Imagining Adoption looks at representations of adoption in an array of literary genres by diverse authors including George Eliot, Edward Albee, and Barbara Kingsolver as well as ordinary adoptive mothers and adoptee activists, exploring what these writings share and what they debate. Marianne Novy is Professor of English and Women's Studies, University of Pittsburgh.

In writing this book I discovered that everyone I talked to had his or her own theory about meetings, and yet there is no theory of meetings in the research literature. This makes writing about this subject both excit ing and hazardous. It is always exciting to examine the significance of something that has been ignored, but it is hazardous to write about something that everyone already thinks they understand. Without re course to the legitimacy of a research tradition, readers are likely to evaluate this study based on their own theory. I have tried to take this into account by discussing what might be referred to as American folk theory about meetings (see particularly Chapter 3), and also by juxtapos ing my own research in an American organization with research in traditional or non-Western societies as conducted by anthropologists. This juxtaposition throws into relief some of the important differences as well as similarities in views of meetings as well as the form of meetings across cultures. It is also the only way that I know to examine how and when one's cultural context is affecting one's theoretical constructions. If this book is successful, it will challenge what I believe is the most common interpretation of meetings found in American society, that is, that meetings are a blank-slate phenomenon useful as a tool for such functions as making decisions, solving problems, and resolving con flicts, but having no impact on behavior in and of themselves.

What is this thing called planning? What is its domain? What do planners do? How do they talk? What are the limits and possibilities for planning imposed by power, politics, knowledge, technology, interpretation, ethics, and institutional design? In this comprehensive volume, the foremost voices in planning explore the foundational ideas and issues of the profession.Explorations in Planning Theory is an extended inquiry into the practice of the profession. As such, it is a landmark text that defines the field for today's planners and the next generation. As Seymour J. Mandelbaum notes in the introduction, ""the shared framework of these essays captures a pervasive interest in the behavior, values, character, and experience of professional planners at work.""All of the chapters in this volume are written to address arguments that are important in the community of planning theoreticians and are crafted in the language of that community. While many of the contributors included here differ in their styles, the editors note that students, experienced practitioners, and scholars of city and regional planning will find this work illuminating and helpful in their research.

Why do we need to understand audit committees? The Cadbury Committee recommended that UK companies should adopt them in response to financial scandals that have stemmed from dubious financial reporting practices. In other countries, similar commissions have made similar recommendations and audit committees are now a common institution. However, many practitioners doubt whether an audit committee really does much to ensure the integrity of a firm's financial statements because, as outsiders, members don't know enough to dig deeply beneath the numbers. The Audit Committee: Performing Corporate Governance argues that such criticism overlooks the ceremonial function of these committees. The audit committee is an arena where members can form and strengthen shifting and fragmentary networks with each other and with the external auditors. Within these networks, both consensus and independence are demonstrated, generating comfort, which legitimises the company and maintains its access to external sources of capital. The audit committee is a key part of the corporate governance structure within an organisation. Many in the UK have been patched together to meet regulatory requirements and their operation is poorly understood because few people other than their members have access to their deliberations. In this account of the world of audit committees the practitioner will find the ethnographical perspectives on ceremonial performance, consensus, independence, and comfort both familiar and different. It's like looking at a photograph of something commonplace from an unusual angle or through a strange-shaped lens.

To date, the majority of HIV/AIDS research has concentrated on education and prevention for those with a seronegative status, while studies of HIV positive individuals have been concerned with their potential to infect others. The Endangered Self however, focuses on how the discovery of an HIV positive status affects the individual's sense of identity, on the experience of living with HIV and its effects on the individual's social relationships. In this comparative study of the UK and US, Green and Sobo explore identity change and the stigma attached to an HIV positive status within the context of the sociology of risk. Chapters discuss issues such as: *identity, social risk and AIDS *stigma *living and coping with HIV *the danger of disclosure *reported reactions in health care settings and sexual settings *risk and reality *seropositivity. The Endangered Self will be of interest to all those infected with HIV and to their families, partners, friends and caregivers who are affected by it. It will be essential reading for health-care professionals and those studying medical anthropology, sociology and health and risk studies.

First Published in 1996. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

The Office Politics Handbook is for business executives, managers, consultants, lawyers, agents, editors, and anyone who wants to become more politically astute, more powerful, and more successful. This is not a book on political game playing; it is for people who hate power games but who know that politics takes place in every organization and want to make sure they wind up on top of the heap...not at the bottom of the barrel. This book will explain why people are political animals, and why they engage in power-seeking behavior. It will also discuss different instruments of power to help you understand the cultural and collective forces at work in human nature, and the occasionally aggressive characteristics of the political animal. The Office Politics Handbook will show you how to: Cultivate your political skill Exercise power beyond your place in the organizational chart Defend yourself against political attacks Know when to fight, when to retreat, and when to lead