Year 2005, Finalist; AAP Awards for Excellence in Professional and Scholarly Publishing, 2006.

    “Read it and you will never think of civilization in the same way again.”—Kirkpatrick SaleThis anthology about "the pathology of civilization" offers insight into how progress and technology have led to emptiness and alienation.

    Today, in an age driven by the tyranny of the now, with 24/7 news, the latest tweet, and the buy-now button commanding our attention, we rarely stop to consider how our actions will affect future generations. With such frenetic short-termism at the root of contemporary crises, the call for long-term thinking grows every day – but what is it, has it ever worked, and can we even do it?In The Good Ancestor, leading public philosopher Roman Krznaric argues that there is still hope. From the pyramids to the NHS, humankind has always had the innate ability to plan for posterity and take action that will resonate for decades, centuries, even millennia to come. If we want to become good ancestors, now is the time to recover and enrich this imaginative skill.The Good Ancestor reveals six profound ways in which we can all learn to think long-term, exploring how we can reawaken oft-neglected but uniquely human talents like ‘cathedral thinking’ that expand our time horizons and sharpen our foresight. Drawing on radical solutions from around the world, Krznaric celebrates the innovators who are reinventing democracy, culture and economics so that we all have the chance to become good ancestors and create a better tomorrow.

    Jackie Benton in rural North Carolina. No Name Creek gurgled through Benton’s permaculture farm, and she stroked honeybees’ wings as she shared her wildcrafter philosophy of living on a planet in crisis. Powers, just back from a decade of international aid work, then accepted Benton’s offer to stay at the cabin for a season while she traveled. There, he befriended her eclectic neighbors — organic farmers, biofuel brewers, eco-developers — and discovered a sustainable but imperiled way of life.In these pages, Powers not only explores this small patch of community but draws on his international experiences with other pockets of resistance. This engrossing tale of Powers’s struggle for a meaningful life with a smaller footprint proposes a paradigm shift to an elusive “Soft World” with clues to personal happiness and global healing.

    The Geography of Nowhere tallies up the huge economic, social, and spiritual costs that America is paying for its car-crazed lifestyle. It is also a wake-up call for citizens to reinvent the places where we live and work, to build communities that are once again worthy of our affection. Kunstler proposes that by reviving civic art and civic life, we will rediscover public virtue and a new vision of the common good. "The future will require us to build better places," Kunstler says, "or the future will belong to other people in other societies."The Geography of Nowhere has become a touchstone work in the two decades since its initial publication, its incisive commentary giving language to the feeling of millions of Americans that our nation's suburban environments were ceasing to be credible human habitats. Since that time, the work has inspired city planners, architects, legislators, designers and citizens everywhere. In this special 20th Anniversary edition, dozens of authors and experts in various fields share their perspective on James Howard Kunstler's brave and seminal work.

    Freedom, Sen argues, is both the end and most efficient means of sustaining economic life and the key to securing the general welfare of the world's entire population. Releasing the idea of individual freedom from association with any particular historical, intellectual, political, or religious tradition, Sen clearly demonstrates its current applicability and possibilities. In the new global economy, where, despite unprecedented increases in overall opulence, the contemporary world denies elementary freedoms to vast numbers—perhaps even the majority of people—he concludes, it is still possible to practically and optimistically regain a sense of social accountability. Development as Freedom is essential reading.

    Deibert exposes the disturbing influence and impact of the internet on politics, the economy, the environment, and humanity.Digital technologies have given rise to a new machine-based civilization that is increasingly linked to a growing number of social and political maladies. Accountability is weak and insecurity is endemic, creating disturbing opportunities for exploitation. Drawing from the cutting-edge research of the Citizen Lab, the world-renowned digital security research group which he founded and directs, Ronald J. Deibert exposes the impacts of this communications ecosystem on civil society. He tracks a mostly unregulated surveillance industry, innovations in technologies of remote control, superpower policing practices, dark PR firms, and highly profitable hack-for-hire services feeding off rivers of poorly secured personal data. Deibert also unearths how dependence on social media and its expanding universe of consumer electronics creates immense pressure on the natural environment. In order to combat authoritarian practices, environmental degradation, and rampant electronic consumerism, he urges restraints on tech platforms and governments to reclaim the internet for civil society.

    Knowing where we're headed collectively is a crucial step in responding constructively to the challenges of the future and doing what we can now to help our descendants make the most of the world we're leaving them.John Michael Greer, historian of ideas and one of the most influential authors exploring the future of industrial society, writes the widely cited weekly blog the Archdruid Report and has published more than thirty books including The Long Descent, The Ecotechnic Future, The Wealth of Nature, and After Progress. He lives in Cumberland, Maryland, an old mill town in the Appalachians, with his wife Sara.

    This could explain the deadly cocktail of exploding inequalities, massive deregulation, and conversion of the dream of globalization into a nightmare for most people.What holds these three phenomena together is the conviction, shared by some powerful people, that the ecological threat is real and that the only way for them to survive is to abandon any pretense at sharing a common future with the rest of the world. Hence their flight offshore and their massive investment in climate change denial.The Left has been slow to turn its attention to this new situation. It is still organized along an axis that goes from investment in local values to the hope of globalization and just at the time when, everywhere, people dissatisfied with the ideal of modernity are turning back to the protection of national or even ethnic borders.This is why it is urgent to shift sideways and to define politics as what leads toward the Earth and not toward the global or the national. Belonging to a territory is the phenomenon most in need of rethinking and careful redescription; learning new ways to inhabit the Earth is our biggest challenge. Bringing us down to earth is the task of politics today.

    Written by a prominent social work leader and trainer for social work licensing exams in the U.S., this guide is based on years of time-tested exam prep workshops conducted by the author. It mirrors the ASWB Clinical "Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities” upon which the exam is based, as well as incorporates information from the DSM-5, which will be included in the exam starting in mid-2015. The guide is comprehensive yet focuses on the material most likely to be included on the exam, so that students can prioritize information as they study. A self-assessment section helps readers identify their strengths and weaknesses before they tackle the material. The author shares her extensive knowledge of the exam by providing useful test-taking strategies and tips for overcoming test anxiety. The 170-question practice test at the end of the guide (with explanations of the correct answers) mirrors the actual exam in both length and structure. Content covers human development, human behavior in the environment, diversity, addictions, assessment and diagnosis, treatment planning, clinical interventions, case management, and professional values and ethics. This book will be a valuable asset for students and aspiring social workers throughout the U.S. and Canada. Key Features: Developed by a highly respected educator of social work licensure candidates Covers all the content areas on the examination, as well as new content added in 2015 Begins with a self-assessment section to help identify areas of strength and weakness Offers a wealth of test-taking tips and strategies to foster exam confidence Includes a practice test (with explanations of the correct answers) that mirrors the exam ASWB is a registered service mark of the Association of Social Work Boards, which neither sponsors nor endorses this product.

    This remarkable transformation has required, and willcontinue to demand, massive quantities of resources. Like every other major power in modern history, China is looking outward to find them.In By All Means Necessary, Elizabeth C. Economy and Michael Levi explore the unrivaled expansion of the Chinese economy and the global effects of its meteoric growth. China is now engaged in a far-flung quest, hunting around the world for fuel, ores, water, and land for farming, and deployingwhatever it needs in the economic, political, and military spheres to secure the resources it requires. Chinese traders and investors buy commodities, with consequences for economies, people, and the environment around the world. Meanwhile the Chinese military aspires to secure sea lanes, andChinese diplomats struggle to protect the country's interests abroad. And just as surely as China's pursuit of natural resources is changing the world--restructuring markets, pushing up commodity prices, transforming resource-rich economies through investment and trade--it is also changing Chinaitself. As Chinese corporations increasingly venture abroad, they must navigate various political regimes, participate in international markets, and adopt foreign standards and practices, which can lead to wide-reaching social and political ramifications at home.Clear, authoritative, and provocative, By All Means Necessary is a sweeping account of where China's pursuit of raw materials may take the country in the coming years and what the consequences will be--not just for China, but for the whole world.

    The perception of public transportation in America is often unflattering—a squalid last resort for those with one too many drunk-driving charges, too poor to afford insurance, or too decrepit to get behind the wheel of a car. Indeed, a century of auto-centric culture and city planning has left most of the country with public transportation that is underfunded, ill maintained, and ill conceived. But as the demand for petroleum is fast outpacing the world's supply, a revolution in transportation is under way. Grescoe explores the ascendance of the straphangers—the growing number of people who rely on public transportation to go about the business of their daily lives. On a journey that takes him around the world—from New York to Moscow, Paris, Copenhagen, Tokyo, Bogotá, Phoenix, Portland, Vancouver, and Philadelphia—Grescoe profiles public transportation here and abroad, highlighting the people and ideas that may help undo the damage that car-centric planning has done to our cities and create convenient, affordable, and sustainable urban transportation—and better city living—for all.

    These signify a place's authenticity, in contrast to the bland standardization of the suburbs and exurbs. But as Sharon Zukin shows in Naked City, the rapid and pervasive demand for authenticity -- evident in escalating real estate prices, expensive stores, and closely monitored urban streetscapes -- has helped drive out the very people who first lent a neighborhood its authentic aura: immigrants, the working class, and artists. Zukin traces this economic and social evolution in six archetypal New York areas -- Williamsburg, Harlem, the East Village, Union Square, Red Hook, and the city's community gardens -- and travels to both the city's first IKEA store and the World Trade Center site. She shows that for followers of Jane Jacobs, this transformation is a perversion of what was supposed to happen. Indeed, Naked City is a sobering update of Jacobs' legendary 1961 book, The Death and Life of Great American Cities. Like Jacobs, Zukin looks at what gives neighborhoods a sense of place, but argues that over time, the emphasis on neighborhood distinctiveness has become a tool of economic elites to drive up real estate values and effectively force out the neighborhood "characters" that Jacobs so evocatively idealized. "This is scholarship with its boots on the ground, challenging us to look at the familiar in a new light." --The Boston Globe "A highly readable narrative...a revelation, no matter where you live." --The Austin Chronicle "Provocative." --San Francisco Chronicle

    This quick read is a must for new managers -- and also for senior managers who are seeking a framework to help newer managers avoid the common mistakes." - Dave Stachowiak, Host of the ‘Coaching for Leaders’ podcast Do you feel stressed and overwhelmed with tasks that you can’t keep up with? Are you struggling with the delegation of work to your employees?  Effective Delegation of Authority is a brief guide for new managers that will help you improve your delegation skills in simple steps.If you’re a manager or entrepreneur who leads three or more employees, then this book is for you.It’s a super-short book that’ll help you avoid the common mistakes that new managers make when delegating tasks.It includes a comprehensive step-by-step process that tells you exactly what to do before delegation, during delegation, and after delegation.You’ll also get immediately applicable tactics that you can implement straightway with your subordinates. Here’s a partial list of what’s covered:  How to determine what to delegate to your employees before starting the delegation process The method you should follow to decide who to delegate work to on your team The five traits that every task should have before you delegate it.  How to describe authority levels the right way before you delegate work How to avoid micromanaging your employees How to check in with your subordinates and give them meaningful feedback.  How to avoid being too prescriptive, while still giving your employees a good description of what they need to accomplish The most important thing you should do after you delegate a task to verify understanding Some examples of delegation to help you understand the concepts better A downloadable sample delegation template and one-page cheat sheet that you can use as quick reference guides The book is divided into three sections that will serve as your new manager checklist:   Section I: Before Delegation Step One: Determine What to Delegate Step Two: Determine Who to Delegate to Section II: During Delegation Step One: Explain the Task Clearly Step Two: Describe Goals, Not Actions Step Three: Give Clear Timelines