Sociology: family, kinship and relationships Books

Book SynopsisSleepless Nights: The Faults and Failings of Love is an inquiry into the cultural and psychological forces at work in our most intimate relationships. Romanticized and theorized throughout all ages, love remains the paradigm of human experience, the one aspect of life that could redeem all the suffering and disappointment to which we are otherwise heir. And yet it too often forms part of that very suffering itself. In this daring and reflective book, Stuart Walton invites the reader to check into a love hotel with a difference. Instead of selling rooms by the hour, this one offers a luxurious vacation from everyday reality, but in each of its public areas and in its guestrooms, a different scenario is unfolding that relates to the conduct of romantic liaisons in actuality, their momentary splendors, and the crashing and burning to which so many of them are subject. With help from philosophers and musicians through the ages, we find our way to a clear-sighted and honest assessment of the pitfalls and trapdoors with which all love, however ideally conceived, is furnished.

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Book SynopsisThe Revolutionary Art of Love: From Romantic Love to Global Compassion offers a complex description of love as a personal emotion and as an intersubjective, ethical experience of connection. Its purpose is to deconstruct cultural myths about love, proposing instead a framework for understanding love's contribution to the well-being of individuals and social systems. The uniqueness of the book lies in its interdisciplinary scope, articulating love as a form of connection to the self, others, and the world in general. It examines its role in mental health, sexuality, emotional intelligence, and social responsibility.Bianca Briciu's bold new book is an invitation to reclaim the power of the human heart from institutional constraints by redefining love as a complex human capability, similar to intelligence or creativity. The cultivation of love opens us to the ethics of interconnectedness and responsibility of caring for life. Framing love as a revolutionary art articulates the subtleties of different experiences of love as expressions of an insufficiently explored human capability with transformative potential.

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Book SynopsisEngendering Transnational Voices examines the transnational practices and identities of immigrant women, youth, and children in an era of global migration and neoliberalism, addressing such topics as family relations, gender and work, schooling, remittances, cultural identities, caring for children and the elderly, inter- and multi-generational relationships, activism, and refugee determination.Expressions of power, resistance, agency, and accommodation in relation to the changing concepts of home, family, and citizenship are explored in both theoretical and empirical essays that critically analyze transnational experiences, discourses, cultural identities, and social spaces of women, youth, and children who come from diverse racial, ethnic, and cultural backgrounds; are either first- or second-generation transmigrants; are considered legal or undocumented; and who enter their adopted country as trafficked workers, domestic workers, skilled professionals, or students. The volume gives voice to individual experiences, and focuses on human agency as well as the social, economic, political, and cultural processes inherent in society that enable or disable immigrants to mobilize linkages across national boundaries.Table of Contents Engendering Transnational Voices: Studies in Family, Work, and Identity, edited by Guida Man and Rina Cohen Introduction: Engendering Transnational Voice Rina Cohen and Guida Man Part I: Experiencing Transnational Family Lives 1. Gulf Husbands and Canadian Wives: Transnationalism from Below among South Asiansâ€""A Classed, Gendered, and Racialized Phenomenon Tania Das Gupta 2. Maintaining Families Through Transnational Strategies: The Experience of Mainland Chinese Immigrant Women in Canada Guida Man 3. Intergenerational and Transnational Familyhood in Canada's Technology Triangle Amrita Hari 4. Transnational Family Exchanges in Senior Canadian Immigrant Families Nancy Mandell, Katharine King, Valerie Preston, Natalie Weiser, Ann Kim, and Meg Luxton Part II: Negotiating Transnational Care Work 5. Multidirectional Care in Filipino Families Valerie Francisco 6. Transnationalism and Remittances: The Double-edged Position of Transmigrant Women Engaged in the Domestic Service Sector Patience Elabor-Idemudia 7. Mothering Has No Borders: The Transnational Kinship Networks of Undocumented Jamaican Domestic Workers in Canada Susan M. Brigham 8. Transnational Motherhood: Constructing Intergenerational Relations Between Filipina Migrant Workers and Their Children Rina Cohen Part III: Constructing Transnational Cultural Identities 9. Living Up to Expectations: 2nd and 1.5-Generation Immigrant Students' Pursuit of University Education Leanne Taylor and Carl E. James 10. Family, Religion, and the Re-territorialization of Culture within the South Asian Diaspora Lina Samuel 11. Transnational Activism: An Asian Canadian Case Xiaoping Li Part IV: Contesting Hegemonic Discourses and Reshaping Transnational Social Spaces 12. Structuring Transnationalism: The Mothering Discourse and the Educational Project Ann Kim 13. Producing Refugees and Trafficked Persons: Women, Unaccompanied Minors and Discourses of Criminalized Victimhood Hijin Park 14. Field Correspondence: Exploring the Roots of the Transnational Habitus Christine Hughes 15. Migrant Networks: Peruvian Women (Re)Shaping Social Spaces in Madrid Felipe Rubio Contributors Index

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Book SynopsisThe Parent Track provides an in-depth understanding of parenting in academia, from diverse perspectivesâgender, age, race/ethnicity, marital status, sexual orientationâand at different phases of a parent's academic career. This collection not only arrives at a comprehensive understanding of parenthood and academia; it reveals the shifting ideologies surrounding the challenges of negotiating work and family balance in this context. Earlier research on parenting has documented the ways in which women and men experience, and subsequently negotiate, their roles as parents in the context of the workplace and the home. Particular attention has been paid to the negotiation of familial and childcare responsibilities, the division of labour, the availability of family-friendly policies, social constructions of motherhood and fatherhood, power relations, and gender roles and inequality. Studies on the experience of parenthood within the context of academia, however, have lacked diversity and failed to provide qualitative accounts from scholars of all genders at varying points in their academic careers who have, or are planning to have, children. This book addresses that gap.Trade Review"If finding work-life balance in academia is, at the best of times, a stretch, then finding work-life balance as caregivers to both classrooms and children seems a near-impossibility. The essays in this collection walk the line between realism and despair, and I found myself nodding in recognition at some of the impossible demands that both family and academia place on us as individuals. I laughed at the rueful self-deprecation of the authors as they acknowledge their own failures to walk those lines well. I felt the pull of the academy's imperative to produce alongside the affective pull of my home and the people in it. And yet, somehow, these essays brought both comfort and hope. Reading them felt both affirming and galvanizing." - Erin Wunker, Acadia University, author of Notes from a Feminist Killjoy: Essays on Everyday Life (2016)The Parent Track is a generous, kind-hearted invitation to join the ongoing conversations that academics have about the strains, challenges, and triumphs that parenting brings to a scholarly life. By turns funny, sad, vulnerable, impassioned, and, perhaps above all, compassionate, the contributors to this volume offer readers personal and professional insights that we benefit from hearing. I encourage you to listen to this book's meditations on what happens when parenting and academia collide. - Kit Dobson, Mount Royal University, author of Transnational Canadas (WLU Press, 2009)Table of ContentsOn Overlaps and Bleeds: A Foreword / Amber E. Kinser Preface: Pregnant publications pause: Pursuing motherhood and the tenure track / Elizabeth Koblyk Introduction: Parenting as a Choice or Dilemma / Christina DeRoche and Ellie D. Berger Part One: Foundational Narratives Unanswered and Lingering Questions / Christina DeRoche WorkâFamily Balance?: A Challenging Yet Rewarding Journey through Gendered Academia / Ellie D. Berger Part Two: Making the Big Decision Conversations with Women: Mothers and Academics / Erin Careless Academia, My Mother and Me: Reflections on Intergenerational Emotional Geographies of Academic Parenting / Sara L. Jackson Patchwork Academia / Sarah Milmine Motherhood and Graduate Studies: The Untold Stories of Summer Residency / Melissa Corrente Iâve Been to Me / Jennifer Barnett Part Three: Parenting within Academia: Friend or Foe? Fatherhood and the Ph.D.: Time Management, Perfectionism, and the Question of Value / Geoff Salomons Going In and Coming Out: Understanding Ourselves as Mama Scholars / Lisa J. Starr and Kathleen M. Bortolin Longing to Belong: Parenting and Self Realization within Academia / Ilka Luyt âDad and Mom Do Not Want to Get Zeroesâ: Parenting in Academia / Mildred Tsitsi Masimira Of Diapers and Comprehensives: A Feminist Exploration of Graduate-Student-Mothering in the Academy / Anita Jack-Davies He Told Me Babies Sleep: Expectations and Realities about Maternity Leave Productivity / Tarah Brookfield Legacy and Vulnerability: Queer Parenting in the Academy / Sarah R. Pickett Surviving Parenthood and Academia: Two Professionals Striving to Maintain Work-Life Balance / Rose Ricciardelli and Stephen Czarnuch Parent-Student, Student-Parent: A Tale of Two Roles / Kevin Black Part Four: Ongoing Negotiation in Academia Navigating Role Conflict in Pursuit of an Academic Career: A.k.a. âYou will get used to itâ / Jane E. Barker Engaging Academia as the Nest Empties / Timothy Sibbald Juggling Fatherhood, Child Disability, and Academia / John Beaton Hopeful Intrusions: Moments as Both a Dad and a Professor / David Long A Bridge Too Far? The Elephant in the Ivory Tower: Parenting and The Tenure Track / John Hoben Baby Step by Baby Step: That Was the Way to Do It! / Michelann Parr About the Authors Index

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