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While religious communities often stress the universal nature of their beliefs, it remains true that people choose to worship alongside those they identify with most easily. Multiethnic churches are rare in the United States, but as American attitudes toward diversity change, so too does the appeal of a church that offers diversity. Joining such a community, however, is uncomfortable — worshippers must literally cross the barriers of ethnic difference by entering the religious space of the ethnically “other”. Using the story of one multiethnic congregation in Southern California, this book examines what it means to confront the challenges in forming a religious community across ethnic divisions and attracting a more varied membership.

The relationship between the Gospel of John and the Gospel of Thomas has become a hotly debated issue, with several scholars arguing that John and Thomas are gospels in conflict. The first part of this book argues that the two gospels were written about the same time, but without knowledge of each other. Their authors drew upon similar Jewish and early Christian traditions independently from each other. The second part is devoted to the enigmatic ‘disciple Jesus loved’ in the Gospel of John, arguing that this disciple was created not only to authenticate this gospel, but also to replace the brothers of Jesus. Hence, this figure was developed in the context of a conflict, but that conflict was not related to Thomasine Christianity but to Jewish Christianity.

This book assesses the role of local worship communities — churches, mosques, temples, and others — in promoting civic engagement among recent immigrants to the United States. The product of a three-year study of immigrant worship communities in the Washington, D.C. area, the study looked at churches, mosques, temples, and other communities of immigrants from Korea, China, India, West Africa, the Muslim world, and El Salvador. The researchers surveyed 200 of these communities and studied twenty in depth. Communities vary widely in how much they build social capital, provide social services to immigrants, develop the civic skills of members, and shape immigrants' identities. Local leadership and group characteristics much more than ethnic origin or religious tradition shape the level and kind of civic engagement that the communities foster. Particularly, where leaders are civically engaged, they provide personal and organizational links to the wider American society and promote civic engagement by members. Homeland causes and a strong sense of religious and ethnic identity, far from alienating immigrants from American society, promote higher levels of civic engagement in immigrant communities.

What is the ethical basis of democracy? And what reasons do we have to go along with democratic decisions even when we disagree with them? And when do we have reason to say that we may justly ignore democratic decisions? These questions must be answered if we are to have answers to some of the most important questions facing our global community, which include whether there is a human right to democracy and whether we must attempt to spread democracy throughout the globe. This book provides a philosophical account of the moral foundations of democracy and of liberalism. It shows how democracy and basic liberal rights are grounded in the principle of public equality, which tells us that in the establishment of law and policy we must treat persons as equals in ways that they can see as being treated as equals. The principle of public equality is shown to be the fundamental principle of social justice. This account enables us to understand the nature and roles of adversarial politics and public deliberation in political life. It gives an account of the grounds of the authority of democracy. It also shows when the authority of democracy runs out. It shows how the violations of democratic and liberal rights are beyond the legitimate authority of democracy and how the creation of persistent minorities in a democratic society, and the failure to ensure a basic minimum for all persons, weaken the legitimate authority of democracy.

Offers a detailed critical analysis of the ideal of ‘community’ in politics. Traces elements of the idea of community in a number of social, philosophical, and political contexts over the last century, exploring how these have been and continue to be articulated in recent political and public policy debates. ‘Community’ is invoked as a justification for reorganization of state institutions, as the source of care and support for individuals, and as an entity that is valuable in its own right and must therefore be sustained and defended. In community development, community action, community care and community politics, the tensions and contradictions within the concept are invariably felt. Community is both inclusive and exclusive, both organized and unstructured, both hierarchical and egalitarian. The book argues that analysis of the concept ‘community’ reveals the role of ideas and ideals in shaping political action, the barriers to the realization of community in practical contexts, and ultimately the untenability of the ideal itself.

This work argues for a liberal account of multiculturalism, which draws on a liberalism of fear, like that articulated by Judith Shklar and inspired by Montesquieu. Liberalism should not be centrally concerned either with preserving or with transcending cultural communities, practices, and identities. Rather, it should focus on mitigating evils such as interethnic civil wars, cruel practices internal to cultural communities, and state violence against ethnic minorities. This ‘multiculturalism of fear’ must be grounded in the realities of ethnic politics and ethnic conflict. It must therefore take seriously the importance, which persons feel their ethnic identities and cultural practices to have, without falling into a celebration of cultural belonging. Levy argues against nationalist and multicultural theories that accord significant moral weight to cultural communities as such. Yet he also insists that the challenges of life in a multicultural world cannot be met with appeals to cosmopolitanism, with attempts to deny the importance that particularist identities and practices have to individual persons and to social life. The book applies the multiculturalism of fear to a variety of policy problems confronting multi‐ethnic states. These include the regulation of sexist practices internal to cultural communities, secession and national self‐determination, land rights, customary law, and the symbols and words used by the state, including official apologies. It draws on cases from diverse states such as Australia, Canada, Israel, India, South Africa, and the US.

This book is a collection of 11 essays written from a perspective that is at once sympathetic towards, and critical of, liberalism and liberal political philosophy. The essays explore the capacity of liberal thought, and of the moral traditions on which it draws, to accommodate a variety of challenges posed by the changing circumstances of the modern world. Scheffler considers how, in an era of rapid globalization, we can best conceive of the responsibilities of individual agents and the normative significance of people's diverse commitments and allegiances. Some of the essays are primarily concerned with the role of individual desert in liberal theory. Others focus on the nature of people's special responsibilities to their families, communities, and societies, and assess the compatibility of such responsibilities with liberal ideas of justice and equality. Still others deal with the possibility of developing a liberal conception of justice that acknowledges the normative significance of social and global interdependencies, while reaffirming the values of personal life and the continuing importance of ideas of individual responsibility.

Today there are more Muslims living in diaspora than at any time in history. This situation was not envisioned by Islamic law, which makes no provision for permanent as opposed to transient diasporic communities. Western Muslims are therefore faced with the necessity of developing an Islamic law for Muslim communities living in non-Muslim societies. This book explores the development of new forms of Islamic law and legal reasoning in the U.S. and Great Britain, as well as Muslims encountering Anglo-American common law and its unfamiliar commitments to pluralism and participation, and to gender, family, and identity. The underlying context is the aftermath of 9/11 and 7/7, the two attacks that arguably recast the way the West views Muslims and Islam. Islamic jurisprudence, the book notes, contains a number of references to various “abodes” and a number of interpretations of how Muslims should conduct themselves within those worlds. These include the dar al harb (house of war), dar al kufr (house of unbelievers), and dar al salam (house of peace). How Islamic law interprets these determines the debates that take shape in and around Islamic legality in these spaces. The book's analysis emphasizes the multiplicities of law, and the tensions between secularism and religiosity. It offers a close examination of the emergence of a contingent legal consciousness shaped by the exceptional circumstances of being Muslim in the U.S. and Britain in the 1990s and the first decade of the 21st century.

Many have long suspected that when America takes up arms it is a rich man's war, but a poor man's fight. Despite these concerns about social inequality in military sacrifice, the hard data to validate such claims has been kept out of public view. The Casualty Gap renews the debate over unequal sacrifice by bringing to light new evidence on the inequality dimensions of American wartime casualties. It demonstrates unequivocally that since the conclusion of World War II, communities at the lower end of the socioeconomic ladder have borne a disproportionate share of the human costs of war. Moreover, they show for the first time that when Americans are explicitly confronted with evidence of this inequality, they become markedly less supportive of the nation's war efforts. The Casualty Gap also uncovers how wartime deaths affect entire communities. Citizens who see the high price war exacts on friends and neighbors become more likely to oppose war and to vote against the political leaders waging it than residents of low-casualty communities. Moreover, extensive empirical evidence connects higher community casualty rates in Korea and Vietnam to lower levels of trust in government, interest in politics, and electoral and non-electoral participation. In this way, the casualty gap threatens the very vibrancy of American democracy by depressing civic engagement in high-casualty communities for years after the last gun falls silent.

Symbiotic relationships between plants and fungi are extremely common in nature, ranging from highly parasitic to closely mutualistic. Grasses, which are common and ecologically important components of many ecosystems worldwide, are often infected by clandestine, endosymbiotic fungi that grow within their stems, leaves, and seeds. This book attempts to synthesize the accumulating literature on grass-endophyte symbioses within a modern ecological and evolutionary framework. Topics covered include effects of endophytes on host growth, physiology, reproduction, and competitive ability in both agronomically important forages such as tall fescue and perennial ryegrass and in native grasses. Also, endophyte-host interactions are explored in relation to abiotic (e.g., drought) and biotic stresses (e.g., herbivory). Possible effects of endophyte infection on community and ecosystem-level processes are discussed. The ecological outcomes and coevolutionary dynamics of grass-endophyte associations are shown to be highly contingent on host and endophyte genotypes as well as environmental conditions. In addition to synthesizing much of the current literature on grass-endophyte interactions in natural and managed habitats, this book highlights gaps in current knowledge of specific aspects of symbiosis ecology and suggests many avenues for future research. Endophytic fungi are common in plants yet the nature of these interactions and how they cascade upward to communities and ecosystems are largely unknown.

This book is a collection of nineteen chapters where summaries of major ecological and evolutionary questions have been asked and responded using dragonflies and damselflies as study subjects. Each chapter is written by a well-respected scientist. The topics covered are: demography, population and community ecology, life-history, distribution, abundance, migration, conservation, applied use, predator-prey interactions, mating isolation, lifetime reproductive success estimates, reproduction vs. survival, parasite-host relationships, cryptic female choice, sexual conflict, territoriality, sex-limited colour polymorphisms, sexual size dimorphism, flight performance, and wing evolution. Each chapter puts forward new data and hypothesis in relation to further ecological and evolutionary questions.

The purpose of the book is to provide researchers with a framework to conduct research in a culturally sensitive manner with individuals, families, and communities in diverse cultural settings in the United States, as well as in a global context within the context of three aims: (1) To understand and describe the nature and extent to which a particular problem occurs; (2) To understand the etiology or potential factors associated with the occurrence of a particular problem; (3) To evaluate programs or interventions designed to ameliorate or eliminate a problem. For each of these three aims, applications of different research methods with various population groups are discussed with considerable detail. The work presented falls into different sides of the emic–etic continuum, with some studies taking a more emic perspective (i.e., Chapter 2, a mixed methods study with American Indian populations), others presenting more of an etic approach (i.e., Chapter 3, a multicountry study of drug use in Central America), and yet others presenting an emic–etic distinction that is less salient (i.e., Chapters 4–6, a longitudinal studies of ecological factors and drug use in Santiago, Chile; a longitudinal study of ecological factors and PTSD in the City of Detroit; and a randomized clinical trial and community-based participatory research project both also conducted in Detroit). Two central themes that guided this work are that culture is not static, rather it is fluid and changing, and that cross-cultural researchers should avoid making sweeping generalizations that risk taking on essentialist characteristics. The book concludes with a call for anyone conducting cross-cultural research to include an intersectionality lens, one that encompasses a broader range of multiple identities, into their work.

Ecologists, epidemiologists, and evolutionary biologists are increasingly aware of the significance of parasites in the study of ecosystems. This book provides a summary of the issues involved as well as an overview of the possibilities offered by this research topic, using well-documented case-studies to illustrate the main trends and prospects in this area. This is the first book devoted to the comprehension of both the roles and consequences of pathogens in ecosystems.

Randomized controlled trials (RCTs) have been considered a gold standard for health and social service research for generations of professionals. However, even as methods have developed to accommodate a large number of professional perspectives and fields of intervention, few have adequately addressed the complex nature of RCTs conducted in community settings. In this book, Drs. Solomon, Cavanaugh, and Draine draw on their extensive experience conducting randomized controlled trials to compile a practical and accessible guide to RCTs in community-based practice settings. While providing a detailed, common-sense manual, the authors address numerous design and implementation challenges that are unique to practice settings, which are less-controlled environments than the typical clinic or consultation room. Such issues include: community and agency buy-in to support collaboration, addressing confounds to internal and external validity, and fidelity with complex interventions. These challenges are addressed through a mix of qualitative and quantitative methods that have supported RCT research in community-based settings. This pragmatic guide provides a thorough review of the basic ingredients for working through each step of the RCT process. It offers encouragement and support to enter this richly rewarding and challenging research area.

Needs assessments are a vital part of an organization's planning, service provision, and evaluation process. Social and human service agencies contemplating starting a new program, expanding an existing one, or reviewing existing services ought to conduct a needs assessment. This book is designed to help social workers assess macro problems within their communities and agencies. It provides the essentials needed to understand various ways to conceptualize need and offers practical advice about selecting an appropriate data collection design that incorporates considerations of purpose, stakeholders, and expertise. Two “applied” chapters illustrate how needs assessments can be employed within an agency to identify areas for new staff training, and across a state to obtain an accurate picture of the extent of substance abuse prevention and treatment needs.

This book is a study of the relationship of oral tradition to written sources among different Jewish groups that thrived in Palestine from the later Second Temple period into Late Antiquity. Its main concern is to track the emerging awareness, within diverse Palestinian scribal groups, of the distinction between written books and the oral traditions upon which they were based or in light of which they were interpreted. The thesis holds that during the Second Temple period in particular, diverse Jewish scribal communities –such as the composers of Jewish pseudepigrapha, the Dead Sea community, and the Pharisees – certainly employed oral traditions in their literary and interpretive work. But they did not appeal to oral tradition as an authoritative source of knowledge. This was reserved for written books regarded as prophetic transmissions from antiquity. The emergence of a coherent ideology of oral tradition as a kind of revelation comparable to that of Scripture is associated with the consolidation of third century rabbinic Judaism. The book argues that the rabbinic ideology of Oral Torah – “Torah in the Mouth” – is, in great measure, a legitimation of the institution of rabbinic discipleship, which depended upon the primacy of face‐to‐face relationships, unmediated by the written word.

The relationship between individuals and communities — all manner of communities, but especially the state — is a central preoccupation of property theory. Across a broad range of property thought — from utilitarian to Lockean to Hegelian — scholars have expended enormous effort explaining what owners can do with their property and the extent to which the community or the state can participate in those decisions. Discussions of property rights, from whatever perspective, necessarily reflect ideas about the proper domain and limits of individual and community power. Property stands so squarely at the intersection between the individual and community because systems of property are always the creation of some community. Moreover, systems of property have as their subject matter the allocation among community members of rights and duties with respect to resources that human beings need in order to survive and flourish. These allocative decisions are crucially important both to individuals, owners and non-owners alike, and to the community as a whole. In other words, whenever we discuss property, we are unavoidably discussing the architecture of community and of the individual's place within it. Even though the relationship between individuals and community stands at the conceptual center of property theory, the normative theories of community underlying discussions of property are frequently left implicit. This book aims to remedy this deficiency. With essays by property theorists from five different countries, it addresses various facets of the intersection between property and community.