The promise of upward mobility—the notion that everyone has the chance to get ahead—is one of this country's most cherished ideals, a hallmark of the American Dream. But in today's volatile labor market, the tradition of upward mobility for all may be a thing of the past. In a competitive world of deregulated markets and demanding shareholders, many firms that once offered the opportunity for advancement to workers have remade themselves as leaner enterprises with more flexible work forces. Divergent Paths examines the prospects for upward mobility of workers in this changed economic landscape. Based on an innovative comparison of the fortunes of two generations of young, white men over the course of their careers, Divergent Paths documents the divide between the upwardly mobile and the growing numbers of workers caught in the low-wage trap. The first generation entered the labor market in the late 1960s, a time of prosperity and stability in the U.S. labor market, while the second generation started work in the early 1980s, just as the new labor market was being born amid recession, deregulation, and the weakening of organized labor. Tracking both sets of workers over time, the authors show that the new labor market is more volatile and less forgiving than the labor market of the 1960s and 1970s. Jobs are less stable, and the penalties for failing to find a steady employer are more severe for most workers. At the top of the job pyramid, the new nomads—highly credentialed, well-connected workers—regard each short-term project as a springboard to a better-paying position, while at the bottom, a growing number of retail workers, data entry clerks, and telemarketers, are consigned to a succession of low-paying, dead-end jobs. While many commentators dismiss public anxieties about job insecurity as overblown, Divergent Paths carefully documents hidden trends in today's job market which confirm many of the public's fears. Despite the celebrated job market of recent years, the authors show that the old labor market of the 1960s and 1970s propelled more workers up the earnings ladder than does today's labor market. Divergent Paths concludes with a discussion of policy strategies, such as regional partnerships linking corporate, union, government, and community resources, which may help repair the career paths that once made upward mobility a realistic ambition for all American workers.

This book is unique in adopting a family history approach to Irish immigrants in nineteenth century Britain. It shows that the family was central to the migrants’ lives and identities. The techniques of family and digital history are used for the first time to reveal the paths followed by a representative body of Irish immigrant families, using the town of Stafford in the West Midlands as a case study. The book contains vital evidence about the lives of ordinary families. In the long term many intermarried with the local population, but others moved away and some simply died out. The book investigates what forces determined the paths they followed and why their ultimate fates were so varied. A fascinating picture is revealed of family life and gender relations in nineteenth-century England which will appeal to scholars of Irish history, social history, genealogy and the history of the family.

R.M. Berry -- Debra Di Blasi -- Percival Everett -- Thalia Field -- Renee Gladman -- Bhanu Kapil -- Michael Martone -- Carole Maso -- Joseph McElroy -- Christina Milletti -- Lance Olsen -- Alan Singer -- Steve Tomasula

This is a rapidly developing field to which the author is a leading contributor New methods in quantum dynamics and computational techniques, with applications to interesting physical problems, are brought together in this book Useful to both students and researchers

Megan M. Holland examines how high schools structure different pathways that lead to very different college destinations based on race and class. She finds that racial and class inequalities are reproduced through unequal access to key sources of information, even among students in the same school and even in schools with well-established college-going cultures.

The application of quantum mechanics to many-particle systems has been an active area of research in recent years as researchers have looked for ways to tackle difficult problems in this area. The quantum trajectory method provides an efficient computational technique for solving both stationary and time-evolving states, encompassing a large area o

The question of why some countries have democratic regimes and others do not is a significant issue in comparative politics. This book looks at India and Pakistan, two countries with clearly contrasting political regime histories, and presents an argument on why India is a democracy and Pakistan is not. Focusing on the specificities and the nuances of each state system, the author examines in detail the balance of authority and power between popular or elected politicians and the state apparatus through substantial historical analysis. India and Pakistan are both large, multi-religious and multi-lingual countries sharing a geographic and historical space that in 1947, when they became independent from British rule, gave them a virtually indistinguishable level of both extreme poverty and inequality. All of those factors militate against democracy, according to most theories, and in Pakistan democracy did indeed fail very quickly after Independence. It has only been restored as a façade for military-bureaucratic rule for brief periods since then. In comparison, after almost thirty years of democracy, India had a brush with authoritarian rule, in the 1975-76 Emergency, and some analysts were perversely reassured that the India exception had been erased. But instead, after a momentous election in 1977, democracy has become stronger over the last thirty years. Providing a comparative analysis of the political systems of India and Pakistan as well as a historical overview of the two countries, this textbook constitutes essential reading for students of South Asian History and Politics. It is a useful and balanced introduction to the politics of India and Pakistan.

Every human sense becomes the basis of a sensuous trajectory that emanates from the body. In this book, noted authors, scholars and artists take up a wide range of topics, bringing to the fore the uniquely complex and diverse ways in which the body interacts with the experiential dimensions that correspond to such a trajectory, and in which the body also intersects and coalesces with the dimensions of other such trajectories. The topics treated here are reflective of the broad and diverse backgrounds of the contributors. Each sets out to call attention to the lived body in insightful and meaningful ways, highlighting the connection between the body and its sensorial trajectories. Collectively, the chapters of this book also serve to call attention to aesthetically lived experiences associated with the phenomenon of synesthesia, as well as to the role of sensorial trajectories in a wide range of experiential psychic states ranging from the ecstatic to the melancholic. In this book, readers are offered a greater appreciation of this thought-provoking, informative and compelling subject of the human senses and related sensuous trajectories. It will be of particular value to those interested in aesthetics and the arts, especially from cross-cultural and intercultural perspectives. More broadly, as a study of the body’s relationship to the natural world, it will also be of value to those interested in philosophy and the arts, phenomenological studies, cultural studies and the humanities in general.

Is the 'natural resource curse' destiny? Are different ways to link natural resources and economic development? Using two particular regions as case studies, this edited collection examines the divergent development paths of natural resource rich countries over the past two centuries. Bolivia, Chile and Peru are neighbour states with a common history and are globally known by their mining endowments. Norway and Sweden have also a strong common history, and different natural resource endowments (forestry, mining and fishing) are essential to understand their current economic success. By comparing natural resource management in the long run in these two divergent regions, this book can help rethink how developing countries can better take advantage of their natural resource endowments. Specifically, the book examines the interaction between natural resources and different key determinants of long-term development: trade, fiscal policy, sustainability, human capital accumulation and business strategies.

The $3x+1$ problem, or Collatz problem, concerns the following seemingly innocent arithmetic procedure applied to integers: If an integer $x$ is odd then “multiply by three and add one”, while if it is even then “divide by two”. The $3x+1$ problem asks whether, starting from any positive integer, repeating this procedure over and over will eventually reach the number 1. Despite its simple appearance, this problem is unsolved. Generalizations of the problem are known to be undecidable, and the problem itself is believed to be extraordinarily difficult. This book reports on what is known on this problem. It consists of a collection of papers, which can be read independently of each other. The book begins with two introductory papers, one giving an overview and current status, and the second giving history and basic results on the problem. These are followed by three survey papers on the problem, relating it to number theory and dynamical systems, to Markov chains and ergodic theory, and to logic and the theory of computation. The next paper presents results on probabilistic models for behavior of the iteration. This is followed by a paper giving the latest computational results on the problem, which verify its truth for $x < 5.4 cdot 10^{18}$. The book also reprints six early papers on the problem and related questions, by L. Collatz, J. H. Conway, H. S. M. Coxeter, C. J. Everett, and R. K. Guy, each with editorial commentary. The book concludes with an annotated bibliography of work on the problem up to the year 2000.