Provides an overview of the political historical context of race and gender politics in schools, followed by an in-depth analysis. The chapters include work of scholars and policy analysts on policy and policy implementation at all levels of school politics in the USA, Australia, and Israel.

The problem of the Twentieth Century is the problem of the color-line. Du Bois's prophetic statement, made at the beginning of the century, is as true today at the dawn of the 21st century. Presenting fresh, contemporary perspectives on a centuries-old problem, the contributors to this volume, including top scholars in sociology and political science, show that race-politics remains a part of the new millennium despite past efforts to erase discriminatory practices. From an initial reconsideration of the DuBois-Washington debate to Derrick Bell's essay on the pitfalls of doing good, the book illustrates that the debate about race remains a firm part of our social fabric, begging for a solution to change old and new feelings about race in the United States. Grappling with enduring issues of race and identifying new racial realities, the volume examines the white backlash to affirmative action, the organizational structure of affirmative action, the impact of social networks on occupational mobility, upward mobility and minority neighborhoods, and inner-city entrepreneurship. America's changing configuration to a multi-ethnic, multi-racial population is considered in a chapter speculating on the impact for African Americans. In conclusion, the book suggests ways to take positive action.

'The New Politics of Race' brings together Winant's new and previously published essays to form a comprehensive picture of the origins and nature of the complex racial politics that engulf us today.

In an age of unprecedented corporate and political control over life inside of educational institutions, this book provides a needed intervention to investigate how the economic and political elite use traditional artifacts in K-16 schools to perpetuate their interests at the expense of minoritized social groups. The contributors provide a comprehensive examination of how textbooks, the most dominant cultural force in which corporations and political leaders impact the schooling curricula, shape students’ thoughts and behavior, perpetuate power in dominant groups, and trivialize social groups who are oppressed on the structural axes of race, class, gender, sexuality, and (dis)ability. Several contributors also generate critical insight in how power shapes the production of textbooks and evaluate whether textbooks still perpetuate dominant Western narratives that normalize and privilege patriotism, militarism, consumerism, White supremacy, heterosexism, rugged individualism, technology, and a positivistic conception of the world. Finally, the book highlights several textbooks that challenge readers to rethink their stereotypical views of the Other, to reflect upon the constitutive forces causing oppression in schools and in the wider society, and to reflect upon how to challenge corporate and political dominance over knowledge production.

Over the last half century, two major developments have transformed the nature of workers’ rights and altered the pathways available to low-wage workers to combat their exploitation. First, while national labor law, which regulates unionization and collective bargaining, has grown increasingly ineffective, employment laws establishing minimal workplace standards have proliferated at the state and local levels. Second, as labor unions have declined, a diversity of small, under-resourced nonprofit “alt-labor” groups have emerged in locations across the United States to organize and support marginalized workers. In Alt-Labor and the New Politics of Workers’ Rights, political scientist Daniel J. Galvin draws on rich data and extensive interviews to examine the links between these developments. With nuance and insight, Galvin explains how alt-labor groups are finding creative ways to help their members while navigating the many organizational challenges and structural constraints they face in this new context. Alt-labor groups have long offered their members services and organizing opportunities to contest their unfair treatment on the job. But many groups have grown frustrated by the limited impact of these traditional strategies and have turned to public policy to scale up their work. They have successfully led campaigns to combat wage theft, raise the minimum wage, improve working conditions, strengthen immigrants’ rights, and more. These successes present something of a puzzle: relative to their larger, wealthier, and better-connected opponents, alt-labor groups are small, poor, and weak. Their members are primarily low-wage immigrant workers and workers of color who are often socially, economically, and politically marginalized. With few exceptions, the groups lack large dues-paying memberships and are dependent on philanthropic foundations and other unpredictable sources of funding. How, given their myriad challenges, have alt-labor groups managed to make gains for their members? Galvin reveals that alt-labor groups are leveraging their deep roots in local communities, their unique position in the labor movement, and the flexibility of their organizational forms to build their collective power and extend their reach. A growing number of groups have also become more politically engaged and have set out to alter their political environments by cultivating more engaged citizens, influencing candidate selection processes, and expanding government capacities. These efforts seek to enhance alt-labor groups’ probabilities of success in the near term while incrementally shifting the balance of power over the long term. Alt-Labor and the New Politics of Workers’ Rights comprehensively details alt-labor’s turn to policy and politics, provides compelling insights into the dilemmas the groups now face, and illuminates how their efforts have both invigorated and complicated the American labor movement.

The insistence by policymakers and politicians that educators be held accountable for student outcomes has resulted in dramatic shifts in the responsibilities of department chairs, principals, and superintendents. Educational Leadership in an Age of Accountability explores these changes in Virginia, following its implementation of an ambitious accountability plan that called for standards of learning, statewide high-stakes tests, standards of accreditation, and annual school performance report cards. This book examines factors such as the fate of students who fail state tests, achievement differences between black and white students, ethical issues surrounding accountability measures, and the increasing politicization of local schooling. Educational Leadership in an Age of Accountability shows that accountability pressure has done more than previous reforms to foster instructional leadership.

This book is about the new politics of leisure and pleasure - the values, practices, struggles and contradictions that now characterize the social worlds of rambling, drinking, tourism, sex, watching TV, gambling, using the internet, reading, comedy, sport, popular music and censorship.

Focusses on the newer forces on the political scene within the Pacific Islands, examining the evolving impact of women in politics and relations with the wider world.

During the past decade governments around the globe have introduced institutional mechanisms to promote the advancement of women, including measures to increase women's political participation rates and to incorporate women's interests into policy-making. Why have they done so? How successful have these initiatives been? What are the emerging agendas facing gender equality advocates now? In The New Politics of Gender Equality Judith Squires examines the origins, evolution and key features of three strategies that have been employed across the world in pursuit of gender equality – quotas, policy agencies and gender mainstreaming. The author critically examines each strategy to see how far they transform political institutions and agendas and to what extent they lead rather to the assimilation of women in male-defined structures. Squires argues that a multi-pronged approach, drawing on democratic rather than technocratic strategies, offers the best potential for advancing gender equality. She highlights too the limitations of approaches that ignore inequalities among women and the challenges of developing equality initiatives to address multiple and cross-cutting inequalities between groups. Judith Squires is Professor of Political Theory, University of Bristol. She has written, researched and published widely in the field of gender politics and gender equality.

Sinn Féin (“ourselves” or “we ourselves”) began innocuously enough, at least in etymology, when founder Arthur Griffith asked the publishers of an Oldcastle paper if he might use their name for a new political party that he was setting up. Since that 1905 founding, however, and through its journey from revolutionary movement to potential political partner in the state it was pledged to destroy, the modern political meaning of Sinn Féin reflects a contradictory and tension-heavy history of Irish republicanism. The New Politics of Sinn Féin is a powerful and revealing assessment of the ideological and organizational development of provisional republicanism since 1985. The first half of the volume chronicles the processes of change that transformed the republican movement from its revolutionary origins to its current role as a civic and legislative power, while the second half explores the ideological implications of this transition. Arguing that the political movement remains a site of contestation between elements of the universal and the particular, Kevin Bean looks especially to the tensions between civic and ethnic conceptions of identity and the nation as a way to define Sinn Féin in its current incarnation—making this an essential volume for anyone concerned with the contemporary state of Irish politics.