Scholars and nonacademics alike have usually assumed that the American working class does not think of itself as a coherent class opposed to the dominant powers in American society-in short, that it is not class conscious. In international perspective, the American working class appears docile and complacent. It has never supported a strong socialist movement; a weak union movement has limited itself to simple wage demands; and class conflict here has rarely threatened to explode into a social revolution. Both radicals and mainstream scholars have explained this American exceptionalism by the conservative psychology of the American worker.This provocative book presents a new vision of the American working class. The American Perception of Class offers a radically new interpretation of American class conflict and criticizes earlier analyses for psychologizing the problem and "blaming the victims" for their subordination. It marshals a great variety of evidence, primarily from national surveys, to demonstrate that, contrary to what almost everybody has assumed, American workers are indeed class conscious. They have not been so beguiled by images of a classless society that they can no longer recognize the divide that separates them from their middle class and corporate bosses; nor have they been swallowed up by an affluent middle class; and they have not been so divided by racial and ethnic loyalties, or gender specific interests that they have forgotten their common class position.Finally, the book suggests a new approach to class conflict in America-one not based on the psychology of the American worker but on the strength of American business and its capacity to overwhelm or redirect any challenge from below. No other working class has faced such a formidable opponent. Author note: Reeve Vanneman is Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Maryland at College Park. >P>Lynn Weber Cannon is Associate Director for the Center for Research on Women and Professor of Sociology at Memphis State University.

Local and regional development is an increasingly global issue. For localities and regions, the challenge of enhancing prosperity, improving wellbeing and increasing living standards has become acute for localities and regions formerly considered discrete parts of the ‘developed’ and ‘developing’ worlds. Amid concern over the definitions and sustainability of ‘development’, a spectre has emerged of deepened unevenness and sharpened inequalities in the development prospects for particular social groups and territories. Local and Regional Development engages and addresses the key questions: what are the principles and values that shape definitions and strategies of local and regional development? What are the conceptual and theoretical frameworks capable of understanding and interpreting local and regional development? What are the main policy interventions and instruments? How do localities and regions attempt to effect development in practice? What kinds of local and regional development should we be pursuing? This book addresses the fundamental issues of ‘what kind of local and regional development and for whom?’, frameworks of understanding, and instruments and policies. It outlines what a holistic, progressive and sustainable local and regional development might constitute before reflecting on its limits and political renewal. With the growing international importance of local and regional development, this book is an essential student purchase, illustrated throughout with maps, figures and case studies from Asia, Europe, and Central and North America.

From the preface: "The 1966 'Human Factors' edition focused on the contemporary threat of Maoist insurgencies, particularly in Southeast Asia, and also drew extensively on World War II resistance movements in Europe. Much of this information is still relevant and has been retained and integrated. In the post-Cold War world, the most important insurgencies tend to be ethnic and religious. Long-simmering conflicts, sometimes with roots in colonial policies, have become prominent; examples include the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) in Sri Lanka, Euskadi Ta Askatasuna (Basque Homeland and Freedom or ETA) in Spain, the Hutu-Tutsi genocides, the Ushtia �lirimtare e Kosov�s (Kosovo Liberation Army, or KLA), and the Provisional Irish Republican Army (PIRA). Battle lines in these conflicts are often drawn along ethnic lines, even when land or politics are the immediate issues in contention. The other important new category is extremist religious movements, most prominently Islamic groups, including regional insurgent movements like Hizbollah and Harakat al-Muqawamah al'Isla�miyyah (Islamic Resistance Movement, or HAMAS) and global movements like Al Qaeda. These present a different profile of ideology, organizational forms, and psychology than either Cold War Maoists or post-colonial ethnic insurgencies (although the Palestinian cause could be considered a post-colonial issue). Globalization has also changed underground operations in numerous ways. Insurgencies, enabled by low-cost transportation, Internet based communications, and other information technologies, can more easily recruit, communicate, and operate across borders. It is correspondingly much more difficult to contain an insurgency in a region. Global media has led to development of new tactics, in particular new types of terrorism, designed to capture worldwide attention. Compared with what was available in the 1960s, there are orders of magnitude more academic research available relevant to this study's topics. We were able to draw on more recent work in psychology, political science, economics, sociology, organizational studies, and communications studies. Readers of this edition will, over the course of eleven chapters, get a wide exposure to basic concepts from a number of disciplines".

The Guyana StoryFrom Earliest Times to Independence traces the countrys history from thousands of years ago when the first Amerindian groups began to settle on the Guyana territory. It examines the period of early European exploration leading to Dutch colonization, the forcible introduction of African slaves to work on cotton and sugar plantations, the effects of European wars, and the final ceding of the territory to the British who ruled it as their colony until they finally granted it independence in 1966. The book also tells of Indian, Chinese, and Portuguese indentured immigration and shows how the cultural interrelationships among the various ethnic groups introduced newer forms of conflict, but also brought about cooperation in the struggles of the workers for better working and living conditions. The final part describes the roles of the political leaders who arose from among these ethnic groups from the late 1940s and began the political struggle against colonialism and the demand for independence. This struggle led to political turbulence in the 1950s and early 1960s when the country was caught in the crosshairs of the cold war resulting in joint British-American devious actions that undermined a democratically elected pro-socialist government and deliberately delayed independence for the country until a government friendly to their international interests came to power.

Issues spawned by the headlong pace of developments in science and technology fill the courts. The realm of the law is sometimes at a loss—constrained by its own assumptions and practices, Jasanoff suggests. This book exposes American law’s long-standing involvement in constructing, propagating, and perpetuating myths about science and technology.

This new edition of Patterson's widely used book carries the story of battles over poverty and social welfare through what the author calls the "amazing 1990s," those years of extraordinary performance of the economy. He explores a range of issues arising from the economic phenomenon--increasing inequality and demands for use of an improved poverty definition. He focuses the story on the impact of the highly controversial welfare reform of 1996, passed by a Republican Congress and signed by a Democratic President Clinton, despite the laments of anguished liberals.