What happens to traditional conceptions of heritage in the era of fluid media spaces? 'Heritage' usually involves intergenerational transmission of ideas, customs, ancestral lands, and artefacts, and so serves to reproduce national communities over time. However, media industries have the power to transform national lands and histories into generic landscapes and ideas through digital reproductions or modifications, prompting renegotiations of belonging in new ways. Contemporary media allow digital environments to function as transnational classrooms, creating virtual spaces of debate for...

This book provides an in-depth comparative analysis of inequality and the stratification of the digital sphere.

Grounded in classical sociological theories of inequality, as well as empirical evidence, this book defines 'the digital divide' as the unequal access and utility of internet communications technologies and explores how it has the potential to replicate existing social inequalities, as well as create new forms of stratification. The Digital Divide examines how various demographic and socio-economic factors including income, education, age and gender, as well as...

How can we raise the standard of living of the world's poor and maintain high levels of social health and well-being in the developed world, while simultaneously reducing the environmental damage wrought by human activity? The social dimension of sustainability is becoming recognized as a necessary if not sufficient condition for attaining economic and environmental sustainability. The requisite dialogue requires inclusion at multi-levels. This collection of works is an ambitious and multi-disciplinary effort to indemnify and articulate the design, implementation and implications of...

Call centers have come in the last three decades to define the interaction between corporations, governments, and other institutions and their respective customers, citizens, and members. The offshoring and outsourcing of call center employment, part of the larger information technology and information-technology-enabled services sectors, continues to be a growing practice amongst governments and corporations in their attempts at controlling costs and providing new services. While incredible advances in technology have permitted the use of distant and "offshore" labor forces, the grander...

European social movements have been central to European history, politics, society and culture, and have had a global reach and impact. Yet they have rarely been taken on their own terms in the English-language literature, considered rather as counterpoints to the US experience. This has been exacerbated by the failure of Anglophone social movement theorists to pay attention to the substantial literatures in languages such as French, German, Spanish or Italian and by the increasing global dominance of English in the production of news and other forms of media.

This book sets out to take...

As the world changes, so sexual identities are changing. In a context of globalisation, mass communication and technological advances, individuals find themselves able to make lifestyle choices in new and different ways. In this increasingly confusing world, sociologists have argued that identities are in flux, and that traditional patterns of identity and intimacy are being disrupted and reshaped, with all the implications for sexual identities that this suggests.

"Changing Gay Male Identities" draws on the powerful life stories of twenty-one gay men to explore how individuals...

As the world seemingly gets smaller and smaller, schools around the globe are focusing their attention on expanding the consciousness and competencies of their students to prepare them for the conditions of globalization. Global citizenship education is rapidly growing in popularity because it captures the longings of so many-to help make a world of prosperity, universal benevolence, and human rights in the midst of globalization's varied processes of change.

This book offers an empirical account from the perspective of teachers and classrooms, based on a qualitative study of ten...