Gender, Globalization, and Postsocialism

Book Description

How are changing gender relations shaping and being shaped by post-socialist marketization and liberalization? Do new forms of economic and cultural globalization open spaces for women's empowerment and feminist politics? The rapid social transformations experienced by the people of the Czech Republic in the wake of the collapse of communism in 1989 afford political scientist Jacqui True with an opportunity to answer these questions by examining political and gendered identities in flux. She argues that the privatization of a formerly state economy and the adoption of consumer-oriented market practices were shaped by ideas and attitudes about gender roles.

Though finely tuned to the particular, local traditions that have defined the boundaries of globalization for Czech men and women, Gender, Globalization, and Postsocialism also offers a provocative general thesis about the inextricable linkages between political and economic changes and gender identities.

Customer Reviews:

More roles for women.......2004-06-30

True argues that the rapid and massive changes in Czech society after communism fell also included new roles for women. The change from a statist economy, mostly plugged into other countries in the Warsaw Pact, to a free market economy, exposed to global trends, was abrupt and severe.

She suggests that women could now expand their gender roles by taking initiatives in a capitalist system. Changes in how families were viewed, and in the political system, and what this meant for women are also discussed.

Average customer rating:
Gender, Globalization, and Postsocialism
Jacqui True
Manufacturer: Columbia University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000OQ1H16

Book Description

This book is a report of how the government, industry, individuals, and interest groups have access to personal information about you. The book contains valuable information that will help you get around Big Brother.

Customer Reviews:

Good research, but too much fluff and "chicken-little".......2002-07-06

Take out the fluff and chicken-little-the-sky-is-falling nonsense, and the meat of this book would make up a small pamphlet. There are many more informative authors on the subject of personal privacy. "The Privacy Rights Handbook" is a much better start.

Excellent Privacy Primer.......2002-01-14

privacy plan. While privacy tolerance is a very private
issue, a compromise plan needs to be developed for your
household or office. This book is great privacy primer,
I would have given it five stars, but I had problems
with the emphasis on getting a lock box mailing address.
The author did not emphasize enough the need to
maintain that alternative address for a long time after
you move to another location. Change of address notices
only last six months and need to be renewed for several
years. I know when I got my post office box the mail
from the prior box users continued to be delivered
including what appeared to be preapproved credit card
notices. This minor flaw was out weighed by the quality
and volume of information on protecting your privacy.

Good, Practical Advice on Preventing Personal Fraud.......2001-12-30

Author Michael Hyatt is a best- selling author and speaker who wrote this book to advise individuals on ways to protect themselves in today's digital age. He feels that we need to be aware of the everyday dangers to our personal privacy, and that we should not take this issue lightly.

Hyatt begins the book by discussing the supposed "threat" that exists today, from corporations, individuals, and the government. According to Hyatt, there are threats to your privacy that are all around you, and some are not so obvious to the naked eye. Most of us are aware of some of the threats, like government surveillance and Social Security number theft. But other privacy threats are not quite so obvious, like the threat imposed by using supermarket credit cards. Through the use of these cards, the store is able to keep tabs on all sorts of personal data, which is often more information than many people would want them to have.

In the second and third parts of the book, Hyatt talks about specific strategies to use, to minimize the problems that are caused by invasions of privacy. He recommends, for instance, using a P.O. Box, whenever practical, instead of your home address, to avoid letting others know exactly where you live. He also recommends not carrying your Social Security Card in your wallet, and getting your Social Security number removed from your driver's license and other forms of ID, to reduce the chances of identity theft.

Hyatt wraps of the book with several appendices that are meant to assist the individual in assessing his/her privacy knowledge and risk. There's a privacy self assessment test; a privacy checklist; privacy resource list; family privacy policy; and a public servant questionnaire.

Hyatt seems a little obsessed with his concerns about privacy, and many readers might think he borders on being paranoid. Are we really in this much danger, to justify taking all these measures to protect our privacy? Personally, I think Hyatt goes a bit overboard on a few occassions (like when he recommends not using cordless phones, because someone could be listening in) but I must admit that I did take his advice by removing my Social Security Card from my wallet. I don't carry it with me anymore.

Overall, this is a pretty good book. It's a quick read, and it does give some sound advice on how to protect yourself in the information age. I wouldn't necessarily take everything Hyatt recommends to heart, but I think that some of his recommendations are worth listening to. It's better to be safe, than sorry.

Excellent Privacy Primer.......2001-12-11

Michael Hyatt's book is a very comprehensive book on privacy. Privacy is an issue of great variance of importance to people. Some people are very private and some do not seem to care at all about their privacy. This range of concern is based on two factors. One is trust, if you trust who you give your information to and truse those organizations that use this information for various purposes you have a very high tolerance on privacy. The second is experience in events of privacy abuse, if you have never had your credit card number or identity used, or been stalked, you again will have a very high privacy tolerance. The strength of this book is that approaches privacy in degrees of the privacy you want to attain. The book has very current information and is supported by an even more up to date website. The book seems to lack much original thought or direction, but I think that is caused by the author offering such a wide range of resources to meet the wide range of privacy desired by the reader. The information of the book is well summarized and referenced into a series of "Practical Privacy Tips" lists and another "Complete Privacy Checklist" in the appendix. This book is a little shallow in technical areas, but that is because it is written for the general population. The reader with a high tech background will enjoy the range of choices provided. Another element of the book I enjoyed was the emphasis of having a family or business privacy plan. While privacy tolerance is a very private issue, a compromise plan needs to be developed for your household or office. This book is great privacy primer, I would have given it five stars, but I had problems with the emphasis on getting a lock box mailing address. The author did not emphasize enough the need to maintain that alternative address for a long time after you move to another location. Change of address notices only last six months and need to be renewed for several years. I know when I got my post office box the mail from the prior box users continued to be delivered including what appeared to be preapproved credit card notices. This minor flaw was out weighed by the quality and volume of information on protecting your privacy.

Insightful explanation, great advice and resources.......2001-11-04

Privacy has become an increasingly important issue for ordinary citizens who thought their personal and concealed. More and more, we've discovered that information we thought was confidential is, in fact, public knowledge . . . or nearly so.

The question for us now is how to protect ourselves from the snoops-the marketers, bill collectors, stalkers, criminals, and so many others that shouldn't really know so much about us. Personal security is a major concern today, so this book is certainly timely. Hyatt reveals how much information about us is available for instant public access or can be uncovered with a little legal (or illicit) research.

Shortly after reading in Invasion of Privacy that I should never give out my Social Security number, I looked into buying a car for my daughter. When the salesman and I came to the question of financing, he sat down at a computer terminal and asked for . . . you guessed it: my Social Security number. After enjoying a good laugh, I asked him why he needed it. His reply: so he could check on what kind of interest rate I could get for the credit. He tapped a few keys and instantly knew my credit rating . . . and a lot more information that I didn't think was any of his business. Real life evidence about what this book reports.

And the book is filled with much more evidence of identity theft, credit card misuse, and how stalkers learn about their victims. And that's just scratching the surface! Reading Hyatt's information-packed book, you'll first learn about the threat. You can evaluate your own vulnerability using the self-assessment in the first of five appendices. With this knowledge in-hand, you have to decide what to do about your privacy. How important is your privacy to you? After learning about corporate spies, predators, and government surveillance, you'll read chapters that will help you determine your preferred level of privacy and security.

The rest of the book describes in fine how-to detail what countermeasures are available to you. Hyatt covers Computers and the Internet, Banking and Finances, Your Physical Address and Mail Privacy, Medical Records, Identification Documents, and Telephone and Fax. You'll be amazed at your exposure and how you can overcome that openness.

Customer Reviews:

Really well-researched book; very interesting too........2007-08-30

This book is really very interesting, and well written. I borrowed it from our HP Labs Research Library. The scope of the book is privacy rights, but the applications of these rights are far and wide. The author explains each area well, and describes what the laws are, what the challenges to the laws have been, and how each area of privacy rights relates to the way we live. Topics include DNA, abortion rights, availability of birth control (starting way back in the 1930's), job applications, and many other areas where our personal data is given and/or stored. I recommend this book whole-heartedly.

Book Description

The shock following the recent outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) in the UK dispelled the notion that this disease was permanently under control and could be forgotten. FMD proved to be an endemic disease in many countries and continues to pose a major threat to animal health worldwide. The development of more effective and socially acceptable diagnosis and control measures is essential to effectively combat this devastating virus. Foot and Mouth Disease: Current Perspectives benefits researchers by presenting the latest developments resulting from the upsurge in data concerning this disease. Interdisciplinary in its approach, this book offers the first coherent picture of emerging strategies for diagnosis and control. With contributions from respected FMD researchers worldwide, this volume provides comprehensive coverage of the entire spectrum of FMD issues. Topics include genome organization, translation and replication of FMD virus RNA, proteinases, virus particles, clinical signs of FMD, and much more. This book delivers essential information for everyone with an interest in FMD, such as virologists, molecular biologists, biotechnologists, veterinarians, and pharmaceutical and biotech researchers.

Book Description

This invaluable book provides a quick introduction to the rudiments of perturbative string theory and a detailed introduction to the more current topic of D-brane dynamics. The presentation is very pedagogical, with much of the technical detail streamlined. The rapid but highly coherent introduction to the subject is perhaps what distinguishes this book from other string theory or D-brane books. The material is based on mini-courses delivered by the author at various summer schools in theoretical high energy physics, so its actual level has been appropriately tested.

Customer Reviews:

A little short but does its job. .......2004-08-01

From a mathematical perspective, string theory, and its modern metamorphosis, M-theory, is the most complex physical theory ever constructed. From a physical and experimental perspective, these theories completely lack any support. Mathematical elegance and the need for a consistent physical theory have driven the research in string theory, and to this day it remains one of the hottest, if not the most esoteric, topics in theoretical physics. Those physicists with a penchant towards mathematics have joined the ranks of those doing research in string theory. Mathematicians are also benefiting immensely from the insights that string theory offers to myriads of concepts and results in mathematics.

This book gives a very quick overview of the main results in string and M-theory, and would be suitable only for those readers who have had a lot of prior exposure to the subject. There are no in-depth explanations given for the physical and mathematical concepts needed in string and M-theories in the book, and therefore it might be difficult for the newcomer curious about these theories to gain an appreciation of them. The mathematics behind these theories is formidable, requiring years of study to digest, and the insight and motivation behind this mathematics is usually not given in the literature, unfortunately.

After a brief discussion of the history of string theory in chapter 1, and also a very brief discussion of the classical dynamics of strings in chapter 2, the author begins a study of how to quantize the bosonic string in chapter 3. This is done using the familiar canonical quantization of quantum field theory but here applied to the (1+1)-dimensional worldsheet field theory. The mass-shell constraints of classical string dynamics appearing as Virasoro operators are subjected to normal ordering in the quantization procedure. The origin of the bosonic critical dimension of spacetime as 26 is not explained in enough detail that will allow the reader to appreciate it. Also discussed, but only briefly, are the `vertex operators', which have become very important recently, especially in mathematics. In this book vertex operators are introduced as an analogy to the operator-state correspondence that is found in ordinary quantum field theory.

Superstring theory is studied in chapter 4, motivated by the need for eliminating tachyonic states and for including fermions in the spectrum. The Ramond-Neveu-Schwarz (RNS) and light-cone Green-Schwarz formalisms are mentioned as two techniques for dealing with superstrings, but the author only uses the RNS formalism in the book. The role of boundary conditions as the origin of the Ramond (R) and Neveu-Schwartz (NS) sectors is explained very well, but the author leaves to the reader (as an exercise) the canonical quantization of the superstring. The origin of the superstring critical dimension as 10 is thus delegated to the reader. The ubiquitous `GSO projection' is introduced as a device for making the theory of interacting strings consistent, one example being the elimination of tachyonic states. The GSO projection is discussed in both the NS and R sectors. The modular invariance of the bosonic string partition function is left as an exercise for the reader. The author does explain well the origin of `spin structures', i.e. their connection with the introduction of fermions, and the consequent use in the superstring theory to get rid of the tachyonic instability. He gives brief discussions of the five different types of string theories, but restricts himself to only Type II superstrings in the remainder of the book. The origin of the famous `T-duality' for closed strings and its relation to the existence of D-branes in superstring theory is explained very well. The author assigns a very interesting exercise for the reader on showing that T-duality interchanges the definition of normal and tangential derivatives, and therefore exchanges Neumann and Dirichlet boundary conditions. This exercise, in this reviewer's opinion, should eliminate sometimes held view of T-duality as being somewhat mysterious. D-branes are explained as being essential for superstring theory, in that there are missing R-R charges in the perturbative string states, i.e. the vertex operators for the R-R states only involve the fields. The D-branes are thus nonperturbative states that carry the R-R charges.

D-branes and their (fascinating) relation to gauge theory are discussed in detail in chapter 6, their dynamics in chapter 7, and their R-R couplings in the last chapter. D-branes are described nonperturbatively, with the massless modes of open strings equated to the fluctuations of D-branes. Massless fields are interpreted as a 10-dimensional gauge theory on the D-brane worldvolume. The guage fields have components as U(1) gauge fields on the D-brane as well as scalar field components that describe the fluctuations of the D-brane. The gauge theory is actually, and most interestingly, a dimensional reduction to the D-brane of supersymmetric Yang-Mills theory. Via a consideration of Wilson lines of the gauge fields, the author shows how T-duality maps gauge fields in open string theory to positions on the D-branes. The dynamics of D-branes is further described in terms of (supersymmetric Yang-Mills) gauge theory, giving the famous AdS/CFT correspondence. This correspondence is quite exciting if one views it from the standpoint of how difficult it is to do nonperturbative calculations in gauge theories. Interactions between D-branes are studied, and the author describes the coincidence (resulting from spacetime supersymmetry) between the D-brane tension and the R-R charge, i.e. that the R-R repulsion between parallel D-branes cancels their gravitational and dilaton attraction. A brief discussion is given of `BPS states' and their relation to D-branes, i.e. that a D-brane is a state that preserves only half of the spacetime supersymmetries. In addition, and similar to the case in gauge field theories where chirality is present, anomalies can arise in D-branes. These arise, as the author shows, on the chiral worldvolume field theory on the intersection of two or more D-branes. Requiring anomaly cancellation will determine completely the coupling between the D-brane and the fields of the R-R sector.

Customer Reviews:

A lovely collection.......2001-08-28

Although I bought this book just for a quick read of Suddenly Last Summer but found all of the other plays in this volume to be delights in their own respect. Each has their ups and downs, but all are undeniably in the style of Tennessee Williams. I think this book is a must read for any true Tennessee fan as it give any reader a fuller look into the style that is Tennessee.

The best of the best.......2000-07-23

Tennesse Williams has become of my favorite authors, partially due to this book. I have long been a fan of the movie adaptations of his work, but they come nowhere near to the superb quality of the written word. In all of his plays you can get a sense of what the characters are feeling. In most cases those feelings are angst and despair. "Suddenly Last Summer" is by far the best play in this book, but the others are not far behind. The characters in these plays are easy to "see", thanks to Williams' wonderful development. As with every Williams' play, these have surprising twists and revelations throughout. I highly recommend these, and all other Tennessee Williams plays.

It was amasing........1998-04-21

Of the plays that I read, I found them all to have real life aplications. One of the suprising things was that his works were written several years ago but there are still points that he raises that are aplicable to today. Honestly I could not go to bed until I found out how he resolved his conflicts. I will have to read more of his work. He is not that bad for being an english paper topic.

Amazing. (This review is for "Suddenly Last Summer" only.).......1998-02-10

This is one of the best plays I've ever read or seen. Definitely one of Williams' best, though I still have not read "The Night of the Iguana," or "The Rose Tattoo." This play is definitely Williams' most brutal, most shocking play. In the introduction to "Sweet Bird of Youth," he says that he only wrote "two violent plays": "Suddenly, and "Sweet Bird..." If you read it (PLEAE do), be prepared- Williams' style is like an extremely complex poem. There are levels to this play, like all of his. Consider the subtext, the allegory... and the LANGUAGE- definitely first-rate and poetic. WONDERFUL.

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