This book brings together perspectives from sociology, political science, gender studies, and history to produce new ways of analysing wildfire preparedness and policy in Australia. Drawing on data from hundreds of interviews with residents, volunteers and emergency services professionals living and working in wildfire-prone areas, the authors focus on issues of power and inequality, the contested nature of community and the relationship between citizens and the state.The book ques...

In recent decades, trade unions have suffered major reversals and experienced declining memberships. Transnational corporations and state-owned multi-nationals have increasingly implemented deteriorating terms and conditions of employment, with vulnerable and insecure job contracts.In this context, there has been a wide-ranging debate about the form of trade unionism, the bases for collective organization and struggle and the future of trade unionism. This book addresses these ques...

The chapters in this volume reflect the variety of methods that researchers have recently applied in their investigations of "behavior toward language", or language management. The innovative methods introduced in the volume will appeal to researchers interested in different types of introspective interview methodology and discourse analysis, and to those looking for ways of linking language policy to everyday social interactions. The broad spectrum of themes taken up by the authors includ...

Trade Unions and Regions: Better Work, Experimentation, and Regional Governance is about the place of workers and their unions in the modern world. It addresses current challenges for unions working in regions and the experiments that may take place at this level of governance. The book addresses pressing questions concerned with the conditions for better work and a humane society. The focus is on the capacities of unions to address questions relating to regional governance, in both supran...

Transnational trade union action has expanded significantly over the last few decades and has taken a variety of shapes and trajectories. This book is concerned with understanding the spatial extension of trade union action, and in particular the development of new forms of collective mobilization, network-building, and forms of regulation that bridge local and transnational issues.Through the work of leading international specialists, this collection of essays examines the process...

Trade union movements in many countries face uncertain futures. After three decades of extensive economic restructuring at both national and international levels, often accompanied by major legislative reforms, the way forward for unions is unclear. Throughout the 1980s and into the 1990s, in most developed economies, union membership declined massively and union leaders and their members lost their former prominence and their place in the polity. Will trade unions be able to re-establish ...

Globalisation, State and Labour combines a new theoretical approach with comparative analysis – ensuring that it will be of vital interest to anyone concerned with the globalization debate, the future of the state, and organized labour.It shows how although the world is undergoing enormous changes involving politics, the economy and society, the position and place of the state, and the significance of state policy in this process, is heavily contested. Presenting a timely ...

This comprehensive survey of continuity and change in trade unions looks at five primarily English-speaking countries: the USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the UK. The authors consider the recent re-examination by trade union movements of the basis of union organization and activity in the face of a harsher economic and political climate. One of the impetuses for this re-examination has been the recent history of unions in the USA. American models of renewal have inspired Australia,...