Books about Socioeconomic from Amazon.com

America's leading historian on Korea offers a nuanced analysis that demolishes familiar generalizations.

Depicted as an insular and forbidding police state with an "insane" dictator at its helm, North Korea —charter member of Bush's "Axis of Evil" —is a country the U.S. loves to hate. Now the CIA says it possesses nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons, as well as long-range missiles capable of delivering them to America's West Coast.

But, as Bruce Cumings demonstrates in this provocative, lively read, the story of the U.S.-Korea conflict is more complex than our leaders or our news media would have us believe. Drawing on his extensive knowledge of Korea, and on declassified government reports, Cumings traces that story, from the brutal Korean War to the present crisis. Harboring no illusions regarding the totalitarian Kim Jong Il regime, Cumings nonetheless insists on a more nuanced approach. The result is both a counter-narrative to the official U.S. and North Korean versions and a fascinating portrayal of North Korea, a country that suffers through foreign invasions, natural disasters, and its own internal contradictions, yet somehow continues to survive..
Price: $7.94 [Notify me when price goes down.]

In "Simulating Scoiety", the authors explore the basis for social and economic behavior. Using the methodology of computer simulation, specifically cellular automata, they model various factors that are involved in a system of individuals (or agents) who interact socially and economically with one another. The usefulness of computer simulations in the social sciences is that it provides a laboratory in which qualitative ideas about social and economic interations can be tested. This brings a new dimension to the social sciences where 'explanations' abound, but are rarely subject to much experimental testing. Mathematica is used as the programming language for implementing these models as cellular automata simulations. The authors have chosen this language because it has a number of features which make it uniquely qualified to be used by social scientists, especially those without expertise in computer programming. Users can easily access the various 3.0 Mathematica notebooks, and readily interact with them, the full text of the printed book, itself, and other data contained on www.telospub.com..
Price: $71.95 [Notify me when price goes down.]

This book provides rich course materials that permit students to explore, in a variety of contexts, the relationship between law and economic/social processes It critiques neoclassical economics and draws on diverse economic approaches and other social sciences, such as psychology, sociology, anthropology, and political science, for the tools of public policy analysis. It offers students a values-conscious approach to public policy that is designed to take into account the power implications and distributional effects of laws and stresses the importance to effective regulation of attention to historical context, philosophical beliefs, culture, existing institutions, working rules and sources of power.

Each chapter of the book contains social science and legal materials that provide the basis for vigorous student inquiry and discussion. Law and Public Policy begins with background chapters on law and cognitive psychology, economic fairness and human well-being, fairness and legal socialization, culture and norms, and cooperation and trust. It then addresses important public policy areas in which markets are viewed as the nexus of law and economic/social processes. Intended to be the primary text for law school courses and seminars on law and socio-economics and existing courses on law and economics, Law and Public Policy is also designed for courses and seminars on law and the social sciences and for pre-law programs..
Price: $90.00 [Notify me when price goes down.]

The Magnificent Ambersons is a 1918 novel by Booth Tarkington which won the 1919 Pulitzer Prize. It was the second novel in the Growth trilogy, which included The Turmoil (1915) and The Midlander (1923, retitled National Avenue in 1927). In 1942 Orson Welles directed a film version, also titled The Magnificent Ambersons.

The novel and trilogy traces the growth of the United States through the declining fortunes of three generations of the aristocratic Amberson family in a fictional Mid-Western town, between the end of the Civil War and the early part of the 20th century, a period of rapid industrialization and socio-economic change in America. The decline of the Ambersons is contrasted with the rising fortunes of industrial tycoons and other new-money families, which did not derive power from family names but by "doing things". As George Amberson's friend (name unspecified) says, "don't you think being things is 'rahthuh bettuh' than doing things?"

Source: Wikipedia.org.
Price: $1.48 [Notify me when price goes down.]

In this award-winning environmental history of Cuba since the age of Columbus, Reinaldo Funes Monzote emphasizes the two processes that have had the most dramatic impact on the island's landscape: deforestation and sugar cultivation. During the first 300 years of Spanish settlement, sugar plantations arose primarily in areas where forests had been cleared by the royal navy, which maintained an interest in management and conservation for the shipbuilding industry. The sugar planters won a decisive victory in 1815, however, when they were allowed to clear extensive forests, without restriction, for cane fields and sugar production. This book is the first to consider Cuba's vital sugar industry through the lens of environmental history. Funes Monzote demonstrates how the industry that came to define Cuba—and upon which Cuba urgently depended--also devastated the ecology of the island.

The original Spanish-language edition of the book, published in Mexico in 2004, was awarded the UNESCO Book Prize for Caribbean Thought, Environmental Category. For this first English edition, the author has revised the text throughout and provided new material, including a glossary and a conclusion that summarizes important developments up to the present..
Price: $23.60 [Notify me when price goes down.]

The Ethiopian Afar are a pastoral people with a fearless reputation. They have roamed the Awash Valley for ages. How do they cope with the modern development of irrigated cultivation in the lowlands and the policy to displace pastoral communities from these lands by a coercive state that looks down upon them as 'backward', to say the least? An outstanding study into the problems pastoral peoples face around the world when resource conflicts threaten their sources of livelihood..
Price: $28.45 [Notify me when price goes down.]

There is no denying that for Dr. Reynolds history is the great teacher that one chooses to be guided by, or ignore at one's peril. You get a sense, by reading the book, however, that history is replete with instances reminding one that there are always certain forces (fate) that are beyond the control of island people, and before which they remain powerless. This the author traces back to the post Columbian era. From then till now, European control of the rules of production and trade, and their superiority over the early inhabitants (Caribs and Arawaks), and the slave and ex-slave population in a later era, all had been testimony. He cites the greed of European settlers and its toll in the underdevelopment of the island in the 19th and 20th centuries. According to Dr. Reynolds, the helplessness (or dependence and despondency) of the island population persists throughout the sugar-cane plantation era, into and beyond emancipation, and it was not until the introduction of bananas that the social and economic and even political status of islanders began to change, when they began to truly experience the meaning of independence and empowerment, all but temporarily as shown by the events of 1993. However, Dr. Reynolds doesn't only dwell on the past. He takes a deep analytical look into the state of the island today and what the age of information and technology expects of St. Lucia in order to make it hereon. He believes that the rate of illiteracy is much too high, and he laments the environmental degradation that banana cultivation has brought on the island. He is equally critical of `the social and cultural destabilizing effects of tourism' and the loss of sovereignty resulting from the construction of each new hotel..
Price: $30.68 [Notify me when price goes down.]

This book addresses the pressing issue of severe poverty and inequality, and questions why violations of socio-economic rights are treated with less urgency than violations of civil and political rights, such as the right to freedom of speech or to vote?
Socio-economic rights have been widely regarded as aspirational goals, rhetorically useful, but having few practical implications for government policy and the distribution of resources within a polity. It is not therefore surprising that socio-economic rights have been systematically neglected in the world today, with millions still lacking access to even basic shelter, food or health-care. This book seeks to provide a sustained argument for placing renewed emphasis upon socio-economic rights in the fight against desperate poverty. It utilizes a combination of political philosophy, constitutional law, and public policy in its focus on the right to food, to housing, and to health-care.
Part I involves the development of a philosophical theory of rights that provides a common normative foundation for both civil and political rights and socio-economic rights. This theory involves developing an understanding of value that recognizes individuals have fundamental interests of differing levels of urgency. It also involves drawing an important distinction between conditional rights that flow purely from a normative focus on the equal importance of individuals and unconditional rights that involve competing normative and pragmatic considerations. A general theory of judicial review is also put forward that provides a justification for judicial involvement in the enforcement of socio-economic rights.

Part II then considers the implications of this general philosophical theory for the interpretation and enforcement of socio-economic rights in law. The focus of this more applied discussion is upon South Africa, where entrenched, directly justiciable socio-economic rights are expressly protected in the constitution. The current approach of the South African Constitutional Court to their interpretation and enforcement is considered and criticized primarily for failing to provide sufficient content to such rights. A modified version of the minimum core approach to socio-economic rights is proposed as an alterative way which is supported by the philosophical theory developed in the first part of the book. This approach requires priority to be given to worst off in society through placing a heavy burden of justification on any society that fails to meet the minimal interests of individuals. It also requires concrete steps to be taken towards realizing a higher level of provision that guarantees individuals the necessary conditions for realizing a wide range of purposes. This is also shown to have important policy implications both for developing and developed countries that can, it is hoped, assist in creating an urgency and commitment towards eradicating extreme poverty.
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Price: $60.00 [Notify me when price goes down.]