Open Access Publisher and Free Library
10-social sciences.jpg

SOCIAL SCIENCES

EXCLUSION-SUICIDE-HATE-DIVERSITY-EXTREMISM-SOCIOLOGY-PSYCHOLOGY-INCLUSION-EQUITY-CULTURE

Posts in Social Issues
Conflict in Culture: Permission Versus Controls and Alcohol Use in American Society

May Contain Markup

By John E. Tropman

Dualistic Perspective on Values: The book explores the idea that values come in pairs of partially contradictory concepts, such as permission and control.

Alcohol in American Society: It examines the historical shifts in attitudes toward alcohol in the U.S., highlighting the cyclical nature of permission and control.

Cultural and Social Systems: The interaction between social and cultural systems is discussed, emphasizing how changes in one can lead to changes in the other.

Permission/Control Balance: The book delves into the balance between permissions and control in society, particularly in the context of alcohol use.

University Press of America, 1986, 105 pages

The Trail of the Tramp

May Contain Markup

By Leon Ray Livingston

Book Overview: "The Trail of the Tramp" by Leon Ray Livingston, also known as A-No. 1, is a narrative based on the author's own experiences as a tramp.

Content Summary: The book includes various chapters detailing different aspects of tramp life, such as "The Harvester," "TheSamaritans," and "The Wages of Sin is Death."

Publication Details: This edition was republished in 2010 using Print onDemand technology, which may result in typos or missing text due to the condition of the original book.

Availability: The book can be purchased from newsagents, train stations, and book stores, and a free digital copy is available on the publisher's website.

A-No. 1 publishing Company, 1913, 71 pages

The Other Side: Perspectives on Deviance

Edited by Howard S. Becker

Focus on Deviance: The document explores deviance as an interactive process involving both deviants and non-deviants, emphasizing the importance of societal reactions and labeling.

Historical Context: It highlights the evolution of the study of deviance, noting its roots in general sociology and its shift towards practical applications.

Contributors and Topics: The document includes contributions from various scholars, covering topics like drug addiction, legal stigma, and the social integration of marginalized groups.

Lack of Sentimentality: The new approach to deviance is characterized by alack of sentimentality, focusing on objective analysis and avoiding preconceived notions

Free Press of Glencoe, 1964, 297 pages

COLOUR, RACE AND EMPIRE

by A. G. R U S S E L.L

● Focus on Race and Colour: The document explores the social and economic implications of racial differentiation, particularly within the British Colonial Empire, emphasizing the practical importance of these issues over physical differences.

● Historical Context: It discusses the historical development of racial issues, including the impact of European expansion and the Industrial Revolution on race relations.

● Colonial Exploitation: The text highlights the economic exploitation of colonies, particularly in Africa, and the profits made by European companies at the expense of native labor.

● Educational Challenges: The document addresses the educational disparities faced by colonized peoples and critiques the Western educational system for its failure to adequately serve these populations.

London. Gollancz. 1944. 273p.

The Development of Attitude Toward the Negro

By EUGENE L. HOROWITZ

● Study Focus: The research investigates the development of attitudes toward African Americans in white children, aiming for objective, verifiable, and significant results.

● Historical Context: The study highlights the historical evolution of attitudes toward African Americans, noting legal and social discrimination dating back to the 17th century.

● Methodology: The research employs three tests involving pictorial materials to measure children's attitudes, focusing on ranking preferences and imagined social situations.

● Findings: The study finds that prejudice begins early in childhood and is influenced more by societal attitudes than direct contact with African Americans.

NY. ARCHIVES OF PSYCHOLOGY. R. S. WOODWORTH, EDITOR. No. 194. 1916. 48p.

THE NEGRO AROUND THE WORLD

By Willard Price

THE BLACK GIRDLE. If an inhabitant of Mars could see the Earth according to the color of its peoples, he could observe a broad black sash about the World's waist. The belt of black, within which most of the 140,000,000 black people of the globe live, follows the equator and spreads about twenty degrees to the north and the same distance south. It is not quite broad enough to take in the United States ith its 11,000,000 Negroesbut all the other important groupings of blacks in the world are within this tropical belt. It includes the 11,000,000 Negroes of Central and South America and the 10,000,000 of the West Indies. Most of the 100,000,000 Negroes of Africa are found within these limits….

NY. George H. Doran Co. 1925. 69p.

RACE AND SOCIETY

Kenneth Little

● This book emphasizes that history and social context are more influential than biological race in shaping cultural differences and racial attitudes. Racial prejudice is not innate but learned through socialization, often during early childhood.

● Global Examples: The book provides case studies from various countries, including South Africa, Brazil, Hawaii, and the United States, to illustrate different racial dynamics and policies.

● References: The document includes numerous references to works by various authors on race and society, providing a comprehensive bibliography for further reading.

UNESCO. 1958. 54Pp.

Election Policy Fundamentals: The Secret Ballot [July 5, 2024]

SHANTON, KAREN L.; WOLANIN, TYLER L.

From the document: "Provisions for a secret ballot appear in all states' laws or constitutions [hyperlink]. Consensus that the ballot should be secret--that voters should not be able to be linked to their selections--is a somewhat recent development in American history. How to preserve ballot secrecy and balance it against other election objectives like promoting transparency, protecting against fraud, and ensuring accessibility for all eligible voters is also an ongoing issue, featuring in current election policy debates."

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. CONGRESSIONAL RESEARCH SERVICE. 5 JUL, 2024 4p.

What is Antiracism? And Why It Means Anticapitalism

By Arun Kundnani

Liberals have been arguing for nearly a century that racism is fundamentally an individual problem of extremist beliefs. Responding to Nazism, thinkers like gay rights pioneer Magnus Hirschfeld and anthropologist Ruth Benedict called for teaching people, especially poor people, to be less prejudiced. Here lies the origin of today 39 liberal antiracism, from diversity training to Hollywood activism. Meanwhile, a more radical antiracism flowered in the Third World. Anticolonial revolutionaries traced racism to the broad economic and political structures of modernity. Thinkers like C.L.R. James, Claudia Jones, and Frantz Fanon showed how racism was connected to colonialism and capitalism, a perspective adopted even by Martin Luther King.Today, liberal antiracism has proven powerless against structural oppression. As Arun Kundnani demonstrates, white liberals can heroically confront their own whiteness all they want, yet these structures remain.This deeply researched and swift-moving narrative history tells the story of the two antiracisms and their fates. As neoliberalism reordered the world in the last decades of the twentieth century, the case became clear: fighting racism means striking at its capitalist roots

London: Verso, 2023. 304p.

Building a Whole-of-Government Strategy to Address Extreme Heat

WICKERSON, GRACE; BURTON, AUTUMN

The passage that follows includes several links embedded in the original text. From the document: "From August 2023 to March 2024, the Federation of American Scientists (FAS) talked with +'85 experts' to source '20 high-demand opportunity areas for ready policy innovation' and '65 policy ideas.' In response, FAS recruited '33 authors to work on +18 policy memos' through our 'Extreme Heat Policy Sprint' from January 2024 to April 2024, 'generating an additional +100 policy recommendations' to address extreme heat. Our experts' full recommendations will be published in April 2024; this report previews key findings. In total, FAS has collected '+165 recommendations for 34 offices and/or agencies.' Key opportunity areas are described below and link out to a set of featured recommendations. The accompanying spreadsheet includes the '165 policy ideas' developed through expert engagement. [...] America is rapidly barreling towards its next hottest summer on record. While we still lack national strategy, states, counties, and cities around the country have taken up the charge of addressing extreme heat in their communities and are experimenting on the fly. [...] While state and local governments can make significant advances, national extreme heat resilience requires a 'whole of government' federal approach, as it intersects health, energy, housing, homeland and national security, international relations, and many more policy domains. The federal government plays a critical role in scaling up heat resilience interventions through research and development, regulations, standards, guidance, funding sources, and other policy levers. 'But what are the transformational policy opportunities for action?'"

FEDERATION OF AMERICAN SCIENTISTS. JUN, 2024. 34p.

Pro-Palestine US Student Protests Nearly Triple in April

HO, BIANCA; DOYLE, KIERAN

From the document: "Pro-Palestine demonstrations involving students in the United States have nearly tripled from 1 to 26 April compared with all of March, ACLED [ [Armed Conflict Location and Event Data]] data show [...]. New York has been one of the main student protest battlegrounds since the Israel-Palestine conflict flared up in and around Gaza last October, and the arrest of more than 100 students at Columbia University in New York around 18 April heralded a new wave of campus demonstrations."

ARMED CONFLICT LOCATION & EVENT DATA PROJECT. 2 MAY, 2024. 5p.

Overview of the Impact of GenAI and Deepfakes on Global Electoral Processes

CERVINI, ENZO MARIA LE FEVRE; CARRO, MARÍA VICTORIA

From the document: "Generative Artificial Intelligence's (GenAI) capacity to produce highly realistic images, videos, and text poses a significant challenge, as it can deceive viewers and consumers into accepting artificially generated content as authentic and genuine. This raises concerns about the dissemination of false information, disinformation, and its implications for public trust and democratic processes. Additionally, this phenomenon prompts critical ethical and legal inquiries, including issues surrounding the attribution of authority and accountability for the generated content. [...] This article delves into the impact of generative AI on recent and future political elections. We'll examine how deepfakes and other AI-generated content are used, along with their potential to sway voters. We'll also analyze the strategies various stakeholders are deploying to counter this growing phenomenon."

ITALIAN INSTITUTE FOR INTERNATIONAL POLITICAL STUDIES. 22 MAR, 2024. 44p.

Overdose prevention centres, safe consumption sites, and drug consumption rooms: a rapid evidence review

By Gillian Shorter, Phoebe McKenna-Plumley, Kerry Campbell, Jolie Keemink, and Benjamin Scher, et al.

Overdose prevention centres can also be referred to as drug consumption rooms, safe consumption/injecting/smoking sites, and/or other relevant names. These names can reflect legal distinctions e.g. in Canada, which relate to permanency or function of the site. There are currently over 200 OPCs worldwide in 17 countries, primarily in urban areas, and they cater to a range of drug types and visitor numbers.

Overdose prevention centres can be integrated facilities with other services, specialised sites which are primarily an OPC with limited other services, mobile sites, or tent/other temporary sites. Collaboration and consultation before and after a service opens is central to successful OPCs. Potential and actual OPC users should be consulted on the design of and running of sites to support their use. Collaboration and consultation involving members of the local community, businesses, police, elected representatives, public health, or other local authority staff with OPC staff and operators can smooth over any issues before and after a service opens. Belfast, Queen's University, 2023. 188p.

pureadmin.qub.ac.uk/ws/portalfiles/portal/530629435/DS_OPC_Report_V4.pdf

Zero Returns to Homelessness Resource and Technical Assistance Guide

By Thomas Coyne; Sean Quitzau; and Joseph W. Arnett

This publication of Zero Returns to Homelessness, the Bureau of Justice Assistance (BJA), and the Justice Center of the Council of State Governments, provides a reference guide on housing access for practitioners, including state leaders working to address homelessness as part of their Reentry 2030 goals. It details best practices and strategies around reentry housing, building from four essential steps that have worked in neighborhoods around the country as leaders have expanded housing opportunities for people reentering their communities: Collaborate, Assess, Connect, and Expand. Every year, tens of thousands of people experience homelessness as they return to their communities from incarceration. Gaps and barriers, such as housing policies that bar people with conviction histories from renting, persist that reduce even the limited amount of housing people can access when returning. Because of this, people returning from incarceration are almost 10 times more likely to experience homelessness and more often cycle through public systems designed to respond to emergencies and not provide long-term solutions. However, in states such as Ohio, Connecticut, and Utah, communities are making strides in preventing homelessness when people return from incarceration. These communities are working toward a bold, new vision—Zero Returns to Homelessness—which aims to ensure that all returning residents have access to a safe, permanent place to call home.

New York: The Council of State Governments (CSG) Justice Center, 2024. 65p.

Russia and the Far-Right: Insights From Ten European Countries

edited by Kacper Rekawek, Thomas Renard and Bàrbara Molas

Russia’s influence over far-right/ racially or ethnically motivated violent extremist (REMVE) milieus in Europe is multi-faceted and complex. It involves direct activities, such as financing or political support, as well as indirect activities, such as disinformation campaigns. In some cases, Russia was associated, albeit remotely, with some far-right violent incidents in Europe, including the alleged coup attempt by the sovereign movement Reichsburger, in Germany. Recognising the increasingly confrontational policy of Russia vis-à-vis Europe, and the growing threat from far-right extremism in Europe, this book thoroughly and systematically reviews Russia’s relationship with diverse far-right actors in ten European countries over the past decade. The countries covered in this book include Austria, The Czech Republic, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Poland, Serbia, Slovakia, and Sweden. The chapters are authored by some of the world’s most authoritative experts on extremism and Russian influence.

Overall, this edited volume is the first such comprehensive attempt at mapping the scope and depth of Russian influence over far-right extremism in Europe, resulting in the identification of key patterns of influence and offering some possible recommendations to counter it. This book is both a leading scholarly work, as well as a wake-up call and guide for action for European policy-makers.

Dangerous or Endangered? Race and the Politics of Youth in Urban America

by Jennifer Tilton

How do you tell the difference between a “good kid” and a “potential thug”? In Dangerous or Endangered?, Jennifer Tilton considers the ways in which children are increasingly viewed as dangerous and yet, simultaneously, as endangered and in need of protection by the state.
Tilton draws on three years of ethnographic research in Oakland, California, one of the nation’s most racially diverse cities, to examine how debates over the nature and needs of young people have fundamentally reshaped politics, transforming ideas of citizenship and the state in contemporary America. As parents and neighborhood activists have worked to save and discipline young people, they have often inadvertently reinforced privatized models of childhood and urban space, clearing the streets of children, who are encouraged to stay at home or in supervised after-school programs. Youth activists protest these attempts, demanding a right to the city and expanded rights of citizenship.
Dangerous or Endangered? pays careful attention to the intricate connections between fears of other people’s kids and fears for our own kids in order to explore the complex racial, class, and gender divides in contemporary American cities.

New York; London: NYU Press, 2010; 203p.

Critical Race Narratives: A Study of Race, Rhetoric and Injury

By Carl Gutierrez-Jones

The beating of Rodney King, the killing of Amadou Diallo, and the LAPD Rampart Scandal: these events have been interpreted by the courts, the media and the public in dramatically conflicting ways. Critical Race Narratives examines what is at stake in these conflicts and, in so doing, rethinks racial strife in the United States as a highly-charged struggle over different methods of reading and writing. Focusing in particular on the practice and theorization of narrative strategies, Gutiérrez-Jones engages many of the most influential texts in the recent race debates including The Bell Curve, America in Black and White, The Alchemy of Race and Rights, and The Mismeasure of Man. In the process, Critical Race Narratives pursues key questions posed by the texts as they work within, or against, disciplinary expectations: can critical engagements with narrative enable a more democratic dialogue regarding race? what promise does such experimentation hold for working through the traumatic legacy of racism in the United States? Throughout, Critical Race Narratives initiates a timely dialogue between race-focused narrative experiment in scholarly writing and similar work in literary texts and popular culture.

New York; London: NYU Press, 2001.

Whitewashed: America’s Invisible Middle Eastern Minority

By John Tehranian

Middle Easterners: Sometimes White, Sometimes Not - an article by John Tehranian
The Middle Eastern question lies at the heart of the most pressing issues of our time: the war in Iraq and on terrorism, the growing tension between preservation of our national security and protection of our civil rights, and the debate over immigration, assimilation, and our national identity. Yet paradoxically, little attention is focused on our domestic Middle Eastern population and its place in American society. Unlike many other racial minorities in our country, Middle Eastern Americans have faced rising, rather than diminishing, degrees of discrimination over time; a fact highlighted by recent targeted immigration policies, racial profiling, a war on terrorism with a decided racialist bent, and growing rates of job discrimination and hate crime. Oddly enough, however, Middle Eastern Americans are not even considered a minority in official government data. Instead, they are deemed white by law.
In Whitewashed, John Tehranian combines his own personal experiences as an Iranian American with an expert’s analysis of current events, legal trends, and critical theory to analyze this bizarre Catch-22 of Middle Eastern racial classification. He explains how American constructions of Middle Eastern racial identity have changed over the last two centuries, paying particular attention to the shift in perceptions of the Middle Easterner from friendly foreigner to enemy alien, a trend accelerated by the tragic events of 9/11. Focusing on the contemporary immigration debate, the war on terrorism, media portrayals of Middle Easterners, and the processes of creating racial stereotypes, Tehranian argues that, despite its many successes, the modern civil rights movement has not done enough to protect the liberties of Middle Eastern Americans.
By following how concepts of whiteness have transformed over time, Whitewashed forces readers to rethink and question some of their most deeply held assumptions about race in American society.

New York; London: NYU Press, 2008. 250p.

Beyond Definitions: The Need for a Comprehensive Human Rights-Based UK Extremism Policy Strategy

By Milo Comerford and Hannah Rose

The UK hate and extremism threat landscape faces a new era of contemporary threats, characterised by an increasingly diverse and amorphous set of threat actors. Since October 7, harmful online content and systems have catalysed real world threats to public safety, social cohesion and democracy across borders. However, policy and legislative responses are often slow to adapt to the rapid pace of change and struggle to respond to the increasingly hybridised contemporary threat environment.

In the first part of this paper, ISD provides a landscape assessment of the extremism, targeted hate and hostile state actors threats currently facing the UK. It evidences the broad ideological spectrum of extremism, analysing the communities impacted by targeted hate and exploring the intersection of these harm areas.

In the second section, the paper explores a roadmap for a holistic policy strategy capable of responding to the interconnectivity of these threats, including practical considerations for the effective implementation of a coordinated cross-government strategy.

London: Institute for Strategic Dialogue. 2024, 28pg

A Year of Hate: Anti-Drag Mobilisation Efforts Targeting LGBTQ+ People in Australia

By Elise Thomas

Drag Queen Story Hours (DQSH) and similar drag events for child audiences have been held in libraries across Australia for several years. In previous years these events were mostly uncontroversial and the response to them positive, despite some critical commentary from right-wing media and politicians. In late 2022 and over the course of 2023, however, the situation changed.  

Inspired by increasing transphobic and anti-drag rhetoric and conspiracy theories about drag performers emanating from the US, a loose network began to mobilise to disrupt all-ages drag events in Australia. At least a dozen events across the country were targeted with online harassment and/or offline protest between September 2022 and February 2024, and likely more which were not publicly reported on. This is occurring in the context of broader anti-LGBTQ+ hate and mobilisation, including incidents during WorldPride celebrations in Sydney, which ran from 17 February to 5 March 2023; a violent mass attack on pro-LGBTQ+ protesters on 21 March; and the attendance of neo-Nazis at an anti-trans rally in Melbourne on 18 March.  

This country profile uses analysis of open sources including social media content (primarily from Facebook and Telegram), protest footage and media interviews to examine the growth of anti-drag hate and harassment in Australia. It breaks down the groups and influencers involved into four broad categories: fringe politicians and far right media; conspiracy theory groups left over from the anti-lockdown movement; neo-Nazis; and Christian groups active in anti-LGBTQ+ demonstrations.  

Amman; Berlin; London;Paris; Washington, DC : Institute for Strategic Dialogue. 2024, 22pg