In this ethnography of the everyday life of contemporary Korea, Denise Lett argues that South Korea’s contemporary urban middle class not only exhibits upper-class characteristics but also that this reflects a culturally inherited disposition of Koreans to seek high status. Lett shows that Koreans have adapted traditional ways of asserting high status to modern life, and analyzes strategies for claiming high status in terms of occupation, family, lifestyle, education, and marriage.

The Psychology of Social Status outlines the foundational insights, key advances, and developments that have been made in the field thus far. The goal of this volume is to provide an in-depth exploration of the psychology of human status, by reviewing each of the major lines of theoretical and empirical work that have been conducted in this vein. Organized thematically, the volume covers the following areas: - An overview of several prominent overarching theoretical perspectives that have shaped much of the current research on social status. - Examination of the personality, demographic, situational, emotional, and cultural underpinnings of status attainment, addressing questions about why and how people attain status. - Identification of the intra- and inter-personal benefits and costs of possessing and lacking status. - Emerging research on the biological and bodily manifestation of status attainment - A broad review of available research methods for measuring and experimentally manipulating social status ​A key component of this volume is its interdisciplinary focus. Research on social status cuts across a variety of academic fields, including psychology, sociology, anthropology, organizational science others; thus the chapter authors are drawn from a similarly wide-range of disciplines. Encompassing the current state of knowledge in a thriving and proliferating field, The Psychology of Social Status is a fascinating and comprehensive resource for researchers, students, policy-makers, and others interested in learning about the complex nature of social status, hierarchy, dominance, and power.

Although academics have never lacked for critics, publications on the profession tend to be either popularized polemics, which are engaging but misleading, or scholarly analyses, which are intellectually responsible but of little interest to anyone but specialists. In Pursuit of Knowledge offers an alternative: a unique portrait of academic life that should appeal to both experts and a general audience. Drawing on a wide range of disciplines, including higher education, history, law, sociology, economics, and literature, the book focuses on the ways in which the pursuit of status has undermined the pursuit of knowledge. Deborah Rhode argues that both individual scholars and institutions in higher education are caught in an arms race of reputation. The result has been to skew priorities in scholarship, erode commitments to teaching, compromise efforts of public intellectuals, and impede effectiveness in administration. The book offers several solutions to counter these pervasive problems in our research institutions. Rhode makes a case for increasing accountability and realigning reward systems. She argues that what is needed is a greater sense of responsibility among universities and their faculties to narrow the gap between academic ideals and practices. In Pursuit of Knowledge is meticulously researched and elegantly written. It is also exceptionally entertaining in its use of quotations culled from over a hundred academic novels, including works by Kingsley Amis, Saul Bellow, David Lodge, and C.P. Snow.(For example, from P.G. Wodehouse's The Girl in Blue, "The Agee womantold us for three quarters of an hourhow she came to write her beastly book, when a simple apology was all that was required.") The result is a highly readable but also deeply reflective analysis of the academic profession.

A master class in achieving and sustaining excellence, even in the most challenging of times—from the host of The Learning Leader Show and author of Welcome to Management Millions of business professionals aspire to become effective leaders. But for hardworking, growth-oriented top performers who are always looking to improve and for rigorous thinkers who are never quite satisfied with the status quo, the true goal is the lifelong pursuit of excellence. Leadership advisor Ryan Hawk has interviewed hundreds of the most productive achievers in the world on his acclaimed podcast, The Learning Leader Show, to discover the best practices for pursuing and sustaining excellence. He found a pattern of uncommon behaviors that set these stellar individuals apart. By following their examples, you will learn how to: Commit to yourself and the process―and build purpose, focus, and discipline Develop resilience to face new challenges―and find inspiration for the long haul Seek guidance―and lead others to new heights Meet the moment―and make the most of every opportunity to excel Create a trusted group of advisors―and become a lifelong learner Packed with specific actions to take, experiments to run, and tools to analyze what works best for you, this uncompromisingly practical guide will inspire, challenge, support, and empower you to become your very best. Put mindsets into action and turn behaviors into habits with The Pursuit of Excellence.

Employees with valuable skills and a sense of their own worth can make their jobs, pay, perks, and career opportunities different from those of their coworkers in subtle and not-so-subtle ways. Work at home arrangements, flexible hours, special projects - personally negotiated arrangements like these can be a valuable source of flexibility and personal satisfaction, but at the risk of creating inequality and resentment by other employees. This book shows how such individual arrangements can be made fair and acceptable to coworkers, and beneficial to both the employee and the employer. Written by the world's leading expert on the subject, I-deals: Idiosyncratic Deals Employees Bargain for Themselves challenges traditional notions that standardization is the way to create workplace justice. The book is filled with real examples, cases, and supporting data. It expands conventional ideas of workplace fairness, provides details on the power that workers influence over their employment conditions, and spells out how employees and employers can channel this influence into mutually beneficial innovations. The book is "must reading" for students and scholars in the fields of human resource management and organizational behavior, and for managers and employees everywhere.

Though the fall of the Soviet Union opened the way for states in central and eastern Europe to join the world of market-oriented Western democracies, the expected transitions have not been as easy, common, or smooth as sometimes perceived. Rachel A. Epstein investigates how liberal ideas and practices are embedded in transitioning societies and finds that success or failure depends largely on creating a social context in which incentives held out by international institutions are viewed as symbols of an emerging Western identity in the affected country. Epstein first explains how a liberal worldview and institutions like the European Union, World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization go hand-in-hand and why Western nations assume that a broad and incremental program of incentives to join will encourage formerly authoritarian states to reform their political and economic systems. Using Hungary, Poland, Romania, and the Ukraine as case studies, she demonstrates the limits of conditionality in the face of national social perceptions and elucidates the three key points around which a consensus within the state must emerge before international institutions can expect liberalization: domestic officials must be uncertain about how changing policies will affect their interests; the status of international and domestic institutions must not be in jeopardy; and the proposed polices must seem credible. In making her case, Epstein cleverly bridges the gap between the rationalist and constructivist schools of thought. Offering new data on and fresh interpretations of reforming central bank policies, privatizing banks with foreign capital, democratizing civil-military relations, and denationalizing defense policy, In Pursuit of Liberalism extends well beyond the scope of previous book-length studies.

The Declaration of Independence claims that individuals need liberty to pursue happiness, but provides little guidance on the “what” of happiness. Happiness studies and liberal theory are incomplete guides. Happiness studies offer insights into what makes people happy but happiness policy risks becoming doctrinaire. Liberal theory is better on personal liberty, but weak on the “what” of happiness. My argument is that American novelists are surer guides on the pursuit of happiness. Treated as political thinkers, my book offers a close reading of four American novelists, Tom Wolfe, Walker Percy, Edith Wharton, and Nathaniel Hawthorne, and their critique of the pursuit of happiness. With a critical and friendly eye, they present the shortcomings of pursuing happiness in a liberal nation but also present alternatives and correctives possible in America. Our novelists point us toward each other in friendship as our greatest resource to guide us towards happiness.

ÿ In pursuit of societal harmony: Reviewing the experiences and approaches in officially monolingual and officially multilingual countries contains a selection of papers on language legislation that were presented at the International Conference on Language Policy in Multicultural and Multilingual Settings, Mandalay, Myanmar, 8-11 February 2016. The editors, both members of the International Academy of Language Law / Acad‚mie internationale de droit linguistique, brought together presentations that deal with language legislation and practices in Europe, Asia, Africa and North America. The contributions show that the post-communist trend in language policy has been vastly represented by attempts to eliminate the language, and even the cultural legacy, of the formerly hegemonic nation/s in countries emerging after the collapse of the system. In doing so officials in these countries tend to link the harmonisation of a diverse society with the idea of homogenising its population, and prioritising the cultural legacy of the titular nation. In contrast, some post-colonial countries are more tolerant of the language of their colonisers but consequently do not sufficiently promote the institutionalisation of their indigenous languages.ÿ Furthermore, the absence of visible efforts to follow any legal pattern in this regard often result in a communication gap between government and the various communities. In pursuit of societal harmony therefore challenges from different perspectives the populist notion of ?one nation-one language?, revealing the inherent shortcomings of attempting to establish unity through something as abstract as language without constructively addressing the actual, and mostly gross, inequalities and resulting divisions in many societies. The contributions to this Proceedings suggest that by pursuing social harmony through an alleged common language many countries unwittingly emphasise social inequalities and division and even cultivate the basis for resistance. Scholars that work in the field of language legislation and the sociology of language and readers interested in comparative studies will find the collection of papers presented in this Proceedings an interesting read.ÿ

In pursuit of societal harmony: Reviewing the experiences and approaches in officially monolingual and officially multilingual countries contains a selection of papers on language legislation that were presented at the International Conference on Language Policy in Multicultural and Multilingual Settings, Mandalay, Myanmar, 8-11 February 2016. The editors, both members of the International Academy of Language Law / Académie internationale de droit linguistique, brought together presentations that deal with language legislation and practices in Europe, Asia, Africa and North America. The contributions show that the post-communist trend in language policy has been vastly represented by attempts to eliminate the language, and even the cultural legacy, of the formerly hegemonic nation/s in countries emerging after the collapse of the system. In doing so officials in these countries tend to link the harmonisation of a diverse society with the idea of homogenising its population, and prioritising the cultural legacy of the titular nation. In contrast, some post-colonial countries are more tolerant of the language of their colonisers but consequently do not sufficiently promote the institutionalisation of their indigenous languages. Furthermore, the absence of visible efforts to follow any legal pattern in this regard often result in a communication gap between government and the various communities.

This book presents and evaluates theoretical approaches to 'pluralist jurisprudence' and assesses the viability of theorising law extending beyond the state.