Modern Societies ─ A Comparative Perspective

This volume examines the nature of modern societies by comparing their basic institutions and patterns of social organization. It addresses how rich democracies became rich and democratic; governments and welfare states; the growth of democracy in the 20th century; socialist and postsocialist societies; the less-developed countries, including those that are developing rapidly; race and ethnicity in the US, Brazil, and South Africa; gender roles and relations and inequalities around the world; shifts in patterns of marriage and families; modern mass education and educational credentialism; worldwide patterns of religion; the controversy over the secularization thesis; economic, political, and cultural globalization; the nature of social and economic progress over the past two centuries; and predictions of the short and long-term future of the world. It includes tables of data on economic development, government expansion, democracy, racial segregation, gender empowerment, fertility, single-parent households, educational enrollments, religiosity, religious pluralism and freedom, happiness, and other topics. Annotation c2014 Ringgold, Inc., Portland, OR (protoview.com)