Title: Power and illness: the failure and future of American health policy 
Author: Fox, Daniel M
Published: University of California Press,  1993
Subjects: Sociology | Medicine | History | American Studies | United States History
Publisher's Description: During most of this century, American health policy has emphasized caring for acute conditions rather than preventing and managing chronic illness - even though chronic illness has caused most sickness and death since the 1920s. In this provocative and wide-ranging book, Daniel Fox explains why this has been so and offers a forceful argument for fundamental change in national health care priorities.Fox discusses how ideas about illness and health care, as well as the power of special interest groups, have shaped the ways in which Americans have treated illness. Those who make health policy decisions have increased support for hospitals, physicians, and medical research, believing that people then would become healthier. This position, implemented at considerable cost, has not adequately taken into account the growing burden of chronic disabling illness. While decision makers may have defined chronic disease as a high priority in research, they have not given it such a priority in the financing of health services.The increasing burden of chronic illness is critical. Fox suggests ways to solve this problem without increasing the already high cost of health care - but he does not underestimate the difficulties in such a strategy. Advocating the redistribution of resources within hospital and medical services, he targets those that are redundant or marginally effective.There could be no more timely subject today than American health care. And Daniel Fox is uniquely able to address its problems. A historian of medicine, with knowledge of how hospitals and physicians behave and how health policy is made at government levels, he has extensively researched published and unpublished documents on health care. What he proposes could profoundly affect all Americans.   [brief]
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Title: The power of collective purse strings: the effects of bank hegemony on corporations and the state 
Author: Glasberg, Davita Silfen
Published: University of California Press,  1989
Subjects: Sociology | Sociology
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Title: Practicing virtues: moral traditions at Quaker and military boarding schools 
Author: Hays, Kim
Published: University of California Press,  1994
Subjects: Sociology | Philosophy | Education
Publisher's Description: Practicing Virtues is about learning to be good in the distinct moral worlds of Quaker and military boarding schools. Both types of schools bind their communities with shared codes of conduct, the military schools' conservative tradition emphasizing discipline and hard work, the Quaker schools' liberal tradition favoring tolerance and togetherness. At the heart of this contrast are two sets of virtues: pride, loyalty, and leadership among the cadets; simplicity, equality, and concern among the students at Quaker schools.During the course of a year Kim Hays lived in six schools, attending classes and staff meetings, sharing meals and informal conversation, and participating in the nonacademic side of boarding-school life.Despite the outward contrast between the Quaker and military settings, Hays found surprising similarities. Both systems cherish individualism while encouraging group identification and service to the school community. Hays shows that orderliness, obedience, and harmony do not in themselves create a vital moral environment. To reach that goal, teachers, students, and administrators need to disagree, question rules, and fight for change.This book has much to say about the role of education in developing moral responsibility. Every educator, student, and parent who cares about the future of American schooling will find valuable lessons here.   [brief]
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Title: Prescription for profit: how doctors defraud Medicaid
Author: Jesilow, Paul 1950-
Published: University of California Press,  1993
Subjects: Science | Sociology | Medicine | Social Problems | Economics and Business
Publisher's Description: In this explosive exposé of our health care system, Paul Jesilow, Henry N. Pontell, and Gilbert Geis uncover the dark side of physician practice. Using interviews with doctors and federal, state, and private officials and extensive investigation of case files, they tell the stories of doctors who profit from abortions on women who aren't pregnant, of needless surgery, overcharging for services, and excessive testing.How can doctors, recipients of a sacred trust and sworn to the Hippocratic Oath, violate Medicaid so egregiously? The authors trace patterns of abuse to the program's inauguration in the mid 1960s, when government authorities, not individual patients, were entrusted with responsibility for payments. Determining fees and regulating treatment also became the job of government agencies, thus limiting the doctors' traditional role. Physicians continue to disagree with Medicare and Medicaid policies that infringe on their autonomy and judgment.The medical profession has not accepted the gravity or extent of some members' illegal behavior, and individual doctors continue to blame violations on subordinates and patients. In the meantime, program guidelines have grown more confusing, hamstringing efforts to detect, apprehend, and prosecute Medicaid defrauders. Failure to institute a coherent policy for fraud control in the medical benefit program has allowed self-serving and greedy practitioners to violate the law with impunity. Prescription for Profit is a shocking revelation of abuse within a once-hallowed profession. It is a book that every doctor, and every patient, needs to read this year.   [brief]
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Title: The price of poverty: money, work, and culture in the Mexican-American barrio
Author: Dohan, Daniel 1965-
Published: University of California Press,  2003
Subjects: Anthropology | Sociology | Social Problems | Urban Studies | Latin American Studies | Chicano Studies | Labor Studies
Publisher's Description: Drawing on two years of ethnographic fieldwork in two impoverished California communities - one made up of recent immigrants from Mexico, the other of U.S.-born Chicano citizens - this book provides an invaluable comparative perspective on Latino poverty in contemporary America. In northern California's high-tech Silicon Valley, author Daniel Dohan shows how recent immigrants get by on low-wage babysitting and dish-cleaning jobs. In the housing projects of Los Angeles, he documents how families and communities of U.S.-born Mexican Americans manage the social and economic dislocations of persistent poverty. Taking readers into worlds where public assistance, street crime, competition for low-wage jobs, and family, pride, and cross-cultural experiences intermingle, The Price of Poverty offers vivid portraits of everyday life in these Mexican American communities while addressing urgent policy questions such as: What accounts for joblessness? How can we make sense of crime in poor communities? Does welfare hurt or help?   [brief]
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Title: Prime-time families: television culture in postwar America
Author: Taylor, Ella
Published: University of California Press,  1989
Subjects: Sociology | United States History | Media Studies | Gender Studies | Television and Radio
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Title: Problematics of sociology: the Georg Simmel lectures, 1995
Author: Smelser, Neil J
Published: University of California Press,  1997
Subjects: Sociology | Social Theory
Publisher's Description: These skillfully written essays are based on the Georg Simmel Lectures delivered by Neil J. Smelser at Humboldt University in Berlin in the spring of 1995. A distillation of Smelser's reflections after nearly four decades of research, teaching, and thought in the field of sociology, the essays identify, as he says in the first chapter, ". . . some central problematics - those generic, recurrent, never resolved and never completely resolvable issues - that shape the work of the sociologist."Each chapter considers a different level of sociological analysis: micro (the person and personal interaction), meso (groups, organizations, movements), macro (societies), and global (multi-societal). Within this framework, Smelser covers a variety of topics, including the place of the rational and the nonrational in social action and in social science theory; the changing character of group attachments in post-industrial society; the eclipse of social class; and the decline of the nation-state as a focus of solidarity.The clarity of Smelser's writing makes this a book that will be welcomed throughout the field of social science as well as by anyone wishing to understand sociology's essential characteristics and problems.   [brief]
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Title: The promise of the city: space, identity, and politics in contemporary social thought 
Author: Tajbakhsh, Kian 1962-
Published: University of California Press,  2000
Subjects: Urban Studies | Sociology | Popular Culture | Social Theory | Geography | Politics
Publisher's Description: The Promise of the City proposes a new theoretical framework for the study of cities and urban life. Finding the contemporary urban scene too complex to be captured by radical or conventional approaches, Kian Tajbakhsh offers a threefold, interdisciplinary approach linking agency, space, and structure. First, he says, urban identities cannot be understood through individualistic, communitarian, or class perspectives but rather through the shifting spectrum of cultural, political, and economic influences. Second, the layered, unfinished city spaces we inhabit and within which we create meaning are best represented not by the image of bounded physical spaces but rather by overlapping and shifting boundaries. And third, the macro forces shaping urban society include bureaucratic and governmental interventions not captured by a purely economic paradigm. Tajbakhsh examines these dimensions in the work of three major critical urban theorists of recent decades: Manuel Castells, David Harvey, and Ira Katznelson. He shows why the answers offered by Marxian urban theory to the questions of identity, space, and structure are unsatisfactory and why the perspectives of other intellectual traditions such as poststructuralism, feminism, Habermasian Critical Theory, and pragmatism can help us better understand the challenges facing contemporary cities.   [brief]
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Title: Protectors of privilege: red squads and police repression in urban America
Author: Donner, Frank J
Published: University of California Press,  1990
Subjects: American Studies | United States History | Urban Studies | Public Policy | Sociology
Publisher's Description: This landmark exposé of the dark history of repressive police operations in American cities offers a richly detailed account of police misconduct and violations of protected freedoms over the past century. In an incisive examination of undercover work in Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, and Philadelp . . . [more]
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Title: The quiet hand of God: faith-based activism and the public role of mainline Protestantism
Author: Wuthnow, Robert
Published: University of California Press,  2002
Subjects: Religion | Christianity | Sociology | Public Policy
Publisher's Description: Robert Wuthnow and John H. Evans bring together a stellar collection of essays that paints a contemporary portrait of American Protestantism - a denomination that has remained quietly, but firmly, influential in the public sphere. Mainline Protestants may have steered clear of the controversial, attention-grabbing tactics of the Religious Right, but they remain culturally influential and continue to impact American society through political action and the provision of social services. The contributors to this volume address religion's larger role in society and cover such topics as welfare, ecology, family, civil rights, and homosexuality. Pioneering, timely, and meticulously researched, The Quiet Hand of God will be an essential reference to the dynamics of American religion well into the twenty-first century.   [brief]
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Title: Race and the invisible hand: how white networks exclude black men from blue-collar jobs
Author: Royster, Deirdre A. (Deirdre Alexia) 1966-
Published: University of California Press,  2003
Subjects: Sociology | American Studies | Anthropology | Economics and Business | Urban Studies | Public Policy | African American Studies | Urban Studies | Public Policy
Publisher's Description: From the time of Booker T. Washington to today, and William Julius Wilson, the advice dispensed to young black men has invariably been, "Get a trade." Deirdre Royster has put this folk wisdom to an empirical test - and, in Race and the Invisible Hand, exposes the subtleties and discrepancies of a workplace that favors the white job-seeker over the black. At the heart of this study is the question: Is there something about young black men that makes them less desirable as workers than their white peers? And if not, then why do black men trail white men in earnings and employment rates? Royster seeks an answer in the experiences of 25 black and 25 white men who graduated from the same vocational school and sought jobs in the same blue-collar labor market in the early 1990s. After seriously examining the educational performances, work ethics, and values of the black men for unique deficiencies, her study reveals the greatest difference between young black and white men - access to the kinds of contacts that really help in the job search and entry process.   [brief]
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Title: Rainbow's end: Irish-Americans and the dilemmas of urban machine politics, 1840-1985
Author: Erie, Steven P
Published: University of California Press,  1990
Subjects: Politics | Sociology | Urban Studies | Ethnic Studies | United States History
Publisher's Description: Unprecedented in its scope, Rainbow's End provides a bold new analysis of the emergence, growth, and decline of six classic Irish-American political machines in New York, Jersey City, Chicago, San Francisco, Pittsburgh and Albany. Combining the approaches of political economy and historical sociology, Erie examines a wide range of issues, including the relationship between city and state politics, the manner in which machines shaped ethnic and working-class politics, and the reasons why centralized party organizations failed to emerge in Boston and Philadelphia despite their large Irish populations. The book ends with a thorough discussion of the significance of machine politics for today's urban minorities.   [brief]
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Title: Random violence: how we talk about new crimes and new victims
Author: Best, Joel
Published: University of California Press,  1999
Subjects: Sociology | Social Problems | Law | Criminology
Publisher's Description: Random Violence is a deft and thought-provoking exploration of the ways we talk about - and why we worry about - new crimes and new forms of victimization. Focusing on so-called random crimes such as freeway shootings, gang violence, hate crimes, stalking, and wilding, Joel Best shows how new crime problems emerge and how some quickly fade from public attention while others spread and become enduring subjects of concern. Best's original and incisive argument illuminates the fact that while these crimes are in actuality neither new, nor epidemic, nor random, the language used to describe them nonetheless shapes both private fears and public policies.Best scrutinizes the melodramatic quality of the American public's attitudes toward crime, exposing the cultural context for the popularity of "random violence" as a catch-all phrase to describe contemporary crime, and the fallacious belief that violence is steadily rising. He points out that the age, race, and sex of homicide victims reveal that violence is highly patterned.Best also details the contemporary ideology of victimization, as well as the social arrangements that create and support a victim industry that can label large numbers of victims. He demonstrates why it has become commonplace to "declare war" on social problems, including drugs, crime, poverty, and cancer, and outlines the complementary influence of media, activists, officials, and experts in institutionalizing crime problems. Intrinsic to all these concerns is the way in which policy choices and outcomes are affected by the language used to describe social problems.   [brief]
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Title: Real Indians: identity and the survival of Native America
Author: Garroutte, Eva Marie 1962-
Published: University of California Press,  2003
Subjects: Sociology | Native American Studies | Native American Ethnicity | History | American Studies
Publisher's Description: At the dawn of the twenty-first century, America finds itself on the brink of a new racial consciousness. The old, unquestioned confidence with which individuals can be classified (as embodied, for instance, in previous U.S. census categories) has been eroded. In its place are shifting paradigms and . . . [more]
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Title: Reconcilable differences: confronting beauty, pornography, and the future of feminism 
Author: Chancer, Lynn S 1954-
Published: University of California Press,  1998
Subjects: Gender Studies | Sociology | Women's Studies | Social Problems
Publisher's Description: This volume examines controversial faultlines in contemporary feminism - pornography, the beauty myth, sadomasochism, prostitution, and the issue of rape - from an original and provocative perspective. Lynn Chancer focuses on how, among many feminists, the concepts of sex and sexism became fragmented and mutually exclusive. Exploring the dichotomy between sex and sexism as it has developed through five current feminist debates, Chancer seeks to forge positions that bridge oppositions between unnecessary (and sometimes unwitting) "either/or" binaries. Chancer's book attempts to incorporate both the need for sexual freedom and the depth of sexist subordination into feminist thought and politics.   [brief]
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Title: The red rooster scare: making cinema American, 1900-1910
Author: Abel, Richard 1941-
Published: University of California Press,  1999
Subjects: Cinema and Performance Arts | Cultural Anthropology | Sociology
Publisher's Description: Only once in cinema history have imported films dominated the American market: during the nickelodeon era in the early years of the twentieth century, when the Pathé company's "Red Rooster" films could be found "everywhere." Through extensive original research, Richard Abel demonstrates how crucial French films were in making "going to the movies" popular in the United States, first in vaudeville houses and then in nickelodeons.Abel then deftly exposes the consequences of that popularity. He shows how, in the midst of fears about mass immigration and concern that women and children (many of them immigrants) were the principal audience for moving pictures, the nickelodeon became a contested site of Americanization. Pathé's Red Rooster films came to be defined as dangerously "foreign" and "alien" and even "feminine" (especially in relation to "American" subjects like westerns). Their impact was thwarted, and they were nearly excluded from the market, all in order to ensure that the American cinema would be truly American. The Red Rooster Scare offers a revealing and readable cultural history of American cinema's nationalization, by one of the most distinguished historians of early cinema.   [brief]
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Title: Re-drawing boundaries: work, households, and gender in China 
Author: Entwisle, Barbara
Published: University of California Press,  2000
Subjects: Sociology | China | Gender Studies | Cultural Anthropology | Asian History
Publisher's Description: Representing the culmination of more than a decade of empirical research in post-Mao China, this collection of essays explores changes in the nature of work in relation to changes in households, migration patterns, and gender roles during an era of economic reform. The contributors are respected scholars in fields that range from history and anthropology to demography and sociology. They use a variety of data and diverse approaches to gauge the impact of new economic opportunities on Chinese households and to show how the rise of the private sector, the industrialization of the countryside, and increased migration have affected Chinese workers and workplaces. The collection also asks us to consider how gender roles have been redefined by the economic and institutional changes that arose from post-Mao market reform.   [brief]
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Title: Reds or rackets?: the making of radical and conservative unions on the waterfront 
Author: Kimeldorf, Howard
Published: University of California Press,  1988
Subjects: Sociology | United States History | Labor Studies
Publisher's Description: Why is the American working class different? For generations, scholars and activists alike have wrestled with this question, with an eye to explaining why workers in the United States are not more like their radicalized European counterparts. Approaching the question from a different angle, Reds or Rackets? provides a fascinating examination of the American labor movement from the inside out, as it were, by analyzing the divergent sources of radicalism and conservatism within it. Kimeldorf focuses on the political contrast between East and West Coast longshoremen from World War I through the early years of the Cold War, when the difference between the two unions was greatest. He explores the politics of the West Coast union that developed into a hot bed of working class insurgency and contrasts it with the conservative and racket-ridden East Coast longshoreman's union. Two unions, based in the same industry - as different as night and day. The question posed by Kimeldorf is, why? Why "reds" on one coast and racketeers on the other?To answer this question Kimeldorf provides a systematic comparison of the two unions, illuminating the political consequences of occupational recruitment, industry structure, mobilization strategies, and industrial conflict during this period. In doing so, Reds orRackets? sheds new light on the structural and historical bases of radical and conservative unionism.More than a comparative study of two unions, Reds or Rackets? is an exploration of the dynamics of trade unionism, sources of membership loyalty, and neglected aspects of working class consciousness. It is an incisive and valuable study that will appeal to historians, social scientists, and anyone interested in understanding the political trajectory of twentieth-century American labor.   [brief]
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Title: Refuge of the honored: social organization in a Japanese retirement community 
Author: Kinoshita, Yasuhito 1953-
Published: University of California Press,  1993
Subjects: Anthropology | Cultural Anthropology | Sociology | Japan
Publisher's Description: Faced with the decline of the traditional family and the explosive growth of the over-65 population, the Japanese are looking for new ways to care for their elders. This timely study documents the birth of a major social phenomenon in Japan - the planned retirement community.In the mid-1980s, Yasuhito Kinoshita spent a year living in Japan's first such community, Fuji-no-Sato. His collaboration with Christie W. Kiefer, a cultural gerontologist, is the first detailed study of a retirement community in a non-Western culture.Fuji-no-Sato is a social community with no visible traditions. Kinoshita and Kiefer show that its residents' preference for long-established relationships creates the need for the invention of relationships that have no precedent in Japanese society.This book reveals much about Japanese culture, and about the "graying of society" that plagues the newly industrialized countries of Asia. Its lessons about sensitivity to the elderly's values and the need for clear communication have important applications in other cultures as well.   [brief]
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Title: Reinventing American Protestantism: Christianity in the new millennium
Author: Miller, Donald E. (Donald Earl) 1946-
Published: University of California Press,  1997
Subjects: Religion | Sociology
Publisher's Description: During the past thirty years the American religious landscape has undergone a dramatic change. More and more churches meet in converted warehouses, many have ministers who've never attended a seminary, and congregations are singing songs whose melodies might be heard in bars or nightclubs. Donald E. Miller's provocative examination of these "new paradigm churches" - sometimes called megachurches or postdenominational churches shows how they are reinventing the way Christianity is experienced in the United States today.Drawing on over five years of research and hundreds of interviews, Miller explores three of the movements that have created new paradigm churches: Calvary Chapel, Vineyard Christian Fellowship, and Hope Chapel. Together, these groups have over one thousand congregations and are growing rapidly, attracting large numbers of worshipers who have felt alienated from institutional religion. While attempting to reconnect with first-century Christianity, these churches meet in nonreligious structures and use the medium of contemporary twentieth-century America to spread their message through contemporary forms of worship, Christian rock music, and a variety of support and interest groups.In the first book to examine postdenominational churches in depth, Miller argues that these churches are involved in a second Reformation, one that challenges the bureaucracy and rigidity of mainstream Christianity. The religion of the new millennium, says Miller, will connect people to the sacred by reinventing traditional worship and redefining the institutional forms associated with denominational Christian churches. Nothing less than a transformation of religion in the United States may be taking place, and Miller convincingly demonstrates how "postmodern traditionalists" are at the forefront of this change.   [brief]
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