In this conceptual guided tour of contemporary public administration, Jong S. Jun challenges the limitations of the discipline which, he argues, make it inadequate for understanding today's complex human phenomena. Drawing on examples and case studies from both Eastern and Western countries, he emphasizes critical and interpretive perspectives as a counterforce to the instrumental-technical rat…

We the Media, has become something of a bible for those who believe the online medium will change journalism for the better. -Financial Times Big Media has lost its monopoly on the news, thanks to the Internet. Now that it's possible to publish in real time to a worldwide audience, a new breed of grassroots journalists are taking the news into their own hands. Armed with laptops, cell phones, a…

Anthony Giddens is one of the most famous and influential sociologists of recent decades. Largely credited with the concept of the Third Way, he continues to be a key advisor to Tony Blair, and is generally presented as an exponent of liberalism and socialism. This original and controversial book provides an excellent introduction to Giddens' work, covering the wide range of his writing from th…

Anthropology's long and complex relationship to magic has been strongly influenced by western science and notions of rationality. This book takes a refreshing new look at modern magic as practised by contemporary Pagans in Britain. It focuses on what Pagans see as the essence of magic - a communication with an otherworldly reality. Examining issues of identity, gender and morality, the author a…

In this work, Jeff Pratt argues for the need to set up a new analytical framework that examines all political movements from a rounded perspective that takes in both the class dimensions of identity politics and ethnographic analyses of economic and social processes.

This volume analyzes the remarkable ability of Buddhism to survive within a strong urban environment despite its renunciant nature. Early Buddhism flourished because it was able to take up the challenge represented by buoyant economic conditions and the need for cultural uniformity in the newly emergent states in northeastern India from the fifth century BCE onwards. In spite of the Buddhist as…

This study examines Social Entrepreneurship, a term that has come to be applied to the activities of grass-roots activists, NGOs, policy makers, international institutions, and corporations, amongst others, which address a range of social issues in innovative and creative ways. This study examines Social Entrepreneurship, a term that has come to be applied to the activities of grass-roots activ…

This book, with 15 chapters divided into 4 parts, is the product of the research programme on backpacking developed by the Backpacker Research Group (BRG) of the Association for Tourism and Leisure Education (ATLAS). The BRG was initiated in Hainan in October 2000 by a few ATLAS members who shared the general feeling that backpacker research was becoming an important field of enquiry, but that …

Gone are the days of the hegemony of la pensée unique (or the one-and-only-way of thinking) and the euphoria created by the globalization of markets. Rising unemployment and insecurity, the insidious dismantling of public services, repeated fi nancial crises, ecological imbalances and US unilateralism: all these have helped to undermine the neoliberal discourse. People have lost their confi de…

Biological Influences on Criminal Behavior fundamentally questions the way most criminologists attempt to explain, let alone ameliorate the problem of human criminal behavior. Written by a respected expert in forensics, who also brings a much-needed biological background to the task, this resource champions contemporary biological theory by introducing criminologists to areas of research they m…