This book provides an introduction and overview to Alfred Adler's person-centered approach to psychotherapy. In Adler's view, all behavior has social meaning, and the socio-cultural context of a person's life is a driving influence on their mental health and life experiences.

A groundbreaking study of labor unions that advances a new theory of organizational leadership and governance In the Interest of Others develops a new theory of organizational leadership and governance to explain why some organizations expand their scope of action in ways that do not benefit their members directly. John Ahlquist and Margaret Levi document eighty years of such activism by the International Longshore and Warehouse Union in the United States and the Waterside Workers Federation in Australia. They systematically compare the ILWU and WWF to the Teamsters and the International Longshoremen's Association, two American transport industry labor unions that actively discouraged the pursuit of political causes unrelated to their own economic interests. Drawing on a wealth of original data, Ahlquist and Levi show how activist organizations can profoundly transform the views of members about their political efficacy and the collective actions they are willing to contemplate. They find that leaders who ask for support of projects without obvious material benefits must first demonstrate their ability to deliver the goods and services members expect. These leaders must also build governance institutions that coordinate expectations about their objectives and the behavior of members. In the Interest of Others reveals how activist labor unions expand the community of fate and provoke preferences that transcend the private interests of individual members. Ahlquist and Levi then extend this logic to other membership organizations, including religious groups, political parties, and the state itself.

One of the central questions in social science is ‘Why do people behave as they do?’ A common social scientific answer is, ‘because of their interests’. Despite the importance of the concept of interest for the social sciences, it has been surprisingly little discussed, and many aspects of its general history and many uses are largely unknown. In this book, Richard Swedberg attempts to remedy this situation through an easily accessible introduction to the topic, starting with a history of the concept that covers the origin of the word and its early use in philosophy, political science, literature and everyday language. He then pioneers an analysis of the emergence of interest as a sociological concept during the 19th century. Arguing that economists have reduced the concept of interest to that of economic interest, he emphasizes that sociologists, in contrast, have attempted to develop a flexible and social concept of interest. Moving on to a discussion of the contemporary use of the concept of interest in economics, sociology and political science, the book concludes with a discussion of the potential of the concept of interest as a policy tool.

Though the revised edition of A Theory of Justice, published in 1999, is the definitive statement of Rawls's view, so much of the extensive literature on Rawls's theory refers to the first edition. This reissue makes the first edition once again available for scholars and serious students of Rawls's work.

Psychologist John Jost has spent decades researching poor people who vote for policies of inequality and women who think men deserve higher salaries. He argues that the persecuted often justify and defend the very social systems that oppress them because doing so serves a fundamental need for certainty, security, and social acceptance.