Skip to main content

Books in Social sciences

The Social Sciences collection forms a definitive resource for those entering, researching, or teaching in any of the many disciplines making up this interdisciplinary area of study. Written by experts and researchers from both Academic and Commercial domains, titles offer global scope and perspectives.

Key subject areas include: Library and Information Science; Transportation; Urban Studies; Geography, Planning, and Development; Security; Emergency Management.

  • Economics of Arms Reduction and the Peace Process

    Contributions from Peace Economics and Peace Science
    • 1st Edition
    • W. Isard + 1 more
    • English
    The subject of peace economics and its ramifications are comprehensively and deeply attacked in this book. First of all the book presents a compact survey of significant contributions already made, and then it provides a broad theoretical background for examining the subject by evaluating four different approaches, those of 1) neoclassical welfare theory, 2) Keynesian and modern versions of macroeconomics, 3) modern growth theory and 4) political choice theory.A number of contributions deal with major questions on issues such as the impact of military cutbacks in the Eastern European economies upon their growth; trade between nations; arms trade; nuclear defense; and the benefits and costs of war as highlighted by the recent Gulf War. Issues of a more general nature but equally significant are also discussed, including the age-old negotiations problem of two mature political leaders of major powers in conflict; the determinants of military expenditures; and the problems of developing countries. In the last chapter the findings of the studies reported in the book are summarized and key directions for further research are identified.This book is indispensable for any economist or analyst conducting research on peace economics and the peace process or concerned with the impacts of recent arms reduction and conversion by the major powers and the escalation of military expenditures elsewhere.
  • Speech and Language

    Advances in Basic Research and Practice
    • 1st Edition
    • Volume 5
    • Norman J. Lass
    • English
    Speech and Language: Volume 5, Advances in Basic Research and Practice is a collection of papers dealing with clinical issues, theories, and pathology of language and speech. Several papers discuss developmental apraxia of speech, relapse of stuttering therapy, the single subject research design, and the implications of the physiologic, acoustic, and perceptual aspects of coarticulation. Other papers analyze language development, language training, the three aspects of voice quality element, and the issue of disputed communication origins. One paper notes that intervention programs for stuttering produces mostly short-term benefits. The paper discusses the known risks of relapse following the end of stuttering therapy and the independent variables that influence this risk. Another paper examines voice quality in terms of perceptual, acoustic, and physiologic features of the different voice modes. By using the "Black Box" model, in which frequency, intensity, laryngeal waveform, pharyngeal prefiltering, and formant frequency can be controlled, the paper shows that a measure of interaction among all the controls exist. For example, a voice mode represented by a laryngeal waveform and pharyngeal prefiltering still interacts with frequency and intensity. Therefore, knowledge of the differences in physiology that attend to each voice mode can be valuable in effecting changes in voice production. The collection will prove valuable for linguists, speech therapists, neurologists, neuropsychologists, neurolinguists, speech pathologists, or investigators whose works involve linguistics, learning, communications, and syntax.
  • Benefiting from Basic Education, School Quality and Functional Literacy in Kenya

    • 1st Edition
    • Volume 2
    • T. O. Eisemon
    • English
    Studies of the retention of literacy and numeracy by adults who have only obtained primary schooling have given little encouragement to the belief that the cognitive effects of schooling are enduring for many school leavers. How these findings can be reconciled with the claims made for the importance of schooling as an instrument of social and economic change is the subject ofinvestigation in this volume. The cognitive outcomes of literacy acqusition and secular schools in coastal Kenya are the focus of this ethnographic study, which stresses the relevance of an international understanding of the particular problems and dilemmas that face the educational systems of individual countries.
  • The Western European Idea in Education

    • 1st Edition
    • V. Mallinson
    • English
    A textbook on education in Western Europe, this book is designed for students of both education and European studies. It compares and contrasts education ideals and practice and cultural aspirations in different countries and generations and then goes on to consider how Western Europe will react to future challenge and change - both from within and beyond its own confines
  • Economics and Cognitive Science

    • 1st Edition
    • Paul Bourgine + 1 more
    • English
    Economics, dealing with mental processes of decision makers is part of cognitive science; conversely, cognitive science, faced with constraints on information processing, is part of economics. In July 1990, the Cecoia 2 conference was organised in Paris to further explore the connections between the two. The papers presented in this volume illustrate this truly interdisciplinary research intertwining social and cognitive sciences. Three main topics are represented: agent's mental representation when facing complex uncertainty; agent's computational constraints leading to bounded rationality; agent's learning and evolution in an imperfectly known environment.
  • Tradition and Change in Swedish Education

    • 1st Edition
    • L. Boucher
    • English
    An up-to-date description and analysis of the recent reforms, current structure and issues in Swedish education. All stages of the system, from pre-school through to adult education and teacher training are covered. The book seeks to place the material firmly within the context of Swedish society and politics but the problems addressed are of concern to people everywhere
  • Sasakawa

    The Warrior for Peace, the Global Philanthropist
    • 2nd Edition
    • P. Daventry
    • English
    Ryoichi Sasakawa's avowed goal in life is the pursuit of world peace and the betterment of mankind. He is one of the world's greatest philanthropists - the biggest individual donor to the United Nations and the World Health Organization - and his humanitarian interests extend from refugee aid to leprosy relief. This second edition of Mr Sasakawa's biography traces his life from its humble origins to its present success and charts the continuing development of his worldwide philanthropic activity, including that for the victims of the famine in Africa.
  • FREUDIANISM:A MARXIST CRITIQUE

    • 1st Edition
    • COLE
    • English
    Freudianism: A Marxist Critique investigates Freud's theory and method, that Freud's use of "the unconscious" in psychoanalysis is questionable. The book discusses that the unconscious is an aspect of "the conscious" something like an "unofficial conscious" different from the normal, everyday "official conscious." The conscious is assumed as an "inner speech" with the properties of language, and because the unconscious is an aspect of the conscious, hence the unconscious is also linguistic in nature. Humans, according to Freud's theory, are inherently false, individualistic, asocial, existing in an ahistorical setting. The strength of the book comes from its concept of discourse that binds humans together in their social contexts of action and history through language. The book notes that the "cosmism" of Steiner's anthroposophy, Bergson's biologism, and Frued's psychobiologism and sexualism have endowed with their own features the physiognomy of the modern "Kulturmensch." In this culture, the Steinerians, the Bergsonians, and the Freudians have raised the three altars of Frued's belief—magic, instinct, and sex. Psychiatrists, psycho-analysts, psychologists, philosophers, as well as students of psychology and its related branches will find this book very challenging.
  • New Citizens for a New Society

    The Institutional Origins of Mass Schooling in Sweden
    • 1st Edition
    • J. Boli
    • English
    Employing a macro-sociological perspective applicable to all Western countries, this book argues that mass schooling is an essentially ideological enterprise. Concentrating on the 1650-1850 period in Swedish history, the book traces the institutionalization of the universal, egalitarian individual and the homogeneous, integrated national polity as primordial social elements in place of the corporate groups of estate society. It then studies the reorganization of the Swedish polity as a secular project for the pursuit of progress under the direction of an active bureaucractic state. These transformations led to the ideology of mass schooling as a ceremonial means of preparing competent, responsible citizens who could participate successfully in the rationalized, exchange-oriented polity. The book's detailed study of primary schooling between 1800 and 1880 supports this theory, demonstrating that competing theories - functionalist, social control, status competition, and modernization arguments - are contradicted by the Swedish primary schooling in the 20th century and speculates about future mass schooling developments.
  • Dialects of the Yiddish Language

    Winter Studies in Yiddish
    • 1st Edition
    • D. Katz
    • English
    Modern research on dialects of the Yiddish language focuses in many instances upon Western Yiddish and the application of Yiddish dialectology to the study of older Yiddish and non-Yiddish monuments. The Second Oxford Winter Symposium on Yiddish Language and Literature reflects this trend and this collection of papers from the conference explores a wide range of contemporary research in the field.