5 Politics, Sociology related eBooks

You Don't Own Me: How Mattel v. MGA Entertainment Exposed Barbie's Dark Side by Orly Lobel
Jean-Marc F. Blanchard, "China's Maritime Silk Road Initiative and South Asia: A Political Economic Analysis of its Purposes, Perils, and Promise"
Social Synthesis: Finding Dynamic Patterns in Complex Social Systems
Dr. Nils Karlson, "Statecraft and Liberal Reform in Advanced Democracies"
R. Ahrendt, M. Ferraguto, D. Mahiet, "Music and Diplomacy from the Early Modern Era to the Present"

You Don't Own Me: How Mattel v. MGA Entertainment Exposed Barbie's Dark Side by Orly Lobel
English | November 14th, 2017 | ASIN: B06XKXD4WX, ISBN: 0393254070 | 303 Pages | EPUB | 1.11 MB
Are your ideas your own or does your employer own them? This is the question that set off the greatest toy war of our time.
When Carter Bryant began designing what would become the billion-dollar line of Bratz dolls, he was taking time off from his job at Mattel, where he designed outfits for Barbie. Later, back at Mattel, he sold his concept for Bratz to rival company MGA. Law professor Orly Lobel reveals the colorful story behind the ensuing decade-long court battle.
This entertaining and provocative work pits audacious MGA against behemoth Mattel, shows how an idea turns into a product, and explores the two different versions of womanhood, represented by traditional all-American Barbie and her defiant, anti-establishment rival-the only doll to come close to outselling her. In an era when workers may be asked to sign contracts granting their employers the rights to and income resulting from their ideas-whether conceived during work hours or on their own time-Lobel's deeply researched story is a riveting and thought-provoking contribution to the contentious debate over creativity and intellectual property.

Jean-Marc F. Blanchard, "China's Maritime Silk Road Initiative and South Asia: A Political Economic Analysis of its Purposes, Perils, and Promise"
English | ISBN: 9811052387 | 2018 | 256 pages | PDF, EPUB | 4 MB
This book brings together a diverse range of responses to China's Marine Silk Road Initiative, which proposes to redraw the map of Asia, particularly South Asia. China’s 21st Century Maritime Silk Road Initiative (MSRI) is a massive scheme to connect wide swaths of East, Southeast, South, and West Asia through a dense web of interconnected hard and soft infrastructure involving ports, roads, logistics facilities, special industrial zones, and free trade and investment agreements. This book will be invaluable for students of Chinese foreign security and foreign economic policy, those interested in South Asia including Indian foreign security and economic policy as well as Indian relations with China, those attentive to international economic developments in East and South Asia, and those interested in the political and economic situation in specific MSRI participant countries such as Pakistan, Maldives, and Sri Lanka as well as their political and economic relations with China.

Social Synthesis: Finding Dynamic Patterns in Complex Social Systems
Philip Haynes | 2017 | True PDF | ISBN: 1138208728 | 203 pages | 2 MB
How is it possible to understand society and the problems it faces? What sense can be made of the behaviour of markets and government interventions? How can citizens understand the course that their lives take and the opportunities available to them?
There has been much debate surrounding what methodology and methods are appropriate for social science research. In a larger sense, there have been differences in quantitative and qualitative approaches and some attempts to combine them. In addition, there have also been questions of the influence of competing values on all social activities versus the need to find an objective understanding. Thus, this aptly named volume strives to develop new methods through the practice of ‘social synthesis’, describing a methodology that perceives societies and economies as manifestations of highly dynamic, interactive and emergent complex systems. Furthermore, helping us to understand that an analysis of parts alone does not always lead to an informed understanding, Haynes presents to the contemporary researcher an original tool called Dynamic Pattern Synthesis (DPS) - a rigorous method that informs us about how specific complex social and economic systems adapt over time.
A timely and significant monograph, Social Synthesis will appeal to advanced undergraduate and postgraduate students, research professionals and academic researchers informed by sociology, economics, politics, public policy, social policy and social psychology.

Dr. Nils Karlson, "Statecraft and Liberal Reform in Advanced Democracies"
English | EPUB | 2017 (2018 Edition) | 195 Pages | ISBN : 3319642324 | 1 MB
This book explains how advanced democracies and welfare states can achieve welfare-enhancing, liberal institutional reform. It develops a general theory based on an extended comparative case study of Sweden and Australia over the last 25 years, and offers an in-depth contribution to the field of institutional change, explaining how to govern a country well and how to overcome different barriers to reform, such as special interests, negativity biases and media logic.
It develops the concepts of the ‘reform cycle’, ‘reform strategies’ and ‘polycentric experiential’ learning in order to explain successful reforms, and the key role of policy entrepreneurs, who introduce and develop new ideas. The book further examines why these reforms came to an end. Karlson also applies the ideas of Popperian, Kuhnian and Machiavellian reform strategies, and explains why they are needed for reform to come about.
The theory of modern statecraft presented here involves a combination of knowing w
hat and knowing how. It has the potential to be generally applicable in any advanced democracy with the ambition to improve its economy and society. This book is of interest for anyone who is concerned about budget deficits, slow growth, over regulation, lack of structural reforms and the rise of populism. It will appeal to scholars of political science, public policy and political economy.

R. Ahrendt, M. Ferraguto, D. Mahiet, "Music and Diplomacy from the Early Modern Era to the Present"
English | 2014 | ISBN: 1349500194, 1137468327 | PDF | pages: 288 | 5.3 mb
How does music shape the exercise of diplomacy, the pursuit of power, and the conduct of international relations? Drawing together international scholars with backgrounds in musicology, ethnomusicology, political science, cultural history, and communication, this volume interweaves historical, theoretical, and practical perspectives.