Family Configurations develops current scholarship on families and intimate lives by demonstrating that family relationships, far from being fluid and inconsequential, are more structured and committed than ever. Based on a series of empirical studies carried out in the US and Europe, this volume reveals the diversity of family relationships that emerge as a result of various key family issues, emphasizing the supportive and disruptive interdependencies existing among large sets of family ...

This book critically assesses the main features of the modernization of family life and personal relationships by examining and comparing three European countries with different social and political pathways: Portugal, Switzerland and Lithuania. Drawing on national surveys of family trajectories and social networks, the contributors highlight personal and family relationships through the lens of network and life course perspectives as well as gender and generational perspectives.Pr...

This open access interdisciplinary book integrates the major findings and theoretical advances of a 12-year research program run by the Swiss National Centre of Competence in Research LIVES research program hosted by the universities of Lausanne and Geneva, within a single comprehensive and coherent publication on vulnerability across adulthood. The book is based on the idea that vulnerability is an essential component of the life course that can inform how we use our resources, reserves a...

This volume provides readers with recent sociological approaches to family understanding, theorising and practices within the context of continuities and change, both across generations and during individual life courses. The contributors uniquely investigate the friction between persisting family needs and changing circumstances, between holding on to traditional family norms and adapting to fast-changing demands. Authors from nine countries develop and apply innovative theoretical and me...

Most of the intriguing social phenomena of our time, such as international terrorism, social inequality, and urban ethnic segregation, are consequences of complex forms of agent interaction that are difficult to observe methodically and experimentally. This book looks at a new research stream that makes use of advanced computer simulation modelling techniques to spotlight agent interaction that allows us to explain the emergence of social patterns. It presents a method to pursue analytical...

Canada, like other countries, is aging. The media has reported on a "grey tsunami," a demographic change reflecting longer life expectancy and the retirement of the so-called baby boomer generation. The numbers and percentages of older adults within our population continue to increase. In 2010, 15.3 percent of Canada's population was over 65; in 2030, it will be 24.1 percent. Many commentators have risen alarm about this flood of adults potentially bankrupting our health care system. This ...

Despite the swift spread of social network concepts and their applications and the rising use of network analysis in social science, there is no book that provides a thorough general introduction for the serious reader. Understanding Social Networks fills that gap by explaining the big ideas that underlie the social network phenomenon. Written for those interested in this fast moving area but who are not mathematically inclined, it covers fundamental concepts, then discusses netwo...

While categorization has always been one of the primary focuses of the social sciences, recent trends within these disciplines have tended to categorize various behaviours as disorders. Researching Resilience challenges this tendency to pathologize, and marks a profound shift in research methods from the study of disorder to the study of well-being.This collection assembles qualitative and quantitative studies from a diverse group of scholars and disciplines, stressing the...

From public transportation and education to adequate access to buildings, the social impact of disability has been felt everywhere since the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act in 1990. And a remarkable groundswell of activism and critical literature has followed in this wake.Claiming Disability is the first comprehensive examination of Disability Studies as a field of inquiry. Disability Studies is not simply about the variations that exist in human beh...

Population-based survey experiments have become an invaluable tool for social scientists struggling to generalize laboratory-based results, and for survey researchers besieged by uncertainties about causality. Thanks to technological advances in recent years, experiments can now be administered to random samples of the population to which a theory applies. Yet until now, there was no self-contained resource for social scientists seeking a concise and accessible overview of this methodology...

In an advanced society like the U.S., where an array of processes work against gender inequality, how does this inequality persist? Integrating research from sociology, social cognition and psychology, and organizational behavior, Framed by Gender identifies the general processes through which gender as a principle of inequality rewrites itself into new forms of social and economic organization. Cecilia Ridgeway argues that people confront uncertain circumstances with gender belie...

In 1788 John Adams created a sublime ambition for all nations - 'a government of laws and not of men'. In the intervening years we have come to learn that legislation itself works through the interpretations of the many men and women who work on the inside and the outside of the law. Effective regulation thus depends not only on scrupulous legal analysis, with its appeal to precedent, conceptual clarity and argumentation, but also on sound empirical research, which often reveals divers...