This landmark reference work is a comprehensive, one-stop interdisciplinary resource that examines important, current social issues in global and historical perspective. Approximately 140 in-depth, balanced text entries cover a broad range of critical topics pertaining to the natural environment, health, energy, science, the media, ethnic conflict, poverty, labor, justice, individual rights, family, gender, and immigration, to name just a few. Each original, signed article provides historical context as well as a thorough discussion and analysis of a contemporary issue in today's interconnected global society. Articles also include essential primary documents, as well as extensive further reading lists, Web sites of notable institutions and organizations, statistical data, and photographs. In all, Global Social Issues provides essential, objective information that enables students to understand and evaluate the major challenges facing human society worldwide and to foster awareness and critical thinking as "global citizens" of the 21st century. --

Suggesting ways in which global social problems could be dealt with through global social policy, this work provides an introduction to a wide range of social problems and their relation to the global era, such as AIDS, poverty and racism.

Extensively revised and updated, the new Fourth Edition of Global Issues: An Introduction offers a unique approach to the most important environmental, economic, social, and political concerns of modern life. Revised and updated to reflect the latest global developments Examines the most important environmental, economic, social, and political concerns of modern life The only book of its kind to use the concept of development to illustrate how different global issues are interrelated Includes a new section on nuclear energy Chapter boxes examine ways that individuals can have a positive impact on the issues examined within the text Key features include a glossary of terms; guides to further reading, media, and Internet resources; and suggestions for discussing and studying the material

Building on the successes of Understanding Global Social Policy (Yeates ed. 2008) and its companion text, the Global Social Policy Reader (Yeates and Holden ed. 2009), the second edition of this leading textbook in social policy identifies and reviews the key issues, debates and priorities for action in global social policy as a field of academic study and research and as a field of political practice and action. All first edition chapters have been systematically revised and updated to reflect major developments in the fast-paced area of global social policy making over the past five years, and include new material on the Millennium Development Goals, the Social Protection Floor and the ‘greening’ of global social policy. This much-needed second edition includes new chapters on global poverty and inequality, social protection, criminal justice and education. Written by an international team of leading social policy analysts , Understanding Global Social Policy is the leading textbook in the field and provides a comprehensive and accessible overview of international actors and social policy formation in global context. It is essential reading for undergraduate and postgraduate students, researchers, policy makers and practitioners seeking to identify key issues in contemporary social policy and locate them within a global framework of analysis and action.

In this age of instant communication and biotechnology, on this ever-smaller planet, what kinds of problems have we created for ourselves? How do we tackle them in a world where the accustomed methods used by nation-states may be reaching their natural limits?In High Noon, J. F. Rischard challenges us to take a new approach to the twenty most important and urgent global problems of the twenty-first century. Rischard finds their common thread: we don't have an effective way of dealing with the problems that our increasingly crowded, interconnected world creates. Our difficulties belong to the future, but our means of solving them belong to the past.Rischard proposes new vehicles for global problem-solving that are startling and persuasive. With its clear-eyed urgency and refreshing specificity, High Noon is an agenda-setting book that everyone who cares about the future must read.

This report examines the links between inequality and other major global trends (or megatrends), with a focus on technological change, climate change, urbanization and international migration. The analysis pays particular attention to poverty and labour market trends, as they mediate the distributional impacts of the major trends selected. It also provides policy recommendations to manage these megatrends in an equitable manner and considers the policy implications, so as to reduce inequalities and support their implementation.