Download Free Understanding Inequality Social Costs And Benefits Book in PDF and EPUB Free Download. You can read online Understanding Inequality Social Costs And Benefits and write the review.

The contributions in this book highlight, contextualize and analyze different aspects of social inequality. What are the various cause and effects of inequality? How have these changed over recent decades? Which social policies might be best able to intervene? Written by authors from a variety of disciplines and geographical regions, these contributions provide a rich account of inequality within contemporary society. The role of the state, the media and the market in exacerbating and alleviating patterns of equality are all accessed alongside analysis of changing patterns of exclusion and hierarchy.
Here is a fresh, intriguing, and, above all, authoritative book about how our sometimes hidden positions in various social structures—our human networks—shape how we think and behave, and inform our very outlook on life. Inequality, social immobility, and political polarization are only a few crucial phenomena driven by the inevitability of social structures. Social structures determine who has power and influence, account for why people fail to assimilate basic facts, and enlarge our understanding of patterns of contagion—from the spread of disease to financial crises. Despite their primary role in shaping our lives, human networks are often overlooked when we try to account for our most important political and economic practices. Matthew O. Jackson brilliantly illuminates the complexity of the social networks in which we are—often unwittingly—positioned and aims to facilitate a deeper appreciation of why we are who we are. Ranging across disciplines—psychology, behavioral economics, sociology, and business—and rich with historical analogies and anecdotes, The Human Network provides a galvanizing account of what can drive success or failure in life.
In the United States, some populations suffer from far greater disparities in health than others. Those disparities are caused not only by fundamental differences in health status across segments of the population, but also because of inequities in factors that impact health status, so-called determinants of health. Only part of an individual's health status depends on his or her behavior and choice; community-wide problems like poverty, unemployment, poor education, inadequate housing, poor public transportation, interpersonal violence, and decaying neighborhoods also contribute to health inequities, as well as the historic and ongoing interplay of structures, policies, and norms that shape lives. When these factors are not optimal in a community, it does not mean they are intractable: such inequities can be mitigated by social policies that can shape health in powerful ways. Communities in Action: Pathways to Health Equity seeks to delineate the causes of and the solutions to health inequities in the United States. This report focuses on what communities can do to promote health equity, what actions are needed by the many and varied stakeholders that are part of communities or support them, as well as the root causes and structural barriers that need to be overcome.
Economic Inequality and News Media examines how mainstream news media cover, frame, and discuss economic inequality through an empirical analysis of news media coverage of Thomas Piketty's high-profile and best-selling book Capital in the Twenty-First Century.
Motivated by the desire to explain how Americans perceive and evaluate inequality and related programs and policies, the authors conducted a national survey of beliefs about social and economic inequality in America. Here they present the results of their research on the structure, determinants, and certain political and personal consequences of these beliefs. The presentations serve two major goals; to describe and explain the central features of Americans' images of inequality. Beliefs About Inequality begins with a focus on people's perceptions of the most basic elements of inequality: the availability of opportunity in society, the causes of economic achievements, and the benefits and costs of equality and inequality. The book's analysis of the public's beliefs on these key issues is based on fundamental theories of social psychology and lays the groundwork for understanding how Americans evaluate inequality-related policies. The authors discuss the ultimate determinants of beliefs and the implications of their findings for social policies related to inequality. They propose that attitudes toward economic inequality and related policy are influenced by three major aspects of the current American social, economic, and political environment: a stable "dominant ideology" about economic inequality; individuals' social and economic status; and specific beliefs and attitudes, often reflecting "social liberalism" shaped by recent political debates and events. "a superb piece of scholarship, combining substantive ambition and theoretical depth with analytical clarity and sophistication."--Public Opinion Quarterly James R. Kluegel is chairman of the Department of Sociology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He is the author of Evaluating Contemporary Juvenile Justice. Eliot R. Smith is professor of psychology at Indiana University. He is the author of Social Psychology.
This book examines the ways in which the welfare state impacts levels and distributions of political participation and democratic support in Western democracies. Going beyond the traditional contextual accounts of political behaviour, which primarily focus on political institutions or the socio-economic climate, this book looks specifically at the impact of public policy on a variety of political behaviours and attitudes. Drawing on the theoretical insights from the policy feedback approach, the author argues and empirically demonstrates that generous social policy offerings can not only foster democratic citizenship by promoting a more inclusive political culture, but are most beneficial to citizens who are otherwise excluded from political life in many other societies. This book will appeal most to scholars in the fields of political science and sociology who are especially interested in the welfare state, public policy, political sociology, and inequality.
At the heart of developed societies lies an insatiable drive for wealth and prosperity. Yet in a world ruled by free-market economics, there are always winners and losers. The benefits enjoyed by the privileged few come at the expense of the many. In this important new book, Stephan Lessenich shows how our wealth and affluence are built overwhelmingly at the expense of those in less-developed countries and regions of the world. His theory of ‘externalization’ demonstrates how the negative consequences of our lifestyles are directly transferred onto the world’s poorest. From the destruction of habitats caused by the massive increase in demand for soy and palm oil to the catastrophic impact of mining, Lessenich shows how the Global South has borne the brunt of our success. Yet, as we see from the mass movements of people across the world, we can no longer ignore the environmental and social toll of our prosperity. Lessenich’s highly original account of the structure and dynamics of global inequality highlights the devastating consequences of the affluent lifestyles of the West and reminds us of our far-reaching political responsibilities in an increasingly interconnected world.
This open access book challenges international policy ‘groupthink’ about lifelong learning. Adult learning – too long a servant of business competitiveness – should be reimagined as central to democratic society. Young adults, especially from disadvantaged backgrounds, engage more in education and training, and learn more day-to-day at work, if provision is democratically organised and based on enduring and inclusive institutional networks, and when jobs encourage and reward the acquisition of skills. Using innovative qualitative and quantitative methods, the contributors develop a critical perspective on dominant policies, investigating – across the European Union and Australia – how ‘vulnerable’ young adults experience programmes designed to improve their ‘employability’, and how ‘skills for jobs’ policies squeeze out wider – and wiser – ideas of what education and training should do. Chapters show why some provision works for those with poor educational backgrounds, why labour market and educational institutions matter so much, how adult education can empower and expand people’s agency, and the challenges of using artificial intelligence in lifelong learning policy-making. Several investigate the pivotal role of workplace learning in organisational life, and in learning during ‘emerging adulthood’. Important comparative studies of workplace learning in the metals, retail and adult education sectors show the role of management, trade unions and social movements in young adults’ learning.
Since the publication of Georg Simmel’s Philosophy of Money more than a century ago, social science has primarily considered money a medium of exchange. This new book treats money as a more inclusive social concept that has profoundly influenced the emergence of modern society. Money is also a moral and political category. It communicates prices and thus embodies innumerable evaluations and judgments of objects and services, of social relationships and associations. At the same time, modern societies are undergoing fundamental transformations in which money assumes an ever-important role, while banking and financial services constitute the new primary sector of modern service economies. In this book, the authors trace the transformational scope of monetarization and financialization along the four classical productive forces—land, capital, labor, and knowledge—and evaluate the consequences of an irrepressible urge to quantify and monetarize almost everything social. What happens to a society in which the tangible products of the real economy lose their preeminent status, and everything is judged purely according to its economic value? The authors identify an increasing disconnect between market prices and social values with serious social, political, economic, and environmental consequences.