Drawing on extensive ethnographic fieldwork and in-depth life history interviews, this illuminating book provides an intimate portrait of contemporary... Chinese Christianity in the context of a modern, commercialized economy. In vivid detail, anthropologist Nanlai Cao explores the massive resurgence of Protestant Christianity in the southeastern coastal city of Wenzhou—popularly referred to by its residents as "China's Jerusalem"—a nationwide model for economic development and the largest urban Christian center in China.Cao's study of Chinese Christians delves into the dynamics of activities such as banqueting, network building, property acquisition, mate selection, marriage ritual, migrant work, and education. Unlike previous research that has mainly looked at older, rural, and socially marginalized church communities, Cao trains his focus on economically powerful, politically connected, moralizing Christian entrepreneurs. In framing the city of Wenzhou as China's Jerusalem, newly rich Chinese Christians seek not only to express their leadership aspirations in a global religious movement but also to assert their place, identity, and elite status in post-reform Chinese society.

This intriguing collection of articles explores the many actors, practices, and techniques involved in constructing the social reality of crime. The... first section offers an overview of the issues associated with studying crime and the media. The next section explores the making of crime problems from gang rituals to less mature constructions of crime like road warriors. The final section looks at the effects of media constructions of crime. The frames through which crime is projected increase fear and shape perceptions of the amount of crime committed, the types of crime, who commits crimes, and what crimes are social problems. Sensational and violent crimes are featured prominently in the media, exaggerating the risks faced by the public and reinforcing stereotypes about who commits crime and why. While the media are instrumental in defining the terms through which we think about crime, informed audiences can decide how to interpret crime news by asking questions such as: Who supplied the information? Do they have a vested interest in how we react? Who benefits from the presentation? Who is harmed? The articles in this collection provide roadmaps to navigate through filtered information to an informed analysis.

This latest edition of this acclaimed text examines four themes vital to building market-oriented democracies in Latin America: the development of... democratic institutions, globalization’s impact, socio-political integration, and market reforms. Within these broad themes, the contributors explore how issues such as the performance of political parties, civilian control of the military, human rights protections, and executive-legislative relations are playing out in eight countries: Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, Peru, and Venezuela. They find a mixed record on many fronts and discuss the uncertain state of democracy in several Latin American states in light of recent institutional setbacks and attempts to overhaul the political sphere.Edited by Jorge I. Domínguez and Michael Shifter and featuring contributions from more than a dozen leading scholars of democratization studies, this volume provides a concise and up-to-date measure of the quality of democracy in Latin America.

"Constructing Early Childhood Science" provides early childhood education students with a comprehensive hands-on guide to science education. This is a... contemporary, practical methods text that maintains student involvement as an integral part of the course. More than 100 open-ended activities are offered for children ages 3 to 8, most of which provide references to aid teachers in developing an interdisciplinary approach to instruction. Citing the most contemporary publications on each topic, it includes chapters such as technology, multiculturalism, learner differences and the involvement of parents and community in science education. Appendices contain a listing of sources for free and inexpensive science materials, as well as referenced activities and cited children's literature. This text follows National Science Education Standards and the principles of Developmentally Appropriate Practice, as outlined by the National Association for the Education of Young Children

Demands for national independence among ethnic minorities around the world suggest the power of nationalism. Contemporary nationalist movements can... quickly attract fervent followings, but they can just as rapidly lose support. In Constructing Grievance, Elise Giuliano asks why people with ethnic identities throw their support behind nationalism in some cases but remain quiescent in others. Popular support for nationalism, Giuliano contends, is often fleeting. It develops as part of the process of political mobilization-a process that itself transforms the meaning of ethnic identity. She compares sixteen ethnic republics of the Russian Federation, where nationalist mobilization varied widely during the early 1990s despite a common Soviet inheritance. Drawing on field research in the republic of Tatarstan, socioeconomic statistical data, and a comparative discourse analysis of local newspapers, Giuliano argues that people respond to nationalist leaders after developing a group grievance. Ethnic grievances, however, are not simply present or absent among a given population based on societal conditions. Instead, they develop out of the interaction between people's lived experiences and the specific messages that nationalist entrepreneurs put forward concerning ethnic group disadvantage.In Russia, Giuliano shows, ethnic grievances developed rapidly in certain republics in the late Soviet era when messages articulated by nationalist leaders about ethnic inequality in local labor markets resonated with people's experience of growing job insecurity in a contracting economy. In other republics, however, where nationalist leaders focused on articulating other issues, such as cultural and language problems facing the ethnic group, group grievances failed to develop, and popular support for nationalism stalled. People with ethnic identities, Giuliano concludes, do not form political interest groups primed to support ethnic politicians and movements for national secession.

Kathy Charmaz is one of the world's leading theorists and exponents of grounded theory. In this important and essential new textbook, she introduces the... reader to the craft of using grounded theory in social research, and provides a clear, step-by-step guide for those new to the field. Using worked examples throughout, this book also maps out an alternative vision of grounded theory put forward by its founding thinkers, Glaser and Strauss. To Charmaz, grounded theory must move on from its positivist origins and must incorporate many of the methods and questions posed by constructivists over the past twenty years to become a more nuanced and reflexive practice.

Kathy Charmaz is one of the world's leading theorists and exponents of grounded theory. In this important and essential new textbook, she introduces the... reader to the craft of using grounded theory in social research, and provides a clear, step-by-step guide for those new to the field. Using worked examples throughout, this book also maps out an alternative vision of grounded theory put forward by its founding thinkers, Glaser and Strauss. To Charmaz, grounded theory must move on from its positivist origins and must incorporate many of the methods and questions posed by constructivists over the past twenty years to become a more nuanced and reflexive practice.

The Universal Declaration for Human Rights was approved in 1948 and yet more than fifty years later some human rights--especially the rights of groups... such as women, minorities, and indigenous peoples--continue to be at risk. This book examines recent humanitarian catastrophes involving such groups and suggests how the society of states may develop a collective capacity for human rights enforcement. Above all, it emphasizes the long term efforts to stabilize weak or failing societies and to develop democratic governments on which the protection of human rights ultimately depends.

If we could only put aside our civil pose and say what we really thought, the world would be a lot like the one alluded to in The Unabridged Devil’s... Dictionary. There, a bore is “a person who talks when you wish him to listen,” and happiness is “an agreeable sensation arising from contemplating the misery of another.” This is the most comprehensive, authoritative edition ever of Ambrose Bierce’s satiric masterpiece. It renders obsolete all other versions that have appeared in the book’s ninety-year history.A virtual onslaught of acerbic, confrontational wordplay, The Unabridged Devil’s Dictionary offers some 1,600 wickedly clever definitions to the vocabulary of everyday life. Little is sacred and few are safe, for Bierce targets just about any pursuit, from matrimony to immortality, that allows our willful failings and excesses to shine forth.This new edition is based on David E. Schultz and S. T. Joshi’s exhaustive investigation into the book’s writing and publishing history. All of Bierce’s known satiric definitions are here, including previously uncollected, unpublished, and alternative entries. Definitions dropped from previous editions have been restored while nearly two hundred wrongly attributed to Bierce have been excised. For dedicated Bierce readers, an introduction and notes are also included.Ambrose Bierce’s Devil’s Dictionary is a classic that stands alongside the best work of satirists such as Twain, Mencken, and Thurber. This unabridged edition will be celebrated by humor fans and word lovers everywhere.

CONSTRUCTING LITERACIES is a collection of readings that focus on cultures of learning-the multiple literacies that students need for negotiating higher... education and beyond.

Intriguing, and occasionally unsettling, In Defense of Sinis a refreshingly frank exploration of some real facts of life. Portmann gathers an on-target... collection of great writers on transgressions large and small. Read about defenses for promiscuity, greed, deceit, gossip, lust, breaking the golden rule, and more--and use this unusual guide to decide for yourself if sin has a place in our contemporary, and virtually unshockable, society.Provocative and illuminating, this book may change how you think about sin, morality, and what's right.Contributors include Aaron Ben-Ze'ev, Anthony Ellis, Jane English, Ludwig Feuerbach, Sigmund Freud, Bernard Mandeville, Jerome Neu, Friedrich Nietzsche, David Novitz, Joyce Carol Oates, David A.J. Richards, Seneca, Jonathan Swift, Richard Wasserstrom, and Oscar Wilde.

The dramatic growth of the Christian community in Latin America, Africa, Asia and Oceania during the twentieth century has led to a substantial shift of... outlook, particularly within the Roman Catholic church. Third World churches are no longer satisfied to repeat the tradition, centred on Europe, as it has come down to them. They are anxious to take their place alongside the churches of older origin in contributing their response to the gospel within the great stream of Christian tradition. This raises one particular set of problems again and again: How is it possible to be faithful both to the contemporary experience of the gospel and to the tradition of Christian life that has been received? How is a community to go about bringing to expression its own experience of Christ in its concrete situation? And how is this to be related to a tradition that is often expressed in language and concepts vastly different from anything in the current situation? These problems are the subject of this book, which attempts to bring together evidence from a variety of different contexts and to reflect on answers which are already being given. It is a fascinating and important contribution to a debate of immense significance.

Good readers think about reading while they are reading. But how does a teacher teach students to apply comprehension strategies as they read? By... applying the explicit teaching model to comprehension strategy instruction, Dr. Nancy Boyles offers teachers an easy, effective, and innovative approach to improve students' reading comprehension. Using her book--rich with models, teacher-talk,and real-life examples--teachers learn how to explicitly teach students to apply comprehension strategies competently while they read. And with Dr. Boyles' detailed lesson plans and templates, teachers can embed comprehension strategy instruction into guided, shared, and independent reading for both literacy and content-area instruction. Constructing Meaning shows teachers: * A kid-friendly way to introduce and model a blended repertoire of comprehension strategies concurrently, so students practice strategies as readers actually use them: flexibly and as an integrated whole while reading. * How to refine students' comprehension of fiction and informational text during shared, guided, and independent reading with focused lessons in specific strategy applications. * How to monitor students' progress in reading comprehension and comprehension strategy use through follow-up activities, rubrics with discrete assessment criteria, and questions that make kids think. Teachers can reproduce classroom-ready visual supports from the book or customize them from the included CD.

Constructing Measures introduces a way to understand the advantages and disadvantages of measurement instruments, how to use such instruments, and how... to apply these methods to develop new instruments or adapt old ones. The book is organized around the steps taken while constructing an instrument. It opens with a summary of the constructive steps involved. Each step is then expanded on in the next four chapters. These chapters develop the "building blocks" that make up an instrument--the construct map, the design plan for the items, the outcome space, and the statistical measurement model. The next three chapters focus on quality control. They rely heavily on the calibrated construct map and review how to check if scores are operating consistently and how to evaluate the reliability and validity evidence. The book introduces a variety of item formats, including multiple-choice, open-ended, and performance items; projects; portfolios; Likert and Guttman items; behavioral observations; and interview protocols.Each chapter includes an overview of the key concepts, related resources for further investigation and exercises and activities. Some chapters feature appendices that describe parts of the instrument development process in more detail, numerical manipulations used in the text, and/or data results. A variety of examples from the behavioral and social sciences and education including achievement and performance testing; attitude measures; health measures, and general sociological scales, demonstrate the application of the material. An accompanying CD features control files, output, and a data set to allow readers to compute the text's exercises and create new analyses and case archives based on the book's examples so the reader can work through the entire development of an instrument.Constructing Measures is an ideal text or supplement in courses on item, test, or instrument development, measurement, item response theory, or rasch analysis taught in a variety of departments including education and psychology. The book also appeals to those who develop instruments, including industrial/organizational, educational, and school psychologists, health outcomes researchers, program evaluators, and sociological measurers. Knowledge of basic descriptive statistics and elementary regression is recommended.