Abstract
The themes of social injustice and redemption are analyzed in this analysis of Victor Hugo's 'Les Miserables'. The writer discusses that by evaluating the men, women, and children of this novel, the three main characters define how injustice affects their lives through poverty, feminist issues, and the problem of orphans in French society.

Tags:literature

Abstract
This paper explores the possibilities of creating a US-led non-governmental organization (NGO) to fight poverty, hunger, and social injustice on a global scale. The paper explains that the international community cannot help but remember the actions that occurred during the Bush administration that lead to the worsening of the United States' reputation throughout the world. The paper specifies a few of these events, including an unpopular war in Iraq, the United States' attitude toward alternative fuels, and United States' military action in other parts of the globe. The paper asserts that a US-led NGO would collaborate with other NGOs in the realm of hunger, poverty, and social justice, ensuring that the US-led NGO builds relationships in many sectors, restores the United States' reputation, and helps to foster a global civil society. The paper concludes that with Obama's US-led NGO, the United States may soon be seen as a contributor to the world community.

From the Paper
"To begin to address these problems, the NGO director and advisors must ease their way into the community of institutions developed to solve problems such as those already detailed. Currently, many NGOs and IGOs exist with the expressed purpose of addressing these problems. In addition, the United States has maintained a reputation of the world power that likes to burst in and take care of problems its own way, without consulting others with vested interest in the solution. If their entrance into this arena is not carefully planed, it may confirm the United States' reputation as a jealous dominate rather than change that reputation. Thus, the NGO director and advisors should plan a multilateral conference with the leaders of other NGOs that are of like-minded ideals. This way, the US-lead NGO can collaborate with other NGOs in order to determine an action plan, discuss issues of importance, and foster cooperation. According to Walsh, the international community has entered a new era in which entities must work together in order to affect change. While Walsh specifically discusses the partnership that for-profit companies can have with NGOs, his point is more generally applicable. Indeed, it is the very definition of global civil society. Global civil society is an international community that functions and works together in order to solve shared problems. By entering the NGO arena by working with other arenas, the director and advisors of Obama's US-sponsored NGO will represent its willingness to enter that global civil society."

Tags:peacekeeping, reputation, imperialism, community

Abstract
This paper explores the socially marginal individuals in Japanese society, through the research by Tom Gill. It examines how Japanese day workers challenge our western assumption of the homogeneous Japanese culture and social structures. The paper illustrates Gill's intensive study of ethnography of the day laborers, including factors such as their martial status, and age.

From the Paper
"What occurs when individuals are excluded and socially ostracized from an essentially community-focused society? This is the central research question that drives the perspective of the book authored by Tom Gill, entitled Men of Uncertainty; The Social Organization of Day Laborers in Contemporary Japan. The book uses the specific example of day laborers in contemporary Japanese society to challenge some of the assumptions of homogeneity many Westerners bring to larger Japanese culture and social structures, as well as to simply highlight aspects of the difficulties individuals experience when they live at the margins of any particular culture. Gill's relatively narrow social focus is thus developed, through historical study and fieldwork, to challenge a larger set of expectations often held by Westerners. The existence of day laborers, for example, challenges the notion that Japanese society is homogeneous yet inclusive. Both ordinary Japanese individuals who deny the existence of day laborers in their midst as well as Westerners observing Japan from afar often hold such expectations."

Tags:social, homogeneity, western, social, structures, marginal, tokyo, homeless

Abstract
This film study analyzes the issues of economic and social stratification in conflict theory in relation to the film "A Day Without a Mexican". Through an understanding of the characters and society presented in this fictional comedy, the paper shows how helpless white society becomes when the Mexicans have vanished. This creates an economic and social vacuum due to the wage slavery and racial conflicts that white Americans impose on legal or illegal Mexican immigrants.

From the Paper
"This aim of this film study will be to examine the sociological basis of conflict theory in relation to the film: A Day Without a Mexican, directed by Sergio Arau. The basis of social conflict lies within the racial stereotypes that white hegemonic society imparts on the Mexican population in America. By this form of racial subjection, the Mexicans in this film must struggle through the conflict of subjugating the Mexican race through American social and economic stratification. The film A Day Without a Mexican (2004) reflects the story of whites that are left without their Mexican servants and illegal immigrant workers to do their manual labor. The story revolves round both political and social lines in relation to how these people `survive' in this comedy on Mexican social and economic status."

Tags:film, mexican, day

Abstract
This paper discusses James Midgley's book, "Social Development: The Development Perspective in Social Welfare." The paper discusses Midgley's arguments and concludes that his means do not seem to justify his ends, as he fall short in comprehensively expounding and discussing the framework and conceptual dynamics of how exactly social development and policies in social welfare development can be integrated to have a mutually reinforcing effect and role with economic development.

Table of Contents:
Abstract
Introduction
Overview and Structure of the Book
Discussion and Review
Conclusion

From the Paper
"The term "development" has been widely used in the last couple of decades. Its meaning for most people, involves a general idea of progress and change accompanied by industrialization and improvement in social wellbeing, and in effect, an enhancement in people's income, educational levels, housing, and health care. Mostly though, regard development as economic development. And in the decades following World War II, there have been significant levels of economic development with adoption of economic development prescriptions as in the Martial Plan, and subsequent application of principles to the third world. With this, levels of social welfare have also improved significantly compared to the situation at the end of the nineteenth century. But the social achievements of the recent decades have been mixed with grinding poverty, and homelessness, and lack of education, characterizing the lives of billions of people in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. This is what James Midgley terms distorted development; pointing to the need for social development to counteract this phenomenon."

Tags:social development, social welfare, social philanthropy, economic development, public administration

Abstract
This paper shows why Elvis Presley rose to fame so quickly. It examines the social, race, political and youth issues of the time and explains how each one of these factors had a major influence on his success as a rock star.

From the paper:

"Though some like to recall it as a time of innocence, it was in 1956 that the U.S. Supreme Court declared segregation on buses and trains unconstitutional, and the year of the Montgomery boycotts. Elvis, as he once told an interviewer, did not just happen to ?come along at the right time.? There is a social and cultural context to his success. Elvis mirrored the contradictions of the South. According to John Reed of the University of North Carolina, ?Aside from the way he moved his lower body, hell, he was a gospel-singing mama?s boy.? Perhaps he also mirrored the contractions of post-war American youth seeking an identity apart from their parents."

Tags:rock, n, roll, music, social, war, expression

Abstract
This paper discusses Rousseau's "Discourses" and "Social Contract", in which he presents a philosophical debate on the failures, ideals, and realities of states and political livelihood. The paper details the ways in which he creates an argument for the social contract .

From the Paper
"Rousseau defines freedom and equality through the integration of liberty in the Discourses. Rousseau argues that the onset of governmental forces exists, in its most nascent state, in a way that is at odds with citizens and thus under steady review if not threat. The basic, core freedoms of individual sovereignty are so undermined by a new republic that, despite its necessary quality, it is initially incomprehensible to those who it should rule; liberty is the key to the circumnavigation of this construction. "For with liberty," he purports, "it is like those solid and delicious foods or those robust wines which are appropriate to nourish and strengthen healthy temperaments which are used to them but which overwhelm, ruin, and intoxicate the weak and delicate who are not made for them." Those who have become used to the mastery of others and their own suppression are not able to make use of liberty in a conscious manner, be it viable or volatile."

Tags:sovereignty, liberties, social, leadership, ownership, security

Abstract
The paper presents an analysis of media concepts and methods in Part III of Dan Berkowitz's book "Social Meanings of News". It discusses news as social narrative or familiar stories, and news as myth.

From the Paper
In order to organize the variety of research and concepts in his text-reader Social Meanings of News Dan Berkowitz uses a conceptual scheme that highlights key topics about news and network. Theories and practices of mass communications are the core of the ..."

Tags:Media, Social, News, Berkowitz, Methods, Concepts

Abstract
The paper reviews the themes, conflicts, symbols and characterization in Melville's novel "Billy Budd" that relates the different elements in the novel to ideas of the Enlightenment.

From the Paper
"During the Age of the Enlightenment, Gay maintains that the men of the Enlightenment united on a vastly ambitious program, a program of secularism, humanity, cosmopolitanism and freedom. From a growing reliance on science and reason over faith and emotion to formation of political philosophies that asserted a balance between individual and State rights, many of the ideas associated with the Enlightenment can be found in a reading of Herman Melville's "Billy Budd.""

Tags:individual rights, state rights, law and order, Captain Vere, John Claggart, chaos, anarchy, Social Contract, Rousseau, reason

Abstract
This paper analyzes Melville's innovative manipulation of the color white. The primary concerns include the unsettling effect of a monster "wearing white" and what may have been Melville's attack on racism. Careful attention to syntax, diction and literary style serve as the intellectual support for these ideas.

From the Paper
"From a very young age, popular media teaches us that we can spot the good guys from a mile away, based solely on their entirely white costumes. This small piece of conventional wisdom presents a serious problem for Moby Dick's readers, as Herman Melville shrouds his title character, the vicious, homicidal whale in the color traditionally reserved for heroes. Without a close reading of the text, the simple fact that the whale is associated with white might be enough to convince the reader that he is in fact the hero of the story. However, this is not the case, as close reading of the text suggests only Moby Dick's fundamental "naturalness" as well as the whale's ability to serve as a metaphor for the color, and, in turn all of those things for which the color itself serves as a metaphor. The effects of Melville's decision to employ the whale in such a way are numerous, spanning from the simple, unnerving juxtaposition of the color's purity with the whale's monstrosity, to a complex, subtle condemnation of racism."

Tags:herman, ishmael, melville, racism, whale, whiteness