Readers will follow an intense period of social change in Quebec, during which there was a remarkable increase in the level of modernization. They will note a massive entry of women into the labour force and a growing service sector that now constitutes seventy percent of all economic activity. They will observe also that the Québécois have dramatically increased their television viewing and that, while they express a generally high level of satisfaction with life, the Québécois must contend with escalating crime and suicide rates.
On Rachel Carson and her work and on current environmental challenges. The four authors present information on various American trends: demographic, macroeconomic, and macro-technological. Descriptions, tables, and graphs trace the dynamics of population, specifically in relation to the expansion which followed the 1982-83 recession, and analyze achievements in intelligence, genetic engineering, and space travel. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
The introduction summarizes and locates the major waves of change. The authors then document each trend in relation to eighteen thematic groups that include age, community, women, labour, management, stratification, social relations, the state, mobilizing institutions, social forces, ideologies, households, lifestyle, leisure, education, integration, and attitudes and values.
Over the three decades from 1960 to 1990, French society underwent a spectacular transformation due to the baby boom, which was particularly broad-based and prolonged in France and caused the population to climb by a full one-third. At the same time, the French economy expanded and the pace of modernization picked up, with the result that the wealth of the French quadrupled in a single generation. The turning point between the reconstruction and development period and the period of profound social change appears to have been 1965. The baby boom was over by then, and the production system was shifting in orientation. No longer dominated by the growth of basic industries, production was now starting to focus on consumer goods and services.
The third volume in the invaluable reference series Comparative Charting of Social Change examines social trends in West Germany during the period between 1960 and 1990. This was a special phase of German history: the Federal Republic of Germany was founded in 1949, and by 1960 the main disturbances of the Second World War had been overcome. The next thirty years saw relatively stable development in democratic institutions, economic wealth, and the welfare state. This process, however, was not entirely without difficulties. Environmental conditions deteriorated and unemployment grew, especially in the 1980s. A new, reunified Germany replaced the "old" FRG in 1990, ushering in a fundamentally different social structure.
Italy remains an enigma for many observers. Recent Social Trends in Italy, 1960-1995, the sixth volume from the international Comparative Charting of Social Change program, provides a new and convincing schema for its comprehension. It shows that three essential institutions have structured and unified Italian society: the family, the church, and political parties. While the state remains a weak institution, it is important as a regulator of the economy and of society through the welfare state. The book, which contains a long introduction by Alberto Martinelli on the uneven modernization of Italy, shows the usefulness of analysing social change through study of a series of macro-social trends. These trends range from life-style structures to fertility, leisure, consumption, inequality, religion, and family, among others. This sixth national profile provides more arguements in favour of a hypothesis of diversification, rather than convergence, of modern societies. As Henri Mendras writes in the preface of the book, "The more we change, the more we remain ourselves: that is the conclusion of our comparative research, and the Italian study provides further ample proof of it."
Contrary to mid-twentieth century predictions, ethnic pluralism has increased dramatically in North America and significantly in Europe. Neither the post 9/11 emphasis on international border security nor anti-immigration and anti-multiculturalism movements have affected the fifty year trend of increasing labour mobility and sustained levels of migration. The ethnic pluralism accompanying this powerful trend has fueled academic research and public debate. Contributors report on and develop a conceptualization of ethnic social incorporation and multiculturalism in Canada, the United States, Germany, Greece, Bulgaria and Italy. This group of countries displays a remarkable variety of both ethnic diversity and public policy responses to ethnic social incorporation over the past four decades. It includes two countries (Canada and the United States) built upon very large-scale immigration over the course of more than a century, two countries (Greece and Italy) which until recently were characterized by large-scale emigration but now are grappling with immigration, one country (Bulgaria) that was until the 1990s insulated from extensive migration and faces a demographic slump, and one (Germany) that has experimented with isolating temporary populations but is now addressing the responsibilities of permanent immigration. Multicultural Variations includes national reports describing each of the six countries under investigation and is book-ended by introductory and concluding chapters that present a new understanding of and synthesis on multiculturalism that is distinct from either enthusiastic support or ideological critiques. Contributors include Mathias Bös (Philipps-Universität Marburg; Germany), Antonio Chiesi, (Università degli Studi di Milano, Italy), Jason Edgerton (University of Manitoba, Canada), Barry Ferguson (University of Manitoba, Canada), Nikolai Genov (Freie Universität Berlin, Germany), Louis Hicks (St Mary's College of Maryland, USA), Paul Kingston (University of Virginia, USA), Laura Maratou-Alipranti (National Centre for Social Research, Athens, Greece), Lance W. Roberts (University of Manitoba, Canada), Sonia Stefanizzi (Università degli Studi di Milano-Bicocca, Italy), and Susanne von Below (Johann Wolfgang Goethe- Universität Frankfurt, Germany),
The authors, using these goals as a checklist, found that each of the seven states performs well in some areas and badly in others. They discovered that all states approached these goals in a style shaped by their own history and, in particular, by how they have been affected by the troubles of the twentieth century. Their investigations offer a new, informative way of looking at these nation states and detail the social and political conditions in each state. Contributors include Theodore Caplow, Salustiano Del Campo (Royal Academy of Political and Social Science, Madrid), Nikolai Genov (Bulgaria Academy of Sciences), Karl-Otto Hondrich (Goethe University), Simon Langlois (Université de Laval), Alberto Martinelli (University of Milan), and Henri Mendras (OFCE, Paris).
The international sociological community has engaged recently in a controversial discussion on social inequality. There is a vigourous debate on whether the traditional concepts of social class and social stratification are still useful. Some researchers argue that social classes still offer a key explanation to social inequalities while others challenge the long-standing tradition of class analysis. New approaches have been proposed to describe recent social changes in the stratification system: vanishing middle class, two-thirds societies, cosmographic inequality, and classless society, among others.
Values and Attitudes across Nations and Time contributes to an ever-growing body of work focussing on the elucidation of variations in values and attitudes throughout the world - not only what they actually are, but also strategies for their detection, description and classification. Researchers in the field seek to identify both similarities and differences. In this work, quantitative and qualitative views and methods are explored by nine well-known authors: Masamichi Sasaki, current President of the International Institute of Sociology; Theodore Caplow of the University of Virginia; Mattei Dogan of the National Center of Scientific Research, Paris; S.N. Eisenstadt of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem; Chikio Hayashi of the Institute of Statistical Mathematics, Tokyo; Geert Hofstede of the University of Limburg at Maastricht in The Netherlands; Alex Inkeles of Stanford University; P. Herbert Leiderman of the Stanford University Medical School; Robert M. Marsh of Brown University; and Carmi Schooler of the National Institute of Mental Health, Bethesda, USA.
