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A Soldier's Story: Revolutionary Writings by a New Afrikan Anarchist (Kersplebedeb)
by Kuwasi BalagoonKuwasi Balagoon was a participant in the Black Liberation struggle from the 1960s until his death in prison in 1986. A member of the Black Panther Party and defendant in the infamous Panther 21 case, Balagoon went underground with the Black Liberation Army (BLA). Balagoon was unusual for his time in that he combined anarchism with Black nationalism, broke the rules of sexual and political conformity, took up arms against the white supremacist State—all the while never shying away from critiquing the movements's weaknesses. The first part of this book consists of contributions by those who knew or were touched by Balagoon; the second consists of court statements and essays by Balagoon himself, including several documents which have never been published before. The third section consists of excerpts from letters Balagoon wrote while in prison. A final section includes a historical essay by Akinyele Umoja and an extensive intergenerational roundtable discussion of the significance of Balagoon's life and thoughts today.
Soledad Brother: The Prison Letters of George Jackson
by George Jackson Jean Genet Jonathan Jackson Jr.A collection of Jackson's letters from prison, Soledad Brother is an outspoken condemnation of the racism of white America and a powerful appraisal of the prison system that failed to break his spirit but eventually took his life. Jackson's letters make palpable the intense feelings of anger and rebellion that filled black men in America's prisons in the 1960s. But even removed from the social and political firestorms of the 1960s, Jackson's story still resonates for its portrait of a man taking a stand even while locked down.
Soles of a Survivor: A Memoir
by Nhi AronheimThe Unbelievable True Story of a Vietnamese Refugee Who Not Only Made the United States Her Home, But Learned the True Value of Hope, Love, and Religion Along the Way The soles of Nhi Aronheim's feet still bear the scars of her escape from Vietnam—trudging through the jungles of Cambodia as a twelve-year-old with a group of strangers seeking the land of opportunity: America. Her quest for survival through the Cambodian jungle eventually led her to a boat that took her to Thailand and an orphanage where Nhi lived for two years until she qualified for refugee status in the United States. Years later, she returned to Vietnam with a film producer to reunite with the family she never thought she&’d see again. A second trip to Vietnam brought her two mothers, birth and adopted, face to face. Yet Soles of a Survivor isn&’t just another inspirational survival story. It&’s about the lessons Nhi learned about humanity, diversity, and unconditional love since arriving in the United States. She now has a deeper appreciation for the parallels between the Jewish and Vietnamese cultures, and others. After she met her Jewish beau, they got married. She eventually converted to Judaism, though the process was challenging for an Asian woman adopted into a Christian household. Her story shows it matters less what religion we&’re part of, as long as we radiate goodness to those we meet. Now she relishes being a Vietnamese Jew. Having come full circle from prosperity to poverty and back, Nhi hopes to encourage others to believe that in spite of overwhelming odds, all things are possible if one has an intense desire, focused energy, and the audacity to grasp presented opportunities.
Solidarités provinciales: Histoire de la Fédération des travailleurs et travailleuses du Nouveau-Brunswick
by David Frank Réjean OuelletteLa Fédération des travailleurs et travailleuses du Nouveau-Brunswick, fondée en 1913, est la deuxième plus ancienne fédération provinciale du travail au Canada. Son histoire remonte aux premières campagnes en faveur de l’indemnisation des accidents du travail et de la reconnaissance syndicale, et elle se poursuit dans les plus récentes luttes visant à défendre les normes sociales et à protéger les emplois et les droits syndicaux. La Fédération a vu le jour dans la ville portuaire de Saint John et le centre ferroviaire de Moncton, puis elle s’est étendue aux travailleurs des mines et des usines du nord de la province, soutenant la cause des employés du secteur public et des travailleuses, reflétant les réalités de la vie et du travail dans une société bilingue. Puisant dans les archives, les journaux et les expériences des travailleurs et des travailleuses, voici l’histoire inédite de solidarités syndicales provinciales qui ont surmonté les divisions et les revers afin de rehausser le statut des travailleurs et des travailleuses dans la société néo-brunswickoise. Par cette étude pionnière rédigée dans un style clair et puissant, Frank apporte une contribution originale à la compréhension de l’évolution politique, économique et sociale de la province, et il aide à combler le besoin d’éclairer la connaissance que le public a de l’histoire des travailleurs et des syndicats de toutes les régions du Canada.
Solidarity and Conflict: European Social Law In Crisis
by Silvana SciarraThe ongoing austerity crisis is being felt in all sectors of EU law, but has had a particularly severe impact on labour law. <P><P>Silvana Sciarra, a leading judge and scholar of EU employment law, considers how solidarity regimes have been shaken by the crisis. She brings together existing European policies in social and employment law, to enhance synergies and developments in a post-crisis discourse. She looks at reactions of national constitutional courts to austerity measures and of international organizations in re-establishing respect of fundamental workers' rights. <P>Criticizing soft law approaches in employment policies, she favours recourse to binding measures connected with selective financial incentives through European funds. She highlights developments in European sector social dialogue and new horizons of transnational collective bargaining in large multinationals. Taking a positive, practical approach, Sciarra shows how social policies can enhance solidarity and social cohesion, through European financial support. <P>Provides a critical and constructive point of view on European social law developments.<P> Combines information on legal sources with proposals for better policy making.<P> Discusses highly topical issues around austerity and workers' rights.
Solidarity and Defiant Spirituality: Africana Lessons on Religion, Racism, and Ending Gender Violence (Religion and Social Transformation #4)
by Traci C. WestHow activists in Ghana, South Africa, and Brazil provide inspiration and strategies for combating the gender violence epidemic in the United States How can the U.S. learn from the perspectives of anti-gender violence activists in South America and Africa as we seek to end intimate violence in this country? The U.S. has consistently positioned itself as a moral exemplar, seeking to export its philosophy and values to other societies. Yet in this book, Traci C. West argues that the U.S. has much to learn from other countries when it comes to addressing gender-based violence. West traveled to Ghana, South Africa, and Brazil to interview activists involved in the struggle against gender violence. In each of these places, as in the United States, Christianity and anti-black racism have been implicated in violence against women. In Ghana and Brazil, in particular, their Christian colonial and trans-Atlantic slave trade histories directly connect with the socioeconomic development of the Americas and historic incidents of rape of black slave women. With a transnational focus on religion and racism, West brings a new perspective to efforts to systemically combat gender violence. Calling attention to forms of violence in the U.S. and international settings, such as marital rape, sex trafficking of women and girls, domestic violence, and the targeting of lesbians, the book offers an expansive and nuanced view of how to form activist solidarity in tackling this violence. It features bold and inspiring approaches by black women leaders working in each setting to uproot the myriad forms of violence against women and girls. Ultimately, West calls for us to learn from the lessons of Africana activists, drawing on a defiant Africana spirituality as an invaluable resource in the quest to combat the seemingly chronic problem of gender-based violence.
Solidarity and Fragmentation: Working People and Class Consciousness in Detroit, 1875-1900 (Working Class in American History)
by Richard Jules OestreicherHow did the interplay between class and ethnicity play out within the working class during the Gilded Age? Richard Jules Oestreicher illuminates the immigrant communities, radical politics, worker-employer relationships, and the multiple meanings of workers' affiliations in Detroit at the end of the nineteenth century.
Solidarity and Reciprocity with Migrants in Asia: Catholic and Confucian Ethics in Dialogue (Religion and Global Migrations)
by Mary Mee-Yin YuenBased on Catholic and Confucian social ethics, this book develops an ethic of solidarity and reciprocity with the migrants in Asia who are marginalized. Mary Mee-Yin Yuen draws off her own pastoral experiences in the Church, the situation of the wider Christian community, and the personal experiences of migrant women from various Asian countries in Hong Kong, to describe the features and practices of an ethical approach that emphasizes solidarity and reciprocity. Interdisciplinary in nature, this book integrates Catholic social ethics, moral philosophy, Chinese Confucian ethics, social sciences, and cultural studies to investigate the phenomenon of international and intra-national migration in Asia, particularly with regard to women migrants moving from South Asia, Southeast Asia, and Mainland China to Hong Kong.
Solidarity and the 'Refugee Crisis' in Europe
by Óscar García Agustín Martin Bak JørgensenNew forms of solidarity are being shaped as a response to the European “refugee crisis.” The state—in the form of national governments—has not been able to implement any viable or sustainable solution to the crisis, but the solidarity movement has been very visible and active in European countries. This book offers a conceptualization of three types of solidarity: autonomous, civic, and institutional solidarity. This framework is applied to three case studies, illustrating the emergence of different forms of solidarity: the City Plaza Hotel in Athens, the Danish “friendly neighbors,” and Barcelona as refuge city.
Solidarity Between Species: Living with Animals Exposed to Pandemic Viruses
by Frederic KeckThis book examines how the Covid-19 pandemic can be described as a biopolitical crisis, taking into account a fact often overlooked by commentators: Covid-19 is a zoonosis, a disease transmissible between animal species. The Sars-Cov2 virus causing this respiratory disease circulated in bats before passing to humans under as-yet mysterious conditions, and it was transmitted from humans to other species, notably mink and deer. Building on Michel Foucault’s revival of the term “biopolitics” and related notions (disciplinary power, pastoral power, cynegetic power), this book traces a set of public health measures taken over the last two centuries to control epidemics. It underlines how the need to conserve virus strains in order to identify and anticipate their mutations has given rise to cryopolitics, a set of techniques aimed at suspending the living in order to defer death. The book then questions the emancipatory scope of this cryopolitics by examining interspecies solidarity built by the warning signals sent by animals to humans about coming threats, be they pandemics, natural disasters, or climate change. By blurring the boundaries between the wild and the domestic resulting from the process of domestication, the politics of zoonoses relies on sentinels who preserve the memory of signs from the past to prepare living beings for future threats by involving them in a common ideal.
Solidarity & Care: Domestic Worker Activism In New York City
by Alana Lee GlaserThe members of the Domestic Workers United (DWU) organization—immigrant women of color employed as nannies, caregivers, and housekeepers in New York City—formed to fight for dignity and respect and to “bring meaningful change” to their work. Alana Lee Glaser examines the process of how these domestic workers organized against precarity, isolation, and exploitation to help pass the 2010 New York State Domestic Worker Bill of Rights, the first labor law in the United States protecting in-home workers. Solidarity & Care examines the political mobilization of diverse care workers who joined together and supported one another through education, protests, lobbying, and storytelling. Domestic work activists used narrative and emotional appeals to build a coalition of religious communities, employers of domestic workers, labor union members, and politicians to first pass and then to enforce the new law. Through oral history interviews, as well as ethnographic observation during DWU meetings and protest actions, Glaser chronicles how these women fought (and continue to fight) to improve working conditions. She also illustrates how they endure racism, punitive immigration laws, on-the-job indignities, and unemployment that can result in eviction and food insecurity. The lessons from Solidarity & Care along with the DWU’s precedent-setting legislative success have applications to workers across industries. All royalties will go directly to the Domestic Workers United
Solidarity Cities: Confronting Racial Capitalism, Mapping Transformation (Diverse Economies and Livable Worlds)
by Maliha Safri Marianna Pavlovskaya Stephen Healy Craig BorowiakMapping the transformative effects of America&’s urban solidarity economies Solidarity economies, characterized by diverse practices of cooperation and mutual support, have long played pivotal but largely invisible roles in fostering shared survival and envisioning alternatives to racial capitalism globally and in the United States. This book maps the thriving existence of these cooperative networks in three differently sized American cities, highlighting their commitment to cooperation, democracy, and inclusion and demonstrating the desire—and the pressing need—to establish alternative foundations for social and economic justice. Collectively authored by four social scientists, Solidarity Cities analyzes the deeply entrenched racial and economic divides from which cooperative networks emerge as they work to provide unmet basic needs, including food security, affordable housing, access to fair credit, and employment opportunities. Examining entities such as community gardens, credit unions, cooperatives, and other forms of economic solidarity, the authors highlight how relatively small yet vital interventions into public life can expand into broader movements that help bolster the overall well-being of their surrounding communities. Bringing together insights from geography, political economy, and political science with mapping and spatial analysis methodologies, surveys, and in-depth interviews, Solidarity Cities illuminates the extensive footprints of solidarity economies and the roles they play in communities. The authors show how these initiatives act as bulwarks against gentrification, exploitation, and economic exclusion, helping readers see them as part of the past, present, and future of more livable and just cities. Retail e-book files for this title are screen-reader friendly with images accompanied by short alt text and/or extended descriptions.
The Solidarity Economy (Diverse Economies and Livable Worlds)
by Jean-Louis LavilleQuestioning the boundaries between politics and economics Jean-Louis Laville&’s large body of work has focused on an intellectual history of the concept of solidarity since the Industrial Revolution. In The Solidarity Economy, his most famous distillation of this work, Laville establishes how the formations of economic solidarities (unions, activism, and other forms of associationalism) reveal that the boundaries between politics and economics are porous and structured such that politics, ideally a pure expression of ethics and values, is instead integrated with economic concerns. Exploring the possibilities and long histories of association, The Solidarity Economy identifies the power of contemporary social and solidarity movements and examines the history of postcapitalist practices in which democratic demands invade the heart of the economy. The Solidarity Economy ranges in focus from workers associations in France dating back to the nineteenth century, to associations of African Americans and feminists in the United States in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, to a Brazilian landless-worker coalition in the twentieth century. Studying solidarity associations over time allows us to examine how we can recombine the economic and political spheres to address dependencies and inequalities. Ultimately, The Solidarity Economy has global scope and inspiring examples of associations that deepen democracy.
Solidarity in Conflict: A Democratic Theory
by Rochelle DuFordDemocracy has become disentangled from our ordinary lives. Mere cooperation or ethical consumption now often stands in for a robust concept of solidarity that structures the entirety of sociality and forms the basis of democratic culture. How did democracy become something that is done only at ballot boxes and what role can solidarity play in reviving it? In Solidarity in Conflict, Rochelle DuFord presents a theory of solidarity fit for developing democratic life and a complementary theory of democracy that emerges from a society typified by solidarity. DuFord argues that solidarity is best understood as a set of relations, one agonistic and one antagonistic: the solidarity groups' internal organization and its interactions with the broader world. Such a picture of solidarity develops through careful consideration of the conflicts endemic to social relations and solidarity organizations. Examining men's rights groups, labor organizing's role in recognitional protections for LGBTQ members of society, and the debate over trans inclusion in feminist praxis, DuFord explores how conflict, in these contexts, becomes the locus of solidarity's democratic functions and thereby critiques democratic theorizing for having become either overly idealized or overly focused on building and maintaining stability. Working in the tradition of the Frankfurt School, DuFord makes a provocative case that the conflict generated by solidarity organizations can address a variety of forms of domination, oppression, and exploitation while building a democratic society.
Solidarity in Individualized Societies: Recognition, Justice and Good Judgement (Routledge Advances in Sociology)
by Søren JuulIn today’s individualized, culturally diverse and globalized society, many sociologists have concluded that the conceptualizations developed by classical sociology are no longer sufficient to promote social cohesion. So what kind of solidarity can achieve this? Engaging with recent thought in social and political theory and philosophy (including Honneth, Forst, Ricoeur, Bauman, Sennett, Taylor, Rawls, MacIntyre and many others), this book develops a renewed concept of solidarity based on the notion of ‘recognition’ with regard to others. With attention to the implications of such an account for justice and judgement – particularly where competing claims for recognition arise – Solidarity in Individualized Societies examines what, in a society based on recognition, a fair distribution of recognition would mean. The book provides a critical analysis of trends in modern culture and in the policy on welfare that seem to constitute obstacles to solidarity and social cohesion. It is a rigorous examination of forms of solidarity that may sustain social cohesion in the contemporary Western world. This book will appeal to scholars and students of sociology, social theory, politics and philosophy.
Solidarity in Strategy: Making Business Meaningful in American Trade Associations
by Lyn SpillmanPopular conceptions hold that capitalism is driven almost entirely by the pursuit of profit and self-interest. Challenging that assumption, this major new study of American business associations shows how market and non-market relations are actually profoundly entwined at the heart of capitalism. In Solidarity in Strategy, Lyn Spillman draws on rich documentary archives and a comprehensive data set of more than four thousand trade associations from diverse and obscure corners of commercial life to reveal a busy and often surprising arena of American economic activity. From the Intelligent Transportation Society to the American Gem Trade Association, Spillman explains how business associations are more collegial than cutthroat, and how they make capitalist action meaningful not only by developing shared ideas about collective interests but also by articulating a disinterested solidarity that transcends those interests. Deeply grounded in both economic and cultural sociology, Solidarity in Strategy provides rich, lively, and often surprising insights into the world of business, and leads us to question some of our most fundamental assumptions about economic life and how cultural context influences economic.
Solidarity in the Media and Public Contention over Refugees in Europe (Routledge Studies in Media, Communication, and Politics)
by Christian Lahusen Hans-Jörg Trenz Manlio Cinalli Verena Brändle Olga EiseleThis book examines the ‘European refugee crisis’, offering an in-depth comparative analysis of how public attitudes towards refugees and humanitarian dispositions are shaped by political news coverage. An international team of authors address the role of the media in contesting solidarity towards refugees from a variety of disciplinary perspectives. Focusing on the public sphere, the book follows the assumption that solidarity is a social value, political concept and legal principle that is discursively constructed in public contentions. The analysis refers systematically and comparatively to eight European countries, namely, Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Poland, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. Treatment of data is also original in the way it deals with variations of public spheres by combining a news media claims-making analysis with a social media reception analysis. In particular, the book highlights the prominent role of the mass media in shaping national and transnational solidarity, while exploring the readiness of the mass media to extend thick conceptions of solidarity to non-members. It proposes a research design for the comparative analysis of online news reception and considers the innovative potential of this method in relation to established public opinion research. The book is of particular interest for scholars who are interested in the fields of European solidarity, migration and refugees, contentious politics, while providing an approach that talks to scholars of journalism and political communication studies, as well as digital journalism and online news reception.
Solidarity Mobilizations in the ‘Refugee Crisis’: Contentious Moves (Palgrave Studies In European Political Sociology Series)
by Donatella Della PortaThis edited collection introduces conceptual innovations that critically engage with understanding refugee movements as part of the broader category of ‘poor people’s movements’. The empirical focus of the work lies on the protest events related to the so-called ‘long summer of migration’ of 2015. It traces the route followed by the migrants from the places of first arrival to the places of passage and on to the places of destination. Through qualitative and quantitative data, the authors map, within a cross-national comparative perspective, the wide set of actions and initiatives that are being created in solidarity with refugees who have made their journey seeking asylum to the European Union, either travelling across the Mediterranean Sea or through South Eastern Europe. It explores these cases from the perspective of social movement studies alongside critical studies on migration and citizenship.
Solitary: Unbroken by Four Decades in Solitary Confinement. My Story of Transformation and Hope
by Albert WoodfoxSolitary is the unforgettable life story of a man who served more than four decades in solitary confinement in a 6-foot by 9-foot cell, 23 hours a day, in notorious Angola prison in Louisiana, all for a crime he did not commit. That Albert Woodfox survived was, in itself, a feat of extraordinary endurance against the violence and deprivation he faced daily. That he was able to emerge whole from his odyssey within America’s prison and judicial systems is a triumph of the human spirit, and makes his book a clarion call to reform the inhumanity of solitary confinement in the U.S. and around the world. Arrested often as a teenager in New Orleans, inspired behind bars in his early twenties to join the Black Panther Party because of its social commitment and code of living, Albert was serving a 50-year sentence in Angola for armed robbery when on April 17, 1972, a white guard was killed. Albert and another member of the Panthers were accused of the crime and immediately put in solitary confinement by the warden. Without a shred of actual evidence against them, their trial was a sham of justice that gave them life sentences in solitary. Decades passed before Albert gained a lawyer of consequence; even so, sixteen more years and multiple appeals were needed before he was finally released in February 2016. Remarkably self-aware that anger or bitterness would have destroyed him in solitary confinement, sustained by the shared solidarity of two fellow Panthers, Albert turned his anger into activism and resistance. The Angola 3, as they became known, resolved never to be broken by the grinding inhumanity and corruption that effectively held them for decades as political prisoners. He survived to give us Solitary, a chronicle of rare power and humanity that proves the better spirits of our nature can thrive against any odds.
Solitary: Unbroken By Four Decades In Solitary Confinement. My Story Of Transformation And Hope
by Albert Woodfox“An uncommonly powerful memoir about four decades in confinement . . . A profound book about friendship [and] solitary confinement in the United States.” —New York TimesFinalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book AwardSolitary is the unforgettable life story of a man who served more than four decades in solitary confinement—in a 6-foot by 9-foot cell, twenty-three hours a day, in Louisiana’s notorious Angola prison—all for a crime he did not commit. That Albert Woodfox survived at all was a feat of extraordinary endurance. That he emerged whole from his odyssey within America’s prison and judicial systems is a triumph of the human spirit.While behind bars in his early twenties, Albert was inspired to join the Black Panther Party because of its social commitment and code of living. He was serving a fifty-year sentence in Angola for armed robbery when, on April 17, 1972, a white guard was killed. Albert and another member of the Panthers were accused of the crime and immediately put in solitary confinement. Without a shred of evidence against them, their trial was a sham of justice. Decades passed before Albert was finally released in February 2016.Sustained by the solidarity of two fellow Panthers, Albert turned his anger into activism and resistance. The Angola 3, as they became known, resolved never to be broken by the corruption that effectively held them for decades as political prisoners. Solitary is a clarion call to reform the inhumanity of solitary confinement in the United States and around the world.
Solitary Confinement: Social Death and Its Afterlives
by Lisa GuentherProlonged solitary confinement has become a widespread and standard practice in U.S. prisons—even though it consistently drives healthy prisoners insane, makes the mentally ill sicker, and, according to the testimony of prisoners, threatens to reduce life to a living death. In this profoundly important and original book, Lisa Guenther examines the death-in-life experience of solitary confinement in America from the early nineteenth century to today’s supermax prisons. Documenting how solitary confinement undermines prisoners’ sense of identity and their ability to understand the world, Guenther demonstrates the real effects of forcibly isolating a person for weeks, months, or years. <p><p> Drawing on the testimony of prisoners and the work of philosophers and social activists from Edmund Husserl and Maurice Merleau-Ponty to Frantz Fanon and Angela Davis, the author defines solitary confinement as a kind of social death. It argues that isolation exposes the relational structure of being by showing what happens when that structure is abused—when prisoners are deprived of the concrete relations with others on which our existence as sense-making creatures depends. Solitary confinement is beyond a form of racial or political violence; it is an assault on being. <p> A searing and unforgettable indictment, Solitary Confinement reveals what the devastation wrought by the torture of solitary confinement tells us about what it means to be human—and why humanity is so often destroyed when we separate prisoners from all other people.
Solitary Confinement: Social Death and Its Afterlives
by Lisa GuentherProlonged solitary confinement has become a widespread and standard practice in U.S. prisons—even though it consistently drives healthy prisoners insane, makes the mentally ill sicker, and, according to the testimony of prisoners, threatens to reduce life to a living death. In this profoundly important and original book, Lisa Guenther examines the death-in-life experience of solitary confinement in America from the early nineteenth century to today&’s supermax prisons. Documenting how solitary confinement undermines prisoners&’ sense of identity and their ability to understand the world, Guenther demonstrates the real effects of forcibly isolating a person for weeks, months, or years.Drawing on the testimony of prisoners and the work of philosophers and social activists from Edmund Husserl and Maurice Merleau-Ponty to Frantz Fanon and Angela Davis, the author defines solitary confinement as a kind of social death. It argues that isolation exposes the relational structure of being by showing what happens when that structure is abused—when prisoners are deprived of the concrete relations with others on which our existence as sense-making creatures depends. Solitary confinement is beyond a form of racial or political violence; it is an assault on being.A searing and unforgettable indictment, Solitary Confinement reveals what the devastation wrought by the torture of solitary confinement tells us about what it means to be human—and why humanity is so often destroyed when we separate prisoners from all other people.
Solitary Confinement: Lived Experiences and Ethical Implications
by David PolizziWhy is solitary confinement used in today’s world? Does it help the rehabilitation of offenders? And how is policy affected by justification for the use of it? This book is the first to consider the history of solitary confinement and how it is experienced by the individuals undergoing it. Using Merleau-Ponty’s concept of embodied subjectivity, it provides first-hand accounts of the inhumane experience of solitary confinement to provide a better appreciation of the relationship between penal strategy and its effect on human beings. Drawing on his own experiences as a Psychological Specialist in the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections and on those interviewed as part of the Guardian 6x9 project (http://www.theguardian.com/world/ng-interactive/2016/apr/27/6x9-a-virtual-experience-of-solitary-confinement), the author focuses on the phenomenology of solitary confinement to consider what the intentional aspect of this almost uninhabitable type of confinement says about a democratic society that continues to justify its use as a correctional strategy. Aiming to influence policy, the book fills the gap between the practice of solitary confinement and its implications, as well as the social attitudes that uncritically condone its use.
Solitary Non-Employed Persons: Empirical Research on Hikikomori in Japan (Advances in Japanese Business and Economics #23)
by Yuji GendaThis book is devoted to offering a new concept of non-employment caused by social exclusion. Among labor economic studies, it is the first attempt to investigate the conditions of jobless persons who have completely lost opportunities for daily communication with others. The new concept provided by this book is “solitary non-employed persons (SNEP).” SNEP are defined as non-employed persons who are normally entirely alone or do not spend time with people other than their family. According to a detailed time-use survey in Japan, SNEP make up almost 70 % of single, jobless persons aged 20 to 59. The number of SNEP doubled in the 2000s. As a serious issue for non-employment, economists and sociologists have focused on long-term unemployed persons and persons “not in education, employment, or training” (NEET), which include discouraged persons resigning from work. These serious non-employment issues are attributable to and further aggravated by the isolation experienced by the SNEP. Social withdrawal—that is, the hikikomori who stay indoors—is one notable feature of Japanese youth problems in many cases. Large numbers of the middle-aged jobless Japanese also currently shut themselves in their rooms. The objective approach by the SNEP concept enables us to understand the reality of these withdrawn persons who are now growing in number in many countries. A continuous increase in the number of SNEP will cause several difficulties in society and the economy. SNEP will not make their own livings after the deaths of their families, causing social security costs and financial deficits to further accumulate in the efforts to help them. A shortage of an attractive labor force will accelerate in the future due to the expansion of SNEP within the young and middle-aged populations. This book proposes appropriate policies to prevent an increase in SNEP in such a way as to generate skilled professionals, as well as to reach out and support them. It will contribute to developing studies for jobless people closely involved in social exclusion, and to finding universal and effective solutions for their inclusion.
Solitary Pleasures: The Historical, Literary and Artistic Discourses of Autoeroticism
by Paula Bennett Vernon A. Rosario IISolitary Pleasures is the first anthology to address masturbation, exploring both the history and artistic representation of autoeroticism. Masturbation today enjoys a highly equivocal and contradictory status among cultural discourses relating to sexuality. On the one hand, it is the subject of much popular treatment, especially in sexual self-help books, advice columns, and in pop culture--for example, Madonna's "Like a Virgin" performance, a recent Roseanne episode, and David Russell's movie Spanking the Monkey. On the other hand, masturbation is still a taboo subject for most people in everyday conversation. Perhaps more surprising, it has been largely dismissed by academics as a trivial, humorous topic and the "history of a delusion."It was not until the eighteenth century that "onanism" was portrayed as a morbid act of epidemic proportions that produced pox, hair loss, blindness, insanity, impotence and a horrible. Its prevention and treatment warranted diverse and often cruel measures: surveillance, diets, drugs, corsets, electrical alarms, urethral cauterization, clitoridectomy, and labial sewing. This literature's apocalyptic warnings about the personal and social morbidity of "pollution-by-the-hand" are largely unknown to most people today, but the ghostly echoes of these admonitions still inform and preserve the present taboo of the subject.Why did this apparently innocuous activity become so overpoweringly stigmatized? Why was the eradication of masturbation one of the most important goals of 19th century public hygiene? Why, even after the "sexual revolution," is masturbation still shrouded in shame?