Jonathan Eastwood - Böcker

An engaging and accessible introduction to the subject, Comparative Politics: Integrating Theories, Methods, and Cases gives students the methodological tools they need to answer the "big questions" in the field. The authors introduce methods early in the text and integrate them throughout, in Thinking Comparatively features, to help students develop a systematic way of thinking about comparative politics. Offering a hybrid format, the text's unique structure offers the best of thematic and country-by-country approaches. Sixteen succinct thematic chapters--organized around the "big questions" in the field--are followed by a separate section at the end of the book offering full-length profiles and case studies for twelve countries. Examples of some of the "big picture questions discussed in the thematic chapters are, "Why do countries have different institutions and forms of government? Why do some social revolutions succeed and endure while others fail? Why are some societies subjected to terrorism and not others?" Each chapter integrates several standalone country case studies in Case in Context features; these features tie into the narrative, pose questions, and point students to the full case discussions in the country profiles section of the book.

Is Venezuela’s Bolivarian revolution under Hugo Chávez truly revolutionary? Most books and articles tend to view the Chávez government in an either-or fashion. Some see the president as the shining knight of twenty-first-century socialism, while others see him as an avenging Stalinist strongman. Despite passion on both sides, the Chávez government does not fall easily into a seamless fable of emancipatory or authoritarian history, as these essays make clear.A range of distinguished authors consider the nature of social change in contemporary Venezuela and explore a number of themes that help elucidate the sources of the nation’s political polarization. The chapters range from Fernando Coronil’s “Bolivarian Revolution,” which examines the relationship between the state’s social body (its population) and its natural body (its oil reserves), to an insightful look at women’s rights by Cathy A. Rakowski and Gioconda Espina. This volume shows that, while the future of the national process is unclear, the principles elaborated by the Chávez government are helping articulate a new Latin American left.

Thisbook offers eleven coordinated reviews on multi-scalestructure formation in cosmic plasmas in the Universe. Observations and theories of plasma structures are presentedin all relevant astrophysical contexts, from the Earth’s magnetosphere  through heliospheric and galactic scales to  clusters of galaxies and the large scalestructure of the Universe. Basic processes in cosmic plasmas starting fromelectric currents and the helicity concept governing the dynamics of magnetic structures in planet magnetospheres,stellar winds, and relativistic plasma outflows like pulsar wind nebulae andActive Galactic Nuclei jets are covered. Themulti-wavelength view from the radio to gamma-rays with modern high resolutiontelescopes discussed in the book reveals a beautiful and highly informativepicture of both coherent and chaotic plasma structures tightly connected bystrong mutual influence. The authors are all leading scientists in theirfields, making this book an authoritative, up‐to‐date and enduring contributionto astrophysics.

Basic processes in cosmic plasmas starting fromelectric currents and the helicity concept governing the dynamics of magnetic structures in planet magnetospheres,stellar winds, and relativistic plasma outflows like pulsar wind nebulae andActive Galactic Nuclei jets are covered.

Social structure is arguably the central concept of sociology, and in recent years a much wider public has taken up with fresh vigor the sociological idea that persistent inequalities are rooted in social structures. Yet there seem to be as many definitions of the term as there are sociologists, and we often struggle to articulate accessible yet precise accounts of structures that can guide empirical research and other kinds of action. Jonathan Eastwood offers a set of pragmatic strategies for thinking about social structures, emphasizing ways in which we can approach them as complex lacings of relationships, representations, and rules. He then teases out a variety of implications of these strategies for qualitative and quantitative research, the analysis of social problems, and the implementation of social policies. Written for advanced undergraduate and graduate students as well as fellow scholars, this insightful book contributes to our understanding of this fundamental and dynamic ingredient of social life.