Author: Claude S. Fischer
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226251381
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 463
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Book Description
An analysis of the influence of urban life on society compares and contrasts personal relationships in large cities with those in small towns.
Author: Claude S. Fischer
Publisher: Russell Sage Foundation
ISBN: 1610447107
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 174
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Book Description
National news reports periodically proclaim that American life is lonelier than ever, and new books on the subject with titles like Bowling Alone generate considerable anxiety about the declining quality of Americans' social ties. Still Connected challenges such concerns by asking a simple yet significant question: have Americans' bonds with family and friends changed since the 1970s, and, if so, how? Noted sociologist Claude Fischer examines long-term trends in family ties and friendships and paints an insightful and ultimately reassuring portrait of Americans' personal relationships. Still Connected analyzes forty years of survey research to address whether and how Americans' personal ties have changed—their involvement with relatives, the number of friends they have and their contacts with those friends, the amount of practical and emotional support they are able to count on, and how emotionally tied they feel to these relationships. The book shows that Americans today have fewer relatives than they did forty years ago and that formal gatherings have declined over the decades—at least partially as a result of later marriages and more women in the work force. Yet neither the overall quantity of personal relationships nor, more importantly, the quality of those relationships has diminished. Americans' contact with relatives and friends, as well as their feelings of emotional connectedness, has changed relatively little since the 1970s. Although Americans are marrying later and single people feel lonely, few Americans report being socially isolated and the percentage who do has not really increased. Fischer maintains that this constancy testifies to the value Americans place on family and friends and to their willingness to adapt to changing circumstances in ways that sustain their social connections. For example, children now often have schedules as busy as their parents. Yet today's parents spend more quality time with their children than parents did forty years ago—although less in the form of organized home activities and more in the form of accompanying them to play dates or sports activities. And those family meals at home that seem to be disappearing? While survey research shows that families dine at home together less often, it also shows that they dine out together more often. Americans are fascinated by the quality of their relationships with family and friends and whether these bonds fray or remain stable over time. With so many voices heralding the demise of personal relationships, it's no wonder that confusion on this topic abounds. An engrossing and accessible social history, Still Connected brings a much-needed note of clarity to the discussion. Americans' personal ties, this book assures us, remain strong.
Author: Claude S. Fischer
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520086473
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 442
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Book Description
Annotation 'In his study of the telephone in American society, Fishcer confronts the most significant, but also the most difficult, question we can ask about a new technology--what differences did it make in the lives of its users?'Roland Marchand
Author: Claude S. Fischer
Publisher: New York : Free Press
ISBN:
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 248
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Book Description
Author: Claude S. Fischer
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691221502
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 332
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Book Description
As debate rages over the widening and destructive gap between the rich and the rest of Americans, Claude Fischer and his colleagues present a comprehensive new treatment of inequality in America. They challenge arguments that expanding inequality is the natural, perhaps necessary, accompaniment of economic growth. They refute the claims of the incendiary bestseller The Bell Curve (1994) through a clear, rigorous re-analysis of the very data its authors, Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray, used to contend that inherited differences in intelligence explain inequality. Inequality by Design offers a powerful alternative explanation, stressing that economic fortune depends more on social circumstances than on IQ, which is itself a product of society. More critical yet, patterns of inequality must be explained by looking beyond the attributes of individuals to the structure of society. Social policies set the "rules of the game" within which individual abilities and efforts matter. And recent policies have, on the whole, widened the gap between the rich and the rest of Americans since the 1970s. Not only does the wealth of individuals' parents shape their chances for a good life, so do national policies ranging from labor laws to investments in education to tax deductions. The authors explore the ways that America--the most economically unequal society in the industrialized world--unevenly distributes rewards through regulation of the market, taxes, and government spending. It attacks the myth that inequality fosters economic growth, that reducing economic inequality requires enormous welfare expenditures, and that there is little we can do to alter the extent of inequality. It also attacks the injurious myth of innate racial inequality, presenting powerful evidence that racial differences in achievement are the consequences, not the causes, of social inequality. By refusing to blame inequality on an unchangeable human nature and an inexorable market--an excuse that leads to resignation and passivity--Inequality by Design shows how we can advance policies that widen opportunity for all.
Author: Bernice Pescosolido
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108839975
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 769
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Book Description
Combines classic and cutting-edge scholarship on personal social networks. A must-have resource for both newcomers and seasoned experts.
Author: Deborah Copaken Kogan
Publisher: Hachette Books
ISBN: 1401342809
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 317
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Book Description
The Big Chill meets The Group in Deborah Copaken Kogan's wry, lively, and irresistible new novel about a once-close circle of friends at their twentieth college reunion. Clover, Addison, Mia, and Jane were roommates at Harvard until their graduation in 1989. Clover, homeschooled on a commune by mixed-race parents, felt woefully out of place. Addison yearned to shed the burden of her Mayflower heritage. Mia mined the depths of her suburban ennui to enact brilliant performances on the Harvard stage. Jane, an adopted Vietnamese war orphan, made sense of her fractured world through words. Twenty years later, their lives are in free fall. Clover, once a securities broker with Lehman, is out of a job and struggling to reproduce before her fertility window slams shut. Addison's marriage to a writer's-blocked novelist is as stale as her so-called career as a painter. Hollywood shut its gold-plated gates to Mia, who now stays home with her four children, renovating and acquiring faster than her director husband can pay the bills. Jane, the Paris bureau chief for a newspaper whose foreign bureaus are now shuttered, is caught in a vortex of loss. Like all Harvard grads, they've kept abreast of one another via the red book, a class report published every five years, containing brief autobiographical essays by fellow alumni. But there's the story we tell the world, and then there's the real story, as these former classmates will learn during their twentieth reunion weekend, when they arrive with their families, their histories, their dashed dreams, and their secret yearnings to a relationship-changing, score-settling, unforgettable weekend.
Author: Sam Shepard
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 1101974389
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 194
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Book Description
This searing, extraordinarily evocative narrative opens with a man in his house at dawn, surrounded by aspens, coyotes cackling in the distance as he quietly navigates the distance between present and past. As memory overtakes him, he sees the bygone America of his childhood: the farmland and the feedlots, the railyards and the diners—and, most hauntingly, his father’s young girlfriend, with whom he also became involved, setting into motion a tragedy that has stayed with him. His complex interiority is filtered through views of mountains and deserts as he drives across the country, propelled by Benzedrine, rock and roll, and a restlessness born out of exile. The rhythms of theater, the language of poetry, and a flinty humor combine in this stunning meditation on the nature of experience, at once celebratory, surreal, poignant, and unforgettable.
Author: Erik Davis
Publisher: Chronicle Books
ISBN: 0811848353
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 287
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Book Description
With a rich cultural history and Hollywood stars publicly attesting to a wide range of faiths, it's no surprise that California's spiritual landscape is as diverse as its natural surroundings. The Visionary State weaves text and image into a compelling narrative of religion, architecture, and consciousness in California, from neopaganism to televangelism, UFO cults to austere Zen Buddhism. Acclaimed culture critic Erik Davis brings together the immigrant and homegrown religious influences that have been part of the region's character from its earliest days, drawing connections between seemingly unlike traditions and celebrating the diversity of California's spiritual composition. Michael Rauner's evocative photographs depict the sites and structures where these traditions have taken root and flourished. The Visionary State is a landmark look at what is likely the most varied locale for religious activity anywhere.
Author: Alexandra Gove
Publisher: Blue Star Press
ISBN: 1944515607
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 222
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Book Description
"We need to understand and harness the impact our homes have on our happiness . . . What makes a home a happy one? I think Dwell, Gather, Be is part of the answer." -Meik Wiking, Author of The Little Book of Hygge: The Danish Way to Live Well and CEO of the Happiness Research Institute in Copenhagen In a world where perfectly designed homes are encountered at every turn, Dwell, Gather, Be goes deeper, exploring how thoughtful, intentional home design can cultivate meaningful moments in your life. Learn to elevate, celebrate, and value the time you spend with the people you hold dear in the space that is uniquely yours. Dwell, Gather, Be shares inspiration and advice to: Design a home to reflect, complement, and enhance your lifestyle Create a welcoming environment for family and friends Cultivate special moments through timeless design Elevate and celebrate a rich, satisfying life
