Published Books

By GC Alumnus, Calvin John Smiley (Ph.D. in Sociology, 2014)

Reentry after release from incarceration is often presented as a story of redemption. Unfortunately, this is not the reality. Those being released must navigate the reentry process with diminished legal rights and amplified social stigmas, in a journey that is often confusing, complex, and precarious. Making use of life-history interviews, focus groups, and ethnographic fieldwork with low-income urban residents of color, primarily Black men, Calvin John Smiley finds that reentry requires the recently released to negotiate a web of disjointed and often contradictory systems that serve as an extension of the carceral system. No longer behind bars but not fully free, the recently released navigate a state of limbo that deprives them of opportunity and support while leaving them locked in a cycle of perpetual punishment. Warning of the dangers of reformist efforts that only serve to further entrench carceral systems, Purgatory Citizenship advocates for abolitionist solutions rooted in the visions of the people most affected.

Despite its image as an epicenter of progressive social policy, New York City continues to have one of the nation's most segregated school systems. Tracing the quest for integration in education from the mid-1950s to the present, The Battle Nearer to Home follows the tireless efforts by educational activists to dismantle the deep racial and socioeconomic inequalities that segregation reinforces. The fight for integration has shifted significantly over time, not least in terms of the way "integration" is conceived, from transfers of students and redrawing school attendance zones, to more recent demands of community control of segregated schools. In all cases, the Board eventually pulled the plug in the face of resistance from more powerful stakeholders, and, starting in the 1970s, integration receded as a possible solution to educational inequality. In excavating the history of New York City school integration politics, in the halls of power and on the ground, Christopher Bonastia unearths the enduring white resistance to integration and the severe costs paid by Black and Latino students. This last decade has seen activists renew the fight for integration, but the war is still far from won.

A unique insight into desegregation in the suburbs and how racial inequality persists

Half of Black Americans who live in the one hundred largest metropolitan areas are now living in suburbs, not cities. In Liberty Road, Gregory Smithsimon shows us how this happened, and why it matters, unearthing the hidden role that suburbs played in establishing the Black middle-class.

Focusing on Liberty Road, a Black middle-class suburb of Baltimore, Smithsimon tells the remarkable story of how residents broke the color barrier, against all odds, in the face of racial discrimination, tensions with suburban whites and urban Blacks, and economic crises like the mortgage meltdown of 2008. Drawing on interviews, census data, and archival research he shows us the unique strategies that suburban Black residents in Liberty Road employed, creating a blueprint for other Black middle-class suburbs.

Smithsimon re-orients our perspective on race relations in American life to consider the lived experiences and lessons of those who broke the color barrier in unexpected places. Liberty Road shows us that if we want to understand Black America in the twenty-first century, we must look not just to our cities, but to our suburbs as well.

Co-authored by Luke Elliott-Negri (Ph.D. candidate, Sociology), Isaac Jabola-Carolus (Ph.D. candidate, Sociology), Marc Kagan (Ph.D. candidate, History), Jessica Mahlbacher (Ph.D. '21, Political Science), Manès Weisskircher , and Anna Zhelnina (Ph.D. '20, Sociology)

Presents cutting edge theory about the consequences of social movements and protest while asking what kind of trade-offs protest movements face in trying to change the world around them.

Many scholars have tried to figure out why some social movements have an impact and others do not. By looking inside movements at their component parts and recurrent strategic interactions, the authors of Gains and Losses show that movements usually produce a variety of effects, including recurring packages of gains and losses. They ask what kinds of trade-offs and dilemmas these packages reflect by looking at six empirical cases from around the world: Seattle's conflict over the $15 an hour minimum wage; the establishment of participatory budgeting in New York City; a democratic insurgency inside New York City's Transport Workers' Union; a communist party's struggle to gain votes and also protect citizen housing in Graz, Austria; the internal movement tensions that led to Hong Kong's umbrella occupation; and Russia's electoral reform movement embodied in Alexei Navalny. They not only examine the diverse players in these cases involved in politics and protest, but also the many strategic arenas in which they maneuver. While each of these movements made some remarkable gains, this book shows how many also suffered losses, especially in the longer run.

The impact of immigrants over the past half century has become so much a part of everyday life in the United States that we sometimes fail to see it. This deeply researched book by one of America’s leading immigration scholars tells the story of how immigrants are fundamentally changing this country.

An astonishing number of immigrants and their children—nearly 86 million people—now live in the United States. Together, they have transformed the American experience in profound and far-reaching ways that go to the heart of the country’s identity and institutions.  

Unprecedented in scope, One Quarter of the Nation traces how immigration has reconfigured America’s racial order—and, importantly, how Americans perceive race—and played a pivotal role in reshaping electoral politics and party alignments. It discusses how immigrants have rejuvenated our urban centers as well as some far-flung rural communities, and examines how they have strengthened the economy, fueling the growth of old industries and spurring the formation of new ones. This wide-ranging book demonstrates how immigration has touched virtually every facet of American culture, from the music we dance to and the food we eat to the films we watch and books we read.  

One Quarter of the Nation opens a new chapter in our understanding of immigration. While many books look at how America changed immigrants, this one examines how they changed America. It reminds us that immigration has long been a part of American society, and shows how immigrants and their families continue to redefine who we are as a nation.

Foner is a distinguished professor of Sociology at Hunter College and the CUNY Graduate Center.

Mikhail Kogan and Joan Liebmann-Smith

Marijuana has been used for thousands of years as a medicine, but pot has been illegal in the United States for most of our lives. Almost all states have now legalized its medical use, and many consumers and physicians are exploring it as an alternative to conventional treatments. There’s substantial evidence that marijuana (cannabis) is a safe and effective treatment for chronic pain, chemo side effects, sleep and mood disorders, MS, and Parkinson’s disease, among others. But there’s also misinformation about marijuana on social media. And most physicians have limited knowledge on the subject, while dispensary staff (a.k.a. “budtenders”) lack medical training.
 
Mikhail Kogan, M.D., an expert on medical marijuana, has found that cannabinoids (THC, CBD, hemp, and other cannabis products) can often be more beneficial, have fewer side effects, and be safer than many conventional medications, including opioids and other painkillers. But different ailments require different strains, doses, and routes of delivery. Medical Marijuana demystifies marijuana and other forms of cannabis in a user-friendly guide that will help readers:

Understand how marijuana morphed from the days of “Reefer Madness” to being hailed as a wonder weed

Navigate the complex medical and legal world of marijuana

Understand the risks and benefits of THC, CBD, and other cannabis products

Evaluate the pros and cons of inhaled and other routes of delivery:edibles, topicals, and even suppositories

Find a doctor who can recommend medical cannabis

Choose a reliable dispensary

Learn how to evaluate labels on cannabis products

Discover cost-saving strategies since medical marijuana isn’t covered by health insurance 

With real-life patients’ stories woven throughout the book, simple explanatory graphics, and the most up-to-date information, this is the definitive guide to the wide-ranging benefits of medical marijuana and other forms of cannabis.

Liebmann-Smith received a Ph.D. in Sociology in 1995 from the CUNY Graduate Center. She is a medical sociologist and award-winning medical writer.

Leslie Paik

Trapped in a Maze provides a window into families' lived experiences in poverty by looking at their complex interactions with institutions such as welfare, hospitals, courts, housing, and schools. Families are more intertwined with institutions than ever as they struggle to maintain their eligibility for services and face the possibility that involvement with one institution could trigger other types of institutional oversight. Many poor families find themselves trapped in a multi-institutional maze, stuck in between several systems with no clear path to resolution. Tracing the complex and often unpredictable journeys of families in this maze, this book reveals how the formal rationality by which these institutions ostensibly operate undercuts what they can actually achieve. And worse, it demonstrates how involvement with multiple institutions can perpetuate the conditions of poverty that these families are fighting to escape.

Colin Jerolmack

Shale gas extraction—commonly known as fracking—is often portrayed as an energy revolution that will transform the American economy and geopolitics. But in greater Williamsport, Pennsylvania, fracking is personal. Up to Heaven and Down to Hell is a vivid and sometimes heartbreaking account of what happens when one of the most momentous decisions about the well-being of our communities and our planet—whether or not to extract shale gas and oil from the very land beneath our feet— is largely a private choice that millions of ordinary people make without the public's consent. 

The United States is the only country in the world where property rights commonly extend "up to heaven and down to hell," which means that landowners have the exclusive right to lease their subsurface mineral estates to petroleum companies. Colin Jerolmack spent eight months living with rural communities outside of Williamsport as they confronted the tension between property rights and the commonwealth. In this deeply intimate book, he reveals how the decision to lease brings financial rewards but can also cause irreparable harm to neighbors, to communal resources like air and water, and even to oneself.

Up to Heaven and Down to Hell casts America's ideas about freedom and property rights in a troubling new light, revealing how your personal choices can undermine your neighbors' liberty, and how the exercise of individual rights can bring unintended environmental consequences for us all.

Jerolmack received a Ph.D. in sociology in 2009 from the CUNY Graduate Center.

We are all citizens of The Biomedical Empire, though few of us know it, and even fewer understand the extent of its power. In this book, Barbara Katz Rothman clarifies that critiques of biopower and the "medical industrial complex" have not gone far enough, and asserts that the medical industry is nothing short of an imperial power. Factors as fundamental as one's citizenship and sex identity — drivers of our access to basic goods and services — rely on approval and legitimation by biomedicine. Moreover, a vast and powerful global market has risen up around the empire, making it one of the largest economic forces in the world. Katz Rothman shows that biomedicine has the key elements of an imperial power: economic leverage, the faith of its citizens, and governmental rule. She investigates the Western colonial underpinnings of the empire and its rapid intrusion into everyday life, focusing on the realms of birth and death. This provides her with a powerful vantage point from which to critically examine the current moment, when the COVID-19 pandemic has exposed the power structures of the empire in unprecedented ways while sparking the most visible resistance it has ever seen.

Foucault lived in Tunisia for two years and travelled to Japan and Iran more than once. Yet throughout his critical scholarship, he insisted that the cultures of the "Orient" constitute the "limit" of Western rationality. Using archival research supplemented by interviews with key scholars in Tunisia, Japan, and France, this book examines the philosophical sources, evolution as well as contradictions of Foucault's experience with non-Western cultures.  Beyond tracing Foucault's journey into the world of otherness, the book reveals the personal, political as well as methodological effects of a radical conception of cultural difference that extolled the local over the cosmopolitan. 

Americans are under the spell of a distorted and polarizing story about their country’s future ― the majority-minority narrative ― which contends that inevitable demographic changes will create a society with a majority made up of minorities for the first time in the United States’s history. The Great Demographic Illusion reveals that this narrative obscures a more transformative development: the rising numbers of young Americans from ethno-racially mixed families, consisting of one white and one nonwhite parent. Examining the unprecedented significance of mixed parentage in the 21st-century United States, Richard Alba looks at how young Americans with this background will play pivotal roles in the country’s demographic future.

Assembling a vast body of evidence, Alba explores where individuals of mixed parentage fit in American society. Most participate in and reshape the mainstream, as seen in their high levels of integration into social milieus that were previously white dominated. Yet, racism is evident in the very different experiences of individuals with black-white heritage. Alba’s portrait squares in key ways with the history of immigrant-group assimilation, and indicates that, once again, mainstream American society is expanding and becoming more inclusive.

Nevertheless, there are also major limitations to mainstream expansion today, especially in its more modest magnitude and selective nature, which hinder the participation of Black Americans and some other people of color. Alba calls for social policies to further open up the mainstream by correcting the restrictions imposed by intensifying economic inequality, shape-shifting racism, and the impaired legal status of many immigrant families.

Countering rigid demographic beliefs and predictions, The Great Demographic Illusion offers a new way of understanding American society and its coming transformation.

A behind-the-scenes examination of Asian Americans in the workplace.

In the classroom, Asian Americans, often singled out as so-called "model minorities," are expected to be top of the class. Often they are, getting straight As and gaining admission to elite colleges and universities. But the corporate world is a different story. As Margaret M. Chin reveals in this important new book, many Asian Americans get stuck on the corporate ladder, never reaching the top.

In Stuck, Chin shows that there is a "bamboo ceiling" in the workplace, describing a corporate world where racial and ethnic inequalities prevent upward mobility. Drawing on interviews with second-generation Asian Americans, she examines why they fail to advance as fast or as high as their colleagues, showing how they lose out on leadership positions, executive roles, and entry to the coveted boardroom suite over the course of their careers. An unfair lack of trust from their coworkers, absence of role models, sponsors and mentors, and for women, sexual harassment and prejudice especially born at the intersection of race and gender are only a few of the factors that hold Asian American professionals back.

Ultimately, Chin sheds light on the experiences of Asian Americans in the workplace, providing insight into and a framework of who is and isn't granted access into the upper echelons of American society, and why.

Immigration has been a contentious issue for decades, but in the twenty-first century it has moved to center stage, propelled by an immigrant threat narrative that blames foreign-born workers, and especially the undocumented, for the collapsing living standards of American workers.  According to that narrative, if immigration were summarily curtailed, border security established, and ""illegal aliens"" removed, the American Dream would be restored.

In this book, Ruth Milkman demonstrates that immigration is not the cause of economic precarity and growing inequality, as Trump and other promoters of the immigrant threat narrative claim. Rather, the influx of low-wage immigrants since the 1970s was a consequence of concerted employer efforts to weaken labor unions, along with neoliberal policies fostering outsourcing, deregulation, and skyrocketing inequality. 

These dynamics have remained largely invisible to the public. The justifiable anger of US-born workers whose jobs have been eliminated or degraded has been tragically misdirected, with even some liberal voices recently advocating immigration restriction. This provocative book argues that progressives should instead challenge right-wing populism, redirecting workers' anger toward employers and political elites, demanding upgraded jobs for foreign-born and US-born workers alike, along with public policies to reduce inequality.

Jan Willem Duyvendak, Nancy Foner, Philip Kasinitz (Editors)

Presenting several in-depth studies, this book explores how super-diversity operates in everyday relations and interactions in a variety of urban settings in Western Europe and the United States. The contributors raise a broad range of questions about the nature and effects of super-diversity. They ask if a quantitative increase in demographic diversity makes a qualitative difference in how diversity is experienced in urban neighborhoods, and what are the consequences of demographic change when people from a wide range of countries and social backgrounds live together in urban neighborhoods. The question at the core of the book is to what extent, and in what contexts, super-diversity leads to either the normalization of diversity or to added hostility towards and amongst those in different ethnic, racial, and religious groups. In cases where there is no particular ethno-racial or religious majority, are certain long-established groups able to continue to exert economic and political power, and is this continued economic and political dominance actually often facilitated by super-diversity? With contributions from a number of European countries as well as the U.S., this book will be of interest to researchers studying contemporary migration and ethnic diversity. It will also spark discussion amongst those focusing on multiculturalism in urban environments. This book was originally published as a special issue of Ethnic and Racial Studies.

Jan Willem Duyvendak, distinguished research professor of sociology at the University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands, and the director of the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities and Social Sciences, is a former ARC Distinguished Scholar. 

Sharon Zukin

You hear a lot these days about "innovation and entrepreneurship" and about how "good jobs" in tech will save our cities. Yet these common tropes hide a stunning reality: local lives and fortunes are tied to global capital. You see this clearly in metropolises such as San Francisco and New York that have emerged as "superstar cities." In these cities, startups bloom, jobs of the future multiply, and a meritocracy trained in digital technology, backed by investors who control deep pools of capital, forms a new class: the tech-financial elite. In The Innovation Complex, the eminent urbanist Sharon Zukin shows the way these forces shape the new urban economy through a rich and illuminating account of the rise of the tech sector in New York City. Drawing from original interviews with venture capitalists, tech evangelists, and economic development officials, she shows how the ecosystem forms and reshapes the city from the ground up.

A video produced by Alice Arnold and the distinguished sociologist Sharon Zukin, for the publication of "The Innovation Complex: Cities, Tech and the New Economy" (Oxford University Press, 2020).

Sam Han

In modern times, death is understood to have undergone a transformation not unlike religion. Whereas in the past it was out in the open, it now resides mostly in specialized spaces of sequestration ― funeral homes, hospitals, and other medical facilities. A mainstay in so-called traditional societies in the form of ritual practices, death was usually messy but meaningful, with the questions of what happens to the dead or where they go lying at the heart of traditional culture and religion. In modernity, however, we are said to have effectively sanitized it, embalmed it and packaged it ― but it seems that death is back. In the current era marked by economic, political, and social uncertainty, we see it on television, on the Internet; we see it almost everywhere. (Inter)Facing Death analyzes the nexus of death and digital culture in the contemporary moment in the context of recent developments in social, cultural, and political theory. It argues that death today can be thought of as "interfaced," that is mediated and expressed, in various aspects of contemporary life rather than put to the side or overcome, as many narratives of modernity have suggested. Employing concepts from anthropology, sociology, media studies, and communications, (Inter)Facing Death examines diverse phenomena where death and digital culture meet, including art, online suicide pacts, the mourning of celebrity deaths, terrorist beheadings, and selfies. Providing new lines of thinking about one of the oldest questions facing the human and social sciences, this book will appeal to scholars and students of social and political theory, anthropology, sociology, and cultural and media studies with interests in death.

Han received his Ph.D. in sociology in 2012 from The Graduate Center.

Pamela Stone and Meg Lovejoy

Taking a career break is a conflicted and risky decision for high-achieving professional women. Yet many do so, usually planning, even as they quit, to return to work eventually. But can they? And if so, how? In Opting Back In, Pamela Stone and Meg Lovejoy revisit women first interviewed a decade earlier in Stone’s book Opting Out? Why Women Really Quit Careers and Head Home to answer these questions. In frank and intimate accounts, women lay bare the dilemmas they face upon reentry. Most succeed but not by returning to their former high-paying, still family-inhospitable jobs. Instead, women strike out in new directions, finding personally gratifying but lower-paid jobs in the gig economy or predominantly female nonprofit sector. Opting Back In uncovers a paradox of privilege by which the very women best positioned to achieve leadership and close gender gaps use strategies to resume their careers that inadvertently reinforce gender inequality. The authors advocate gender equitable policies that will allow women — and all parents — to combine the intense demands of work and family life in the 21st century.

Philip Kasinitz and Marco Martiniello (Editors)
 

This volume brings together the work of social scientists and music scholars examining the role of migrant and migrant descended communities in the production and consumption of popular music in Europe and North America. The contributions to the collection include studies of language and local identity in hip hop in Liege and Montreal; the politics of Mexican folk music in Los Angeles; the remaking of ethnic boundaries in Naples; the changing meanings of Tango in the Argentine diaspora and of Alevi music among Turks in Germany; the history of Soca in Brooklyn; and the re-creation of "American" culture by the children of immigrants on the Broadway stage. Taken together, these works demonstrate how music affords us a window onto local culture, social relations, and community politics in the diverse cities of immigrant-receiving societies. Music is often one of the first arenas in which populations encounter newcomers, a place where ideas about identity can be reformulated and reimagined, and a field in which innovation and hybridity are often highly valued. This book highlights why it is a subject worthy of more attention from students of racial and ethnic relations in diverse societies. It was originally published as a special issue of Ethnic and Racial Studies.

Martiniello, research director at the FRS-FNRS, Brussels, Belgium, and director of CEDEM-Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Liège, Liège, Belgium, is a former ARC Distinguished Scholar. 

Once dominated by vast empires, the world is now divided into close to 200 independent countries with laws and constitutions proclaiming human rights—a transformation that suggests that nations and human rights inevitably developed together. But the reality is far more problematic, as Weitz shows in this compelling global history of the fate of human rights in a world of nation-states.

Through vivid histories drawn from virtually every continent, A World Divided describes how, since the 18th century, nationalists have struggled to establish their own states that grant human rights to some people. At the same time, they have excluded others through forced assimilation, ethnic cleansing, or even genocide. From Greek rebels, American settlers, and Brazilian abolitionists in the 19th century to anticolonial Africans and Zionists in the 20th, nationalists have confronted a crucial question: Who has the "right to have rights?" A World Divided tells these stories in colorful accounts focusing on people who were at the center of events. And it shows that rights are dynamic. Proclaimed originally for propertied white men, rights were quickly demanded by others, including women, American Indians, and black slaves.

A World Divided also explains the origins of many of today's crises, from the existence of more than 65 million refugees and migrants worldwide to the growth of right-wing nationalism. The book argues that only the continual advance of international human rights will move us beyond the quandary of a world divided between those who have rights and those who don't.

Horse Crazy explores the meaning behind the love between girls and horses. Jean Halley, a self-professed “horse girl,” contends that this relationship and its cultural signifiers influence the manner in which young girls define their identity when it comes to gender. Halley examines how popular culture, including the “pony book” genre, uses horses to encourage conformity to gender norms but also insists that the loving relationship between a girl and a horse fundamentally challenges sexist and mainstream ideas of girlhood.

Horse Crazy looks at the relationships between girls and horses through the frameworks of Michel Foucault’s concepts of normalization and biopower, drawing conclusions about the way girls’ agency is both normalized and resistant to normalization. Segments of Halley’s own experiences with horses as a young girl, as well as experiences from the perspective of other girls, are sources for examination. “Horsey girls,” as she calls them, are girls who find a way to defy the expectations given to them by society―thinness, obsession with makeup and beauty, frailty―and gain the possibility of freedom in the process.

Drawing on Nicole Shukin’s uses of animal capital theories, Halley also explores the varied treatment of horses themselves as an example of the biopolitical use of nonhuman animals and the manipulation and exploitation of horse life. In so doing she engages with common ways we think and feel about animals and with the technologies of speciesism.

Alexandrea J. Ravenelle 

Choose your hours, choose your work, be your own boss, control your own income. Welcome to the sharing economy, a nebulous collection of online platforms and apps that promise to transcend capitalism. Supporters argue that the gig economy will reverse economic inequality, enhance worker rights, and bring entrepreneurship to the masses. But does it?
 
In Hustle and Gig, Alexandrea J. Ravenelle shares the personal stories of nearly eighty predominantly millennial workers from Airbnb, Uber, TaskRabbit, and Kitchensurfing. Their stories underline the volatility of working in the gig economy: the autonomy these young workers expected has been usurped by the need to maintain algorithm-approved acceptance and response rates. The sharing economy upends generations of workplace protections such as worker safety; workplace protections around discrimination and sexual harassment; the right to unionize; and the right to redress for injuries. Discerning three types of gig economy workers—Success Stories, who have used the gig economy to create the life they want; Strugglers, who can’t make ends meet; and Strivers, who have stable jobs and use the sharing economy for extra cash—Ravenelle examines the costs, benefits, and societal impact of this new economic movement. Poignant and evocative, Hustle and Gig exposes how the gig economy is the millennial’s version of minimum-wage precarious work.

Ravenelle graduated in 2018 with a Ph.D. in sociology.

This volume brings together scholarship from two different, and until now, largely separate literatures―the study of the children of immigrants and the study of Muslim minority communities―in order to explore the changing nature of ethnic identity, religious practice, and citizenship in the contemporary western world. With attention to the similarities and differences between the European and American experiences of growing up Muslim, the contributing authors ask what it means for young people to be both Muslim and American or European, how they reconcile these, at times, conflicting identities, how they reconcile the religious and gendered cultural norms of their immigrant families with the more liberal ideals of the western societies that they live in, and how they deal with these issues through mobilization and political incorporation.

A transatlantic research effort that brings together work from the tradition in diaspora studies with research on the second generation, to examine social, cultural, and political dimensions of the second-generation Muslim experience in Europe and the United States, this book will appeal to scholars across the social sciences with interests in migration, diaspora, race and ethnicity, religion and integration.

William B. Helmreich

Bill Helmreich walked every block of New York City ― six-thousand miles in all ― to write the award-winning The New York Nobody Knows. Now he has re-walked most of Manhattan ― 721 miles ― to write this new, one-of-a-kind walking guide to the heart of one of the world's greatest cities. Drawing on hundreds of conversations he had with residents during his block-by-block journey, The Manhattan Nobody Knows captures the unique magic and excitement of the island and highlights hundreds of facts, places, and points of interest that you won't find in any other guide.

The guide covers every one of Manhattan's 31 distinct neighborhoods, from Marble Hill to the Financial District, providing a colorful portrait of each area's most interesting, unusual, and unfamiliar people, places, and things. Along the way you'll be introduced to an elderly Inwood man who lives in a cave; a Greenwich Village townhouse where Weathermen terrorists set up a bomb factory; a Harlem apartment building whose residents included W.E.B. DuBois and Thurgood Marshall; a tiny community garden attached to the Lincoln Tunnel; a Washington Heights pizza joint that sells some of the biggest slices in town; the story behind the "Birdman" of Washington Square Park; and much, much more. An unforgettably vivid chronicle of today's Manhattan, the book can also be enjoyed without ever leaving home ― but it's almost guaranteed to inspire you to get out and explore this fascinating metropolis.

Helmreich is a professor of sociology at The Graduate Center and City College.

The Middle East and North Africa have recently experienced one of the highest population growth rates in the world, something which has profoundly affected the wider region and its institutions. In addition, the recent period of unprecedented political turbulence has further complicated the picture, resulting in uprisings and resistance movements that have coincided with intense shifts in socio-cultural norms, as well as economic and political change. Through highlighting the links between population dynamics and the social and political transitions, this book provides a new view of these recent regional changes. The complexity of the changes is further explained in the context of demographic transitions (mortality, fertility, migration) that work hand in hand with development (economic and social modernization) and ultimately, democratization (political modernization). These three Ds (Demographic, Development and Democratic transitions) are central to Elhum Haghighat's analysis of the Middle East and North Africa at this crucial time

When we try to understand our world, we ask “why?” a specific event occured. But this profoundly human question often leads us astray. In Cause, sociologist Gregory Smithsimon brings us a much sharper understanding of cause and effect, and shows how we can use it to approach some of our most daunting collective problems.

Smithsimon begins by explaining the misguided cause and effect explanations that have given us tragically little insight on issues such as racial discrimination, climate change, and the cycle of poverty.  He then shows unseen causes behind these issues, and shows how we are hard-wired to overlook them. Armed with these insights, Smithsimon explains how we can avoid these mistakes, and begin to make effective change.
Combining philosophy, the science of perception, and deeply researched social factors, Cause offers us a new way to ask “why?” and a hope that we may improve our society and ourselves.

Gregory Smithsimon is a Associate Professor of Sociology at The Graduate Center.

Women who use social media are often subjected to blatant sexual harassment, facing everything from name calling to threats of violence. Aside from being disturbing, what does this abuse tell us about gender and sexual norms? And can we use the Internet to resist, even transform, destructive misogynistic norms? Exploring the language of shaming and silencing women in the cybersphere, Tania Levey addresses these questions and also considers how online attempts to regulate women’s behavior intersect with issues of race, ethnicity, and class. 

Graduate Center alumna Levey (Ph.D. '06, Sociology) is an associate professor at York College. 

In today's new economy--in which good" jobs are typically knowledge or technology based--many well-educated and culturally savvy young men are instead choosing to pursue traditionally low-status manual labor occupations as careers. Masters of Craft looks at the renaissance of four such trades: bartending, distilling, barbering, and butchering.

In this in-depth and engaging book, Professor Richard Ocejo (GC/John Jay, Criminal Justice/Sociology) takes you into the lives and workplaces of these people to examine how they are transforming these once-undesirable jobs into "cool" and highly specialized upscale occupational niches--and in the process complicating our notions about upward and downward mobility through work. He shows how they find meaning in these jobs by enacting a set of "cultural repertoires," which include technical skills based on a renewed sense of craft and craftsmanship and an ability to understand and communicate that knowledge to others, resulting in a new form of elite taste-making. Ocejo describes the paths people take to these jobs, how they learn their chosen trades, how they imbue their work practices with craftsmanship, and how they teach a sense of taste to their consumers.

Focusing on cocktail bartenders, craft distillers, upscale men's barbers, and whole-animal butcher shop workers in Manhattan, Brooklyn, and upstate New York, Masters of Craft provides new insights into the stratification of taste, gentrification, and the evolving labor market in today's postindustrial city.

This book is co-authored by Amy Eshleman.

Seeing Straight introduces students to key concepts in gender and sexuality through the lens of privilege and power. After an accessible overview, the book asks students to examine the privilege inherent in approaching heterosexual and cisgender identities as “normal,” as well as the problems of treating queer gender and sexuality as “abnormal.” Compelling real-life examples illustrate theory and empirical research, revealing phenomena that shape not only students’ own lives, but also their communities, their country, and the field of gender studies itself. The book addresses tough topics like hate, violence, and privilege, and it also considers institutionalized heteronormativity through the military, law, religion, and more. The book ends with a chapter called “It’s Getting Better” that presents evidence for queer hope and courage. Filled with compelling true stories, this book is an ideal introduction to gender and sexuality that encourages students to question their own assumptions.

What opportunities, rather than disruptions, do digital technologies present? How do developments in digital media not only support scholarship and teaching but also further social justice? Written by two experts in the field, this accessible book offers practical guidance, examples, and reflection on this changing foundation of scholarly practice. It is the first to consider how new technologies can connect academics, journalists, and activists in ways that foster transformation on issues of social justice. Discussing digital innovations in higher education as well as what these changes mean in an age of austerity, this book provides both a vision of what scholars can be in the digital era and a road map to how they can enliven the public good.

Ruth Milkman's groundbreaking research in women's labor history has contributed important perspectives on work and unionism in the United States. On Gender, Labor, and Inequality presents four decades of Milkman's essential writings, tracing the parallel evolutions of her ideas and the field she helped define. Milkman's introduction frames a career-spanning scholarly project: her interrogation of historical and contemporary intersections of class and gender inequalities in the workplace, and the efforts to challenge those inequalities. Early chapters focus on her pioneering work on women's labor during the Great Depression and the World War II years. In the book's second half, Milkman turns to the past fifty years, a period that saw a dramatic decline in gender inequality even as growing class imbalances created greater-than-ever class disparity among women. She concludes with a previously unpublished essay comparing the impact of the Great Depression and the Great Recession on women workers.

Chicago has long struggled with racial residential segregation, high rates of poverty, and deepening class stratification, and it can be a challenging place for adolescents to grow up. Unequal City examines the ways in which Chicago’s most vulnerable residents navigate their neighborhoods, life opportunities, and encounters with the law. In this pioneering analysis of the intersection of race, place, and opportunity, sociologist and criminal justice expert Carla Shedd illuminates how schools either reinforce or ameliorate the social inequalities that shape the worlds of these adolescents.

Shedd draws from an array of data and in-depth interviews with Chicago youth to offer new insight into this understudied group. Focusing on four public high schools with differing student bodies, Shedd reveals how the predominantly low-income African American students at one school encounter obstacles their more affluent, white counterparts on the other side of the city do not face. Teens often travel long distances to attend school which, due to Chicago’s segregated and highly unequal neighborhoods, can involve crossing class, race, and gang lines. As Shedd explains, the disadvantaged teens who traverse these boundaries daily develop a keen “perception of injustice,” or the recognition that their economic and educational opportunities are restricted by their place in the social hierarchy.

Adolescents’ worldviews are also influenced by encounters with law enforcement while traveling to school and during school hours. Shedd tracks the rise of metal detectors, surveillance cameras, and pat-downs at certain Chicago schools. Along with police procedures like stop-and-frisk, these prison-like practices lead to distrust of authority and feelings of powerlessness among the adolescents who experience mistreatment either firsthand or vicariously. Shedd finds that the racial composition of the student body profoundly shapes students’ perceptions of injustice. The more diverse a school is, the more likely its students of color will recognize whether they are subject to discriminatory treatment. By contrast, African American and Hispanic youth whose schools and neighborhoods are both highly segregated and highly policed are less likely to understand their individual and group disadvantage due to their lack of exposure to youth of differing backgrounds.

Sharon Zukin, Philip Kasinitz, and Xiangming Chen

Global Cities, Local Streets: Everyday Diversity from New York to Shanghai, a cutting-edge text/ethnography, reports on the rapidly expanding field of global, urban studies through a unique pairing of six teams of urban researchers from around the world. The authors present shopping streets from each city - New York, Shanghai, Amsterdam, Berlin, Toronto, and Tokyo - how they have changed over the years, and how they illustrate globalization embedded in local communities. This is an ideal addition to courses in urbanization, consumption, and globalization.

Fifty years of large-scale immigration has brought significant ethnic, racial, and religious diversity to North America and Western Europe, but has also prompted hostile backlashes. In Fear, Anxiety, and National Identity, a distinguished multidisciplinary group of scholars examine whether and how immigrants and their offspring have been included in the prevailing national identity in the societies where they now live and to what extent they remain perpetual foreigners in the eyes of the long-established native-born. What specific social forces in each country account for the barriers immigrants and their children face, and how do anxieties about immigrant integration and national identity differ on the two sides of the Atlantic?

Strangers No More is the first book to compare immigrant integration across key Western countries. Focusing on low-status newcomers and their children, it examines how they are making their way in four critical European countries-France, Germany, Great Britain, and the Netherlands-and, across the Atlantic, in the United States and Canada. This systematic, data-rich comparison reveals their progress and the barriers they face in an array of institutions-from labor markets and neighborhoods to educational and political systems-and considers the controversial questions of religion, race, identity, and intermarriage.

This new and highly contentious book on street gangs moves away from the pathologization of the gang that has been seen in the last several decades. Drawing on a wealth of highly acclaimed original research, it explores the socially layered practices of street gangs from New York and Puerto Rico to Europe, the Caribbean, and South America.

Judith Halasz (Ph.D. 2007, Sociology) published her book, The Bohemian Ethos. From the 19th-century harbingers on Paris's Left Bank to the more recent bohemian outcroppings on New York's Lower East Side, The Bohemian Ethos traces the embodiment of a politically charged yet increasingly precarious form of cultural resistance.

Judith Halasz is an associate professor of sociology at the State University of New York at New Paltz.

Every day around the world there are dozens of protests both large and small. Most groups engage the local police, some get media attention, and a few are successful. Who are these people? What do they want? What do they do to get it? What effects do they ultimately have on our world? In this lively and compelling book, James Jasper, an international expert on the cultural and emotional dimensions of social movements, shows that we cannot answer these questions until we bring culture squarely into the frame. Drawing on a broad range of examples, from the Women's Movement to Occupy and the Arab Spring, Jasper makes clear that we need to appreciate fully the protestors' points of view - in other words their cultural meanings and feelings — as well as the meanings held by other strategic players, such as the police, media, politicians, and intellectuals. In fact, we can't understand our world at all without grasping the profound impact of protest.

Since its initial publication, Loft Living has become the classic analysis of the emergence of artists as a force of gentrification and the related rise of 'creative city' policies around the world. This 25th anniversary edition, with a new introduction, illustrates how loft living has spread around the world and that artists' districts - trailing the success of SoHo in New York - have become a global tourist attraction. Zukin reveals the economic shifts and cultural transformations that brought widespread attention to artists as lifestyle models and agents of urban change, and explains their role in attracting investors and developers to the derelict loft districts where they made their home.

The Routledge Handbook of Religions in Asia provides a contemporary and comprehensive overview of religion in contemporary Asia. Compiled and introduced by Bryan S. Turner and Oscar Salemink, the Handbook contains specially written chapters by experts in their respective fields. The wide-ranging introduction covers issues of Orientalism and the historical development of the discipline of religious studies. It discusses the centuries of interaction among religious traditions in Asia and concepts such as high and low traditions, folk and formal religions, and popular and orthodox developments. Offering basic information about religious cultures in Asia while also addressing the complexity of employing a Western terminology in societies with radically different traditions, this advanced-level reference work is essential reading for students, researchers, and scholars of Asian religions, sociology, anthropology, Asian studies, and religious studies.

By Mauricio Font (former Director, Bildner Center for Western Hemisphere Studies).

This handbook explores key themes in the current debate about Cuba's contemporary cultural and historical dynamics. Leading academics bring to light significant revisions of the artistic and literary canon and the historical archive, reconsidering often neglected subjects and dynamics in historiography as well as contemporary affairs. The book includes new studies on contentious mobilization, leftist activism, and youth organizations in the prerevolutionary republic. Current analyses include the relation between the Cuban state and intellectuals; institutional legitimation processes; the formation and reconstruction of national identity discourses; and new framings of gender, race, and sexual orientation. 

Sociology Looks at the Arts is intended as a concise yet nuanced introduction to the sociology of art. This book will provide a foundation for teaching and discussing a range of questions and perspectives used by sociologists who study the relationship between the arts – including music, performing arts, visual arts, literature, film and new media – and society. Rothenberg is an assistant professor of sociology at Queensborough Community College.

MITCHELL DUNEIER, PHILIP KASINITZ, AND ALEXANDRA K. MURPHY, EDS.

The past few decades have seen an extraordinary revival in urban ethnography, as scholars and the public at large grapple with the increasingly complex and pressing issues that affect the ever-changing American city-from poverty to the immigrant experience, from the changing nature of social bonds to mass incarceration, from hyper-segregation to gentrification. This volume illuminates the history and development of urban ethnography by presenting a selection of past and present contributions to the field. The editors highlight its origins, practices, and significance and guide the reader through the major topics on which it has focused-from the community, public spaces, family, education, work, and recreation to social policy and the relationship between ethnographers and their subjects. Mitchell Duneier is visiting distinguished professor of sociology.

RUTH MILKMAN AND ED OTT, EDS.

While New York is the nation's most highly unionized large city, its unions, especially in the private sector, are in steady decline, and the city today is home to a large and growing 'precariat': workers with little or no employment security. In thirteen fine-grained case studies, this book documents the efforts of community-based worker centers to organize this expanding segment of the workforce. These campaigns involve taxi drivers, street vendors, domestic workers, and middle-strata freelancers, all of whom are excluded from basic employment laws, as well as supermarket, retail, and restaurant workers. The book offers a richly detailed portrait of the city's new labor movement and recent efforts to expand it on a national scale. Ruth Milkman is a professor of sociology at the Graduate Center; contributors include doctoral students and alumni from GC programs in sociology, anthropology, earth and environmental sciences, history, political science, and public health.

Michael James Roberts (Sociology, 2005) published Tell Tchaikovsky the News: Rock 'n' Roll, the Labor Question, and the Musicians' Union, 1942-1968, an exploration of why the American Federation of Musicians (AFM) refused to recognize the legitimacy of rock 'n' roll. Roberts is an associate professor of sociology at San Diego State University.

For more information, and to order the book directly from Duke University Press at a 30% discount, please visit the purchase link below and enter the coupon code E14ROBRT during checkout.

This volume brings together a distinguished and interdisciplinary group of American and Dutch scholars to examine and compare the impact of immigration on two of the world's largest urban centers. The original essays discuss how immigration has affected social, political, and economic structures, cultural patterns, and intergroup relations in the two cities, investigating how their particular, and changing, urban contexts have shaped immigrant and second generation experiences. Despite many parallels between New York City and Amsterdam, the differences stand out; juxtaposing essays on immigration in the two cities helps to illuminate the essential issues that todays immigrants and their children confront. 

BRYAN S. TURNER AND KAMALUDEEN MOHAMED NASR, EDS.

Taking a thematic approach, Turner draws together his writings that explore the relationship between Islam and the ideas of Western social thinkers. He engages with the broad categories of capitalism, orientalism, modernity, gender, and citizenship, among others, as he examines how Muslims adapt to changing times and how Islam has come to be managed by those in power. 

RUTH MILKMAN AND EILEEN APPELBAUM

This book documents the history and impact of California's paid family leave program, which began in 2004 and was the first of its kind in the United States. Drawing on original data from fieldwork and surveys of employers, workers, and the larger California adult population, the authors analyze in detail the effect of the state's landmark paid family leave on employers and workers. They also explore the implications of California's experience for the national debate about work-family policies. While business interests argue that paid family leave and similar programs impose significant costs and burdens on employers, the majority of California employers surveyed reported that its impact on productivity, profitability, and performance was negligible or positive. The authors lay out lessons for advocates in other states and localities. 

Sociology alumni Tamara Mose Brown (2008) and Joanna Dreby (2007) are coeditors of Family and Work in Everyday Ethnography (Temple University Press, 2013), which includes chapters written by Professor Barbara Katz Rothman (Sociology, Public Health) and Sociology alumni Erynn Masi de Casanova (2009) and Randol Contreras (2008).

This account of Greek Americans blends sociological insight with historical detail, as the authors trace the Greek-American experience from the wave of mass immigration in the early 1900s to today. Many Greeks came to America without knowing the language and without education, yet managed to raise solid families in the new country while shouldering responsibilities for those in the old. Included in this completely revised edition is an introduction by Michael Dukakis and chapters relating to the early struggles of Greeks in America, the Greek Orthodox Church, success in America, and the survival and expansion of Greek identity despite intermarriage. 

News about labor unions is usually pessimistic, focusing on declining membership and failed campaigns. But there are encouraging signs that the labor movement is evolving its strategies to benefit workers in rapidly changing global economic conditions. Global Unions, Local Power tells the story of the most successful and aggressive campaign ever waged by workers across national borders. It begins in the United States in 2007 as SEIU struggled to organize private security guards at G4S, a global security services company that is the second largest employer in the world. Failing in its bid, SEIU changed course and sought allies in other countries in which G4S operated. Its efforts resulted in wage gains, benefits increases, new union formations, and an end to management reprisals in many countries throughout the Global South, though close attention is focused on developments in South Africa and India.

In this book, Jamie K. McCallum looks beyond these achievements to probe the meaning of some of the less visible aspects of the campaign. Based on more than two years of fieldwork in nine countries and historical research into labor movement trends since the late 1960s, McCallum’s findings reveal several paradoxes. Although global unionism is typically concerned with creating parity and universal standards across borders, local context can both undermine and empower the intentions of global actors, creating varied and uneven results. At the same time, despite being generally regarded as weaker than their European counterparts, U.S. unions are in the process of remaking the global labor movement in their own image. McCallum suggests that changes in political economy have encouraged unions to develop new ways to organize workers. He calls these "governance struggles," strategies that seek not to win worker rights but to make new rules of engagement with capital in order to establish a different terrain on which to organize.

McCallum is an assistant professor in the Department of Sociology & Anthropology at Middlebury College.

The world of Argentine tango presents a glamorous façade of music and movement. Yet the immigrant artists whose livelihoods depend on the U.S. tango industry receive little attention beyond their enigmatic public personas. This book offers a detailed portrait of Argentine immigrants for whom tango is both an art form and a means of survival, as well as addressing broader questions on the understudied role of informal networks in the entertainment field. Through the voices of both early generations of immigrants and the latest wave of newcomers, Viladrich reveals a diverse community navigating issues of identity, class, and race as they struggle with practical concerns, such as the high cost of living in New York City and affordable health care. She also considers Argentina's social history in exploring their current unified front to keep tango as their own 'authentic' expression. 

HELENA ONNUDOTTIR, ADAM POSSAMAI, AND BRYAN S. TURNER

This book explores religious and spiritual changes that have been taking place among Indigenous populations in Australia, New Zealand, and some Pacific Islands over the last fifteen years. Drawing on local social and political debates, while contextualizing the discussion in a wider global discourse on changing religious affiliation, especially the growth of Islam, the authors present a critical analysis of the persistent images and discourses on Aboriginal religions and spirituality. This book takes a comparative approach to other Indigenous and minority groups to explore contemporary changes in religious affiliation that have raised questions about resistance to modernity, challenges to the nation state, and/or rejection of Christianity or Islam. It also offers a major contribution to the growing debate on conversion to Islam among Indigenous peoples. 

Janet Gornick and MARKUS JÄNTTI

This state-of-the-art volume presents comparative, empirical research on a topic that has long preoccupied scholars, politicians, and everyday citizens: economic inequality. While income and wealth inequality across all populations is the primary focus, the contributions to this book pay special attention to the middle class, a segment often not addressed in inequality literature.

Written by leading scholars in the field of economic inequality, all 17 chapters draw on microdata from the databases of LIS, an esteemed cross-national data center based in Luxembourg. Using LIS data to structure a comparative approach, the contributors paint a complex portrait of inequality across affluent countries at the beginning of the 21st century. The volume also trail-blazes new research into inequality in countries newly entering the LIS databases, including Japan, Iceland, India, and South Africa.

ALAN FRANK, PATRICIA T. CLOUGH, AND STEVEN SEIDMAN, EDS.

As our culture changes, many of us feel entitled to seek intimacy-social bonding with emotional depth—rather than simply security or companionship from our relationships. Unlike in a marriage-centered culture, intimacy is today pursued in varied relationships, from family to friends and to romances. And intimacies are being forged in multiple venues, from face-to-face to virtual contexts. Intimacies explores the psychological terrain of intimacy without abandoning its sociohistorical context and the centrality of power dynamics. Drawing on a rich archive that includes the social sciences, feminism, queer studies, and psychoanalysis, the contributors examine the changing cultures of intimacy; fluid and solid attachments and intimacies from hookups to sibling bonds to erotic love; and a politics of intimacy that may involve state-enforced hierarchies, class, misrecognition, social exclusion, and violence. 

This absorbing anthology features in-depth portraits of diverse ethnic populations, revealing the surprising new realities of immigrant life in twenty-first-century New York City. Contributors show how nearly fifty years of massive inflows have transformed the city's economic and cultural life and how the city has changed the lives of immigrant newcomers. Foner's introduction describes New York's role as a special gateway to America. Subsequent essays focus on the Chinese, Dominicans, Jamaicans, Koreans, Liberians, Mexicans, and Jews from the former Soviet Union now present in the city and fueling its population growth. A concluding chapter follows the prospects of the U.S.-born children of immigrants as they make their way in New York City.
 
Contributors include doctoral faculty members Ramona Hernández (Prof., City, Sociology), Pyong Gap Min (Prof., Queens, Sociology), Robert Courtney Smith (Prof., Baruch, Sociology), John Mollenkopf (Dist. Prof., GC, Political Science, Sociology), Philip Kasinitz (Prof., GC/Hunter, Sociology), and GC doctoral student Bernadette Ludwig (Sociology).

Religion and politics are fundamental dimensions of human society, yet they are often at loggerheads. The apparent differences are deceptive, because the two are inevitably entwined-both deeply concerned with control or regulation of everyday affairs. Following in the tradition of Max Weber's historical and comparative study of religions, this book explores the many ways in which religion and politics are both combined and separated across different societies. Through a variety of case studies, Turner explores different manifestations of secularization and how the separation of church and state is either compromised or abandoned. He considers how different states manage religion in culturally and religiously diverse societies and concludes with a discussion of the contemporary problems facing the liberal theory of freedom of religion. 

This book provides in-depth comparative studies of the two largest cities and metropolitan areas in the United States. The chapters, written by leading experts and based upon the most current census information available, discuss and explicitly compare politics, economic prospects and the financial crisis, and a host of social issues, including reform movements in education, crime prevention, the development of infrastructure, immigration and immigrant communities, racial and economic segregation, environmental issues, the images of both cities in the movies, and architectural trends. This comparative framework reveals that old paradigms of urban 'decline' or 'resurgence' are inadequate for grasping new complexities. Each city is responding in similar and different ways to the challenges created by the events that defined the last decade. These regions act as harbingers for other U. S. cities, the entire nation, and cities worldwide. Andrew A. Beveridge (Assoc. Prof., Queens) served on the doctoral faculty in sociology.

Western societies remain deeply contentious about the status of Islam in their midst. Countering strident claims on both the right and left, Legal Integration of Islam offers an empirically informed analysis of how four liberal democracies-France, Germany, Canada, and the United States-have responded to the challenge of integrating Islam and Muslim populations. The authors reject the widely held notion that Europe is incapable of accommodating Islam and argue that institutional barriers to Muslim integration are no greater on one side of the Atlantic than the other. But while Muslims have achieved a substantial degree of equality working through the courts, political dynamics increasingly push back against these gains, particularly in Europe. The authors bring to light the successes and the shortcomings of integrating Islam through law without denying the challenges that this religion presents for liberal societies. 

Translated as "Brave New World of Reproduction," this collection of Rothman's essays continues the debate on new reproductive technologies. Topics include the history and development of midwifery, the medical view of pregnancy and birth, and the ramifications of genetic diagnostics. In German. 

Weaving together a social history of the American beef industry with her own account of growing up in the shadow of her grandfather's cattle business, Halley juxtaposes the two worlds and creates a link between the meat industry and her own experience of the formation of gender and sexuality through family violence.

Jean Halley is a professor of sociology at the College of Staten Island and CUNY Graduate Center.

C. Wright Mills (1916-1962) played a central role in transforming the independent American Left in the 1940s and 1950s and laying political foundations for the rise of the New Left in the 1960s. This book revisits the role of Mills's education in shaping his outlook and intellectual restlessness, tells of Mills's growing circle of contacts among the New York intellectuals, and describes his efforts to encourage a fundamentally new theoretical orientation centered on more ambitious critiques of U.S. society. Blurring the rigid boundaries among philosophy, history, and social theory and between traditional orthodoxies and the radical imagination, Mills became one of the most admired and controversial thinkers of his time. The book also emphasizes his ongoing significance to debates on power in American democracy. 

Deemed pathbreaking, original, and provocative since its first edition was published three decades ago, Women in Law continues to provide a sociological and historical analysis of the overt and subtle ceilings placed on women in the legal profession in their various roles. With a new foreword by Stanford's Deborah Rhode, the thirtieth anniversary edition of this classic book includes countless revealing interviews, war stories, and inside glimpses of the many professional roles that women inhabit: lawyers, judges, professors, leaders, and backroom staff members. It also brings vividly to life the candid-and sometimes unseemly-assessments by male lawyers and judges about the changes to the profession ushered in by the swell of women members in the lawyers' club. 

Sociology has long incorporated spatial context in the analysis of social issues, developing and applying spatial theory to understand the geographic distribution of social problems, the organization of communities, and the relationship between society and the environment. Now, a number of technological innovations offer new opportunities to analyze spatial data. Geographical Sociology examines such spatial concepts as containment, proximity, and adjacency in relation to such methodological tools as hierarchical linear models, point pattern analysis, and spatial regression. The authors introduce a unifying medium through which the historical foundations, contemporary understandings, and future developments of geo-sociology can be better understood. 

The 1996 U.S. Immigration Reform and Responsibility Act has led to the forcible deportation of more than thirty thousand Dominicans from the United States, with little protest or even notice from the public. Deportees suffer greatly when they are torn from their American families and social networks, and they may be unwelcome in their former homeland. Following thousands of Dominican deportees over a seven-year period, Brotherton and Barrios capture their experience and conclude that a simultaneous process of cultural inclusion and socioeconomic exclusion best explains the trajectory of emigration, settlement, and rejection. Combining sociological and criminological reasoning, the authors isolate the forces that motivate immigrants to leave their homeland and then commit crimes in the United States. They relate the modern deportee's journey to broader theoretical studies of transnationalism, assimilation, and social control. 

The sociologist and political scientist Frances Fox Piven and her late husband Richard Cloward have been famously credited by commentator Glenn Beck with devising the 'Cloward/Piven Strategy,' a world view responsible, according to Beck, for everything from creating a 'culture of poverty' and fomenting 'violent revolution' to causing global warming and the recent financial crisis. Who's Afraid of Frances Fox Piven? is a concise, accessible introduction to Piven's actual thinking, from her early work on welfare rights and 'poor people's movements,' written with Cloward, through her influential examination of American voting habits, and her most recent work on the possibilities for a new movement for progressive reform. 

Religion is now high on the public agenda, and recent events have focused the world's attention on Islam in particular. In this book, Turner provides a unique historical and comparative analysis of the place of religion in the emergence of modern secular society. He considers the problems of multicultural, multifaith societies and legal pluralism in terms of citizenship and the state, placing special emphasis on the problems of defining religion and the sacred in the secularization debate. Other issues he explores are the communications revolution, the rise of youth spirituality, feminism, piety, religious revival, cosmopolitanism, religion, and globalization. Turner concludes with a pessimistic analysis of the erosion of social values in modern society and a gloomy outlook on whether new religions are able to provide 'social repair.' 

The collection explores the legacy of Pierre Bourdieu in contemporary social theory from the standpoint of classical European sociology and from the broader perspective of transatlantic social science. To this end, the volume brings together contributions from prominent scholars in the field, providing a range of perspectives on the continuing relevance of Bourdieu's thought to substantive problems in both social and political analysis, and pays special attention to Bourdieu's roots in classical sociology by closely examining his intellectual connections with Karl Marx, Max Weber, and Emile Durkheim. By presenting an introduction to Bourdieu's fundamental concepts (field, habitus, capital, and practice), this volume also serves as an introduction to modern sociology. The text includes an interview with Bourdieu which was not previously translated into English.

RICHARD ALBA AND MARY WALTERS, EDS.

The Next Generation brings together studies from top immigration scholars to explore how the integration of immigrants in the United States and Western Europe affects the generations that come after. While there are striking similarities in the situations of the children of labor immigrants coming from outside the highly developed worlds of Europe and North America, subtle features of national and local contexts interact with characteristics of the immigrant groups themselves to create variations in second-generation trajectories. The contributors show that these issues are of the utmost importance for the future, for they will determine the degree to which contemporary immigration will produce either durable ethno-racial cleavages or mainstream integration. 

Over the last three decades Turner's essays and other contributions have led to a fundamental reconsideration of the debate about individual and social rights in social theory. Here he explores the virtues and duties that could be associated with human rights through a discussion of cosmopolitanism. In particular, he addresses the debate about modern citizenship inspired by T. H. Marshall; the globalization of human rights; national sovereignty; the relationship between religion and conceptions of rights; participation and exclusion; and the concept of social virtue. Turner's work compares in its breadth and scope with that of his classical forebears, Weber and Durkheim, and offers a contemporary pertinence to questions of citizenship and human rights in a globalized and post-Cold War world. 

In Growing Gaps, scholars closely examine the sometimes paradoxical relationship between inequality and education. Across both postindustrial societies and the high-growth economies of the developing world, education has become the central path for upward mobility even as it maintains and exacerbates existing inequalities. When education is privatized, for example, students from families with resources enjoy the benefits of these new institutions while poorer students face intense competition for entry to underfunded public universities and schools. What's more, qualified young workers in ever-increasing supply face class- or race-based inequalities when they attempt to translate their credentials into suitable jobs. Covering almost every continent, Growing Gaps provides an overarching and essential examination of the worldwide race for educational advantage. 

Although globalization seems like a recent phenomenon linked to migration, some groups have used social networks to migrate great distances for centuries. To gain new insights into migration today, Modern Migrations takes a closer look at the historical presence of globalization with a focus on the lives of Gujarati Indians in New York and London. Gujarati migration flows span four continents, across several centuries; Poros reveals the inner workings of their social networks and how these networks relate to migration flows. Championing a relational view, she examines which kinds of ties result in dead-end jobs and which lead to economic mobility. In the process, she speaks to central debates in the field about the economic and cultural roots of migration's causes and its surprising consequences. 

Designed for undergraduate students, this is a concise textbook/reader that provides a critical and multifaceted approach to the study of gendered bodies. Exploring a broad range of both long-established and more cutting-edge topics in feminist studies, Lorber and Moore present scholarly research, offer information on relevant laws and political events, and point to directions for social change. The book focuses on key themes that reveal how gendered relations, ideologies, and practices shape human bodies. At the same time, it shows how human bodies are linked to other significant axes of inequality based on racial ethnic group, disability, sexuality, class, culture, religion, age, and nation. Thoroughly updated throughout, the second edition incorporates sixteen new selections-including non-Western perspectives-on such topics as evolution and motherhood; breastfeeding; breast cancer; the effects of height on men; job discrimination and transgendered people; world champion runner Caster Semenya and sex verification; disability, gender, and embodiment; and Palestinian female suicide bombers. 

From the 1950s until his death in 1994, Menachem Mendel Schneerson-revered by his followers worldwide simply as the Rebbe-built the Lubavitcher movement from a relatively small sect within Hasidic Judaism into the powerful force in Jewish life that it is today. The Rebbe tracks Schneerson's life from his birth in Russia, to his student days in Berlin and Paris, to his rise to global renown in New York, where he developed and preached his powerful spiritual message from the group's gothic mansion in Crown Heights, Brooklyn. This book demonstrates how Schneerson's embrace of traditionalism and American-style modernity made him uniquely suited to his messianic mission. 

Min compares Indian Americans and Korean Americans, two of the most significant ethnic groups in New York, and examines the different ways in which they preserve their ethnicity through their faith. Pushing beyond sociological research on religion and ethnicity, which has tended to focus on whites or on a single immigrant group or a single generation, Min takes actual religious practice and theology seriously, rather than gauging religiosity based primarily on belonging to a congregation. Informants from two generations combined with telephone survey data help readers to understand overall patterns of religious practices. 

In this ethnographic study of social movements in the barrios, or poor shantytowns, of Caracas, Venezuela, Fernandes looks at political life since the election of President Hugo Chávez. She traces the history of the barrios to the present day and interweaves residents' life stories with her description of movements for social and economic justice, demonstrating that the transformations to the country are shaped not only by the Chávez government but also by social movements, which have their own forms of local organization, historical memory, and consciousness. 

The history of criminological thought is brought alive through a collection of fascinating life stories, with fifty biographies of the most influential criminologists. The book covers a range of historical and contemporary thinkers from around the world, offering a combination of biographical fact with historical and cultural context. A mix of life-and-times detail and theoretical reflection is designed to generate further discussion on some of the key contributions that have shaped the field of criminology. 

This book explores the complexity of women's social status in the Middle East and North African region and fills a gap in the existing literature by providing an up-to-date and comprehensive portrait of women's status from a theoretical and socio-demographic perspective.

JUAN BATTLE AND SANDRA L. BARNES, EDS.

While acknowledging the diversity of the black experience and the shared legacy of racism, contributors to this volume seek a resolution to blacks' understanding of their lives as sexual beings. Through stories of empowerment, healing, self-awareness, and other historic and contemporary life-course panoramas, the book provides practical information to foster tolerance and acceptance as well as more research. 

Founded on a commitment to free expression and community, the first Burning Man Arts Festival began in San Francisco in 1986 with a group of twenty participants. It has since grown into a countercultural phenomenon that draws upwards of forty thousand annually to its current location in Nevada's Black Rock Desert. Enabling Creative Chaos examines how the original Burning Man members transformed themselves into Black Rock City LLC, an unconventional corporation with a ten-million-dollar budget and a pool of over two thousand volunteers. Katherine K. Chen, sociologist and festival organizer, illustrates how Black Rock City LLC experimented with different management models, learning how to recruit, motivate, and retain volunteers, as well as how to respond to various regulatory agencies and the media. 

Janet Gornick and Marcia C. Meyers

In the labor market and workplace, anti-discrimination rules, affirmative action policies, and pay equity procedures exercise a direct effect on gender relations. But what can be done to influence the ways that men and women allocate tasks and responsibilities at home?

In Gender Equality, Volume VI in the Real Utopias series, social scientists Janet C. Gornick and Marcia K. Meyers propose a set of policies—paid family leave provisions, working time regulations, and early childhood education and care—designed to foster more egalitarian family divisions of labor by strengthening men’s ties at home and women’s attachment to paid work. Their policy proposal is followed by a series of commentaries—both critical and supportive—from a group of distinguished scholars, and a concluding essay in which Gornick and Meyers respond to a debate that is a timely and valuable contribution to egalitarian politics.

Following on her earlier ground-breaking study of the social worlds of interracial couples, Erica Chito Childs considers the larger context of social messages, conveyed by the media, which inform how we think about love and interracial relationships. Examining a range of media-from movies to music to the web-Fade to Black and White offers an informative and provocative account of how the perception of interracial sexuality as 'deviant' has been transformed in the course of the twentieth century and how race relations are understood today. 

In a pioneering reinterpretation of the role of mainstream feminism, Eisenstein shows how the world's ruling elites utilize women's labor and the ideas of women's liberation and empowerment to maintain their economic and political power, both at home and abroad. Her explorations range from the abolition of 'welfare as we know it' in the United States to the creation of export-processing zones in the global South that depend on women's "nimble fingers," and from the championing of microcredit as a path to women's empowerment in the global South to the claim of women's presumed liberation in the West as an ideological weapon in the war on terrorism. Eisenstein challenges activists and intellectuals to recognize that international feminism is at a fateful crossroads. She argues that it is crucial for feminists to throw in their lot with the progressive forces that are seeking alternatives to globalized corporate capitalism. 

September 11, 2001, inalterably changed the sense of security that Americans had enjoyed for decades. For Middle Eastern and Muslim Americans, the date also marked the beginning of hate crimes, discrimination, and government initiatives targeted against them. Backlash 9/11 provides the first comprehensive analysis of the impact of post-9/11 events on Middle Eastern and Muslim Americans and considers their organized response. Through fieldwork and interviews with community leaders, authors Bakalian and Bozorgmehr demonstrate how ethnic organizations mobilized to show their commitment to the United States and its ideals while defending their civil rights and establishing their opposition to all forms of terrorism. Anny Bakalian is associate director and Mehdi Bozorgmehr is co-Director of the Middle East and Middle Eastern American Center at the Graduate Center. 

Discussing issues of parent-child contact ranging from breastfeeding and sleeping arrangements to sexual abuse, Jean O'Malley Halley traces the evolution of mainstream ideas about touching between adults and children over the course of the twentieth century in the United States. Boundaries of Touch shows how arguments about adult-child touch have been politicized, simplified, and bifurcated into "naturalist" and "behaviorist" viewpoints, thereby sharpening certain binary constructions such as mind/body and male/female. In addition to contemporary periodicals and self-help books on child rearing, Halley uses information gathered from interviews she conducted with mothers ranging in age from twenty-eight to seventy-three. Throughout, she reveals how the parent-child relationship, far from being a private or benign subject, continues as a highly contested, politicized affair of keen public interest.

Building this collection on the model of a successful undergraduate classroom experience, coeditors Gould and Lewis asked the contributors to choose a topic, match it with their favorite class lecture, and construct a lesson to reflect the way they teach it in the classroom. The result is an engaging, innovative, and versatile volume that presents the core ideas of environmental sociology in concise, accessible chapters. Each brief lesson is designed as a stand-alone piece and can be easily adapted into an existing course syllabus. Ideal for any course that looks at the environment from a sociological perspective, Twenty Lessons in Environmental Sociology offers an insightful introduction to this dynamic subject. 

Schnaiberg's concept of the treadmill of production is arguably the most visible and enduring theory to emerge in three decades of environmental sociology. Elaborated and tested, it has been found to be an accurate predictor of political-economic changes in the global economy. In the global South, it figures prominently in the work of structural environmental analysts and has been used by many political-economic movements. Building new extensions and applications of the treadmill theory, this book shows how and why northern analysts and governments have failed to protect our environment and secure our future. Using an empirically based political-economic perspective, the authors outline the causes of environmental degradation, the limits of environmental protection policies, and the failures of institutional decision-makers to protect human well-being. 

Not since the cultural and economic rebellions of the 1960s have the activities of resistance among lower- and working- class youth caused such anxiety in the international community. Adopting the vantage point of those whose struggle for dignity, social solidarity, self-respect, and survival takes place in the criminalized, or marginalized, spaces in which they live, the contributors to this volume examine the struggle for identity and interdependence of these youth; their clashes with law enforcement and criminal codes; their fight for social, political, and cultural capital; and their efforts to achieve recognition and empowerment. These essays contextualize and humanize the seemingly senseless actions of these youths, who make visible the class contradictions, social exclusion, and rituals of psychological humiliation that permeate their everyday lives. Michael Flynn is associate director of the Center on Terrorism at John Jay College and associate professor of psychology at York College, CUNY. 

Behind the contentious politics of immigration lies the question of how well new immigrants are becoming part of American society. To address this question, Inheriting the City draws on the results of a ground-breaking study of young adults of immigrant parents in metropolitan New York to provide a comprehensive look at their social, economic, cultural, and political lives. While some experts worry that these young adults would not do as well as previous waves of immigrants due to lack of high-paying manufacturing jobs, poor public schools, and an entrenched racial divide, Inheriting the City finds that the second generation is rapidly moving into the mainstream-speaking English, working in jobs that resemble those held by native New Yorkers their age, and creatively combining their ethnic cultures and norms with American ones.  Mary C. Waters is M.E. Zukerman Professor of Sociology at Harvard University. Jennifer Holdaway is a Program Director at the Social Science Research Council.

Ethnic Solidarity for Economic Survival is at once a sophisticated empirical analysis and a riveting collection of stories - about immigration, race, work, and the American dream. Pyong Gap Min takes Korean produce retailers as a case study to explore how involvement in ethnic businesses-especially where it collides with the economic interests of other ethnic groups-powerfully shapes the social, cultural, and economic unity of immigrant groups. Pyong Gap Min returns to the racially charged events surrounding black boycotts of Korean stores in the 1990s, which were fueled by frustration among African Americans at a perceived economic invasion of their neighborhoods. The Korean community responded with rallies, political negotiations, and publicity campaigns of their own. The disappearance of such disputes in recent years suggests that ethnic unity is not inevitable but rather emerges, often as a form of self-defense, under certain contentious conditions. Solidarity, Min argues, is situational. 

America's reputation for open immigration has always been accompanied by a desire to remove or discourage the migration of undesirables." But recent restrictions placed on immigrants, along with an increase in detentions and deportations, point to a more worrying trend. Immigration enforcement has become the fastest growing sector for spending over the past two decades, dwarfing the money spent on helping immigrants adjust to their new lives. Instead of finding effective ways of integrating newcomers into American society, the United States is focusing on making the process of citizenship more difficult, provoking major protests and unrest.

Written by a respected scholar in the field, this authoritative and very accessible text offers students a contemporary introduction to social problems by introducing the major trends and future outlook for each social problem. Social policies devised to address social problems-and their consequences-are examined in depth by presenting the key research conducted to examine, explain, and alleviate today's social problems. The text takes the discussion of social problems one step further by looking at each problem from a global perspective. New features of this revised and updated thirteenth edition include a discussion of the "culture war"; a current controversies box on the Virginia Tech massacre; expanded discussions of the effects of crowding and military duty on mental health; and sections on identity theft, political discrimination-including felony disenfranchisement and anti-voter fraud campaigns, shelter poverty and homelessness, abstinence-only programs, modes of entry for illegal immigrants, immigration reform, and patterns of global terrorism. 

This book looks at the intimate relationship between torture and colonial domination through an examination of the French army's coercive tactics during the Algerian war from 1954 to 1962. Drawing extensively from archives, confessions by former torturers, interviews with former soldiers, and war diaries, as well as writings by Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Camus, and others, Lazreg argues that occupying nations justify their use of torture as a regrettable but necessary means of saving Western civilization from those who challenge their rule. She shows how torture was central to guerre revolutionnaire, a French theory of modern warfare that called for total war against the subject population and which informed a pacification strategy founded on brutal psychological techniques borrowed from totalitarian movements. Lazreg also seeks to understand torture's impact on the Algerian population and on the French troops who became their torturers and explores the roles Christianity and Islam played in rationalizing these acts. 

This encyclopedia seeks to illuminate the world of gangs, including gang formations, routine gang activities, aberrations, and current developments. One hundred essay entries related to gangs in the U.S. and worldwide provide a diffuse overview of the gang phenomenon. Each entry defines and explains the term, provides an historical overview, and explains its significance today. The entries assert that gangs are part of the fabric of American society, not only in our communities but also our schools and other social institutions and that an understanding the world of gangs is necessary to understand American society. Entries include: Bikers, Bloods, Cholas, Crips, gang mythology, gang warfare, graffiti, Hell's Angels, Hong Kong Triads, Latin Kings, law enforcement, occultic gangs, mafia, media, prison gangs, rites, Skinheads, Streetgang Terrorism Omnibus Prevention Act, tattoos, trafficking, Wanna-bes, West Side Story, Witness Protection programs, and youth gangs. 

Stephen Steinberg asks why a paradigm invented four decades before the Civil Rights Revolution still dominates both academic and popular discourses four decades after that revolution. On race, Steinberg argues that even the language of "race relations" obscures the structural basis of racial hierarchy and inequality. Generations of sociologists have unwittingly practiced a "white sociology" that reflects white interests and viewpoints. What happens, he asks, when we foreground the interests and viewpoints of the victims, rather than the perpetrators, of racial oppression? On ethnicity, Steinberg turns the tables and shows that the early sociologists who predicted ultimate assimilation have been vindicated by history. The evidence is overwhelming that the new immigrants, including Asians and most Latinos, are following in the footsteps of past immigrants-into the melting pot. But even today, there is the black exception. The end result is a dual melting pot-one for peoples of African descent and the other for everybody else.

This book was edited by Patricia Clough with Jean Halley.

“The innovative essays in this volume . . . demonstrat[e] the potential of the perspective of the affects in a wide range of fields and with a variety of methodological approaches. Some of the essays . . . use fieldwork to investigate the functions of affects—among organized sex workers, health care workers, and in the modeling industry. Others employ the discourses of microbiology, thermodynamics, information sciences, and cinema studies to rethink the body and the affects in terms of technology. Still others explore the affects of trauma in the context of immigration and war. And throughout all the essays run serious theoretical reflections on the powers of the affects and the political possibilities they pose for research and practice.”—Michael Hardt, from the foreword

In the mid-1990s, scholars turned their attention toward the ways that ongoing political, economic, and cultural transformations were changing the realm of the social, specifically that aspect of it described by the notion of affect: pre-individual bodily forces, linked to autonomic responses, which augment or diminish a body’s capacity to act or engage with others. This “affective turn” and the new configurations of bodies, technology, and matter that it reveals, is the subject of this collection of essays. Scholars based in sociology, cultural studies, science studies, and women’s studies illuminate the movement in thought from a psychoanalytically informed criticism of subject identity, representation, and trauma to an engagement with information and affect; from a privileging of the organic body to an exploration of nonorganic life; and from the presumption of equilibrium-seeking closed systems to an engagement with the complexity of open systems under far-from-equilibrium conditions. Taken together, these essays suggest that attending to the affective turn is necessary to theorizing the social.

Many of the policies that broadened access to higher education have come under attack in recent years by critics alleging that schools are admitting unqualified students who are unlikely to benefit from a college education. In Passing the Torch, the authors follow students admitted under the City University of New York's "open admissions" policy, to find out whether widening college access can accelerate social mobility across generations. Comparing the record of the CUNY alumnae to peers nationwide, the authors find that when women from underprivileged backgrounds go to college, their children are more likely to succeed in school and earn college degrees themselves. Their evidence reaffirms the American ideal of upward mobility through education and makes a powerful argument in favor of college for all. David Lavin, professor of educational psychology and sociology, was at the Graduate Center. Thurston Domina and Tania Levey are graduates of the Graduate Center's doctoral program in sociology.

Challenging, comprehensive, and student friendly, the eighth edition of Sociology in a Changing World takes a thematic approach that emphasizes the reality of social change and its impact on individuals, groups, and societies throughout the world. This unique emphasis on social change helps students understand our similarities, our differences, and society as a whole and will help them think like sociologists long after their college experience. The text carefully balances contemporary and classic theory and research, with special attention to the works of female and minority social scientists and cross-cultural studies. Kornblum applies all the major perspectives of sociology without giving undue emphasis to any single approach. The book is the chosen text for "Exploring Society: Introduction to Sociology," a Telecourse from Dallas TeleLearning.

Building a new platform for change, prominent social critic Stanley Aronowitz diagnoses America's crisis of democracy and the dangers of the new authoritarianism. Aronowitz draws on his vast knowledge of history and political theory and from currents of political change around the globe, from the traditions of the European left to the newest political trends in Latin America that have challenged the "death of socialism." Demonstrating why Democrats lose when they cling to centrism and compromise their core values, this book shows us what a new left party in America would look like in an era of globalization, terrorism, and a crisis of public confidence in government. 

Facing the polar forces of an epidemic of cesarean sections and epidurals and home-like labor rooms, American birth is in transition. Updating Barbara Katz Rothman's now-classic In Labor: Women and Power in the Birthplace (1982)-based on her dissertation work, it was, the first feminist sociological analysis of birth in the United States-Laboring On gives a comprehensive picture of the ever-changing American birth practices and often conflicting visions of birth practitioners. The authors deftly weave compelling accounts of birth work, by midwives, doulas, obstetricians, and nurses, into the larger sociohistorical context of health care practices and activism and offer provocative arguments about the current state of affairs and the future of birth in America. The new first author on this revision, Wendy Simonds, was Professor Rothman's first doctoral student and a CUNY alumna.

By Mauricio Font (former Director, Bildner Center for Western Hemisphere Studies).

Jose Marti, poet, scholar, and revolutionary, contributed greatly to Cuba's struggle for independence from Spain. He has been hailed as an heroic martyr who inspired Cuban republican traditions, although he died before the formation of an independent republic. Traditionally nationalistic twentieth-century literature reinforced an uncritical idealization of Marti­. However, recent new approaches have explored the formation, reception, uses, and abuses of the Marti­ myth. The essays in this volume explore the diverse representations and interpretations of Marti­ and they provide a critical analysis of the ways in which both the left and right have used his political and literary legacies to argue their version of contemporary Cuban 'reality.'  Alfonso Quiroz is a professor of history at Baruch College and The Graduate Center.

The social spaces and cultural labels of shopping offer us hope of achieving the American Dream: low prices define our concept of democracy. Brand names represent our search for a better life. Designer boutiques embody the promise of an ever-improving self," writes Sharon Zukin in her introduction. In Point of Purchase, she traces the incredible phenomenon of shopping and how it became central to American life-from the mid-nineteenth century to today, from the grand department stores to internet shopping and Zagat's guides. Unlike many social critics, Zukin doesn't condemn shoppers, but rather argues that shopping has become so important in our daily lives because it is one of the few means we have left for creating value that was once provided by religions, politics, or work.

In an ethnographic study of two seemingly disparate demographic groups-children growing up in a village in the northern Sudan taking part in a wide-scale, state-sponsored agricultural program and children from mostly working-class families in New York City-the author examines the impact of global development and change on these respective communities. Following a small group of children from ten years of age through to early adulthood, Katz focuses on the ways in which children in the Sudanese village prepare for an agrarian lifestyle centered around family, a way of life that is rapidly become obsolete. She next turns her attention to children in working-class families in New York, and draws some startling conclusions.

Almost two-thirds of New Yorkers under the age of 18 are the children of immigrants. In-depth ethnographies in this volume explore the ways in which the new second generation is adapting to, and also changing, the fabric of American culture. Among the ethnographies included are those of Graduate Center alumni Nancy Lopez (on Dominican men's high-school experiences), Dae Young Kim (on the integration of Korean Americans in New York), and Aviva Zeltzer-Zubida (on being a Russian Jewish American). Mary C. Waters is professor of sociology at Harvard University.

Fighting for Time brings together a collection of essays by distinguished sociologists and management analysts who investigate the social construction of time and its importance in American culture. Though there are still 24 hours in a day, the authors contend that society's idea of who should be doing what-and when-has shifted. Time, the ultimate scarce resource, has become an increasingly contested battle zone in American life as work, family, and personal obligations pull individuals in conflicting directions. This anthology challenges many of the assumptions we make about the relationship between time and work, showing that time is a fluid concept deriving its importance from cultural attitudes, social psychological processes, and the exercise of power. The book provides valuable insights into the fields of sociology, economics, social psychology, business, and work-life balance issues. 

KATHARYNE MITCHELL, SALLIE A. MARSTON, AND CINDI KATZ, EDITORS

This new and innovative study of the shifting spaces and material practices of social reproduction in the global era blurs the heavily drawn boundaries between production and reproduction. The book focuses on both theoretical and practical issues; investigates changing conceptions of subjectivity, national identity, and modernity; and includes case studies of migration, education, and domesticity which show how the practices of everyday life challenge these categorical distinctions. 

In Not Just Black and White, Nancy Foner and George M. Fredrickson bring together a distinguished group of social scientists and historians to consider the relationship between immigration and the ways in which concepts of race and ethnicity have evolved in the United States from the end of the nineteenth century to the present. The book opens with an examination of historical and theoretical perspectives; it considers the shifting role of state policy in defining race and ethnicity; and explores socioeconomic trends that have affected, and continue to affect, the development of ethno-racial identities and relations. Fredrickson is the co-director of the Research Institute for the Comparative Study of Race and Ethnicity at Stanford University.

This book chronicles the self-transformation of the New York City gang, Almighty Latin Kings and Queen Nation, one of the most feared U.S. gangs, into a social movement acting on behalf of the dispossessed, renouncing violence and the underground economy, and requiring school attendance for membership. Based on inside information-new and never-before-published material by and about the gang, and interviews with 100 gang members-Brotherton and Barrios craft a unique portrait of the lives of these gang members and a ground-breaking study of their evolution. 

Gangs and Society brings together the work of academics, activists, and community leaders to examine the many functions and faces of gangs today, covering the spread of gangs from New York to Texas to the West Coast. Fifteen timely essays represent an eclectic range of topics, such as the spirituality of gangs, the place of women in gang culture, and the effect on gangs of a variety of educational programs and services for at-risk youth. The final chapter, featuring a photographic essay by award-winning journalist Donna DeCesare, examines the gang-photography phenomenon.  Gangs and Society is edited by Louis Kontos, associate professor of sociology at Long Island University, C. W. Post Campus; David C. Brotherton; and Luis Barrios.

Although most Americans defiantly identify themselves as middle class, economic inequality is greater in the United States than in most Western nations. Written by prominent sociologist and social activist Stanley Aronowitz, How Class Works reconceptualizes the meaning and significance of class in modern America. Aronowitz shows that class should not be understood only in terms of socioeconomic stratification, but rather as the power of social groups to effect change. Groups from different economic and political positions become ruling classes when they make demands that alter the course of history, Aronowitz argues, and he analyzes the class struggles engaged in by labor movements, environmental activists, and feminists. With this book Aronowitz puts the subject of social class squarely on the intellectual agenda...both intellectually exciting and morally challenging."-Barbara Ehrenreich.

Janet Gornick and Marcia K. Meyers

Parents around the world grapple with the common challenge of balancing work and child care. Despite common problems, the industrialized nations have developed dramatically different social and labor market policies―policies that vary widely in the level of support they provide for parents and the extent to which they encourage an equal division of labor between parents as they balance work and care. In Families That Work, Janet Gornick and Marcia Meyers take a close look at the work-family policies in the United States and abroad and call for a new and expanded role for the U.S. government in order to bring this country up to the standards taken for granted in many other Western nations. In many countries in Europe and in Canada, family leave policies grant parents paid time off to care for their young children, and labor market regulations go a long way toward ensuring that work does not overwhelm family obligations. In addition, early childhood education and care programs guarantee access to high-quality care for their children. In most of these countries, policies encourage gender equality by strengthening mothers' ties to employment and encouraging fathers to spend more time caregiving at home. In sharp contrast, Gornick and Meyers show how in the United States―an economy with high labor force participation among both fathers and mothers―parents are left to craft private solutions to the society-wide dilemma of "who will care for the children?" Parents―overwhelmingly mothers―must loosen their ties to the workplace to care for their children; workers are forced to negotiate with their employers, often unsuccessfully, for family leave and reduced work schedules; and parents must purchase care of dubious quality, at high prices, from consumer markets. By leaving child care solutions up to hard-pressed working parents, these private solutions exact a high price in terms of gender inequality in the workplace and at home, family stress and economic insecurity, and―not least―child well-being. Gornick and Meyers show that it is possible–based on the experiences of other countries―to enhance child well-being and to increase gender equality by promoting more extensive and egalitarian family leave, work-time, and child care policies. Families That Work demonstrates convincingly that the United States has much to learn from policies in Europe and in Canada, and that the often-repeated claim that the United States is simply "too different" to draw lessons from other countries is based largely on misperceptions about policies in other countries and about the possibility of policy expansion in the United States.

For Kornblum, New York City is shaped by the water and the people who have sailed it for goods, money, pirate's loot, and freedom-from a time long before Broadway was a muddy cart track," to today. Kornblum takes readers along as he sails through and around his hometown-as he has been doing his whole life-and paints a vivid portrait of the city's history in relation to its waterfront and maritime culture. As much a work of urban sociology-including tales of shipwrecks and the city's financial beginnings-as a memoir of his adventures on his restored ancient catboat named Tradition, At Sea in the City is an evocative personal narrative that "grapples afresh with the history and complexity of the metropolis" (Philip Lopate). 

Samuel C. Heilman, professor of sociology and Harold M. Proshansky Chair in Jewish Studies, has created a unique account of the traditional customs put into practice when a Jewish person dies in what is both an informative anthropological study of Jewish rites of mourning and a moving chronicle of the loss of his own father. Heilman's eloquent narrative-a rare event of first-person ethnography-crosses and re-crosses the boundary between the academic and the religious, the personal and the general, reflecting the author's changing roles as social scientist, bereaved son, and observant Jew. Winner of a Koret Jewish Book Award.

By Mauricio Font (former Director, Bildner Center for Western Hemisphere Studies).

This new book by the president of Brazil-a scholar long recognized as among the most influential of Latin American-is the first to incorporate writings from his tenure in the executive office. Cardoso's third book in English spans from his earlier theoretical writings to his pragmatic agenda for 21st-century Brazil. It traces the development of one of the world's leading intellectuals, the first sociologist to become president of a large country, as he considers subjects such as the liberalization of the economy in a globalized world system, radicalizing" democracy, his own concept of "dependency theory," and his musings on the art of politics. The introductory essay, "To Craft a New Era," by Mauricio A. Font, provides an overview Cardoso's work, considering the nature of democracy and reform in Brazil and the problem of finding a "utopia" in a liberalized world market.