New insights into how and why social identities formed and changed in the prehistoric past--Provided by publisher.

Find out how to uncover the hidden talents, assets, and abilities in your neighborhood and bring them together to create a vibrant and joyful community. It takes a village! We may be living longer, but people are more socially isolated than ever before. As a result, we are hindered both mentally and physically, and many of us are looking for something concrete we can do to address problems like poverty, racism, and climate change. What if solutions could be found on your very doorstep or just two door knocks away? Cormac Russell is a veteran practitioner of asset-based community development (ABCD), which focuses on uncovering and leveraging the hidden resources, skills, and experience in our neighborhoods. He and John McKnight, the cooriginator of ABCD, show how anyone can discover this untapped potential and connect with his or her neighbors to create healthier, safer, greener, more prosperous, and welcoming communities. They offer a wealth of illustrative examples from around the world that will inspire you to explore your own community and discover its hidden treasures. You will learn to take action on what you already deeply know-that neighborliness is not just a nice-to-have personal characteristic but essential to living a fruitful life and a powerful amplifier of community change and renewal.

As a community, aligning efforts across a community to support the safety and well-being of vulnerable and underserved individuals is extraordinarily difficult. These individuals suffer disproportionally from health issues, job loss, a lack of stable housing, high utility costs, substance abuse, and homelessness. In addition to medical care, these individuals often critically need access to community social sector organizations that provide a distinct and complementary set of services, such as housing, food services, emergency utility assistance, and employment assistance. These services are just as vital as healthcare services to these individuals’ long-term health and well-being, with data suggesting that 80–90% of health outcomes can be attributed to factors beyond direct medical intervention. This book proposes a novel approach to the coordination of medicine and social services through the use of people, process, and technology, with the goal being to streamline coordination between medical and Community-Based Organizations and to promote true cross-sector patient and client advocacy. The book is based on the experience of Dallas, TX, which was one of the first metropolitan regions to develop a comprehensive foundation for partnership between a community’s clinical and social sectors using web-based information exchange. In the 5 years since the initial launch, the authors have been able to provide seamless connection, communication, and coordination between healthcare providers and a wide array of community-based social service organizations (a/k/a Community-Based Organizations or CBOs), criminal justice entities, and various other community organizations, including non-collegiate educational systems. This practical how-to guide is the codification of transferrable lessons from successes and challenges faced when working with clinical, community, and government leaders. By reading this playbook, leaders interested in building (or expanding) connected clinical-community services will learn how to: 1) facilitate cross-sector care coordination; 2) enable community care partners to better provide targeted services to community residents; 3) reduce duplication of services across partnering organizations; and 4) help to bridge service gaps in the currently fragmented system. Implementation of services, as recommended in this book, will ultimately streamline assistance efforts, reduce repeat crises and emergency funding requests, help address disparities of care, and improve the health, safety, and well-being of the most vulnerable community residents.

This book aims to promote greater understanding of social cohesion amidst existing complexities of faith and identity, and what it portends for our future.Social cohesion defies easy definition; yet, every pursuit of social cohesiveness requires nurture, patience and a consensus that it is germane to the success of any community. Indeed, challenges abound, developments such as the COVID-19 pandemic, evolving geopolitical tensions, and a rise in access to technology impact social cohesion. In such times, it is pertinent to maintain on-going conversations revolving around social cohesion to bridge the divides through diversity and technology.This book continues to build on the conversations from the second edition of the International Conference of Cohesive Society (ICCS), held from 6-8 September 2022 in Singapore. Over 25 essays across three ICCS 2022 themes — How Faith Can Bridge Divides, Diversity, and Technology — present international and interdisciplinary perspectives in building confident identities and connected communities.

Based on a four-year research project which highlights the important role of community organisations as intermediaries between community and culture, this book analyses the role played by cultural intermediaries who seek to mitigate the worst effects of social exclusion through engaging communities with different forms of cultural consumption and production. The authors challenge policymakers who see cultural intermediation as an inexpensive fix to social problems and explore the difficulty for intermediaries to rapidly adapt their activity to the changing public-sector landscape and offer alternative frameworks for future practice.

There is growing recognition in practice and policy of how networking contributes to the vitality and cohesion of community life and civil society. The Well-Connected Community provides theoretical insights and practical guidance for people working with and for communities. This updated edition takes account of the changing political and economic context, including rising social inequalities and community tensions. It considers new approaches to well being, such as social prescribing and the use of social media for local and global organising. This model of community development explains and promotes networking as a skilled and strategic intervention and provides recommendations for good practice.

Government policy is increasingly focused on the contribution that communities can make to civil society and democratic renewal. This book demonstrates how informal and formal networks strengthen community capacity and improve cross-sectoral working.