Community and Social Change in America

Community and Social Change in America PDF Author: Thomas Bender
Publisher: JHU Press
ISBN: 9780801829246
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 180

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Book Description
Did urbanization kill communities in the 19th century, or even earlier? Many historians proclaim that it did, but author Bender says otherwise. Here he argues that community survived the trials of industrialization and urbanization and remains a fundamental element of American society.

Communities for Social Change

Communities for Social Change PDF Author: Annette Coburn
Publisher: Counterpoints
ISBN: 9781433129766
Category : Community development
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Communities for Social Change: Practicing Equality and Social Justice in Youth and Community Work examines core ideas of social justice and equality that underpin community and youth work. It informs understanding of a range of community concepts and practices that are used to identify practical skills and characteristics that can help to promote equality by challenging injustice. Working with people in different types of community can bring the kind of social change that makes a real and lasting difference. Although justice is a contested notion, Annette Coburn and Sinéad Gormally assert that it is closely interlinked with human rights and equality. A critical examination of contemporary literature draws on educational, sociological, and psychological perspectives, to set community practices within a context for learning that is conversational, critical and informal. Social justice is about identifying and seeking to address structural disadvantage, discrimination, and inequality. The authors assert that by refocusing on process, participation, and collective rights, it is possible to create and sustain social justice. Transformative research paradigms help to produce findings that inspire and underpin political social action, and an analysis of practice-based examples supports the promotion of increased critical consciousness. This makes Communities for Social Change a must-read for anyone studying or teaching community youth work or who is working in communities or with individuals who experience oppression or inequality. If you are committed to teaching and learning about theory and practice that promotes social change for equality and social justice, you will not be disappointed!

Cooperatives, Grassroots Development, and Social Change

Cooperatives, Grassroots Development, and Social Change PDF Author: Marcela Vásquez-Léon
Publisher: University of Arizona Press
ISBN: 0816536295
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 265

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Book Description
Cooperatives, Grassroots Development, and Social Change presents examples from Paraguay, Brazil, and Colombia, examining what is necessary for smallholder agricultural cooperatives to support holistic community-based development in peasant communities. Reporting on successes and failures of these cooperative efforts, the contributors offer analyses and strategies for supporting collective grassroots interests. Illustrating how poverty and inequality affect rural people, they reveal how cooperative organizations can support grassroots development strategies while negotiating local contexts of inequality amid the broader context of international markets and global competition. The contributors explain the key desirable goals from cooperative efforts among smallholder producers. They are to provide access to more secure livelihoods, expand control over basic resources and commodity chains, improve quality of life in rural areas, support community infrastructure, and offer social spaces wherein small farmers can engage politically in transforming their own communities. The stories in Cooperatives, Grassroots Development, and Social Change reveal immense opportunities and challenges. Although cooperatives have often been framed as alternatives to the global capitalist system, they are neither a panacea nor the hegemonic extension of neoliberal capitalism. Through one of the most thorough cross-country comparisons of cooperatives to date, this volume shows the unfiltered reality of cooperative development in highly stratified societies, with case studies selected specifically because they offer important lessons regarding struggles and strategies for adapting to a changing social, economic, and natural environment. Contributors: Luis Barros Brian J. Burke Charles Cox Luis Alberto Cuéllar Gómez Miguel Ricardo Dávila Ladrón de Guevara Elisa Echagüe Timothy J. Finan Andrés González Aguilera Sonia Carolina López Cerón Joana Laura Marinho Nogueira João Nicédio Alves Nogueira Jessica Piekielek María Isabel Ramírez Anaya Rodrigo F. Rentería-Valencia Lilliana Andrea Ruiz Marín Marcela Vásquez-León

Community and Social Change in America

Community and Social Change in America PDF Author: Thomas Bender
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Communities
Languages : en
Pages : 159

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Book Description


Millennial Movements

Millennial Movements PDF Author: Karen Stocker
Publisher: University of Toronto Press
ISBN: 1487588674
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 137

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Book Description
In these brief and accessible case studies, Costa Rican millennial leaders draw from global solutions to address local problems, inviting students of these emerging social movements to apply similar strategies to their communities at home.

The Vanishing Neighbor: The Transformation of American Community

The Vanishing Neighbor: The Transformation of American Community PDF Author: Marc J. Dunkelman
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0393243990
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 220

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Book Description
A sweeping new look at the unheralded transformation that is eroding the foundations of American exceptionalism. Americans today find themselves mired in an era of uncertainty and frustration. The nation's safety net is pulling apart under its own weight; political compromise is viewed as a form of defeat; and our faith in the enduring concept of American exceptionalism appears increasingly outdated. But the American Age may not be ending. In The Vanishing Neighbor, Marc J. Dunkelman identifies an epochal shift in the structure of American life—a shift unnoticed by many. Routines that once put doctors and lawyers in touch with grocers and plumbers—interactions that encouraged debate and cultivated compromise—have changed dramatically since the postwar era. Both technology and the new routines of everyday life connect tight-knit circles and expand the breadth of our social landscapes, but they've sapped the commonplace, incidental interactions that for centuries have built local communities and fostered healthy debate. The disappearance of these once-central relationships—between people who are familiar but not close, or friendly but not intimate—lies at the root of America's economic woes and political gridlock. The institutions that were erected to support what Tocqueville called the "township"—that unique locus of the power of citizens—are failing because they haven't yet been molded to the realities of the new American community. It's time we moved beyond the debate over whether the changes being made to American life are good or bad and focus instead on understanding the tradeoffs. Our cities are less racially segregated than in decades past, but we’ve become less cognizant of what's happening in the lives of people from different economic backgrounds, education levels, or age groups. Familiar divisions have been replaced by cross-cutting networks—with profound effects for the way we resolve conflicts, spur innovation, and care for those in need. The good news is that the very transformation at the heart of our current anxiety holds the promise of more hope and prosperity than would have been possible under the old order. The Vanishing Neighbor argues persuasively that to win the future we need to adapt yesterday’s institutions to the realities of the twenty-first-century American community.

Social Change in America

Social Change in America PDF Author: Christopher Clark
Publisher: Ivan R. Dee Publisher
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 380

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Book Description
The processes of social change in the late colonial period and early years of the new Republic made a dramatic imprint on the character of American society. These changes over a century or more were rooted in the origins of the United States, its rapid expansion of people and territory, its patterns of economic change and development, and the conflicts that led to its cataclysmic division and reunification through the Civil War. Christopher Clark's brilliant account of these changes in the social relationships of Americans breaks new ground in its emphasis on the connections between the crucial importance of free and unfree labor, regional characteristics, and the sustained tension between arguments for geographic expansion versus economic development. Mr. Clark traces the significance of families and households throughout the period, showing how work and different kinds of labor produced a varied access to power and wealth among free and unfree, male and female, and how the character of social elites was confronted by democratic pressures. He shows how the features of the different regions exercised long-term influences in American society and politics and were modified by pressures for change. And he explains how the widening gap between the claims of free labor and those of slavery fueled the continuing dispute over the best economic course for the nation's future and led ultimately to the Civil War. Like other long-running divisions in American society, however, this dispute was not fully resolved by the war's outcome. Social Change in America is a compelling new overview of the social dynamics of America's early years.

Bowling Alone: Revised and Updated

Bowling Alone: Revised and Updated PDF Author: Robert D. Putnam
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
ISBN: 1982130849
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 592

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Book Description
*The basis for the documentary Join or Die—now streaming on Netflix!* Updated to include a new chapter about the influence of social media and the Internet—the 20th anniversary edition of Bowling Alone remains a seminal work of social analysis, and its examination of what happened to our sense of community remains more relevant than ever in today’s fractured America. Twenty years, ago, Robert D. Putnam made a seemingly simple observation: once we bowled in leagues, usually after work; but no longer. This seemingly small phenomenon symbolized a significant social change that became the basis of the acclaimed bestseller, Bowling Alone, which The Washington Post called “a very important book” and Putnam, “the de Tocqueville of our generation.” Bowling Alone surveyed in detail Americans’ changing behavior over the decades, showing how we had become increasingly disconnected from family, friends, neighbors, and social structures, whether it’s with the PTA, church, clubs, political parties, or bowling leagues. In the revised edition of his classic work, Putnam shows how our shrinking access to the “social capital” that is the reward of communal activity and community sharing still poses a serious threat to our civic and personal health, and how these consequences have a new resonance for our divided country today. He includes critical new material on the pervasive influence of social media and the internet, which has introduced previously unthinkable opportunities for social connection—as well as unprecedented levels of alienation and isolation. At the time of its publication, Putnam’s then-groundbreaking work showed how social bonds are the most powerful predictor of life satisfaction, and how the loss of social capital is felt in critical ways, acting as a strong predictor of crime rates and other measures of neighborhood quality of life, and affecting our health in other ways. While the ways in which we connect, or become disconnected, have changed over the decades, his central argument remains as powerful and urgent as ever: mending our frayed social capital is key to preserving the very fabric of our society.

Exploring Social Change

Exploring Social Change PDF Author: Charles L. Harper
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351679937
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 440

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Book Description
Exploring Social Change provides a compelling analysis of theories that explain social change, innovation, social movements, and revolution, and concludes with reflections about how individuals do and should live in an uncertain and rapidly changing world. Written in a personal and clear manner, the authors provide definitions of key terms and analysis of theories and ideas from the study of social change. The seventh edition includes updated examples reflecting the social changes that have occurred in the world around us, including new discussions on the environmental and social landscapes, as well as updated methods and discussions that reflect that changing field of social change study.

Collective Action for Social Change

Collective Action for Social Change PDF Author: A. Schutz
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 0230118534
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 492

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Book Description
Community organizers build solidarity and collective power in fractured communities. They help ordinary people turn their private pain into public action, releasing hidden capacities for leadership and strategy. In Collective Action for Social Change , Aaron Schutz and Marie G. Sandy draw on their extensive experience participating in community organizing activities and teaching courses on the subject to empower novices to think like an organizers.

One Quarter of the Nation

One Quarter of the Nation PDF Author: Nancy Foner
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691255350
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 232

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Book Description
An in-depth look at the many ways immigration has redefined modern America The impact of immigrants over the past half century has become so much a part of everyday life in the United States that we sometimes fail to see it. This deeply researched book by one of America’s leading immigration scholars tells the story of how immigrants are fundamentally changing this country. An astonishing number of immigrants and their children—nearly eighty-six million people—now live in the United States. Together, they have transformed the American experience in profound and far-reaching ways that go to the heart of the country’s identity and institutions. Unprecedented in scope, One Quarter of the Nation traces how immigration has reconfigured America’s racial order—and, importantly, how Americans perceive race—and played a pivotal role in reshaping electoral politics and party alignments. It discusses how immigrants have rejuvenated our urban centers as well as some far-flung rural communities, and examines how they have strengthened the economy, fueling the growth of old industries and spurring the formation of new ones. This wide-ranging book demonstrates how immigration has touched virtually every facet of American culture, from the music we dance to and the food we eat to the films we watch and books we read. One Quarter of the Nation opens a new chapter in our understanding of immigration. While many books look at how America changed immigrants, this one examines how they changed America. It reminds us that immigration has long been a part of American society, and shows how immigrants and their families continue to redefine who we are as a nation.