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These essays explore the diverse, unexpected and controversial ways in which the idea of civil society has entered into populist politics and public debate throughout Africa. It shows how struggles over civil society reveal much about larger historical forces in the post-Cold War era.

Studies the working poor in the United States, focusing on the relation between welfare and low-wage earnings among working mothers. Grounded in the experience of thirty-three women living in Milwaukee and Racine, Wisconsin, this title tells the story of their struggle to balance child care and wage-earning in poorly paying jobs.

Between 1760 and 1800, British aristocrats became preoccupied with the acquisition of ancient Greek and Roman artifacts - from marble busts to intricately painted vases. This book examines these objects and their owners, as well as dealers, and provides a close look at the classical revival that resulted in this obsession with collecting antiques.

According to the theory of relativity, we are constantly bathed in gravitational radiation. When stars explode or collide, a portion of their mass becomes energy that disturbs the very fabric of the space-time continuum like ripples in a pond. But proving the existence of these waves has been difficult; the cosmic shudders are so weak that only the most sensitive instruments can be expected to observe them directly. Fifteen times during the last thirty years scientists have claimed to have detected gravitational waves, but so far none of those claims have survived the scrutiny of the scientific community. "Gravity's Shadow" chronicles the forty-year effort to detect gravitational waves, while exploring the meaning of scientific knowledge and the nature of expertise.Gravitational wave detection involves recording the collisions, explosions, and trembling of stars and black holes by evaluating the smallest changes ever measured. Because gravitational waves are so faint, their detection will come not in an exuberant moment of discovery but through a chain of inference; for forty years, scientists have debated whether there is anything to detect and whether it has yet been detected. Sociologist Harry Collins has been tracking the progress of this research since 1972, interviewing key scientists and delineating the social process of the science of gravitational waves.Engagingly written and authoritatively comprehensive, "Gravity's Shadow" explores the people, institutions, and government organizations involved in the detection of gravitational waves. This sociological history will prove essential not only to sociologists and historians of science but to scientists themselves.

Putting a human face on globalization, "Threads" shows not only how international trade affects local communities but also how workers can organize in this new environment to more effectively demand better treatment from their distant corporate employers.

Explores some of the mysteries and complexities of medicine while untangling the inherent conundrums of scientific research and highlighting its vagaries. This book considers the prevalence of tonsillectomies, the placebo effect and randomized control trials, bogus doctors, efficacy of vitamin C in fighting cancer and the chronic fatigue syndrome.

In theory, at least, gravitational waves do exist. The author argues that sciences like gravitational wave detection, in exemplifying how the intractable is to be handled, can offer scientific leadership a moral beacon for the twenty-first century. In the end, he shows that discoveries are the denouements of dramatic scientific mysteries.

Frank Oppenheimer, the younger brother of the physicist J Robert Oppenheimer used his own intellectual inquisitiveness to found the Exploratorium, a powerfully influential museum of human awareness in San Francisco that encourages play, creativity, and discovery - all in the name of understanding. The author investigates the man behind the museum.

From cave paintings to the latest Siberian finds, woolly mammoths have fascinated people across the world for centuries. In this volume the large mammal is reconstructed through its history in science, myth and popular culture.

Explores the social, political and cultural impact of AIDS on the African-American community. Informed by interviews with activists, ministers, public officials and people with AIDS, the book brings to light how the epidemic fractured, rather than united, the black community.

Examines the body of work on the intellectual, social and cultural origins of early modern science. Cohen surveys a wide range of scholarship since the 19th century, offering new perspectives on how the Scientific Revolution changed the way we understand the natural world and our place in it.

A study of tree planting practices on the open landscape of Israel and the West Bank, where Palestinians and the Israeli government have both used tree planting to assert their presence on--and claim to--disputed land.

Exploring the varied depictions and descriptions of pain - from martyrdom narratives to practices of torture and surgery - this title attempts to decode this culture of suffering in the Middle Ages. It presents the cacophony of howls emerging from the written record of physicians, torturers, theologians, and mystics.

Throughout the contest for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination, politicians and voters alike worried that the outcome might depend on the preferences of unelected superdelegates. This book shows that for several decades, unelected insiders in both major parties effectively selected candidates long before citizens reached the ballot box.

Including short tales of urban life, editorials on prostitution, and moralizing rants against homosexuality, this work presents selections that epitomize a distinct form of urban journalism. Providing an overview of this colorful reportage, its editors, and its audience, it examines nineteenth-century ideas of sexuality and freedom.

This text reflects on some of the most fundamental concerns of economists since the 18th century. In 15 essays, the author evaluates the contributions of a number of figures, including Adam Smith, and George Stigler, as well as economists at the London School of Economics in the 1930s.

This text demonstrates that the theatrum repudiated by medieval clerics was not "theatre" as we understand the term today. The author contends that critics have misrepresented Western stage history because they have assumed that theatrum designates a place where drama is performed.

Conjures the consciousness of Mexico, evoking the dreams that made and unmade an ancient culture. This book takes readers into the dream that was the religion of the Aztecs, a religion whose own apocalyptic visions anticipated the coming of the Spanish conquerors.

A collection of essays by leading scholars, exploring how justices are influenced by the distinctive features of courts as institutions and their place in the political system. They consider such factors as the influence of jurisprudence, the dynamics of coalition building and the effects of social movements.

Features poems which suggest that we discover what we love by fighting, by bringing our angry, hungry, imperfect selves into the battle.

Revisits the most common stories that average Northerners told in hopes of redeeming their suffering and loss - stories that enabled people to make sense of their hardship, and to express their beliefs about religion, community, and personal character. This title sheds light on this transitional moment in the history of war and emotional culture.

Ten papers by prominent philosophers of science which challenge van Fraassen's thesis from a variety of realist perspectives. Together with van Fraassen's extensive reply, the articles provide a comprehensive picture of the current debate in philosophy of science between realists and anti-realists.

A study of the fundamental building blocks that serve to organise natural language systems. The author argues that there are two distinct forms of agreement in linguistic theory: feature compatibility and an abstract syntactic relation. Her primary source of evidence is Chamorro, an Austro-nesian language spoken on Guam and Saipan.

A comprehensive collection of poems in both the original Tibetan and in English translation. It composes hymns to the Buddha, pithy instructions for the practice of the dharma, stirring tributes to the Tibetan warrior-kings, cynical reflections on the ways of the world, and laments of a wanderer, forgotten in a foreign land.