The authors analyze the ways in which places have been transformed through the changes taking place within them - shifts in the nature and quantity of paid and unpaid work, in social and political mobilization, in cultural and aesthetic experience and in the built environment. Using a locality study of Lancaster, they emphasize place as a decisive point in understanding social and economic changes. They consider how successfully concepts of `restructuring' explain the relation between local and global change. The book will be a major contribution to international debates on restructuring and the impact of global change on the locality. It will also be of interest to all social scientists interested in the sociology,

Since economists traditionally focus on market activities, women's non-wage labour has not been registered in works on economic development. On the other hand, women's wage labour has been described as supplementary or marginal to the household income as well as to economic development as a whole. The contributors to this collection did their research on women workers in countries from the core, the semiperiphery, and the periphery. The eight articles are introduced by Kathryn Ward, who presents a critical overview of the literature on women workers and globalization. In Ward's opinion we have to develop new definitions for some key concepts in our theories on women and work. These concepts should aim at including housework and work in the informal sector, and women's various acts of resistance. Ward also suggests new perspectives from which we should theorize about women's work in the process of global restructuring.

First published in 1999. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

The past ten years have seen local government in the UK facing two major challenges: to survive in the face of Thatcher government hostility, and to adapt to enormously powerful forces of economic restructuring which have also been encouraged by government policies. The key aspects of these changing fortunes of British towns explored in this important new book is the ability of individual localities to exercise any control over their own growth and decline. Place, Policy and Politics examines local political initiatives seeking to influence economic and social development in seven sharply contrasting localities, ranging from the outer council estates of Merseyside to the boom towns of Cheltenham and Swindon. Throughout their analysis, the contributors, drawn from a wide range of social science disciplines, address the vital questions in the debate over local policy initiatives, including: * To what extent are localities able to harness trends in the national and international economy to provide jobs and a better standard of living for their inhabitants? * Why do local authorities vary in their capacity to initiate economic policy? * To what extent do national urban and other policies inhibit or encourage their efforts? * How might central government modify its policies to facilitate the prospering of localities?

Examines how social boundaries are constructed between men and women in the work place and how these differences are grounded, constituted in and through, space, place and situated social networks.

The essays in this book provide the elements for a new theory of spatial development to explain the new socio-territorial reality produced by global restructuring in the 1970s and 1980s. The contributors all account for the contemporary territorial units by focusing on global economic dynamics and the history of particular places. The book looks at restructuring in the automobile and electronics industries; the significance of migrant labour and the informal economy; the consequences of female proletarianization in Southeast Asia; the implications for regional development of the incorporation of Mexico and Malaysia in the world economy; the internationalization of commercial capital and the development of financial centres;

First Published in 1995. The study of the middle classes actually poses a variety of interesting challenges. Traditionally, the social scientific gaze has been directed either downwards, to the working classes, the poor and the dispossessed, or upwards, to the wealthy and powerful. For all these reasons, a collection of original papers on various aspects of the British middle classes seems an important venture that will cast valuable light on the course of social change in Britain more generally. This book is designed to bring together a series of accessible, high-quality research papers on various aspects of the British middle classes.