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From the perspective of trade unions, European integration makes it more necessary than ever before to establish common political positions. At the same time, increasing heterogeneity between the member states makes the crafting of such positions more and more difficult. Can, under these circumstances, a joint political line among European trade unions emerge? To answer this question, the book sheds light on transnational trade union cooperation in the three most important policy fields: the debate around the Freedom of services, the discussion over a European minimum wage, and the efforts of international wage coordination. Drawing on the results of extensive field research based on a quali...
Starting in the 1980s, competitive pressures and the ideology of competitiveness have shaken and transformed traditional models of development, public policy, and governance in Europe. This edited book carries out a comprehensive, interdisciplinary, and innovative analysis of the relationship between competitiveness and solidarity in the contemporary European Union. It offers an original contribution to the scholarly debates on the current developments and challenges of welfare states, social and economic policies, and forms of governance in the European Union. Bringing together an international team of cutting-edge scholars in the social sciences and the humanities, Competitiveness and Solidarity in the European Union sheds light on the conceptual richness and policy relevance of these relationships, pointing to important avenues to make the European Union more economically successful and socially fairer. This book will be of key interest to scholars and students of European Union studies and, more broadly, of EU Law, Public Policy, Economics, Sociology, Political Science, Geography, and Contemporary History.
Germany is a central case for research on comparative political economy, which has inspired theorizing on national differences and historical trajectories. This book assesses Germany’s political economy after the end of the "social democratic" 20th century to rethink its dominant properties and create new opportunities for using the country as a powerful lens into the evolution of democratic capitalism. Documenting large-scale changes and new tensions in the welfare state, company strategies, interest intermediation, and macroeconomic governance, the volume makes the case for analysing contemporary Germany through the politics of imbalance rather than the long-standing paradigm of institut...
This volume addresses the contested relationship between social stratification and social movements in three different ways: First, the authors address the relationship between social stratification and the emergence of protest mobilization. Second, the texts look at social stratification and social positions to explain variations in political orientations, as well as differing aims and interests of protestors. Finally, the volume focuses on the socio-structural composition of protestors. Social Stratification and Social Movements takes up recent attempts to reconnect research on these two fields. Instead of calling for a return of a class perspective or abandoning the classical social movement research agenda, it introduces a multi-dimensional perspective on stratification and social movements and broadens the view by extending the empirical analysis beyond Europe.
There are two tendencies in present public discussions.Social problems have their causes in the individual, and are thus not a problem of socio-economic inequality. Consequently, we find an increasing policy in Europe of selfactivation and self-help as substitutes of social work. On the other hand, new types of social vulnerability and challenges for social work and social policy are detected which are discussed in the book in their European dimensions. Beginning in the last century in Europe, processes of social exclusion are discussed as common phenomena of the crisis in social welfare systems. They have their origins in the radical changes in paid employment, the weakening of family ties,...
This second volume of Christian Fuchs’ Media, Communication and Society book series outlines key concepts and contemporary debates in critical theory. The book explores the foundations of a Marxist-Humanist critical theory of society, clarifying and updating key concepts in critical theory – such as the dialectic, critique, alienation, class, capitalism, ideology, and racial capitalism. In doing so, the book engages with and further develops elements from the works of Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, Rosa Luxemburg, Max Horkheimer, Theodor W. Adorno, Herbert Marcuse, David Harvey, Michael Hardt, Antonio Negri, C.L.R. James, Adolph L. Reed Jr., and Cornel West. Written for a broad audience of students and scholars, this book is an essential guide for readers who are interested in how to think critically from perspectives such as media and communication studies, sociology, philosophy, political economy, and political science.
Politische Transformation - und dann? 25 Jahre nach dem Ende der Apartheid sieht sich die südafrikanische Gesellschaft nach wie vor mit drastischen Ungleichheiten konfrontiert. Carmen Ludwig nimmt den Wandel öffentlicher Dienstleistungen im Post-Apartheid-Südafrika und die Auswirkungen der kommunalen Privatisierungen in den Blick. Sie zeigt anhand dreier Großstädte politische Konfliktlinien und lokale Gewerkschaftsstrategien im Spannungsfeld von in- und exklusiver Solidarität auf. Zudem stellt sie die Frage, wie es Gewerkschaften gelingen kann, Solidarität in fragmentierten Belegschaften herzustellen.
The title of the book derives from the theme of the 20th Conference on Applied Social Sciences of the Professional Association of German Sociologists, held in Munich in May 2019. The question of what concrete contributions social innovations can make to the transition to forms of sustainable coexistence and economic activity is as much the focus of this book as the question of what contribution the social sciences can make. Thus, on the one hand, it is about concrete social innovations that help us to achieve the goal of living and doing business sustainably, but on the other hand, it is also about the way in which the social sciences - not least through appropriate theoretical and methodological training - can be made socially responsible for the success of such socially innovative processes. This book is a translation of an original German edition. The translation was done with the help of artificial intelligence (machine translation by the service DeepL.com). A subsequent human revision was done primarily in terms of content, so that the book will read stylistically differently from a conventional translation.
This book explores how narratives have been and can be used to facilitate radical transformations towards a more sustainable future. Scholars from various disciplines have been increasingly utilizing social and cultural narratives to understand personal, social, and cultural transformations. These narratives offer guiding principles for achieving personal, social, and cultural transformations. Drawing on various fields such as psychoanalysis, psychology, sociology, technology, cultural studies, and related areas, this book presents different perspectives on narratives in situations of transformation, exploring both commonalities and differences. The interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary re...