The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey has morphed in ways that would be unrecognizable to its founders. Its mission evolved from improving rail freight to building motor vehicle crossings, airports, office towers, and industrial parks and taking control of a failing commuter rail line. In its early years, the agency was often viewed with admiration; however as it drew up plans, negotiated to take control of airfields and marine terminals, and constructed large bridges and tunnels, the Port Authority became the object of less favorable attention. It was attacked as a “super-government” that must be reined in, while the mayors of New York and Newark argued that it should be broken up with its pieces given to local governments for their own use. Despite its criticisms and travails, for over half a century the Port Authority overcame hurdles that had frustrated other public and private efforts, built the world's longest suspension bridge, and took a leading role in creating an organization to reduce traffic delays in the New York-New Jersey region. How did the Port Authority achieve these successes? And what lessons does its history offer to other cities and regions in the United States and beyond? In a time when public agencies are often condemned as inefficient and corrupt, this history should provide some positive lessons for governmental officials and social reformers. In 2021, the Port Authority marked its 100th birthday. Its history reveals a struggle between the public and private sectors, the challenges of balancing democratic accountability and efficiency, and the tension between regional and local needs. From selected Port Authority successes and failures, Philip Mark Plotch and Jen Nelles produce a significant and engaging account of a powerful governmental entity that offers durable lessons on collaboration, leadership, and the challenge of overcoming complex political challenges in modern America.

When it comes to the discourse of military intervention, the market is saturated with all sorts of books of war. Such books, for the most part, tend to be narrative accounts of heroic militarism which often do not address the aspect of [societal] rehabilitation. Scores of these books do not highlight the relevance of “interactive socialization” as regards politically embattled nations that harbour [sociologically] shattered societies. So, there is a gap in the market when it comes to the rehabilitation of battled-scarred societies with psychologically distressed masses. Garrison Metropolis explores the adaptive rehabilitation of this embattled universe through a regenerative doctrine of military intervention called “Pure militarism”.

This work offers an assessment of progress made towards the "information society". It begins from the premise that the construction of such a society in Europe is a dynamic process and that the journey towards a society so dependent upon digital information is far from straightforward.

The concept of ’mobility’ has sparked lively academic debate in recent years. Drawing on research from the fields of anthropology, geography, sociology and tourism studies, this volume examines the intersection between mobility and hospitality, highlighting the issues that emerge as we encounter strangers in a mobile world. Through a series of diverse empirical accounts, it focuses on the transnational movement of people in the contexts of migration and tourism and examines how hospitality serves as a way of promoting and policing encounters, questioning how these relations are marked by exclusion as well as inclusion, and by violence as well as by kindness. In addition to exploring the power relations between mobile populations (hosts and guests) and attitudes (hospitality and hostility), the book also examines spaces of hospitality and mobility, such as cities, hotels, clubs, cafes, spas, asylums, restaurants, homes and homepages. In doing so, it makes a significant contribution to the political and ethical dimensions of mobile social relations.

An innovative analysis of how ideas of Indian identity negotiated within the Indian diaspora in Trinidad affect cultural identities "back home" in India.

Mobilizing Public Sociology, coedited by Victoria Carty and Rafael Luévano, combines theory and scholarly perspectives with a grassroots approach to challenges that Latin@ immigrants face in the United States. Public sociology calls for scholars and community activists and practitioners to engage in dialogue and to work together in the struggle for social justice. The contributors to this collection—scholars, immigrants, practitioners, and community activists—share their scholarly perspectives and personal experiences on a wide range of issues related to immigration, including deportation and criminalization, undocumented youth and higher education, legislation, and community activism. The collection encourages ongoing collaboration in dealing with some of the most pressing problems affecting our communities with the hope of breaking down barriers and misconceptions. Contributors are: Amelia Alvarez, Fawn Bekam, Victoria Carty, Kristin E. Heyer, Patricia Huerta, Rusty Kennedy, Oliver Lopez, Rafael Luévano, Raquel R. Marquez, Eileen McNerney, Patrick Murphy, Jerry Price, Lisa D. Ramirez, Harriett D. Romo, Suzanne SooHoo, Madeleine Spencer, Daniele Struppa, and Bishop Kevin William Vann.

Examining three interconnected case studies, Tamar Carroll powerfully demonstrates the ability of grassroots community activism to bridge racial and cultural differences and effect social change. Drawing on a rich array of oral histories, archival records, newspapers, films, and photographs from post–World War II New York City, Carroll shows how poor people transformed the antipoverty organization Mobilization for Youth and shaped the subsequent War on Poverty. Highlighting the little-known National Congress of Neighborhood Women, she reveals the significant participation of working-class white ethnic women and women of color in New York City's feminist activism. Finally, Carroll traces the partnership between the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT UP) and Women's Health Action Mobilization (WHAM!), showing how gay men and feminists collaborated to create a supportive community for those affected by the AIDS epidemic, to improve health care, and to oppose homophobia and misogyny during the culture wars of the 1980s and 1990s. Carroll contends that social policies that encourage the political mobilization of marginalized groups and foster coalitions across identity differences are the most effective means of solving social problems and realizing democracy.

Mobilizing for Democracy compares two waves of protests for democracy, in Central Eastern Europe in 1989 and in the Middle East and North Africa in 2011.

"Throughout its history, the United States has fought its major wars by mobilizing large numbers of citizen-soldiers. While the small, peacetime, regular army provided trained leadership and a framework for growth, the citizen-soldier, from the minuteman of the American Revolution to Civil War volunteers and the draftees of World War II, have successfully prosecuted the nation's major wars. But the Army, and the nation, have never fully resolved the myriad problems surrounding the mobilization and employment of reserve troops. National Guard divisions in World War II suffered from neglect during the interwar period and Great Depression, and regular Army commanders often replaced or relieved National Guard officers, which generated lingering resentment. At the same time, draftees from across the nation diluted the regional affiliations of many units, with a corresponding effect on morale and esprit de corps. Chris Rein's study of one division, recruited from the Gulf South and employed in the Southwest Pacific Theater in 1944 and 1945, highlights the challenges of reserve mobilization, training, and the combat deployment of National Guard units. His account demonstrates the still-strong connections between the local communities that hosted and supported National Guard companies before the war, even after an influx of new personnel nationalized the units and they shipped overseas. The 31st Division, reorganized after combat deployment in World War I, consisted primarily of infantry regiments from Florida, Alabama, Mississippi and, until 1942, Louisiana. Mobilized for federal service in late 1940, the division participated in the critical Louisiana and Carolina Maneuvers in 1941, but then languished for the next two years as a training organization, though it provided trained cadres and replacements for other divisions the Army deployed to Europe and the Pacific. In 1944, the division finally shipped overseas, enduring the brutal conditions in the Southwest Pacific, but successfully conducting landings on the New Guinea coast in support of Gen. Douglas MacArthur's "island hopping" campaign directed at liberating the Philippines. After a change in leadership, on the second day of the amphibious assault on Morotai, the division supported the liberation of Mindanao, the southernmost major island in the archipelago, before redeploying for demobilization at the end of 1945. Rein's study traces the division's decades of duty from the interwar period, when it contended with a series of devastating natural disasters, through its mobilization and combat deployment. However, within the 31st Division's story, there are several significant issues that remain highly relevant for reserve deployment today. The first centers on the issue of World War II-era National Guard leadership. The Army implemented a "purge" of overage and less competent National Guard division commanders in order to replace them with younger officers of the regular Army. Maj. Gen. John C. Persons, a pre-war Birmingham resident and Alabama National Guard officer, commanded the division throughout the peacetime mobilization and training and the first operation in New Guinea, only to be summarily fired on the second day of the Morotai landings, an action not adequately explained in the existing literature. The second issue concerns the Army's "nationalization" of regional units. While this policy has the benefit of spreading any casualties across the nation, rather than duplicate the horrific losses of the "Bedford Boys" of the 29th Infantry Division that devastated one small Virginia community, it also erodes regional identity and esprit de corps. This work is a case study of the strength and weaknesses of units with a regional identity and explores the connections with the home front once that identity erodes. It also examines the Dixie Division's operational and strategic evolution, but just as importantly details drawn from soldiers' correspondence and oral histories to show how their exposure to a larger world, including service alongside African-American and Filipino units, changed their views on race and post-war society"--

Islam and feminism are often thought of as incompatible. Through a vivid ethnography of Muslim and secular women activists in Jakarta, Indonesia, Rachel Rinaldo shows that this is not always the case. Examining a feminist NGO, Muslim women's organizations, and a Muslim political party, Rinaldo reveals that democratization and the Islamic revival in Indonesia are shaping new forms of personal and political agency for women. These unexpected kinds of agency draw on different approaches to interpreting religious texts and facilitate different repertoires of collective action - one oriented toward rights and equality, the other toward more public moral regulation. As Islam becomes a primary source of meaning and identity in Indonesia, some women activists draw on Islam to argue for women's empowerment and equality, while others use Islam to advocate for a more Islamic nation. Mobilizing Piety demonstrates that religious and feminist agency can coexist and even overlap, often in creative ways.