Lieba Faier investigates the processes by which Filipina women who emigrated to work in rural Japan in hostess bars have overcome initial hostilities to become regarded as 'ideal, traditional Japanese brides'. 'Intimate Encounters' shows how changes to culture & identity come about through ordinary interpersonal exchanges.
Eschewing the often standard dry and static writing style of traditional textbooks, Discrete Encounters provides a refreshing approach to discrete mathematics. The author blends traditional course topics and applications with historical context, pop culture references, and open problems. This book focuses on the historical development of the subject and provides fascinating details of the people behind the mathematics, along with their motivations, deepening readers’ appreciation of mathematics. This unique book covers many of the same topics found in traditional textbooks, but does so in an alternative, entertaining style that better captures readers’ attention. In addition to standard discrete mathematics material, the author shows the interplay between the discrete and the continuous and includes high-interest topics such as fractals, chaos theory, cellular automata, money-saving financial mathematics, and much more. Not only will readers gain a greater understanding of mathematics and its culture, they will also be encouraged to further explore the subject. Long lists of references at the end of each chapter make this easy. Highlights: Features fascinating historical context to motivate readers Text includes numerous pop culture references throughout to provide a more engaging reading experience Its unique topic structure presents a fresh approach The text’s narrative style is that of a popular book, not a dry textbook Includes the work of many living mathematicians Its multidisciplinary approach makes it ideal for liberal arts mathematics classes, leisure reading, or as a reference for professors looking to supplement traditional courses Contains many open problems Profusely illustrated
Digital technology is disrupting the prerequisites for most firms in the service industry and frequently forces them to reassess the ratio of human interaction and technology use in service encounters. To retain competitiveness, it seems mandatory to increase service encounter efficiency by embedding digital technology into the existing processes. However, there is little empirical evidence on how such technological implementations affect the sentiments, attitudes, and behaviors of frontline employees. Likewise, research on interrelated customer responses is scarce. To address this matter, this book presents four distinct yet related studies to investigate the impact of digital technology on frontline employees, customers, and ultimately service firms. The results and implications provide meaningful insights for theory and practice.
Politics cannot function without responsibility, but there have been serious disagreements about how responsibility is to be understood and huge controversies about how it is to be distributed, rewarded, legislated, and enforced. The liberal notions of personal responsibility that have dominated political thinking in the West for more than a century are rooted in the familiar territory of individual will and causal blame, but these theories have been assailed as no longer adequate to explain or address the political demands of a global social structure. Informed by Marx, Foucault, and Butler, Chad Lavin argues for a "postliberal" theory of responsibility, formulating responsibility as a process that is anchored in a persistent ability to respond, not reproach. Lavin works this formulation through discussions of contemporary political issues such as globalization, police brutality, and abortion. Rather than assigning individual blame, postliberal responsibility challenges the supposed autonomy of individual subjects by taking structural arguments into account. Lavin concludes that a liberal concept of responsibility gives rise to a moralistic and oppressive approach to social problems, while a postliberal approach highlights a shared responsibility for developing collective solutions to systemic problems. Postliberal responsibility not only suggests more generous and democratic responses to social ills, it also allows us to theorize a greater range of issues that demand political response.
The success of service organizations ultimately depends on employees in customer service roles; their performance affects customer satisfaction and loyalty. Integrating theory and research, this book explores the factors that determine the performance of service providers, and points to important managerial implications.
"This book is aimed at rethinking social scientific approaches to collective action by exploring China's ongoing water crisis from the vantage point of Huize County, a water-stressed, ecologically damaged, multi-ethnic area of rural Yunnan Province"--
The disproportionate criminalisation and incarceration of particular minority ethnic groups has long been observed, though much of the work in criminology has been dominated by a somewhat narrow debate. This debate has concerned itself with explaining this disproportionality in terms of structural inequalities and socio-economic disadvantage or discriminatory criminal justice processing. This book offers an accessible and innovative approach, including chapters on anti-Semitism, social cohesion in London, Bradford and Glasgow, as well as an exploration of policing Traveller communities. Incorporating current empirical research and new departures in methodology and theory, this book also draws on a range of contemporary issues such as policing terrorism, immigration detention and youth gangs. In offering minority perspectives on race, crime and justice and white inmate perspectives from the multicultural prison, the book emphasises contrasting and distinctive influences on constructing ethnic identities. It will be of interest to students studying courses in ethnicity, crime and justice.