Through the prism of one turn-of-the-century factory-city, Tamara Hareven and Randolph Langenbach have captured the historic experience of millions of Americans. We hear for the first time the eloquent voices—sometimes elegiac, sometimes bitter, yet always powerful—of immigrant being turned into Americans as they worked the machines which were themselves transforming this country.The book focuses on the Amoskeag Manufacturing Company, once the largest textile factory in the world. ...

One of the prevailing myths about the American family is that there once existed a harmonious family with three generations living together, and that this "ideal" family broke down under the impact of urbanization and industralization. The essays in this volume challenge this myth and provide dramatic revisions of simplistic notions about change in the American family. Based on detailed research in a variety of sources, including extensive oral history interviews of ordinary people, these ...

Oral History: An Interdisciplinary Anthology is a collection of classic articles by some of the best known proponents of oral history, demonstrating the basics of oral history, while also acting as a guidebook for how to use it in research. Added to this new edition is insight into how oral history is practiced on an international scale, making this book an indispensable resource for scholars of history and social sciences, as well as those interested in oral history on the avocational lev...

Why do we mistrust people more in the UK than in Japan? Why do Americans have higher rates of teenage pregnancy than the French? What makes the Swedish thinner than the Greeks? The answer: inequality.This groundbreaking book, based on years of research, provides hard evidence to show:- How almost everything - from life expectancy to depression levels, violence to illiteracy - is affected not by how wealthy a society is, but how equal it is- That societies with a bigg...

In this book, sociology professor John F. Conway looks at families past, present and future and examines the changing nature of family. Figures from the first decade of the new millennium tell us that one marriage in two may well end in divorce. Conway considers the implications of divorce, the impact of social changes on men, women and children, and suggests how these issues might be better addressed through family policy. The new edition addresses the harsh new reality facing Canadian fa...

A powerful new argument for reviving the ideal of racial integrationMore than forty years have passed since Congress, in response to the Civil Rights Movement, enacted sweeping antidiscrimination laws in the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and the Fair Housing Act of 1968. As a signal achievement of that legacy, in 2008, Americans elected their first African American president. Some would argue that we have finally arrived at a postracial A...

Crime, Shame and Reintegration is a contribution to general criminological theory. Its approach is as relevant to professional burglary as to episodic delinquency or white collar crime. Braithwaite argues that some societies have higher crime rates than others because of their different processes of shaming wrongdoing. Shaming can be counterproductive, making crime problems worse. But when shaming is done within a cultural context of respect for the offender, it can be an extraordinarily p...

The past 30 years have seen vast changes in our attitudes toward crime. More and more of us live in gated communities; prison populations have skyrocketed; and issues such as racial profiling, community policing, and "zero-tolerance" policies dominate the headlines. How is it that our response to crime and our sense of criminal justice has come to be so dramatically reconfigured? David Garland charts the changes in crime and criminal justice in America and Britain over the past twenty-five...

Approved by the General Assembly of the United Nations in 1989, the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child affirms that children in all countries have fundamental rights, including rights to education. To date, 192 states are signatories to or have in some form ratified the accord. Children are still imperilled in many countries, however, and are often not made aware of their guaranteed rights.In Empowering Children, R. Brian Howe and Katherine Covell assert ...

'Religion and politics', as the old saying goes, 'should never be discussed in mixed company.'And yet fostering discussions that cross lines of political difference has long been a central concern of political theorists. More recently, it has also become a cause célèbre for pundits and civic-minded citizens wanting to improve the health of American democracy. But only recently have scholars begun empirical investigations of where and with what consequences people interact with those whose ...

This book offers a critical assessment of the experiences of African Canadian students, exploring strategies that will serve to enhance their academic success.Writing from their respective locations as students, parents, teachers, counsellors, professors and researchers, the contributors to this collection alert readers to many of the challenges that African Canadians face in the educational system. They discuss new initiatives and suggest new directions that might improve the acad...

‘Systematically exposes the neoliberal myths in unequal societies’ - Niels Rosendal Jensen′A call to arms to challenge inequality and social exclusion.′ - Lel Meleyal‘An impassioned dissection of the highly coded lexicon of so-called welfare reform…get reading, get angry, get ready’. - Gargi BhattacharyyaWelfare Words analyses the keywords and phrases commonly used by policy-makers, news-outlets and wider so...