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Despite the growth and persistence of economic and cultural ties with our Pacific Rim neighbour, Canadians remain remarkably ill informed about the possibilities and limitations of connections with Japan.

Moving beyond popular myths, Pacific Partners considers the Japanese-Canadian relationship from a variety of perspectives. It charts the encounters between the two countries from the 19th century throug World War Two; explores our stereotypes of Japanese culture; and examines Japan's role as our second largest export market and third largest investor.

Pacific Partners is a lively and informative explanation of the many facets of Canada's relationship with one of the world's great economic powers. ... Read more

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Understanding the dramatic political, social, and economic changes that have taken place in Poland in the mid-1980s is one key to predicting the future of the communist bloc. Jadwiga Staniszkis, an influential, internationally known expert on contemporary trends in Eastern Europe, provides an insider's analysis that deserves the attention of all scholars interested in the region.Staniszkis presents the breakthrough of 1989 as a consequence not only of systemic contradictions within socialism but also of a series of chance events. These events include unique historical circumstances such as the emergence of the "globalist" faction in Mosow, with its new, world-system perception of crisis, and the discovery of the round-table technique as a productive ritual of communication, imitated all over Eastern Europe. After describing the development, collapse, and reorganization of a "new center" in Poland in 1989-1990, she discusses the first attempt at privatizing the economy. Her analysis of the dilemmas accompanying breakthrough and transition is an invaluable guide to the challenges that face both capitalism and democracy in Eastern Europe. ... Read more

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The French elections of 2002 broke all records for fragmentation, abstention and far-right protest voting, yet returned incumbent President Chirac in triumph and gave him a solid basis of parliamentary support. Parties and the Party System in France seeks to explain the paradox of France's current relationship to politics through a comprehensive analysis of French political parties and their interaction over the last 50 years, set against the two contexts of French history and of contemporary theories of parties and party systems.
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Dealing with pressing issues of the day including health care, race, immigration, liberalism, religion, foreign policy, unions, feminism, education, and the media, this edited volume looks at the prospects for a radical turn in US politics. In doing so, it hopes to inspire the radical imagination by showing where we can go from here. ... Read more

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Just days before the October 1917 Revolution, the Proletkult was formed in Petrograd to serve as an umbrella organization for numerous burgeoning working-class cultural groups. Advocates of the Proletkult hoped to devise new forms of art, education, and social relations that would express the spirit of the class that had come to power in the world's first successful proletarian revolution. Lynn Mally offers a detailed analysis of the Proletkult's cultural and political agenda. Drawing extensively on archival sources, she argues that the creation of a new culture proved as difficult and controversial as the creation of new notions of politics. From the outset, the Proletkult was divided by severe political and social tensions as members struggled to define the role of the organization and the cultural desires of the proletariat. What fused this divided movement was the shared belief that without radical cultural change the revolution would not succeed. The Proletkult's eventual decline graphically shows how political consolidation, institutional rivalries, and the devastating social consequences of the revolution and Civil War all worked together to limit the utopian potential of the October Revolution. ... Read more

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Voicing Dissent presents a unique and original series of interviews with American artists (including Guerrilla Girls on Tour, Tony Shalhoub, Shepard Fairey, Sean Astin, and many others) who have voiced their opposition to the war in Iraq. Following Pierre Bourdieu's example, these discussions are approached sociologically and provide a thorough analysis of the relationships between arts and politics as well as the limits and conditions of political speech and action. These painters and graphic artists, musicians, actors, playwrights, theatre directors and filmmakers reveal their perceptions of politics, war, security and terrorism issues, the Middle East, their experiences with activism, as well as their definition of the artist's role and their practice of citizenship. Addressing the crucial questions for contemporary democracies - such as artists' function in society, the crisis of political legitimacy and representation, the rise of new modes of contestation, and the limits to free public speech - this book will be of interest to scholars in sociology, politics, and the arts.

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Being Young and Homeless is an intimate portrayal of life on the street from the perspective of young people in Toronto, Montreal, Halifax, and Guatemala City. Jeff Karabanow passionately portrays street youth experiences in various locales, highlighting reasons for entering street life, struggles to survive on the street, encounters with service providers, and for some, the street exiting process. This insightful book is relevant for students and practitioners of social work, sociology, social administration, and public policy. ... Read more

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This volume brings together ten essays from the author's enduring work on the different dimensions of power in Indian society. It traces how issues of political and institutional power explain economic change, resource management and poverty, inequality and governance, social capital, and civil society. ... Read more

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Oleg Kharkhordin has constructed a compelling, subtle,and complex genealogy of the Soviet individual that is as much aboutMichel Foucault as it is about Russia. Examining the period from theRussian Revolution to the fall of Gorbachev, Kharkhordin demonstratesthat Party rituals--which forced each Communist to reflect intenselyand repeatedly on his or her "self," an entirely novel experience formany of them--had their antecedents in the Orthodox Christianpractices of doing penance in the public gaze. Individualization inSoviet Russia occurred through the intensification of these publicpenitential practices rather than the private confessional practicesthat are characteristic of Western Christianity. He also finds thatobjectification of the individual in Russia relied on practices ofmutual surveillance among peers, rather than on the hierarchicalsurveillance of subordinates by superiors that characterized theWest. The implications of this book expand well beyond its brilliantanalysis of the connection between Bolshevism and Eastern Orthodoxy toshed light on many questions about the nature of Russian society andculture.

"A brilliant analysis. Using an extraordinary amount of rich andunusual primary sources and a remarkable array of theoreticalinsights, the author analyzes the role of the individual andindividualism throughout the whole Communist period. It is one of thebest works of sociology that I have read in recent years, and may bethe most brilliant and provocative work that I have ever read on theSoviet Union."--Tim McDaniel, author of Autocracy, Capitalism,and Revolution in Russia ... Read more

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* What is citizenship?
* Is global citizenship possible?
* Can cosmopolitanism provide an alternative to globalization?

Citizenship in a Global Age provides a comprehensive and concise overview of the main debates on citizenship and the implications of globalization. It argues that citizenship is no longer defined by nationality and the nation state, but has become de-territorialized and fragmented into the separate discourses of rights, participation, responsibility and identity. Gerard Delanty claims that cosmopolitanism is increasingly becoming a significant force in the global world due to new expressions of cultural identity, civic ties, human rights, technological innovations, ecological sustainability and political mobilization. Citizenship is no longer exclusively about the struggle for social equality but has become a major site of battles over cultural identity and demands for the recognition of group difference. Delanty argues that globalization both threatens and supports cosmopolitan citizenship. Critical of the prospects for a global civil society, he defends the alternative idea of a more limited cosmopolitan public sphere as a basis for new kinds of citizenship that have emerged in a global age. ... Read more