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This book presents bigotry as a systematic, all-encompassing mindset that has a special affinity for rightwing movements. It explores the appeal of bigotry, the self-image it justifies, the interests it serves, and its complex connection with modernity. It reveals how prejudice shapes the conspiratorial and paranoid worldview of the true believer, the elitist, and the chauvinist. In the process, it becomes apparent how the bigot hides behind mainstream conservative labels in order to support policies designed to disadvantage the targets of his contempt. Examining bigotry in its various dimensions—anthropological, historical, psychological, sociological, and political—the book illustrates how the bigot's intense hatred of “the other” is a direct reaction to social progress, liberal values, secularism, and an increasingly complex and diverse world.

This book offers a compelling and uniquely detailed examination of the experiences of kindergarten students in California participating in a voluntary school desegregation program. It focuses on the day-to-day school life of a group of minority children bussed from their poor-performing home school district to an affluent neighboring district with high-performing schools. Through these kindergarteners' experiences, the book sensitively illuminates the processes of school transition, socialization, and adaptation, and addresses an array of important issues relating to American education. The book acutely observes these 'bus kids' and the quality of their social, emotional, cultural and academic experiences. It presents a moving picture of the complexity of challenges, often unrecognized by teachers and parents, each young student confronted every day.

This book presents a history of efforts to reform mathematics education in California throughout the last two decades of the 20th century. That history is a contentious one, full of such fervour and heat that participants and observers often refer to the “math wars”. The book considers the many perspectives of those involved in math reform, weaving a tapestry of facts, philosophies, conversations, events, and personalities into the narrative. While the focus is on California, the implications of this book extend to struggles over education policy and practice throughout the United States. The book's three-dimensional account of math education reform efforts reveals how the debates tend to be deeply ideological and how people come to feel misunderstood and misrepresented. It examines the myths used to explain the failure of reforms, the actual reasons for failure, and the importance of taking multiple perspectives into account when planning and implementing reform.

Everyday Mysticism is a close look at a school for the study of the self in the deep Israeli desert. The school, which was established in the community of Neot Smadar in 1989, assumes the external form of a kibbutz, but is a contemplative community for individuals who seek to become aware of the devastating effects of mechanical thinking. The author spent several summers working in the community and describes, as a participant, the way that contemplative practice—everyday mysticism—shapes the work environment, the community structure and human relationships. The book also provides detailed examples of the spiritual work that was instituted by the founder of the school, Yossef Safra, whose vision is compared with ancient Buddhist and Hindu philosophers. That spiritual work takes place in conversations and dialogues where participants practice the art of listening as a meditative discipline while also learning to observe in fine detail the working of the conscious mind. These contemplative practices define the nature of community of Neot Smadar as an extended family were everyday mysticism prevails.

Why is government distrust rampant, especially in the rural United States? This book offers a simple explanation: corporations and the government together dispossess rural people of their prosperity, and even their property. Based on four years of fieldwork, this eye-opening assessment plays out in a mixed-race Georgia community that hosted the first nuclear power reactors sanctioned by the government in three decades. This work serves as an explanatory mirror of prominent trends in current American politics. Churches become havens for redemption, poaching a means of retribution, guns a tool of self-defense, and nuclear power a faltering solution to global warming as governance strays from democratic principles. In the absence of hope or trust in rulers, rural racial tensions fester and divide. The book tells of the rebellion that unfolds as the rights of corporations supersede the rights of humans.

Among the Wola people of Papua New Guinea, using the term “economy” is problematic. Distribution is unnecessary; the producers of everyday needs are the consumers: produce goes largely “from land to mouth”—with no implication that resources are scarce. Yet transactions featuring valuable things—which are scarce—are a prominent aspect of life, where sociopolitical exchange figures prominently. The relationship—or rather the disconnection—between these two domains is central to understanding the fiercely egalitarian political-economy. In this investigation of a Highland New Guinea agricultural “economy” and acephalous political order the text interrogates the relevance of key economic ideas in noncapitalist contexts and challenges anthropological shibboleths such as the “gift.” Furthermore, it makes a reactionary-cum-innovative contribution to research methods and analysis, drawing on advances in information technology to manage large data sets.

This book tells the story of the Yale University School of Medicine, tracing its history from its origins in 1810, when it had four professors and 37 students, to its present status as one of the world's outstanding medical schools. It focuses on the important relationship of the medical school to the university, which has long operated under the precept that one should heal the body as well as the soul. The book recounts events surrounding the beginnings of the medical school, the very perilous times it experienced in the middle-and late-19th century, and its revitalization, rapid growth, and evolution throughout the 20th century. It describes the colorful individuals involved with the school and shows how social upheavals, including wars, the Depression, boom periods, social activism, and the like, affected the school. The picture it paints is that of an institution that was at times unmanageable and underfunded, that often had troubled relationships with the New Haven community and its major hospital, but that managed to triumph over these difficulties and flourish. Today Yale University School of Medicine is a center for excellence. The book draws on the themes recurrent in its rich past to offer suggestions about its future.

American agriculture employs some 2.5 million workers during a typical year, most for fewer than six months. Three fourths of these farm workers are immigrants, half are unauthorized, and most will leave seasonal farm work within a decade. What do these statistics mean for farmers, for labourers, for rural America? This book addresses the question by reviewing what is happening on farms and in the towns and cities where immigrant farm workers settle with their families. The book finds that the business-labor model that has evolved in rural America is neither desirable nor sustainable. It proposes regularizing U.S. farm workers and rationalizing the farm labor market, an approach that will help American farmers stay globally competitive while also improving conditions for farm workers.

An alarmingly high number of American students continue to lack proficiency in reading, maths, and science. The various attempts to address this problem have all too often resulted in “silver bullet” solutions such as reducing class sizes or implementing voucher programs. But this book shows, improving literacy also requires an understanding of complex and interrelated social issues that shape a child's learning. The book presents the most up-to-date research on the diverse factors that relate to a child's literacy development, from preschool to early elementary school.

This book presents an account of Russia's land reform initiatives from the late 1980s to today. In Russia, a country controlling more land than any other nation, land ownership is central to structures of power, class division, and agricultural production. The aim of Russian land reform for the past thirty years—to undo the collectivization of the Soviet era and encourage public ownership—has been largely unsuccessful. To understand this failure, this book examines contemporary land reform policies in terms of legislation, institutional structure, and human behavior. Using extensive survey data, it analyzes household behaviors in regard to land ownership and usage based on socioeconomic status, family size, demographic distribution, and regional differences.

Education reformers and policymakers argue that improved students' learning requires stronger academic standards, stiffer state tests, and accountability for students' scores. Yet these efforts seem not to be succeeding in many states. This book argues that effective state reform depends on conditions which most reforms ignore: coherence in practice as well as policy and opportunities for professional learning. The book draws on a decade's detailed study of California's ambitious and controversial program to improve mathematics teaching and learning. The book reports that state policy influenced teaching and learning when there was consistency among the tests and other policy instruments; when there was consistency among the curricula and other instruments of classroom practice; and when teachers had substantial opportunities to learn the practices proposed by the policy. These conditions were met for a minority of elementary school teachers in California. When the conditions were met for teachers, students had higher scores on state math tests. The book also shows that, for most teachers, the reform ended with consistency in state policy. They did not have access to consistent instruments of classroom practice, nor did they have opportunities to learn the new practices which state policymakers proposed. In these cases, neither teachers nor their students benefited from the state reform. This book offers insights into the ways policy and practice can be linked in successful educational reform and shows why such linkage has been difficult to achieve.

This book presents a case study of two people learning to teach. It shows them engaging two groups of fourth-grade students in discussion about the meaning of texts—what the text terms “interpretive discussion.” The two groups differ with respect to race, geographical location, and affluence. As the novice teachers learn to clarify their own questions about meaning, they become better listeners and leaders of the discussions. Eventually, they mix the students from the two classrooms, and the reader watches them converse about a text as the barriers of race and class seem to break down. In addition to the detailed analysis of the case study, this book presents philosophical, literary, and psychological foundations of interpretive discussion and describes its three phases: preparation, leading, and reflection.

This interdisciplinary book is about land, belonging, and the mortgage—and how people of different cultural backgrounds understand them in Africa. Drawing on years of ethnographic observation, this book discusses how people in Africa's interior feel about their attachment to family, to clan land, and to ancestral graves on the land. It goes on to explain why systems of property, finance, and mortgaging imposed by outsiders threaten Africa's rural people. The book looks briefly at European and North American theories on private property and the mortgage, and then shows how these theories have played out as attempted economic reforms in Africa. They affect not just personal ownership and possession, it suggests, but also the complex relationships that add up to civil order and episodic disorder over a longer history. Focusing particular attention on the Luo people of Kenya, the book challenges assumptions about rural economic development and calls for a broader understanding of local realities in Africa and beyond.

Sweeping changes in welfare programs since 1996 have transformed the way America cares for its poor. Today, for every dollar spent on cash welfare payments, some twenty dollars are spent on service programs targeted at the working poor—job training, adult education, child care, emergency assistance, mental health care, and other social services. This book examines the current system in the United States and the crucial role that geography plays in the system's ability to offer help. Drawing on unique survey data from almost 1,500 faith-based and secular service organizations in three cities, the book examines which agencies are most accessible to poor populations and looks at the profound impact of unstable funding on these agencies' assistance programs. The book argues that the new system has become less equitable and reliable, and it concludes with practical policy recommendations that address some of the more pressing issues in improving the safety net.

How successful are HIV prevention programs? Which HIV prevention programs are most cost effective? Which programs are worth expanding and which should be abandoned altogether? This book addresses the quantitative evaluation of HIV prevention programs, assessing several different quantitative methods of evaluation. The book includes chapters by behavioral scientists, biologists, economists, epidemiologists, health service researchers, operations researchers, policy makers, and statisticians. The chapters present a wide variety of perspectives on the subject, including an overview of HIV prevention programs in developing countries, economic analyses that address questions of cost effectiveness and resource allocation, case studies such as Israel's ban on Ethiopian blood donors, and descriptions of new methodologies and problems.

Beyond the conventional sources of racial inequality—racism for liberals and a dysfunctional black culture for conservatives—lies a source of racial inequality little discussed or studied in our society. This book maps out that terrain, using the term “racial subordination” to define racial inequality that is a byproduct of individual or institutional action that consciously forgoes an opportunity to advance racial progress for the sake of pursuing a legitimate, nonracist competing interest. While not racism, this non-nefarious source of racial inequality is not racial innocence. Though the subordinator is not on the same hook as the racist, he or she is still on the hook—a different hook. Moving the debate over racial inequality from discrimination discourse to subordination discourse, this book demonstrates how the Supreme Court engages in “juridical subordination” and how the American mainstream culture, even with its commitment to cultural diversity, commits “cultural subordination” time after time. Racism remains a large problem in our society but eliminating it will not end racial inequality. Racism and racial inequality are not coterminous. Unless we also deal with racial subordination, blacks, or African Americans, will effectively face a racial glass ceiling. Breaking through that ceiling involves confronting complex and uncomfortable questions about what we value most as Americans.

This book refocuses the debate about school choice programs in America, with a non-partisan assessment of the nation's largest and longest-running private school voucher program—the high-profile Milwaukee experiment—and finds that the system undercuts the promise of school choice. The book argues that the Milwaukee experiment has not resulted in the one element necessary for school choice to be effective: an accountability system in which good schools thrive and poor schools close. It shows that most ingredients of a robust market are missing. Well-informed consumers (parents) are not the norm. State fiscal incentives are counterproductive and competition among public and choice schools is difficult to discern. The book concludes that school choice could succeed if certain conditions were met, and they offer guidelines to strengthen accountability and repair the voucher system.

Although the essential books of Western civilization are no longer central in our courses or in our thoughts, they retain their ability to energize us intellectually, states this book. It presents a guide to some of these literary works, tracing the main currents of Western culture for all who wish to understand the roots of their civilization and the basis for its achievements. The book focuses on the productive tension between the classical and biblical strains in our civilization, between a life based on cognition and one based on faith and piety. It begins with the Iliad and Exodus, linking Achilles and Moses as Bronze Age heroic figures. Closely analysing texts and illuminating them in unexpected ways, it moves on to Socrates and Jesus, who “internalized the heroic”, continues with Paul and Augustine and their Christian synthesis, addresses Dante, Shakespeare's Hamlet, Moliere, and Voltaire, and concludes with the novel as represented by Crime and Punishment and The Great Gatsby. The book maintains that the dialectical tensions suggested by this survey account for the restlessness and singular achievements of the West and that the essential books can provide the substance and energy currently missed by both students and educated readers.

This book is a masterful introduction to, and appreciation of, sociology as a window into our world. The culmination of a distinguished career, and a fascinating exploration into the nature of human social life, the book describes the field of sociology as a way of looking at the world rather than as a simple gathering of facts about it. It notes that sociologists look out at the same human scenes as poets, historians, economists, or any other observers of the vast social landscape spread out before them, but select different aspects of that vast panorama to focus on and attend to. The book considers how sociology became a field of study, and how it has turned its attention over time to new areas of study such as race and gender and what the book calls “social speciation.” The book provides readers with new ways of The Individual and the Social thinking about human culture and social life.

Millennials have been incited to regard their parents' generation as entitled and selfish, and to blame the baby boomers of the 1960s for the cultural and economic problems of today. But is it true that young people have been victimized by their elders? This book looks at generational labels and the groups of people they apply to. It argues that the prominence and popularity of terms like ‘baby boomer’, ‘millennial’, and ‘snowflake’ in mainstream media operates as a smoke screen — directing attention away from important issues such as housing, education, pensions, and employment. The book systematically disputes the myths that surround the ‘generational war’, exposing it to be nothing more than a tool by which the political and social elite can avoid public scrutiny. It highlights the major issues and concerns surrounding the sociological blame game.