Although the concept of public diplomacy has been part of America's wartime strategy as far back as the Revolutionary War, the term itself is relatively new. In the wake of the events of September 11 and the ensuing War on Terror, there has been an increasing awareness of the negative global image of the United States and intense concern over how communication may be used to improve that image. Within that context, the concept and term public diplomacy have become more notable among practitioners and the American public. Yet public diplomacy has mostly been neglected by scholars and only recently begun to attract academic attention. This volume of The ANNALS commences the first collection of scholarly articles focusing on public diplomacy--the practice through which international actors attempt to advance the ends of policy by engaging with foreign publics--and examines it as an international phenomenon and an important component of statecraft.

Culture has returned to the poverty research agenda. Over the past decade, sociologists, demographers, and even economists have begun asking questions about the role of culture in many aspects of poverty, at times even explaining the behavior of low-income populations in reference to cultural factors. Unlike their predecessors, contemporary researchers rarely claim that culture will sustain itself for multiple generations regardless of structural changes, and they almost never use the term "pathology," which implied in an earlier era that people would cease to be poor if they changed their culture. The new generation of scholars conceives of culture in substantially different ways. In this latest issue of the ANNALS, readers are treated to thought-provoking articles that attempt to bridge the gap between poverty and culture scholarship, highlighting new trends in poverty research. This volume is vital reading, not only for sociologists but also for researchers across the social sciences as a whole.

Available for the first time in English, this is the definitive account of the practice of sexual slavery the Japanese military perpetrated during World War II by the researcher principally responsible for exposing the Japanese government's responsibility for these atrocities. The large scale imprisonment and rape of thousands of women, who were euphemistically called "comfort women" by the Japanese military, first seized public attention in 1991 when three Korean women filed suit in a Toyko District Court stating that they had been forced into sexual servitude and demanding compensation. Since then the comfort stations and their significance have been the subject of ongoing debate and intense activism in Japan, much if it inspired by Yoshimi's investigations. How large a role did the military, and by extension the government, play in setting up and administering these camps? What type of compensation, if any, are the victimized women due? These issues figure prominently in the current Japanese focus on public memory and arguments about the teaching and writing of history and are central to efforts to transform Japanese ways of remembering the war. Yoshimi Yoshiaki provides a wealth of documentation and testimony to prove the existence of some 2,000 centers where as many as 200,000 Korean, Filipina, Taiwanese, Indonesian, Burmese, Dutch, Australian, and some Japanese women were restrained for months and forced to engage in sexual activity with Japanese military personnel. Many of the women were teenagers, some as young as fourteen. To date, the Japanese government has neither admitted responsibility for creating the comfort station system nor given compensation directly to former comfort women. This English edition updates the Japanese edition originally published in 1995 and includes introductions by both the author and the translator placing the story in context for American readers.

This volume brings together a broad range of disciplinary approaches - including contributions from demographers, economists, epidemiologists, historians, molecular and biological anthropologists, political scientists, and sociologists - to advance the science of "legacies" research. The contributions assembled here take a broader view of the ways in which we conceptualize and measure racial violence and the possibilites for effective intervention by bringing quantitative and qualitative insights to bear on salient patterns of historical violence, the contemporary outcomes they are posited to impact, and the intervening mechanisms through which they operate.

A Yale sociology professor discusses how everyday people meet the demands of urban living through islands of civility he calls "cosmopolitan canopies" and describes how activities carried out under this canopy can ease racial tensions and promote harmony.

Sponsored by the American Academy of Political and Social Science William Julius Wilson is a leader in the study of the urban underclass. His controversial thesis states that the fragmentation of the black community along class lines has resulted in a group of blacks who have left the inner city for middle-class suburban life, leaving behind the ghetto underclass of very disadvantaged poor. This thesis has had an enormous impact on the study of urban life, race, and society. Originally published as a special issue of the Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, The Ghetto Underclass addresses questions from theoretical, empirical, and policy perspectives. Wilson and other leading social scientists cover demographic and industrial transitions, family patterns, sexual behavior, immigration, and homelessness of the urban underclass. Wilson′s introduction updates recent work on this topic since publication of the Annals issue. The Ghetto Underclass should be read by all students and professionals of urban studies, ethnic studies, sociology, policy studies, political science, social work, social welfare, and education.