Böcker i SpringerBriefs in Sociology-serien

This book problematises the socioeconomic and institutional construction of prostitution in Thai contexts, identifying the root causes that propel underprivileged, discriminated and deprived women and girls to enter the sex industry. The author considers Thailand¿s tolerance of prostitution and sex trafficking, despite criminalising prostitution since 1960. In doing so, they explain how criminalising prostitution does not lower the odds of women and girls engaging in commercial sex, but rather, legally marginalises them from receiving the necessary social and healthcare support. The book highlights that neither can Thailand pragmatically practice a zero-tolerance stance against prostitution - primarily due to severe police corruption and its heavy reliance on the sex tourism economy to support the national economic growth - nor is Thailand willing to fully crack down on the domestic sex industry. Engaging in an evaluation of how legalising and decriminalising prostitution, along with continuing to implement policies and interventions that alleviate the root causes of prostitution, can help Thailand build a more inclusive society and less-prostitution-reliant economy in the long term, the book provides a nuanced understanding of the relationships between society, inequality, governance, criminality, and policy in Southeast Asian contexts. It is relevant to students and researchers in sociology, socio-criminology, public policy, government and Southeast Asian studies.

This book provides a comparative and contemporary account of social stratification in the Central European states of Czechia, Poland, Hungary, and Slovakia (the Visegrad Four ¿ V4 group), and also by contrast with Austria. It looks at the shared history of these countries as part of the erstwhile Austro-Hungarian Empire. While the V4 states experienced, for decades, the regressive authoritarian Soviet rule, Austria escaped this fate. The question is how some common historical roots, impact of the communist regime, and transition paths have shaped the specific social structures of V4 countries which differ despite belonging to a relatively homogeneous region. The book examines the changes and developments through analyses of large comparative surveys and other data collected after 1990, most notably using the European Union¿s survey ¿Statistics on Income and Living Conditions¿ (EU-SILC) that has been fielded since 2005. The book starts with an outline of the long-term developmentsin key social structure dimensions which occurred during the post-communist transition. The analytical chapters then discuss topics previously not much examined in social stratification perspective: subjective well-being, couples¿ status, cultural activities and differences among retirees. This book is intended for social scientists working on stratification research, and, specifically, V4 societies and politics.

This book extends a previously published model of social evolution by using macroeconomic measures to indicate both the current state of the society, and its evolutionary trajectory.

The open access book provides a critical account of parenthood in Polish society. The author distinguishes between different kinds of work done in connection to parenthood and shows how the existing institutional system reinforces gender and other forms of social inequalities even in a post-communist state like Poland.

This book presents an overview of the economic policies adopted by the Bolivarian governments of Hugo Chavez and Nicolas Maduro in Venezuela between 1998 and 2018, and the economic and social results of these policies.

Additionally, given the new focus on Simmel and intimate relations, the book is of interest to scholars of relational sociology, history of sociology, continental philosophy, history of philosophy, philosophy of culture, and philosophical anthropology.

This open access book brings together a unique set of comparative data from Western and Central Europe on how contemporary families live, and discusses the similarities and differences in family lifestyles in this region.

It concludes by defining the area's artistic community as an artistic bohemian lifestyle community, and argues that the artistic activities and cultural practices exhibited by the community are not unique, and have significant implications for urban artistic policy, and for post-industrial urban society.

This book aims to reflect on how to translate "queer" in the context of Latin America. Queer theory is becoming consolidated on an international scale as an effort to understand dissident bodies and their inventions. But how can we utilize such a rich body of literature and proposals without merely applying in the Global South what has been formulated in the Global North?Through meetings between dissident bodies in the Global South, the book suggests that the theoretical-poetic inventions formulated in this part of the world cannot be forgotten and proposes a discussion on how to approach queer theory from a decolonial point of view. There is still only a scant body of literature that systematizes and approaches these questions from a Latin American point of view; or, to use the term that gives this book its name, the "tropics." The book points out the necessity of staying aware of the connections between western modernity and colonial practices.The book therefore invites us to pass through borders, to question limits, and to allow ourselves to be affected by Others, a fundamental exercise in the context of social inequality as drastic as that in which the majority of the population live in Latin America and in the Global South in general. Theories, like bodies, travel; in being translated, they transform themselves. The movements and the bending of bodies and theories are disturbing and subversive. Queer in the Tropics arises from these translations, from this bending, and from these subversions.

This book provides an in-depth account of a qualitative study on the familial arrangements and domestic settings shaping interracial gay partnerships in the South African context, and it offers both empirical and theoretical insights on the topic.

The overarching argument in this book contends that, while mitigation strategies like solar and wind energy go much further to meet feminist objectives and virtues, geoengineering is not consistent with the values of justice as articulated in Longino's feminist approach to science.

This book describes what an "art of multiculturalism" could be and how in turn multiculturalism could be conceived as a form of art.

It discusses this enclave in the context of sociological, historical, and interdisciplinary work on urban artistic communities (i.e., bohemian and quasi-bohemian communities), and situates it within the larger urban artistic tradition, and within its contemporary urban context.

This book offers a comparison between our earthly society and the society of a hypothetical twin planet with the aim to understand and deal with some of the main problems of our global society, as well as to advance interaction with some extra-terrestrial society no less advanced than ours that sooner or later will be discovered.