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This introductory chapter provides an overview of the South African mining sector’s contribution to the national economy. It also discusses the socio-economic challenges that the sector has faced in terms of operational efficiency, productivity and safety. The chapter then briefly discusses the formal and informal organisational aspects of restructuring work processes in the South African mining industry. It concludes with a synopsis of each of the chapters of this book.

The purpose of this paper is to establish the influence of shopping motivations on Chinese fashion retail engagement relative to demographics, monthly spend on fashion items and high street/electronic commerce (e-commerce) preference. This is to determine how international fashion retailers should design more effective retails channels, expanding upon established theory in Hedonic and utilitarian motivations. While earlier research suggests shopping motivations associate with demographics while influencing retail channel preference and consumer spending, much of this exploration is Western focused, with all variables being influential. However, the degree to which these apply to China, and the unique fingerprint of influential motivations remains unknown. This paper answers these questions to allow international retailers to develop more efficient marketing strategies and design more effective retail channels.

In all, 403 Chinese consumers generalisable to the broader population were surveyed on their hedonic and utilitarian motivations to shop for fashion apparel in high street and e-commerce environments. Statistical analysis was commenced through direct logistic regression and MANOVA.

Demographics have limited association with shopping motivations, with gender and age only producing small effect sizes, while occupation, income and education has no significance. High street store preference is influenced by adventure and social shopping and e-commerce preference only by idea shopping. Spending over ¥1k per month on fashion apparel is influenced by gratification and idea shopping, and regular spending habits inspired by value shopping.

This empirical paper characterises the fingerprint of shopping motivations’ influence as singular to China while proving their limitation and need for a wider plethora of influential factors to be recognised.

The United States government is the world's largest publisher. Its presses churn out thousands of items annually, covering every conceivable subject. Even though most of the items deal with present day concerns, the United States government is responsible for the publication of a large number of histories. Unfortunately, these works, with the possible exception of the Department of Defense's Military History Series, have received little exposure and limited use. In an effort to bring this valuable resource to light, the following bibliography presents annotated citations to nearly 150 histories published from mid‐1977 through mid‐1979.

Film provides an alternative medium for assessing our interpretations of cultural icons. This selective list looks at the film and video sources for information on and interpretations of the life of Woody Guthrie.

The monograph argues that American racism has two colours (white and black), not one; and that each racism dresses itself not in one clothing, but in four: (1) “Minimal” negative, when one race considers another race inferior to itself in degree, but not in nature; (2) “Maximal” negative, when one race regards another as inherently inferior; (3) “Minimal” positive, when one race elevates another race to a superior status in degree, but not in nature; and (4) “Maximal” positive, when one race believes that the other race is genetically superior. The monograph maintains that the needs of capitalism created black slavery; that black slavery produced white racism as a justification for black slavery; and that black racism is a backlash of white racism. The monograph concludes that the abolition of black slavery and the civil rights movement destroyed the social and political ground for white and black racism, while the modern development of capitalism is demolishing their economic and intellectual ground.

This chapter examines the interaction between formal and informal organisation of work in a deep-level mining workplace. In response to organisational constraints, underground mining teams make a plan (planisa) to offset production bottlenecks which affected the daily running of the production process at the rock-face down the mine. They ‘get on and get by’ inside the pit to cope with organisational dysfunctions and management inefficiencies. The chapter highlights the limits of formalised work methods and the significance of the frontline miners’ informal work practice of making a plan (planisa) as an existing and alternative working practice that shapes their subjective orientation, agency and resilience to deep-level mining work processes and managerial initiatives. While the informal work practice of planisa has pros and cons, any managerial strategy designed to improve organisational productivity, safety and teamwork must recognise and systematically articulate the frontline miners’ work culture of planisa. This is especially important if we are to fully understand the limits of contemporary organisational strategies and workers’ orientations towards modernised work processes and managerial practices.

The aim of this chapter is to explore the relationship between contemporary sport, social media, digital technology, and sexuality and to explore the historical context of sport and sexuality, before then outlining the decline of homophobia in recent years. Despite this decline, social media is one area where we still see the manifestation of homophobia.

This chapter synthesizes a range of academic literature to chart how – despite improving attitudes toward homosexuality in sport – abuse and discrimination is still prevalent on social media.

Eric Anderson's (2009) Inclusive Masculinity Theory has been the most useful theoretical apparatus to underpin the changing nature of sport, gender, and sexuality. While this has been used in a variety of sporting contexts, these are primarily focused on gay male athletes in the West. Accordingly, there is a gap in knowledge around the experiences of lesbian, bisexual, and trans athletes, as well as those outside of the Western context.

Although there has been some literature to document discrimination on social media, very little focuses specifically on the manifestation of homophobia. Accordingly, this chapter provides an important contribution by being one of the first to tie together the literature on improved cultural attitudes toward homosexuality while simultaneously focusing on the prevalence of discrimination on social media.

I. Introduction The political events of the late 1980's and the early 1990's taken place in Eastern Europe, the Soviet Union, and Nicaragua certainly represent the predicament, if not the collapse, of the communist economic system. Indeed, the centrally planned solution of attacking the basic economic problems of what, how, and for what seems to be never before as doubtful as it is now. Although the free market solution of the capitalist economy seems to progress smoothly in economic matters as far as the aggregate production is concerned, on the political and social front and with respect to the distribution of income, these economies are not as trouble‐free as they appear on the surface. The bloody poll tax revolt and the IRA attacks in England, the racial unrest in South Africa, and the drug and oil wars fought by the US are but a few examples of the troubles in the basically capitalist systems. Less obvious but surely problematic are the subtle trade wars among them, especially between the US and Japan, the hungry and homeless, and the mounting budget deficit of the US economy.