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We live in a world of big data: the amount of information collected on human behavior each day is staggering, and exponentially greater than at any time in the past. Additionally, powerful algorithms are capable of churning through seas of data to uncover patterns. Providing a simple and accessible introduction to data mining, Paul Attewell and David B. Monaghan discuss how data mining substantially differs from conventional statistical modeling familiar to most social scientists. The authors also empower social scientists to tap into these new resources and incorporate data mining methodologies in their analytical toolkits. Data Mining for the Social Sciences demystifies the process by describing the diverse set of techniques available, discussing the strengths and weaknesses of various approaches, and giving practical demonstrations of how to carry out analyses using tools in various statistical software packages.

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Prodded by economists in the 1970s, corporate directors began adding stock options and bonuses to the already-generous salaries of CEOs with hopes of boosting their companies’ fortunes. Guided by largely unproven assumptions, this trend continues today. So what are companies getting in return for all the extra money? Not much, according to the empirical data.<BR /><BR /> In <I>Indispensable and Other Myths: Why the CEO Pay Experiment Failed and How to Fix It,</I> Michael Dorff explores the consequences of this development. He shows how performance pay has not demonstrably improved corporate performance and offers studies showing that performance pay cannot improve performance on the kind of tasks companies ask of their CEOs. Moreover, CEOs of large established companies do not typically have much impact on their companies’ results. In this eye-opening exposé, Dorff argues that companies should give up on the decades-long experiment to mold compensation into a corporate governance tool and maps out a rationale for returning to the era of guaranteed salaries.

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Fair trade is a fast-growing alternative market intended to bring better prices and greater social justice to small farmers around the world. But what does a fair-trade label signify? This vivid study of coffee farmers in Mexico offers the first thorough investigation of the social, economic, and environmental benefits of fair trade. Based on extensive research in Zapotec indigenous communities in Oaxaca, <I>Brewing Justice</I> follows the members of the cooperative Michiza, whose organic coffee is sold on the international fair-trade market, and compares them to conventional farming families in the same region. The book carries readers into the lives of coffee-producer households and communities, offering a nuanced analysis of fair trade’s effects on everyday life and the limits of its impact. <I>Brewing Justice</I> paints a clear picture of the dynamics of the fair-trade market and its relationship to the global economy. Drawing on interviews with dozens of fair-trade leaders, the book also explores the movement’s fraught politics, especially the challenges posed by rapid growth and the increased role of transnational corporations. It concludes with recommendations to strengthen and protect the integrity of fair trade. This updated edition includes a substantial new chapter that assesses recent developments in both coffee-growing communities and movement politics, offering a guide to navigating the shifting landscape of fair-trade consumption.

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Corporations are among the most powerful institutions of our time, but they are also responsible for a wide range of harmful social and environmental impacts. Consequently, political movements and nongovernmental organizations increasingly contest the risks that corporations pose to people and nature. <i>Mining Capitalism</i> examines the strategies through which corporations manage their relationships with these critics and adversaries. By focusing on the conflict over the Ok Tedi copper and gold mine in Papua New Guinea, Stuart Kirsch tells the story of a slow-moving environmental disaster and the international network of indigenous peoples, advocacy groups, and lawyers that sought to protect local rivers and rain forests. Along the way, he analyzes how corporations promote their interests by manipulating science and invoking the discourses of sustainability and social responsibility. Based on two decades of anthropological research, this book is comparative in scope, showing readers how similar dynamics operate in other industries around the world.

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In <i>Someplace Like America</i>, writer Dale Maharidge and photographer Michael S. Williamson take us to the working-class heart of America, bringing to life—through shoe leather reporting, memoir, vivid stories, stunning photographs, and thoughtful analysis—the deepening crises of poverty and homelessness. The story begins in 1980, when the authors joined forces to cover the America being ignored by the mainstream media—people living on the margins and losing their jobs as a result of deindustrialization. Since then, Maharidge and Williamson have traveled more than half a million miles to investigate the state of the working class (winning a Pulitzer Prize in the process). In <i>Someplace Like America</i>, they follow the lives of several families over the thirty-year span to present an intimate and devastating portrait of workers going jobless. This brilliant and essential study—begun in the trickle-down Reagan years and culminating with the recent banking catastrophe—puts a human face on today’s grim economic numbers. It also illuminates the courage and resolve with which the next generation faces the future.<br /><br />

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Slavery is illegal throughout the world, yet more than twenty-seven million people are still trapped in one of history's oldest social institutions. Kevin Bales's disturbing story of slavery today reaches from brick kilns in Pakistan and brothels in Thailand to the offices of multinational corporations. His investigation of conditions in Mauritania, Brazil, Thailand, Pakistan, and India reveals the tragic emergence of a «new slavery,» one intricately linked to the global economy. The new slaves are not a long-term investment as was true with older forms of slavery, explains Bales. Instead, they are cheap, require little care, and are disposable.<br /><br />Three interrelated factors have helped create the new slavery. The enormous population explosion over the past three decades has flooded the world's labor markets with millions of impoverished, desperate people. The revolution of economic globalization and modernized agriculture has dispossessed poor farmers, making them and their families ready targets for enslavement. And rapid economic change in developing countries has bred corruption and violence, destroying social rules that might once have protected the most vulnerable individuals.<br /><br />Bales's vivid case studies present actual slaves, slaveholders, and public officials in well-drawn historical, geographical, and cultural contexts. He observes the complex economic relationships of modern slavery and is aware that liberation is a bitter victory for a child prostitute or a bondaged miner if the result is starvation.<br /><br />Bales offers suggestions for combating the new slavery and provides examples of very positive results from organizations such as Anti-Slavery International, the Pastoral Land Commission in Brazil, and the Human Rights Commission in Pakistan. He also calls for researchers to follow the flow of raw materials and products from slave to marketplace in order to effectively target campaigns of «naming and shaming» corporations linked to slavery. <i>Disposable People</i> is the first book to point the way to abolishing slavery in today's global economy.<br /><br /><b>All of the author's royalties from this book go to fund anti-slavery projects around the world.</b>

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Rebecca M. Blank offers the first comprehensive analysis of an economic trend that has been reshaping the United States over the past three decades: rapidly rising income inequality. In clear language, she provides an overview of how and why the level and distribution of income and wealth has changed since 1979, sets this situation within its historical context, and investigates the forces that are driving it. Among other factors, Blank looks closely at changes within families, including women’s increasing participation in the work force. The book includes some surprising findings—for example, that per-person income has risen sharply among almost all social groups, even as income has become more unequally distributed. Looking toward the future, Blank suggests that while rising inequality will likely be with us for many decades to come, it is not an inevitable outcome. Her book considers what can be done to address this trend, and also explores the question: why should we be concerned about this phenomenon?

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This book looks at the way we tax the poor in the United States, particularly in the American South, where poor families are often subject to income taxes, and where regressive sales taxes apply even to food for home consumption. Katherine S. Newman and Rourke L. O’Brien argue that these policies contribute in unrecognized ways to poverty-related problems like obesity, early mortality, the high school dropout rates, teen pregnancy, and crime. They show how, decades before California’s passage of Proposition 13, many southern states implemented legislation that makes it almost impossible to raise property or corporate taxes, a pattern now growing in the western states. <i>Taxing the Poor</i> demonstrates how sales taxes intended to replace the missing revenue—taxes that at first glance appear fair—actually punish the poor and exacerbate the very conditions that drove them into poverty in the first place.

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Award-winning journalist Tyche Hendricks has explored the U.S.-Mexico borderlands by car and by foot, on horseback, and in the back of a pickup truck. She has shared meals with border residents, listened to their stories, and visited their homes, churches, hospitals, farms, and jails. In this dazzling portrait of one of the least understood and most debated regions in the country, Hendricks introduces us to the ordinary Americans and Mexicans who live there—cowboys and Indians, factory workers and physicians, naturalists and nuns. A new picture of the borderlands emerges, and we find that this region is not the dividing line so often imagined by Americans, but is a common ground alive with the energy of cultural exchange and international commerce, burdened with too-rapid growth and binational conflict, and underlain with a deep sense of history.

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Gamification is changing the way startups, big brands, governments and non-profits engage and relate to their customers and employees. Demand for Gamification products, services and technologies is growing exponentially. By 2015, Gartner Group projects that over 70% of the Global 2000 (the world's largest companies) will be using Gamification, and according to M2 Research they will spend over $1Bn annually on Gamification to achieve their goals. <p> The industry is facing a bold new world with the amazing technological developments of Gamification, and the challenges and the opportunities this presents are unprecedented. The Gamification Complete Certification Kit serves as a complete introductory guide for anyone looking to grasp a better understanding of Gamification concepts and its practical application in any environment. <p> The Art of Service's introductory Gamification training and certification helps IT practitioners develop the skills that are crucial as businesses embark on this massive transformation. It provides an industry credential for any IT professional to help them transform into the world of Gamification applications. <p> This training and certification enables you to move both the industry and business forward and quickly take advantage of the benefits that Gamification presents. <p> Take the next step: Get Certified! <p> The Art of Service IT Service Management programs are the #1 certification programs in the information management industry. Being Proven means investing in yourself and formally validating your knowledge, skills, and expertise by the industry's most comprehensive learning and certification program. The Gamification Complete Certification Kit course prepares you for Gamification Certification. <p> Why register?<p> – Easy and Affordable<p> – Learning about Gamification technologies has never been more affordable<p> – Latest industry trends explained<p> – Acquire valuable skills and get updated about industry's latest trends right here. Today.<p> – Learn from the Experts. The Art of Service offers education about Gamification and 300 other technologies by the industry's best<p> – Learn at your Own Pace. Find everything right here when you need it and from wherever you are<p> <p> What will you learn?<p> – Learn all the most important techniques and winning methodologies – How to Identify the key challenges framing the true cost of ownership and long-term considerations in developing Gamification strategies for your organization – How to Design a Gamification Architecture – the essential foundation of any Gamification program – How to Drive Sales and Customer Retention. How to Gamify Your Service Today<p> – How to Build Brand Loyalty, Drive Sales and Reduce Customer Experience Costs<p> <p> Course Outline – The topics covered in this course are:<p> – Gamification Techniques and Applications – Popular Gameplay Elements – Gaming Systems and Software – Website Systems and Software – Economical and Social Viability Aspects <p> Contact Hours:<p> The recommended minimum contact hours to pass the certification test is 18 hours<p> <p> Delivery:<p> The program combines 10 presentations supported by trainer audio. Each module is followed by quizzes and exercises (marking scheme provided) to test your knowledge and competency, and to enhance understanding of the key concepts. A Certificate is awarded to your successful passing of the final exam (80% pass requirement) and completion of the course. This is an eLearning Program. Your access details to the eLearning course are in the book.<p> <p> Program Materials:<p> – Multimedia presentations<p> – Downloadable resources (PDF documents)<p> – End of module review questions to assess your content knowledge<p> <p> Gamification represents a new era in engagement, and upon completing this course you will be uniquely positioned to help clients navigate this transformation.

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