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Computer-based transportation applications and databases have been a fact of life for several decades. Transportation information, however, has often not been accessible in a user-friendly manner, and integrating data from diverse sources has too often been a challenge in itself. Geographic Information Systems (GIS) have revolutionized spatial planning and decision making by using the spatial dimension of the depicted world as a common thread according to which all information can be referenced. The application of GIS to transportation research (GIS-T) is quickly becoming a mature domain of application of the GIS technology and has gained full recognition among transportation practitioners and academics.

This book fills a void by providing an overview of the state-of-the-art of GIS for transportation, from data management issues, to data manipulation and analysis, including considerations brought to the forefront by real-time and mobile computing. The twenty-two original contributions by internationally acclaimed authors will be a key reference for practitioners, students and scholars.
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A global industry and an important tool for economic development, international tourism is facing an increasingly uncertain future. Global environmental change, including climate change; increasing fuel prices; and growing criticism from environmental and social interest groups are posing substantial challenges to the belief that international tourism can be sustainable at current rates and patterns of growth. This book therefore aims to answer the questions of if and how tourism can be a sustainable industry. The book concludes that sustainable tourism is possible but that it requires fundamental shifts in operations, systems and philosophies. The various contributions identify a number of means by which this can be accomplished but stress that sustainable tourism still has a long way to travel before it can reach its destination.

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Outlines how a new working partnership between psychologists and evolutionary systems scientists can help create a more humanistic evolutionary theory. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Great reading
I confess I came to this book not as an expert of evolutionary theory, but as a person with a deep passion for futures and the development of the human species. In particular, my personal research relates to educational futures and the futures of consciousness. Thus the critique that follows cannot stand as that of an "impartial" expert's opinion, but merely as the considerations of a relative layman in the field of evolutionary theory. Considering my particular research foci, I found much in the volume to enthuse about.
The contributors to this volume are all members of the General Evolution Research Group. This was formed in 1986, and its purpose is "to bring together a small group of scholars from a variety of disciplines and nations to explore possibilities for the development of a general...evolution theory" (p.304). Ervin Laszlo is its primary founder and leader, with World Futures: the Journal of General Evolution being its mouthpiece.
Let me begin by stating that this is not only a well-written volume, but a necessary one. As Loye points out in the concluding chapter regarding the idea of "evolution," the mindsets of most scientists (and indeed the layperson), have been seized so thoroughly by the concepts of natural selection and blind chance that anyone challenging this idea with suggestions of "normative or developmental goals and ideals as well as standards and benchmarks for what constitutes evolution" is confronted by the reaction that "this is not only heresy but naïve and stupid." (p.281)
Yet most futurists are all too aware of the limitations of a purely biological and mathematical depiction of evolution. As Loye himself points out, conceptions of "ideal goals" are routine in futures (p.281). In futures there is generally an implicit representation of development and evolution which incorporates conceptions that exist above and beyond the merely physical and biological. Each of the contributors adds an extra dimension or two to the idea of evolution, until the total picture is one that is inclusive not only of the cosmic, chemical/Physical and biological dimensions that currently dominate the neo-Darwinian hegemony, but also includes developments in brain science and psychology, as well as cultural, social, economic, political, technological, educational, moral, spiritual, and consciousness evolution. To this is added the necessity for an action-oriented approach (p.277). The tools that are offered to move us forward are also somewhat heretical: including love (Eisler, Loye, Goerner, Bradley, Bausch and Christakis); partnership (Eisler, Goerner); communication and creativity (Goerner, Montuori, Combs and Richards); human agency (Bradley, Loye); creative action (Eisler, Goerner, Loye); and spiritual and consciousness evolution (Bausch and Christakis, Eisler, Goerner, Loye).
There is not room here to comment upon all 11 articles individually, but Loye's "Darwin, Maslow, and the Fully Human Theory of Evolution" is worth mentioning, as it encapsulates much of the spirit of the book, and will be an eye-opening piece for those unfamiliar with Loye's work. He argues that Darwin has been almost completely misrepresented by the neo-Darwinists. He points out that Darwin only wrote of "survival of the fittest" twice in The Decent of Man, whilste writing of love, moral development, and mind/consciousness hundreds of times in total. Yet the latter are totally ignored in mainstream evolutionary theory, a case of what Loye calls "the mind-binding and blinding power of paradigm." (p.23) Loye goes on to argue that Darwin actually presaged the development of transpersonal, positive and humanistic psychology, and indeed the relevance of moral development and "a spirituality freed of deism and dogma" ( p.23).
This book is aptly named. It contains an exciting array of research at the frontier of evolutionary theory. It may annoy purists of mainstream evolutionary theory for the same reason it excites the more speculative and adventurous amongst us, especially at the times that it moves into the explorative domains of evolutionary theory. Bradley's contribution stands out here, with his piece "Love, power, brain, mind, and agency." His endogenous construction of human evolution, heavily influenced by Pribram's holographic theory of perception, is predicated upon the rather prolix notion of a:

principle of organisation that governs any whole...(which) is non-local, distributed throughout the system and enfolded into its parts. It is this same notion of field, of a distributed order of socioaffective connection mediating the transformation of biological energy into psychosocial order that is the basis for ...(my) account...(p.140).

Yet as Loye points out in the introduction, Bradley's contribution is worth persisting with, despite its broad scope of theory and difficult language. Other contributions in the volume, it should be pointed out, are far more layman-friendly. The contributors generally manage to convey their understandings in easy-to-comprehend form, and considering the cross-disciplinary nature of the volume, this is a key component of its value to its potential audience.
As Loye argues, evolutionary theory "requires a massive updating, integrating and streamlining if it is to meet the needs of the twenty-first century, if not our survival itself over the long run." (p.21) This is no small task, but Loye and his colleagues are doing an invaluable job of getting the ball rolling.

Marcus T. Anthony, author of "Sage of Synchronicity" and "Integrated Intelligence." ... Read more

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Creating institutions to meet the challenge of sustainability is arguably the most important task confronting society; it is also dauntingly complex. Ecological, economic, and social elements all play a role, but despite ongoing efforts, researchers have yet to succeed in integrating the various disciplines in a way that gives adequate representation to the insights of each.

Panarchy, a term devised to describe evolving hierarchical systems with multiple interrelated elements, offers an important new framework for understanding and resolving this dilemma. Panarchy is the structure in which systems, including those of nature (e.g., forests) and of humans (e.g., capitalism), as well as combined human-natural systems (e.g., institutions that govern natural resource use such as the Forest Service), are interlinked in continual adaptive cycles of growth, accumulation, restructuring, and renewal. These transformational cycles take place at scales ranging from a drop of water to the biosphere, over periods from days to geologic epochs. By understanding these cycles and their scales, researchers can identify the points at which a system is capable of accepting positive change, and can use those leverage points to foster resilience and sustainability within the system.

This volume brings together leading thinkers on the subject-including Fikret Berkes, Buz Brock, Steve Carpenter, Carl Folke, Lance Gunderson, C.S. Holling, Don Ludwig, Karl-Göran Mäler, Charles Perrings, Marten Scheffer, Brian Walker, and Frances Westley-to develop and examine the concept of panarchy and to consider how it can be applied to human, natural, and human-natural systems. Throughout, contributors seek to identify adaptive approaches to management that recognize uncertainty and encourage innovation while fostering resilience.

The book is a fundamental new development in a widely acclaimed line of inquiry. It represents the first step in integrating disciplinary knowledge for the adaptive management of human-natural systems across widely divergent scales, and offers an important base of knowledge from which institutions for adaptive management can be developed. It will be an invaluable source of ideas and understanding for students, researchers, and professionals involved with ecology, conservation biology, ecological economics, environmental policy, or related fields. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (6)

Good but included too much
I gave this book three stars because I felt that the editors were applying the kitchen-sink approach to this book and were trying to fit the theories of resiliency to encompass all political, cultural, and societal behavior as well as ecological processes. Much of the other material I've read about resiliency is strictly applied to ecology and I think that, by taking a broader approach, the editors of this volume dropped a large group that may have otherwise subscribed to the resiliency theories of sustainability.

With respect to ecological processes and sustainability, much of the initial material in this book deserves five stars. It's just when people who have backgrounds in aquatic ecosystems and economics start getting all sociological and psychological on me, they lose me as an audience member.

Forcing reality into a pre-conceived box
While the book reviews interesting insights about the stability of ecosystems and emphasizes that most preconceptions are invalid in one or another circumstance, it pushes a preconception of its own that is so abstract as to be nearly meaningless.Phenomena are forced into phases of a model even when the fit is unreasonable.The book reads as though the editors fell in love with a nice idea - and a pretty diagram -and proceeded to ignore subtleties and refinements that, if incorporated, could have had real value.One significant flaw is that the wasteland of a devastated ecosystem, such as an overgrazed scrubland, is conceived as the 'same' ecosystem as the mature one (rainforest) that preceded it, and that a 'cycle' will bring it back around - and this in contradiction to the book's own opening chapter.Some redemption is achieved by authors of later chapters, who do not fall into these traps.

Mixed Feelings--Mix of Brilliance and Gobbly-Gook
On balance, Resilience and the Behavior of Large-Scale Systems (Scientific Committee on Problems of the Environment (SCOPE) Series) is the better book but this one is the thicker heavier more math-laden pretender--the problem is they have their own citation cabal, and while the bibliography is much broader and deeper than the above recommended book, there are too many gaps and an excessive reliance on obscure formulas that I have learned over time tend to be smoke for "I don't really know but if I did, this is the formula.

Also published in 2002, also with 20 contributors, this book lost me on the math.As someone who watched political science self-destruct in the 1970's when "comparative statistics" replaced field work, foreign language competency, and actual historical and cultural understanding, and a real-world intelligence professional, I'd listen to these folks, but I would never, ever let them actually manage the totality.

The book is the outcome of a three year effort, the Resilience Network as they called themselves, and there are some definite gems in this book, but it is a rough beginning.Among other things, it tries to model simplicity instead of complexity, and continue to miss the important of true cost transparency as the product and service end-user point of sale level, and real-time science that cannot be manipulated by any one country or organization (Exxon did NOT make $40 billion in profit this year--that is a fraction of the externalized costs, roughly $12 against the future for every $3 paid at the pump--that level of public intelligence in the public interest in missing from this book).

Page 7, "Observation: In every example of crisis and regional development we have studied, both thenatural system and the economic components can be explained by a small set of variables and critical processes."This rang all of my alarm bells.If I did not have total respect for what the authors and funders aretrying to do, that sentence alone would have put this book firmly into my idiocy pile.

I just do not see in this book the kind of understanding of the ten high-level threats to humanity interaction with one another, such as can be seen free online or bought via Amazon, A More Secure World: Our Shared Responsibility--Report of the Secretary-General's High-level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change, nor do these distinguished practitioners of their own little "club" see the strategic coherence of identifying ten core policies from Agriculture to Water that must be harmonized at every budget level, nor the irrelevance of anything we do unless we can persuade the ten demographic challengers with an EarthGame online that delivers real-time science and near-real-time cost-benefit analysis.

I find several of the authors to be a bit too cavalier in their dismissal of the contributions of economists, ecologists, and others.

Theories of change and next cycles are useful.Concepts of cascading change and collapsing panarchies are good.Log number of people in Figure 4.1 is very good.

In discussing adaptive response to change these learned scholars appear to have no clue of what is possible in delivering neighborhood level granularity of data for online social deliberation and models for gaming.There are early light references to deliberative democracy, but right now these folks have models in search of data in search of players.I did like the discussion of the larger model for levels of discourse, but WikiCalc and EarthGame are a decade ahead of this book's contents (which I hasten to add, was started in 1998 and published in 2002).

Table 11-1 on page 310 was so useful I list its row descriptors here, Factors and Adaptation and Possible Effect on Resilience (the latter not replicated here.

Factors:
Biota
Diversity-spacial
Diversity-production strategies
Energy sources
External resources
Mental models
Population structure
Savings
Scale
Technology

This is no where near the 10-12-8 model at Earth Intelligence Network, but I see real value here, and the need for a cross-fertilization.The fatal flaw in this book is that they confuse the failure of expertise with the failure of democracy--if we can achieve electoral reform and eliminate the corruption inherent in most governments, and certainly that of the US government which is broken and "running on empty" while every incumbent sells their constituents out to their party or special interests, it would be possible to connect data, change detection, alternative scenario depiction, and deliberative democracy at the zip code level.

Gilberto Gallopin, Planning for Resilience, is alone worth the price of the book, in combination with above and the closing summary, which is also a real value.My final note: too much gobbly-gook (to which I would add, "and no clue how intelligence-policy-budget connections are made and broken.

The key to eradicating the ten high level threats to humanity, among which environmental degradation is number three after poverty and infectious disease, is not better science--it is better democracy, participatory democracy, combined with moral capitalism.Below are a few titles to help make this point.

These 20 contributors are all part of a future solution, but they cannot be allowed to drive the bus.

See also (apart from my many lists):
Running On Empty: How The Democratic and Republican Parties Are Bankrupting Our Future and What Americans Can Do About It
Breach of Trust: How Washington Turns Outsiders into Insiders
Vice: Dick Cheney and the Hijacking of the American Presidency
The Battle for the Soul of Capitalism
Green to Gold: How Smart Companies Use Environmental Strategy to Innovate, Create Value, and Build Competitive Advantage
The Philosophy of Sustainable Design
The New Craft of Intelligence: Personal, Public, & Political--Citizen's Action Handbook for Fighting Terrorism, Genocide, Disease, Toxic Bombs, & Corruption
Collective Intelligence: Creating a Prosperous World at Peace

Panarchy: Understanding Transformations
A very interesting read. A well developed theoretical framework for examining contempory 'sustainability' issues (social, physical, cultural and so on). Interesting case studies used.

Highly Informative
I weighed into this book on the basis of an article I read about Panarchy.Some of the text is too technical for me (all the chapters are written by academics) so I confess that I skipped some parts.Nonetheless for anyone who is trying to grasp how change happens in our world, this is an outstanding source for understanding the complexities and inter-relatedness of everything. ... Read more

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Over the past decade, several initiatives have been launched to address the major health problems affecting the world's poorest countries, including global efforts to combat HIV/AIDS, TB and malaria. More recently, a millennial challenge has been laid down to root out and confront the links between poverty and health. Using demographic surveillance systems, the INDEPTH researchers aim to contribute both to the empirical knowledge about health equity in developing countries and to report on the application of and innovation in tools and methods. Illustrated with case studies from Africa and Asia, this book puts forward a comprehensive view of the INDEPTH methodologies and findings. It develops and measures concepts and constructs of 'poverty' and 'equity' and relates these to health status. While tools and concepts for measuring health status are more developed, this volume contributes by grappling with new concepts and tools to measure changes in deprivation and disadvantage, adding to this intense theoretical and methodological debate. ... Read more

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Civil Service Systems in Western Europe presents a comprehensive overview of the important issues in modern bureaucracies and provides a comparative analysis of the civil service systems of nine Western European nations. In each chapter expert contributors examine a country-specific case study and employ a neo-institutional framework, combined with extensive empirical research, to emphasize the specific nature and development of civil service systems, paying special attention to the current features of each country's civil service.

The authors focus initially on the structural dimensions of civil service systems, which are explored through themes such as internal labor markets and reform and diffusion. The interface between civil service systems and their political and social environment is studied by analyzing issues such as representativeness, politicization and public opinion, while the dynamic nature of civil service systems is emphasized by examining their historical development. The authors conclude by comparing the civil service systems discussed in the book, attempting to find parallels and variations between them and proposing possible explanations for the development of these similarities and differences.

This comprehensive book will prove popular with scholars and students of public administration, political science and international affairs as well as civil servants, politicians and policymakers. ... Read more

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The author clearly demonstrates the relevance of past events to contemporary options for coping with economic change, and stresses the importance of the biophysical environment, even in ``postindustrial'' societies. The Global Economic System demonstrates the reality and significance of contemporary global economic interdependencies and indicates that environmental and cultural/historical perspectives are crucial to understanding the evolution of national and regional economies. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Great Capitalism,Socialism and a school book.
I read this as a course book in Iain's course, and then bought the first edition in the early nineties.It taught me to research the literature of geographic economics well but not clearly.I had read it with a few socialist books on Poland and other command economies.It brought my trust in capitalism to life as well as opening my reading to socialism and social theory. Covering systems at various scales and in a geographic example type format with small maps and breakdowns of labour and supply,it illustrates,the differences of the world's nations.Some of the connections between these nations and the theory of finances is of course, confusing.

Until we realise that global as a word does not belong to Wall Street but to the people of the earth,we will not get straight talk.But then I am a purist who would like artifical boundries for nations and globes. ... Read more

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This extensive book critically examines and contrasts the civil service systems of eight diverse Asian countries: Bangladesh, China, India, Japan, Laos, the Philippines, South Korea and Thailand, using a common comparative framework. The authors compare the civil service systems in each country discussing several factors including historical development, internal labor markets, degree of representativeness, level of politicization, the effect of public opinion, the impact of reform and diffusion and their place in two popular configurations of civil service systems.

The authors go on to demonstrate the utility of comparative research by analyzing the findings of the country studies and comparing the Asian countries against each other and the Asian experience as a whole against that of the West. They discover that there are considerable differences between the Asian civil service systems, illustrated by the degree to which political parties penetrate the civil service and the extent to which government agencies act as employers of last resort. Other conclusions drawn highlight the fact that in spite of many similarities, there are also sizeable differences between Asian and Western civil services, including a lack of political neutrality in many Asian countries.

Civil Service Systems in Asia will be of great interest and value to academics and advanced level students in public administration, law, political science and Asian studies. ... Read more

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This book argues that complexity theory offers new departures for (spatial-) economic modelling. It offers a broad overview of recent advances in non-linear dynamics (catastrophe theory, chaos theory, evolutionary theory and so forth) and illustrates the relevance of this new paradigm on the basis of several illustrations in the area of space-economy. The empirical limitations - inherent in the use of non-linear dynamic systems approaches - are also addressed. Next, the application potential of biocomputing (in particular, neural networks and evolutionary algorithms) is stressed, while various empirical model results are presented. The book concludes with an agenda for further research.
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The main feature of this book is its multidisciplinary nature, since the book focuses on the complexity of spatial/economic networks from several methodological points of view. For this purpose, both theoretical and empirical works have been included. The aim of the book is to provide an updated and fresh look at the mentioned issue with innovative and creative papers coming from leading experts belonging to different disciplines. Therefore, the book could be considered as an expert and critical guide - through different methodological approaches - to the topic of (complex) networks in the space-economy. All the contributions provide important elements to the understanding of networks and development over space. ... Read more

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The Japanese economy is currently at a crossroads and the embarrassing situation the country faces today is even worse than the Meiji restoration of 1868, the defeat after World War II in 1945 and the yen appreciation after the Plaza Agreements of 1985. Indeed, the traditional Japanese model is doomed to failure, mainly due to economic and industrial structures that are inappropriate towards increasing globalization, liberalization and deregulation. However, Japanese-style industrial capitalism is in this work compared to the economic and social models of other developed countries and this enables us to point out the path the Japanese economy may take in the 21st century in order to survive. ... Read more

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Culture/Place/Health is the first exploration of cultural-geographical health research of the decade, drawing on contemporary research undertaken by geogrphers and other social scientist to explore the links between culture, place and health. It uses a wealth of examples from societies around the world to be the place of culture in shaping relations between health and place. It contributes to an expanding of horizons at the intersection of hte discipline of geography and the multi-disciplinary domain of health concerns. ... Read more

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The effective planning of residential location choices is one of the great challenges of contemporary societies and requires forecasting capabilities and the consideration of complex interdependencies which can only be handled by complex computer models. This book presents a range of approaches used to model residential locations within the context of developing land-use and transport models. These approaches illustrate the range of choices that modellers have to make in order to represent residential choice behaviour. The models presented in this book represent the state-of-the-art and are valuable both as key building blocks for general urban models, and as representative examples of complexity science. ... Read more

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The eleventh edition of Human Societies covers many new developments of our rapidly changing times. Among many global updates are changing political ideologies, cyber warfare, biofuels and the problems they present, new population control initiatives, and the increasing democratization and economic power of China. More than 20 new photos grace the newly designed pages of this classic, influential text. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

From an Author: Changes in this Edition
Although no chapter is entirely unchanged in the present edition, the most noteworthy change in this edition is the elimination of (old) Chapter 15, "Major Social Experiments of the Twentieth Century: Testing the Limits of the Possible." In its place is a short summary in the excursus at the end of Chapter 14, "Marxist Societies as Natural Experiments."

In the early chapters, on preindustrial societies, with few exceptions, the changes are stylistic, but in chapters 9 through 15 the changes are substantive and significant. A summary of these more significant changes is provided below.

A number of photos, figures, and tables have been added, dropped, or substantively changed throughout the text. These changes have altered the placement of a number of figures, tables, and photos familiar to long-time users, only the most notable of which can be listed below. Also, because of changes in formatting and organization, although this edition is physically much thinner than the tenth, it has about the same number of pages (410 vs. 416).

For all these reasons, we strongly recommend that instructors who have used previous editions, as well as those who are using Human Societies for the first time, to page through and consult it before preparing their course materials or making class assignments.

Chapters 1 and 2
The most important changes in these chapters is a further attempt to clarify and emphasize the distinction between human "symbolic" and non-human "behavioral" culture, and the importance of this difference for understanding human societies.

Chapter 3
There are no substantive changes of note.

Chapter 4
The median size of industrial societies has been updated to 10.5 million, and the mean, noted in an asterisked note to Table 4.2, is 35 million. It should be noted that these figures are for 27 industrialized societies -Cyprus and Taiwan have been dropped (see Chapter 10 below).

Chapters 5
No substantive changes of note.

Chapter 6
(Old) Table 6.1 on when various grains and cereals were first cultivated in societies has been dropped, and subsequent tables renumbered.

Chapters 7 and 8
No substantive changes of note.

Virtually all the data and long-term comparisons in Chapters 9-15 have been updated or modified.

Chapter 9
A discussion of "Cyberwarfare" has been added to the section: "A Caution: The Dark Side of the Industrial Revolution"(page 205).

And although the comparison of ENIAC to modern personal computers has been updated (see page 202), as I indicated in the last two editions of Human Societies, this comparison has become increasingly difficult not only in terms of trying to keep up with the rapidly growing power of contemporary computers, but in terms of meaningfully comparing the capabilities (e.g., computing power and memory) of such radically different machines.

Chapter 10
As I noted earlier, recent per capita GDP data indicate that 27 societies can be considered "industrialized," and data on them are used in Table 4.2, and this and the following chapters. They are listed on page 216. Cyprus and Taiwan have been dropped from the industrial list in this edition, because there is/was so much missing data on important variables for them; this formal change had/has little effect on the analysis and comparison of industrial societies .

As would be expected this had/has little effect on the data and trends because they were already missing from most tables and comparisons.
They are listed on page 213; older, more established, industrial societies are italicized.

Given the effects of compounding, the long-term GNP growth figures for the U.S. and Great Britain continue to change noticeably. The GNP growth multiples now are: Great Britain 1830 to present (the latest figures were for 2006) more than 30 times, U.S. 1870 to present almost 100 times. These translate into per capita growth multiples of about 13 for both societies.

Table 10.1 is unchanged, but data in Table 10.2 have been updated and the figure for tertiary industries in 1870 has been corrected to 24.

Table 10.3 has been updated with data on the percentage of eligible workers in unions and its change from 1970 to 2003. This better measure and longer time span really emphasize the dramatic differences among industrial societies.

New data on concentration ratios in manufacturing, Table 10.5, became available for this revision, and a few industries were substituted in the table (e.g., small arms, distillers, bottled water, and tortillas) to provoke student interest.

Tables 10.6 and 10.7 have been updated.

Chapter 11
Tables 11.1, 11.2, and 11.3 are unchanged.

"Environmentalism" has been added as a new secular ideology in industrial societies, and some of its parallels with traditional Christianity are noted.

A new boxed insert, "Money and Politics" (p. 249), discusses, with illustrations, the corrupting influence of money on politics in industrial societies.

Chapter 12
As would be expected, virtually all the data on, and discussion of, stratification has been updated and revised. (Figure 12.2 is unchanged.)

Perhaps most striking of the changes, although Bill Gates and Warren Buffet continue to be the two richest individuals in the world, the members of the Walton family have dropped out of the top 15 and, consequently, American representation in Table 12.1 has substantially declined.

Subcategories of blue- and white-collar employment have been collapsed in Table 12.3 to better show the magnitude of the trend of increasing white-collar employment.

Chapter 13
Although there were no fundamental changes to the chapter, the data in the figures, tables, and text comparisons have been updated throughout this chapter. Figure 13.1 now presents data for female labor force participation for three (rather than four) years: 1890, 1960, 2005; and Table 13.4 now also shows the increase in medical degrees earned by women from 1960 to 2005.

Chapter 14
With the exception of Tables 14.1, on commodity concentration, and Table 14.8, on patriarchal attitudes in industrializing societies, all the data and comparisons in this chapter have been updated.

A new boxed insert -- "The Worst Place to Be a Woman" (page 315) -- dramatizes the plight of women in many industrializing societies. This personalizes implications of data in Tables 14.7 and 14.8.

There is also a new excursus to Chapter 14 - "Marxist Societies as Natural Experiments" (pages 321-322 - which summarizes the key points old Chapter 15 and emphasizes the human toll of attempts to put Marx's revolutionary socialism into practice. (There is also more discussion of China in Chapters 14 and new Chapter 15.)

As a result, old Chapter 15, "Major Social Experiments of the Twentieth Century: Testing the Limits of the Possible," has been dropped from the 11th edition of Human Societies.

With the collapse of the Berlin Wall, the end of the Soviet Union, and its hegemony over Eastern Europe, now some twenty years in the past, a detailed discussion of their features became increasingly less compelling, especially given the time pressures in a single-semester introductory course. A fifteen chapter profile for the book better fits the needs of most instructors. (Please -mail me your reactions to this change, and if there is a perceived need for this material we may make it available in another venue/format.)

Old Chapter 15
Dropped.

New Chapter 15 (Old Chapter 16)
The first part of the chapter, "Looking Back," is virtually unchanged, but there have been a number of important changes in the rest of the chapter, especially "Looking Ahead: "Natural Resources and the Biophysical Environment." The prospects of cheap and easy bio-fuels are dimming greatly, and "peak oil" (i.e., that oil production will decline in future, as demand continues to increase) is being taken seriously by more observers. (I must admit, though, that, as you may have gleaned from recent editions, I am becoming increasingly skeptical of some of these dire predictions and of anthropogenic global warming. To the extent that we are facing greater threats and dangers (e.g., rising food costs, and shortages), they seem more politician, than environment, driven phenomena.)

Data comparisons, and discussion throughout the chapter have been updated.
... Read more

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The word "village" has the evocative power of ancient shared social values based on solidarity, equality, and common expectations for the betterment of life. The book's title is borrowed from McLuhan's apt metaphor, but questions its underlying assumptions. The contributors recast some of the basic elements of the complex phenomenon of the so-called "globalization." Trade laws, industrial relations, economic and political systems are analyzed in a critical perspective. Moreover, environment and sustainable development, languages' rights, education, mobility and migrations are discussed in view of contemporary changes that societies are undergoing throughout the world. The vulnerability of societies caught up in new networks of interdependence due to reduced distances also are put to the fore, in the context of the new accelerated circulation of information, ideas, goods, and human beings. Provacative reading for scholars interested in a multinational, Euro-Atlanticist perspective on globalization. ... Read more

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This book is one of the first to introduce the potential of thenew and rapidly developing GIS technology in the field of public andenvironmental health. Contributions include papers originallypresented in December 1990 at a meeting at the National Institute ofPublic Health and Environmental Protection in Bilthoven, theNetherlands, convened by the World Health Organization Regional Officefor Europe to discuss the development of a Health and EnvironmentGeographical Information System for the European Region. Thecontributors form a wide-ranging group of international experts andinclude leading researchers in the field of health and environment,prominent GIS experts and representatives of government agencies.This book brings together a balanced sample of written work thatcovers important aspects of the principles involved in GIS as well asdemonstrating the opportunities which the use of GIS can offer toresearch and planning in the fields of public and environmentalhealth. In addition, contributions focus on the demand and supply ofspatial information in public and environmental health. As anillustration of the work being undertaken, some examples of currentapplications are provided, followed by a discussion on thepossibilities of spatial analysis for research and planning in thefields. This book also addresses issues related to the implementationof GIS at both national and international levels. The volume not only provides a very good introduction to thestate-of-the-art and developments in the application of GIS in publicand environmental health; it can also be regarded as a seedbed forfuture research efforts. For students and teachers of GIS as well as for researchers, planners,policymakers and other professionals who wish to learn more about GISand are concerned with the application, implementation and use of GISin public and environmental health. ... Read more

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"Understanding the Earth System" aims to contribute to the timely discussion on Global Change of the Earth system. The discussion centers around the synthesis of procedures effecting both the natural and social sciences. The concept of Earth System Analysis, although controversially discussed, will be the focus of future scientific programs related to Global Change. The main problems are overpopulation, water shortages and climate change. ... Read more

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This book constitutes the third volume documenting the results achieved within a priority program on spatial cognition funded by the German Science Foundation (DFG). The 23 revised full papers presented went through two rounds of reviewing and improvement and reflect the increased interdisciplinary cooperation in the area. The papers are organized in topical sections on routes and navigation, human memory and learning, spatial representation, and spatial reasoning. ... Read more