This best-selling book examines the political, economic, and environmental changes that affect people's lives in the United States and around the world. Using an accessible, narrative approach Robert Schaeffer explains contemporary global processes and developments. Just as a storm that moves across an area has differing local, regional and even national and global impacts that are welcome to some and disastrous to others, global events can have very different consequences-good and bad-for people in different settings. Though many of the global changes that he examines are interconnected, the stories Schaeffer presents are told separately. The result is a text that provides readers with accounts of change that can be studied individually or read collectively. In this fourth edition Schaeffer offers a new chapter on global migration in which he examines the causes and consequences of contemporary economic, environmental, and gender-based migrations. He also looks at the economic problems of 2008 which plunged the United States into a recession and triggered a global economic downturn. Throughout Understanding Globalization Schaeffer examines developments in past years that shaped or resembled current global challenges, making this text an excellent primer for understanding current global developments.

Social Movements and Global Social Change teaches students not only about how social change occurs but also how social movements can contribute to this change. The book links two concepts in sociology that are often related in real life, but that can seem disconnected in traditional approaches to teaching these courses. The book examines different types of social movements, including those often ignored in social change textbooks, such as riots, migration, and disorganized protest. It also looks at citizens’ rights and inequality in connection to social movements and change. The book features global perspectives and examples throughout.

Product Description: Red Inc. takes issue with the view that economic development will eventually promote democracy. It outlines in detail the enormous social costs of the rapid rise of China's economy. Although many observers argue that Deng Xiaoping introduced capitalism to China in the late 1970s, Schaeffer believes that capitalist development really began during the 1950s under Mao Zedong...read more

Product Description: Since 1974, more than thirty countries around the world have democratized. The fall of dictators on both sides of the Cold War divide was triggered by regional economic crises and compounded by different political problems: the death of a dictator, defeat in war, or popular protest...read more

Product Description: This innovative, global feminist analysis of work and politics examines the diverse problems and related protests of women and men who labor to make ends meet in a rapidly-changing world. Using vivid examples from around the world, it reveals how 'globalization' is reshaping social institutions and lives...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

Product Description: This book provides the first comprehensive examination of modern political partition and military conflict. Once touted as the most efficient geopolitical means for resolving ideological and ethnic strife, partition has too often served to deepen enmity and provoke further violence...read more

Product Description: Since 1974, more than thirty countries around the world have democratized. The fall of dictators on both sides of the Cold War divide was triggered by regional economic crises and compounded by different political problems: the death of a dictator, defeat in war, or popular protest...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

(view table of contents)