Search results for ""Author Susan L. Woodward""

In the first political analysis of unemployment in a socialist country, Susan Woodward argues that the bloody conflicts that are destroying Yugoslavia stem not so much from ancient ethnic hatreds as from the political and social divisions created by a failed socialist program to prevent capitalist joblessness. Under Communism the concept of socialist unemployment was considered an oxymoron; when it appeared in postwar Yugoslavia, it was dismissed as illusory or as a transitory consequence of Yugoslavia's unorthodox experiments with worker-managed firms. In Woodward's view, however, it was only a matter of time before countries in the former Soviet bloc caught up with Yugoslavia, confronting the same unintended consequences of economic reforms required to bring socialist states into the world economy. By 1985, Yugoslavia's unemployment rate had risen to 15 percent. How was it that a labor-oriented government managed to tolerate so clear a violation of the socialist commitment to full employment? Proposing a politically based model to explain this paradox, Woodward analyzes the ideology of economic growth, and shows that international constraints, rather than organized political pressures, defined government policy. She argues that unemployment became politically "invisible," owing to its redefinition in terms of guaranteed subsistence and political exclusion, with the result that it corrupted and ultimately dissolved the authority of all political institutions. Forced to balance domestic policies aimed at sustaining minimum standards of living and achieving productivity growth against the conflicting demands of the world economy and national security, the leadership inadvertently recreated the social relations of agrarian communities within a postindustrial society.

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Introduction to Biomes is both a standalone summary to the concept of biomes and an introduction to the 8-volume series Greenwood Guides to Biomes of the World. The volume covers: • The biome concept and brief descriptions of vegetation, climate and distribution of the terrestrial and of the range of freshwater and aquatic biomes covered in the set. • Classifying life - how scientists discuss the taxonomic hierarchy and how it has been used to determine how to divide the world into regions based on living organisms. • The ecosystem concept - how this and other major concepts from ecology that are key to understanding biomes. • Terrestrial environments - the various climatic variables and climate types, and a discussion of our changing planet • Aquatic environments and life - how lifeforms and food chains make aquatic environments distinct from terrestrial biomes. Maps, photos, diagrams, drawings, and tables accompany the text, as do sidebars that highlight habitats, species, and ecological relationships. The volume includes a bibliography of accessible resources for further research.

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