The Confounding Island
The Confounding Island

Author: Orlando Patterson

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Published: 2019-11-12

Total Pages: 433

ISBN-13: 0674243072

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The preeminent sociologist and National Book Award–winning author of Freedom in the Making of Western Culture grapples with the paradox of his homeland: its remarkable achievements amid continuing struggles since independence. There are few places more puzzling than Jamaica. Jamaicans claim their home has more churches per square mile than any other country, yet it is one of the most murderous nations in the world. Its reggae superstars and celebrity sprinters outshine musicians and athletes in countries hundreds of times its size. Jamaica’s economy is anemic and too many of its people impoverished, yet they are, according to international surveys, some of the happiest on earth. In The Confounding Island, Orlando Patterson returns to the place of his birth to reckon with its history and culture. Patterson investigates the failures of Jamaica’s postcolonial democracy, exploring why the country has been unable to achieve broad economic growth and why its free elections and stable government have been unable to address violence and poverty. He takes us inside the island’s passion for cricket and the unparalleled international success of its local musical traditions. He offers a fresh answer to a question that has bedeviled sports fans: Why are Jamaican runners so fast? Jamaica’s successes and struggles expose something fundamental about the world we live in. If we look closely at the Jamaican example, we see the central dilemmas of globalization, economic development, poverty reduction, and postcolonial politics thrown into stark relief.

Social Theory
Social Theory

Author: Charles Lemert

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2018-05-15

Total Pages: 932

ISBN-13: 0429974264

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This book provides an illuminating introduction to a collection of readings on social theory and provides an overview of the socio-historical context and delineation of key thinkers and texts. It includes a new section exploring social theory at the limits of the social.

Remaking Modernity
Remaking Modernity

Author: Julia Adams

Publisher: Duke University Press

Published: 2005-02

Total Pages: 636

ISBN-13: 9780822333630

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DIVA sociology collection reviewing the state-of-historical-study in a wide range of areas while showcasing the use of poststructuralist approaches to studying family, gender, war, protest & revolution, state-making, social provisions, colonialism, trans/div

Urban Political Economy
Urban Political Economy

Author: Kenneth Newton

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2013-11-07

Total Pages: 236

ISBN-13: 1472507142

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The study of urban political economy needs no justification, for cities are the heart (and arguably the soul) of our civilization, and their political and economic conditions are the linchpins of its existence. But how should we study urban political economy? Urban Political Economy deals with different nations – Belgium, Denmark, France, Norway, the UK. and the USA – and with different problems – expenditure patterns, service provision, economic development, fiscal strain, budgetary cuts, and borrowing systems – but they all agree on two fundamental points about the study of their subject matter: first, that the urban economy cannot be understood outside its political context, just as urban politics cannot be understood without its economic background; and second, that the local and the national are knitted together so closely and so tightly that it is necessary to think of them as forming a single system. Urban Political Economy explores the idea of the fusion of factors by demonstrating the extent to which local and national conditions react upon one another to analyze the urban political economy.

The Oxford Handbook of Political Economy
The Oxford Handbook of Political Economy

Author: Barry R. Weingast

Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA

Published: 2008-06-19

Total Pages: 1112

ISBN-13: 0199548471

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Over its lifetime, 'political economy' has had different meanings. This handbook views political economy as a synthesis of the various strands of social science, treating it as the methodology of economics applied to the analysis of political behaviour and institutions.

Political Sociology and the People's Health
Political Sociology and the People's Health

Author: Jason Beckfield

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2018-08-10

Total Pages: 209

ISBN-13: 0190492481

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A social epidemiologist looks at health inequalities in terms of the upstream factors that produced them. A political sociologist sees these same inequalities as products of institutions that unequally allocate power and social goods. Neither is wrong -- but can the two talk to one another? In a stirring new synthesis, Political Sociology and the People's Health advances the debate over social inequalities in health by offering a new set of provocative hypotheses around how health is distributed in and across populations. It joins political sociology's macroscopic insights into social policy, labor markets, and the racialized and gendered state with social epidemiology's conceptualizations and measurements of populations, etiologic periods, and distributions. The result is a major leap forward in how we understand the relationships between institutions and inequalities -- and essential reading for those in public health, sociology, and beyond.