- Table View
- List View
From Neurons to Neighborhoods
by Institute of Medicine National Research Council Steve Olson Board on Children, Youth, and Families Division of Behavioral and Social Sciences and EducationFrom Neurons to Neighborhoods: An Update: Workshop Summary is based on the original study From Neurons to Neighborhoods: Early Childhood Development, which released in October of 2000. From the time of the original publication's release, much has occurred to cause a fundamental reexamination of the nation's response to the needs of young children and families, drawing upon a wealth of scientific knowledge that has emerged in recent decades. The study shaped policy agendas and intervention efforts at national, state, and local levels. It captured a gratifying level of attention in the United States and around the world and has helped to foster a highly dynamic and increasingly visible science of early childhood development. It contributed to a growing public understanding of the foundational importance of the early childhood years and has stimulated a global conversation about the unmet needs of millions of young children. Ten years later, the Board on Children, Youth, and Families of the Institute of Medicine (IOM) and the National Research Council (NRC) held a 2-day workshop in Washington, D.C., to review and commemorate a decade of advances related to the mission of the report. The workshop began with a series of highly interactive breakout sessions in which experts in early childhood development examined the four organizing themes of the original report and identified both measurable progress and remaining challenges. The second day of the workshop, speakers chosen for their diverse perspectives on early childhood research and policy issues discussed how to build on the accomplishments of the past decade and to launch the next era in early childhood science, policy, and practice. From Neurons to Neighborhoods: An Update: Workshop Summary emphasizes that there is a single, integrated science of early childhood development despite the extent to which it is carved up and divided among a diversity of professional disciplines, policy sectors, and service delivery systems. While much work still remains to be done to reach this goal, the 2010 workshop demonstrated both the promise of this integrated science and the rich diversity of contributions to that science.
From Neurons to Neighborhoods: The Science of Early Childhood Development
by Institute of Medicine Staff Jack P. Shonkoff Deborah A. Phillips Committee on Integrating the Science of Early Childhood Development Board on Children, Youth and Families StaffHow we raise young children is one of today's most highly personalized and sharply politicized issues, in part because each of us can claim some level of "expertise." The debate has intensified as discoveries about our development-in the womb and in the first months and years-have reached the popular media. How can we use our burgeoning knowledge to assure the well-being of all young children, for their own sake as well as for the sake of our nation? Drawing from new findings, this book presents important conclusions about nature-versus-nurture, the impact of being born into a working family, the effect of politics on programs for children, the costs and benefits of intervention, and other issues. The committee issues a series of challenges to decision makers regarding the quality of child care, issues of racial and ethnic diversity, the integration of children's cognitive and emotional development, and more. Authoritative yet accessible, From Neurons to Neighborhoods presents the evidence about "brain wiring" and how kids learn to speak, think, and regulate their behavior. It examines the effect of the climate-family, child care, community-within which the child grows.
From Notes to Narrative: Writing Ethnographies That Everyone Can Read (Chicago Guides to Writing, Editing, and Publishing)
by Kristen GhodseeEthnography centers on the culture of everyday life. So it is ironic that most scholars who do research on the intimate experiences of ordinary people write their books in a style that those people cannot understand. In recent years, the ethnographic method has spread from its original home in cultural anthropology to fields such as sociology, marketing, media studies, law, criminology, education, cultural studies, history, geography, and political science. Yet, while more and more students and practitioners are learning how to write ethnographies, there is little or no training on how to write ethnographies well. From Notes to Narrative picks up where methodological training leaves off. Kristen Ghodsee, an award-winning ethnographer, addresses common issues that arise in ethnographic writing. Ghodsee works through sentence-level details, such as word choice and structure. She also tackles bigger-picture elements, such as how to incorporate theory and ethnographic details, how to effectively deploy dialogue, and how to avoid distracting elements such as long block quotations and in-text citations. She includes excerpts and examples from model ethnographies. The book concludes with a bibliography of other useful writing guides and nearly one hundred examples of eminently readable ethnographic books.
From Numbers to Words: Reporting Statistical Results for the Social Sciences
by Tom Reichert Susan Morgan Tyler R. HarrisonThis invaluable resource guides readers through the process of creating scholarly, publishable prose from the results of quantitative experiments and investigations. It delves into the issues commonly encountered when reporting the results of statistical experiments and investigations, and provides instruction re the representation of these results in text and visual formats. This unique research companion serves as a must-have reference for advanced students doing quantitative research and working with statistics, with the goal of writing up and publishing their findings; it also serves as a useful refresher for experienced researchers.
From One Child to Two Children: Opportunities and Challenges for the One-child Generation Cohort in China
by Shibei NiThis book dissects the reproductive intentions and behaviours of the one-child generation cohort in China, situated in the wider context of changing family life patterns and gendered lenses. Demonstrating that the one-child family is still favoured by the one-child generation, this book uncovers the socioeconomic dimensions and mechanisms of family relations underlying young people’s decision-making processes. It also incorporates individual considerations and experiences of childbearing from over 50 interviews to contribute to the development of China's social policy. Whereas men’s childbearing beliefs were relatively unexplored in the literature, the author included male interviewees to better reflect gender differences in relation to childbearing, employment and family. Analysing the relationship between life routine and the desire (or lack thereof) to increase China's population, the author argues that the current childbearing policy fails to accommodate the needs and demands of young people, thus limiting the uptake of China’s new policy.
From Oppression to Assertion: Women and Panchayats in India
by Nirmala BuchThe book explores the experiences, impact and responses of women in village panchayats in India after a Constitutional Amendment in 1992 made it mandatory to reserve one-third positions for women. Based on extensive field research with interviews of 1,200 panchayat representatives and community members in Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh (states usually seen as low on social and gender indicators), the book documents awareness, motivation, perceptions, and participation levels of women elected in the first election following the Amendment, with a follow-up survey of the same panchayats in the next two elections. This work maps the empowering impact on women’s self, the attitudes and perceptions of the family and responses of other social institutions. It explodes the myth of women’s disinterest in politics, the entry of only affluent women and relatives of influential politicians, and particularly, of these women as proxy for their male kin. The recent policy announcements reserving more seats for women in panchayats (from one-third to one-half) makes this book topical, and especially interesting in light of the opposition to the reservation of seats for women in state legislatures and the parliament.
From Parents to Children: The Intergenerational Transmission of Advantage
by Timothy M. Smeeding John Ermisch Markus JanttiDoes economic inequality in one generation lead to inequality of opportunity in the next? In From Parents to Children, an esteemed international group of scholars investigates this question using data from ten countries with differing levels of inequality. The book compares whether and how parents' resources transmit advantage to their children at different stages of development and sheds light on the structural differences among countries that may influence intergenerational mobility. How and why is economic mobility higher in some countries than in others? The contributors find that inequality in mobility-relevant skills emerges early in childhood in all of the countries studied. Bruce Bradbury and his coauthors focus on learning readiness among young children and show that as early as age five, large disparities in cognitive and other mobility-relevant skills develop between low- and high-income kids, particularly in the United States and the United Kingdom. Such disparities may be mitigated by investments in early childhood education, as Christelle Dumas and Arnaud Lefranc demonstrate. They find that universal pre-school education in France lessens the negative effect of low parental SES and gives low-income children a greater shot at social mobility. Katherine Magnuson, Jane Waldfogel, and Elizabeth Washbrook find that income-based gaps in cognitive achievement in the United States and the United Kingdom widen as children reach adolescence. Robert Haveman and his coauthors show that the effect of parental income on test scores increases as children age; and in both the United States and Canada, having parents with a higher income betters the chances that a child will enroll in college. As economic inequality in the United States continues to rise, the national policy conversation will not only need to address the devastating effects of rising inequality in this generation but also the potential consequences of the decline in mobility from one generation to the next. Drawing on unparalleled international datasets, From Parents to Children provides an important first step.
From Pauperism to Poverty (Routledge Library Editions: The History of Social Welfare #24)
by Karel WilliamsFirst published in 1981, From Pauperism to Poverty consists of seven essays, three of which focus on the English poor law between 1800 and 1914 and four of which examine texts of social investigation by Mayhew, Engels, Booth and Rowntree. Rather than making a specialist contribution to the history of social thought and policy, the essays raise general questions about current ways of writing history and alternative analyses of specific texts or institutions are developed. In doing so, the previous histories of the relief of pauperism and the discovery of poverty are revised at many points. Most notably, it is demonstrated for the first time that relief to unemployed men was virtually abolished after 1850. This book will be of interest to those studying the history of social welfare and poverty.
From Persons to People: A Second Primer in Demography
by William PetersenProblems associated with aggregation and classification are the underlying theme of this book. When data assembled from individuals are presented as group characteristics, this process has logical complications. Racial profiling and ethnic discrimination are obvious examples of the problem. Petersen's book analyzes in general how information from "persons" turns into statistics about specific "people." The book is divided into two parts covering population and ethnicity. The first two chapters in part 1, on population statistics and the age-sex structure, are the foundations for any demographic analysis. Chapter 3 is a brief review of the interminable debate over whether the subsistence of mankind is on the point of depletion. The three following chapters are on population theory as expounded by Malthus, Marx, and Communists. Chapters 7 and 8 discuss the competition between parents and the state concerning which of the two shall decide on procreation. Chapter 9 is an account of population at the frontier, using Nevada as a prototype. The last chapter in part 1 is a proposal, to moderate the endless debate about abortion. The first two chapters in the second part of the book concern methods for analyzing ethnicity that are essential for a full understanding of demography: how and by whom ethnic groups are defined. The next chapter discusses some of the many subdivisions of European nations, countering the analyses of European unity with the fact that most of its regions are not themselves homogeneous. In a number of instances American statistical agencies have used surnames to identify nationalities, with invalid results, as the author shows in the next chapter. "Jews as a Race" is an attempt to counter Nazi dogma with a rational analysis of a contentious topic. The subsequent chapters compare Japanese and Chinese Americans as small but fascinating minorities and analyze the social consequences of religion from theoretical and factual viewpoints. The last chapter summarizes the conclusions to be drawn from these topics. Demographers, sociologists, and statisticians, as well as those generally concerned with social policy, will find From Persons to People useful and courageous-the hallmark of the dean of sociological demography. .
From Perverts to Fab Five: The Media's Changing Depiction of Gay Men and Lesbians
by Rodger StreitmatterFrom "Perverts" to "Fab Five" tracks the dramatic change in how the American media have depicted gay people over the last half-century. Each chapter illuminates a particular media product that served as a milestone on the media's journey from demonizing homosexuals some fifty years ago to celebrating gay people--or at least some categories of gay people--today. The media, Streitmatter argues, have not merely reflected the American public's shift to a more enlightened view of gay people, but they have been instrumental in propelling that change. The book spans the breadth of communication venues. Individual chapters focus on major news stories, entertainment television programs, and mainstream motion pictures that captured the public imagination while, at the same time, sending powerful messages about gay men and lesbians. Ideal for any reader interested in the changing depiction of gay men and lesbians in the media over time, or as required reading in media courses.
From Pilgrimage to Package Tour: Travel and Tourism in the Third World
by David L. GladstoneWhen people in First World countries think of tourists in the vast expanses of the Third World today, they typically think of pampered westerners, filling up the luxury hotels and imposing their Orientalist gazes on the teeming masses. As David Gladstone shows us in this fascinating and provocative book, such preconceptions are wrong. Coupling incisive and colorful ethnographic accounts of tourism in India and Mexico with sharp analysis, Gladstone demonstrates the amazing complexity of this industry, which now comprises close to ten percent of the world economy. As he also shows, the vast majority of tourists in the Third World are indigenous people with few resources-often making pilgrimages to religious shrines.From Pilgrimage to Package Tour is a fresh and entirely original account that stands tourism studies on its head and proves that this industry is far more complicated than it initially appears.
From Pleasure Machines to Moral Communities: An Evolutionary Economics without Homo economicus
by Geoffrey M. HodgsonAre humans at their core seekers of their own pleasure or cooperative members of society? Paradoxically, they are both. Pleasure-seeking can take place only within the context of what works within a defined community, and central to any community are the evolved codes and principles guiding appropriate behavior, or morality. The complex interaction of morality and self-interest is at the heart of Geoffrey M. Hodgson's approach to evolutionary economics, which is designed to bring about a better understanding of human behavior. In From Pleasure Machines to Moral Communities, Hodgson casts a critical eye on neoclassical individualism, its foundations and flaws, and turns to recent insights from research on the evolutionary bases of human behavior. He focuses his attention on the evolution of morality, its meaning, why it came about, and how it influences human attitudes and behavior. This more nuanced understanding sets the stage for a fascinating investigation of its implications on a range of pressing issues drawn from diverse environments, including the business world and crucial policy realms like health care and ecology. This book provides a valuable complement to Hodgson's earlier work with Thorbjorn Knudsen on evolutionary economics in Darwin's Conjecture, extending the evolutionary outlook to include moral and policy-related issues.
From Polarisation to Multispecies Relationships: Re-Generation of the Commons in the Era of Mass Extinctions (Contemporary Systems Thinking)
by Yvonne Corcoran-Nantes Janet J. McIntyre-MillsThis book explores the concept of multi-species relationships and suggests critical systemic pathways to protect shared habitats. This book discusses how the eradication of species as a result of rapid urbanisation places humanity at risk. This book demonstrates how narrow anthropocentrism has focused on the rights of human beings at the expense of other species and the environment. This book explores a priori norms and a posteriori measures and indicators to include and protect multiple species. This book aims to strengthen institutional capacity and powers to address and extend the UN 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda by drawing on local wisdom but also the need to implement laws to prevent ecocide. This book highlights that our fragile interdependence requires a recognition of our hybridity and interconnectedness within the web of life and suggests ways to reframe policy within and beyond the nation state to support living systems of which we are a strand.
From Popular to Insurgent Intellectuals: Peasant Catechists in the Salvadoran Revolution
by Leigh BinfordFrom Popular to Insurgent Intellectuals explains how a group of Catholic lay catechists educated in liberation theology came to take up arms and participate on the side of the rebel FMLN during El Salvador’s revolutionary war (1980-92). In the process they became transformed from popular intellectuals to insurgent intellectuals who put their organizational and cognitive skills at the service of a collective effort to create a more egalitarian and democratic society. The book highlights the key roles that peasant catechists in northern Morazán played in disseminating liberation theology before the war and supporting the FMLN during it—as quartermasters, political activists, and musicians, among other roles. Throughout, From Popular to Insurgent Intellectuals highlights the dialectical nature of relations between Catholic priests and urban revolutionaries, among others, in which the latter learned from the former and vice-versa. Peasant catechists proved capable at making independent decisions based on assessment of their needs and did not simply follow the dictates of those with superior authority, and played an important role for the duration of the twelve-year military conflict.
From Post-democracy to Neo-Democracy (The Anthropocene: Politik—Economics—Society—Science #20)
by Klaus Von BeymeThis book of a renowned political scientist and specialist in political theory fundamentally challenges the new fashion of post-democracy by offering an outlook on ‘neo-democracy’. The political periods are similar to epochs in modern art, where ‘neo’ succeeded Post-impressionism and Post-expressionism. This book reviews the topical debate on postdemocracy and scenarios of decline in democratic theory without the alternative of dictatorship. It discusses criticism of politics in the old and new media and a new culture of protest. It addresses new forms of participation and the dangers of populism and right-wing extremism. It proposes institutional reforms of democracy, of the parliamentary system and the party state, in negotiations of coalition-building, in governmental declarations and for the policy output. The book concludes with a debate of normative models of democracy from ‘Post-democracy’ to ‘Neo-democracy’, models of justice and theories of democratic reform.
From Poverty to Power: How Active Citizens and Effective States Can Change the World (Second Edition)
by Duncan GreenThe book discusses different types of initiatives across the world that have enhanced and expanded the powers of the powerless and emphasizes how 'active citizenship' can be a very effective way of seeking solutions.
From Poverty, Inequality to Smart City
by Fumihiko Seta Arindam Biswas Ajay Khare Joy SenThis book is a comprehensive document visualizing the future of built environment from a multidisciplinary dimension, with special emphasis on the Indian scenario. The multidisciplinary focus would be helpful for the readers to cross-refer and understand others' perspectives. The text also includes case studies substantiating theoretical research. This method of composition helps the book to maintain rational balance among theory, research and its contextual application. The book comprises selected papers from the National Conference on Sustainable Built Environment. The chapters provide varied viewpoints on the core issues of urbanization and planning, especially in the economically diverse Indian market. This compilation would be of interest to students, researchers, professionals and policy makers.
From Preferential Status to Partnership: The Euro-Maghreb Relationship
by Ahmed AghroutThis title was first published in 2000. Moving from general principles and determinants to the growing co-operation between the European Community and Maghreb states, and then onto the EU's responses to recent problems in Maghreb countries, this study concludes that a more assertive EU presence is needed, otherwise there will be damaging costs for the already fragile regional stability. The text mixes historical, political and economic analysis.
From Prejudice to Intergroup Emotions: Differentiated Reactions to Social Groups
by Diane M. Mackie Eliot R. SmithThe theories or programs of research described in the chapters of this book move beyond the traditional evaluation model of prejudice, drawing on a broad range of theoretical ancestry to develop models of why, when, and how differentiated reactions to groups arise, and what their consequences might be. The chapters have in common a re-focusing of interest on emotion as a theoretical base for understanding differentiated reactions to, and differentiated behaviors toward, social groups. The contributions also share a focus on specific interactional and structural relations among groups as a source of these differentiated emotional reactions. The chapters in the volume thus reflect a theoretical shift from an earlier emphasis on knowledge about ingroups and outgroups to a new perspective on prejudice in which socially-grounded emotional differentiation becomes a basis for social regulation.
From Public Policy to Family Dynamics: A Case Study of the Impact of Public Policy on Two 20th Century Jewish Immigrant Families (SpringerBriefs in Social Policy)
by Sana LoueThis compact book relies on the story of two intertwined Jewish immigrant families to tell a multigenerational Jewish story about the interplay between public/social policy, cultural categories, and the lived experience of working class immigrant Jews from Eastern Europe, including trans-/intergenerational trauma. Importantly, it focuses on the impacts of pre-Holocaust public policy, a significant departure from the Holocaust and post-Holocaust focus of much of the published literature relating to Jewish intergenerational trauma. As such, it offers the possibility of better understanding the far-reaching and perhaps unforeseen impacts of public policy. This book addresses events on both the micro and macro levels and is biographical, autobiographical, and historical in its scope. Sources for this work include archival materials, census records, maps, military records, birth and death certificates, congressional materials, newspaper articles, films, images, interviews with living family members, and secondary sources. Among the topics covered are: Russian, Soviet, and U.S. Eugenics: Family Internalization of Policy and Rhetoric The Intertwined Impact of Economics, Eugenic Policy, and Immigration Restrictions The Present Past: Policy, Identity, and Progeny From Public Policy to Family Dynamics: A Case Study of the Impact of Public Policy on Two 20th Century Jewish Immigrant Families adds a human face to writings related to public/social policy. As the book integrates understandings from diverse fields of study, students of public policy, social work, psychology, history, Jewish studies, immigration studies, bioethics, and public health, as well as social workers, bioethicists, and historians, would be most interested in reading this unique work.
From Radical Marxism to Knowledge Socialism: An Educational Philosophy and Theory Reader, Volume XI (Educational Philosophy and Theory: Editor’s Choice)
by Michael A. PetersThis volume examines the place of Marxist theory in the history of the journal Educational Philosophy and Theory, primarily through the selection and exploration of typical and significant articles exploring Marxist-related themes in the journal over time. The title, From Radical Marxism to Knowledge Socialism, reflects this historical approach. In the 1960s and 1970s, Marxism was considered to be a radical, extreme ‘political’ theory, while western liberalism and a free-market economy were largely taken for granted as natural phenomena, in western philosophy of education and in the journal. More recently, educational theorists have begun to explore trends related to the neoliberal age. Paradoxically, such trends include the move toward knowledge socialism, which decenters the normative presuppositions of knowledge capitalism as the latest iteration of western liberalism. The volume begins with an introductory chapter that examines the history of Marxism in western philosophy and philosophy of education. The rest of the book features works selected from the journal that further illustrate the evolution of Marxist theoretical perspectives in the field over time. This collection thus gives a sense of the range and extent of Marxist-inspired thinking in educational philosophy and theory. This book will be of interest to students and scholars of educational philosophy and theory and others who are interested in exploring in depth the evolution of key themes in this field over time, including liberalism, ideology, Marxism, neoliberalism, knowledge construction, capitalist and socialist schooling, and other aspects of economic analysis in education.
From Research to Practice in the Design of Cooperative Systems: Results and Open Challenges
by Parina Hassanaly Maria Antonietta Grasso Jean-François Boujut Cédric Masclet Julie DugdaleCOOP 2012 is the tenth COOP conference, marking twenty years from the first conference in 1992. In this special anniversary edition we asked researchers and practitioners to reflect on what have been the successes and the failures in designing cooperative systems, and what challenges still need to be addressed. We have come a long way in understanding the intricacies of cooperation and in designing systems that support work practices and collective activities. These advances would not have been possible without the concerted effort of contributions from a plethora of domains including CSCW, HCI, Information Systems, Knowledge Engineering, Multi-agent systems, organizational and management sciences, sociology, psychology, anthropology, ergonomics, linguistics, etc. The COOP community is going from strength to strength in developing new technologies, advancing and proposing new methodological approaches, and forging theories.
From Rhetoric to Reform?: Welfare Policy In American Politics (Dilemmas in American Politics)
by Anne Marie CammisaWelfare policy illustrates both the strengths and weaknesses of the American political process. The central political dilemma is how welfare policy can assist the poor without creating dependency. Although policy solutions tend to focus on the short term, they are often responsive to public input. This book explores why the debate on welfare policy has shifted to the conservative's vantage point. In discussing how political rhetoric shapes the welfare debate, Anne Marie Cammisa considers questions such as: What happened to welfare? How did it become a program fraught with problems and abuses? Why and when was welfare the answer to a problem—and when did it become the problem? She reviews our response to caring for the less fortunate and examines welfare policy from the federal to the state level. A chapter is devoted to the 1996 welfare reform bill and its impact on the states in 1997.
From Right to Reality
by Helena Ribe Ian Walker David RobalinoThis study highlights the interaction between social protection (SP) programs and labor markets in the Latin America region. It presents new evidence on the limited coverage of existing programs and emphasizes the challenges caused by high informality for achieving universal social protection for old age income, health, unemployment risks and anti-poverty safety nets. It identifies interaction effects between SP programs and the behavioral responses of workers, firms and social protection providers, which can further undermine efforts to expand coverage, summarizing evidence from recent work across the region. The book argues for a re-design of financing to eliminate cross subsidies between members of contributory programs and subsidies that effectively tax income from formal employment. It advocates well-targeted, tax-funded, tapered subsidies to provide incentives to the savings efforts of low-income workers, coupled with an effective safety net for the extreme poor who have no capacity to contribute to financing their own social protection arrangements. It also argues for the consolidation of programs and harmonization of benefits packages across different insurers. The book develops an overall conceptual framework and presents in-depth analysis of the main SP sectors of pensions, health, unemployment insurance and labor market programs, and safety net transfers.
From Ritual to Record: The Nature of Modern Sports
by Allen GuttmannOriginally published in 1978, From Ritual to Record was one of the first books to recognize the importance of sports as a lens on the fundamental structure of societies. In this reissue, Guttmann emphasizes the many ways that modern sports, dramatically different from the sports of previous eras, have profoundly shaped contemporary life.