Handbook of Research on Schools, Schooling and Human Development

Handbook of Research on Schools, Schooling and Human Development
Author: Judith L. Meece
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 1293
Release: 2010-06-10
Genre: Education
ISBN: 1135283869

Children spend more time in school than in any social institution outside the home. And schools probably exert more influence on children’s development and life chances than any environment beyond the home and neighbourhood. The purpose of this book is to document some important ways schools influence children’s development and to describe various models and methods for studying schooling effects. Key features include: Comprehensive Coverage – this is the first book to provide a comprehensive review of what is known about schools as a context for human development. Topical coverage ranges from theoretical foundations to investigative methodologies and from classroom-level influences such as teacher-student relations to broader influences such as school organization and educational policies. Cross-Disciplinary – this volume brings together the divergent perspectives, methods and findings of scholars from a variety of disciplines, among them educational psychology, developmental psychology, school psychology, social psychology, psychiatry, sociology, and educational policy. Chapter Structure – to ensure continuity, chapter authors describe 1) how schooling influences are conceptualized 2) identify their theoretical and methodological approaches 3) discuss the strengths and weaknesses of existing research and 4) highlight implications for future research, practice, and policy. Methodologies – chapters included in the text feature various methodologies including longitudinal studies, hierarchical linear models, experimental and quasi-experimental designs, and mixed methods.

Rural People and Communities in the 21st Century

Rural People and Communities in the 21st Century
Author: David L. Brown
Publisher: Polity
Total Pages: 272
Release: 2011-03-14
Genre: History
ISBN: 0745641288

Rural people and communities continue to play important social, economic and environmental roles at a time in which societies are rapidly urbanizing, and the identities of local places are increasingly subsumed by flows of people, information and economic activity across global spaces. However, while the organization of rural life has been fundamentally transformed by institutional and social changes that have occurred since the mid-twentieth century, rural people and communities have proved resilient in the face of these transformations. This book examines the causes and consequences of major social and economic changes affecting rural communities and populations during the first decades of the twenty-first century, and explores policies developed to ameliorate problems or enhance opportunities. Primarily focused on the U.S. context, while also providing international comparative discussion, the book is organized into five sections each of which explores both socio-demographic and political economic aspects of rural transformation. It features an accessible and up-to-date blend of theory and empirical analysis, with each chapter's discussion grounded in real-life situations through the use of empirical case-study materials. Rural People and Communities in the 21st Century is intended for advanced undergraduate and graduate courses in rural sociology, community sociology, rural and/or population geography, community development, and population studies.

Life is Hard

Life is Hard
Author: Roger N. Lancaster
Publisher: Univ of California Press
Total Pages: 370
Release: 1994-08-30
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 9780520915527

"Rambo took the barrios by storm: Spanish videotapes of the movie were widely available, and nearly all the boys and young men had seen it, usually on the VCRs of their family's more affluent friends. . . . As one young Sandinista commented, 'Rambo is like the Nicaraguan soldier. He's a superman. And if the United States invades, we'll cut the marines down like Rambo did.' And then he mimicked Rambo's famous war howl and mimed his arc of machine gun fire. We both laughed."—from the book There is a Nicaragua that Americans have rarely seen or heard about, a nation of jarring political paradoxes and staggering social and cultural flux. In this Nicaragua, the culture of machismo still governs most relationships, insidious racism belies official declarations of ethnic harmony, sexual relationships between men differ starkly from American conceptions of homosexuality, and fascination with all things American is rampant. Roger Lancaster reveals the enduring character of Nicaraguan society as he records the experiences of three families and their community through times of war, hyperinflation, dire shortages, and political turmoil. Life is hard for the inhabitants of working class barrios like Doña Flora, who expects little from men and who has reared her four children with the help of a constant female companion; and life is hard for Miguel, undersized and vulnerable, stigmatized as a cochón—a "faggot"—until he learned to fight back against his brutalizers. Through candid discussions with young and old Nicaraguans, men and women, Lancaster constructs an account of the successes and failures of the 1979 Sandinista Revolution, documenting the effects of war and embargo on the cultural and economic fabric of Nicaraguan society. He tracks the break up of families, surveys informal networks that allow female-headed households to survive, explores the gradual transformation of the culture of machismo, and reveals a world where heroic efforts have been stymied and the best hopes deferred. This vast chronicle is sustained by a rich theoretical interpretation of the meanings of ideology, power, and the family in a revolutionary setting. Played out against a backdrop of political travail and social dislocation, this work is a story of survival and resistance but also of humor and happiness. Roger Lancaster shows us that life is hard, but then too, life goes on.

Peasants and Globalization

Peasants and Globalization
Author: A. Haroon Akram-Lodhi
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 370
Release: 2012-08-21
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1134064640

In 2007, for the first time in human history, a majority of the world’s population lived in cities. However, on a global scale, poverty overwhelmingly retains a rural face. This book assembles an unparalleled group of internationally-eminent scholars in the field of rural development and social change in order to explore historical and contemporary processes of agrarian change and transformation and their consequent impact upon the livelihoods, poverty and well-being of those who live in the countryside. The book provides a critical analysis of the extent to which rural development trajectories have in the past and are now promoting a change in rural production processes, the accumulation of rural resources, and shifts in rural politics, and the implications of such trajectories for peasant livelihoods and rural workers in an era of globalization. Peasants and Globalization thus explores continuity and change in the debate on the ‘agrarian question’, from its early formulation in the late 19th century to the continuing relevance it has in our times, including chapters from Terence Byres, Amiya Bagchi, Ellen Wood, Farshad Araghi, Henry Bernstein, Saturnino M Borras, Ray Kiely, Michael Watts and Philip McMichael. Collectively, the contributors argue that neoliberal social and economic policies have, in deepening the market imperative governing the contemporary world food system, not only failed to tackle to underlying causes of rural poverty but have indeed deepened the agrarian crisis currently confronting the livelihoods of peasant farmers and rural workers. This crisis does not go unchallenged, as rural social movements have emerged, for the first time, on a transnational scale. Confronting development policies that are unable to reduce, let alone eliminate, rural poverty, transnational rural social movements are attempting to construct a more just future for the world’s farmers and rural workers.

The North American Mosaic

The North American Mosaic
Author: Commission for Environmental Cooperation (Montréal, Québec). Secretariat
Publisher:
Total Pages: 240
Release: 2001
Genre: Agriculture
ISBN:

The North American Mosaic has four overarching features. First, it is, to the extent feasible, based on comparable information on the status and trends of major indicators of the state of the environment in Canada,Mexico, and the United States. Second, the report confirms that these three countries together make up an incredibly complex, dynamic, and interconnected ecosystem in which humans play a dominant and decisive role. Third, the report raises important and sometimes disquieting questions concerning the sustainability of some current trends. Finally, the report is a reminder that our economic, social, and physical well-being are utterly dependent on the life-sustaining services provided by nature. This report emphasizes the importance of developing mutually compatible economic, social, and environmental goals and policies across the three-country region.

Feminist Challenges in the Social Sciences

Feminist Challenges in the Social Sciences
Author: Mari Luz Esteban
Publisher: Center for Basque Studies
Total Pages: 220
Release: 2010
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1935709011

"Collection of articles on academic feminism, gender relations and history in the Basque Country"--Provided by publisher.

Transnational Agrarian Movements Confronting Globalization

Transnational Agrarian Movements Confronting Globalization
Author: Saturnino M. Borras, Jr.
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Total Pages: 376
Release: 2009-02-23
Genre: Technology & Engineering
ISBN: 1444307207

Readers of this book will encounter peasants and farmers whostruggle at home and traverse national borders to challenge theWorld Trade Organization and other powerful global institutions. Studies the activists in Brazil who uproot plots of geneticallymodified soybeans, forest dwellers in Indonesia who chop downrubber plantations to cultivate rice to feed their families,‘runaway villages’ in China that take up arms to resistcorrupt officials, and Mexican migrants who, having exited indesperation, return from abroad to transform their communities Little-known transnational agrarian movements of the earlytwentieth century share the stage with more recent, high-profileglobal alliances, such as Vía Campesina Celebrates a dynamic sector of international civil society, andtackles the thorny questions of successes and failures, ethical andpolitical dilemmas, troubled alliances with NGOs, protestrepertoires, and representation claims Analyzes contemporary collective action in all its complexity,acknowledging ambiguities and contradictions, posing challengingquestions, and providing concrete strategies for scholars andactivists

An Invitation to Environmental Sociology

An Invitation to Environmental Sociology
Author: Michael Mayerfeld Bell
Publisher: SAGE Publications
Total Pages: 513
Release: 2015-07-01
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1452275785

“This is not only the best environmental sociology text I’ve used, but it is the best text of any type I’ve used in college-level teaching.” –Dr. Cliff Brown, University of New Hampshire Join author Mike Bell and new co-author Loka Ashwood as they explore “the biggest community of all” and bring out the sociology of environmental possibility. The highly-anticipated Fifth Edition of An Invitation to Environmental Sociology delves into this rapidly changing and growing field in a clear and artful manner. Written in a lively, engaging style, this book explores the broad range of topics in environmental sociology with a personal passion rarely seen in sociology books. The Fifth Edition contains new chapters entitled “Money and Markets,” “Technology and Science,” and “Living in An Ecological Society.” In addition, this edition brings in fresh material on extraction between core and periphery countries, the industrialization of agriculture, the hazards of fossil fuel production, environmental security, and making environmentalism normal.

Environmental Governance in Latin America

Environmental Governance in Latin America
Author: Fabio De Castro
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 347
Release: 2016-03-24
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1137505729

This book is open access under a CC-BY license. The multiple purposes of nature – livelihood for communities, revenues for states, commodities for companies, and biodiversity for conservationists – have turned environmental governance in Latin America into a highly contested arena. In such a resource-rich region, unequal power relations, conflicting priorities, and trade-offs among multiple goals have led to a myriad of contrasting initiatives that are reshaping social relations and rural territories. This edited collection addresses these tensions by unpacking environmental governance as a complex process of formulating and contesting values, procedures and practices shaping the access, control and use of natural resources. Contributors from various fields address the challenges, limitations, and possibilities for a more sustainable, equal, and fair development. In this book, environmental governance is seen as an overarching concept defining the dynamic and multi-layered repertoire of society-nature interactions, where images of nature and discourses on the use of natural resources are mediated by contextual processes at multiple scales.

Socioecological Transitions and Global Change

Socioecological Transitions and Global Change
Author: Marina Fischer-Kowalski
Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing
Total Pages: 296
Release: 2007
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN:

'In an important contribution to sustainability science, Fischer-Kowalski and Haberl extend the frontiers of contemporary socio-ecological research to articulate a theory of material, energy and land-use transitions across multiple scales based on detailed empirical studies in Europe and Asia. The insights it presents on agrarian-industrial transitions are crucial to understand the potential impact of emerging nations like India and China on global change.' - Aromar Revi, India China Institute, The New School University, US 'This volume represents the culmination of several years of empirical research and refinement of the social metabolism approach. That approach is one of the most exciting and illuminating innovations in the fields of human ecology, industrial ecology, and environmental history. Here the team from Vienna's Institute of Social Ecology shows masterfully how the insights of social metabolism shed light on transitions to high-energy society in Austria, in Britain, and in the world at large.' - J.R. McNeill, Georgetown University, US This significant new book analyses fundamental changes in society-nature interaction: the socioeconomic use of materials, energy and land. The volume presents a number of case studies addressing transitions from an agrarian to an industrial socioecological regime, analysed within the materials and energy flow accounting (MEFA) framework. It is argued that by concentrating on the biophysical dimensions of change in the course of industrialization, social development issues can be explicitly linked to changes in the natural environment. From the historical transition in Europe, to current transitions in developing countries, the book offers a broad and comprehensive analysis of transition processes across scales, from local to national. The comparison of historical and current assessments allows a theory of the underlying patterns of the agrarian-industrial transition to emerge. On this basis, future trends and possible pathways towards (or indeed further departures from) sustainability are discussed. Empirical in character and cautious in its assumptions, this insightful book provides rich and in-depth material for further studies in socioecological research. It will be essential reading for students and researchers of ecological economics, industrial ecology, human ecology, environmental sociology, environmental history, geography as well as land, energy and development studies.