Best social sciences reference books according to redditors

There is absolutely no doubt that Romanian is a Romance language. It is true that many people in Western Europe might tend to forget it in the same way that they would forget, say, Romansh.

But I strongly agree with /u/Bezbojnicul: the concept of "closeness to Latin" is essentially meaningless: there is no natural distance in the space of languages, and depending on whether you emphasize the spoken or written language, grammar or vocabulary, intercomprehension or objectively measured differences, etc., you will get wildly different results.

While I'm on the subject, I'd like to mention what I think is an interesting project: a group of Romanicist linguists, coordinated by Jørgen Schmitt Jensen from the university of Aarhus¹, started the idea, in the early 2000's, of writing a series of books, targeting non-linguists who speak one of the Romance languages, to help them learn to understand the other Romance languages. So these books are supposed to be a bit like comparative grammars, but not really, because they're aimed at non-specialists. I don't know how many of these books eventually did come out, but I know the French version did: it's called Comprendre les langues romanes, by Paul Teyssier, and it describes Spanish, Portuguese, Italian and Romanian in relation to French (and for the benefit of French speakers); I can recommend it.

1. A similar project had earlied been formed for the Scandinavian languages (which, obviously, are closer to one another, by almost any metric, than the Romance languages). This might explain why a Danish scholar would end up leading a project to teach speakers of Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Romanian and French to understand each others.

Tu as plein de bouquins qui font ça très bien !

Par exemple celui de Todd et Hervé Le Bras est très bien foutu (interview ici). Du genre, l'éducation des filles maghrébines meilleure que celle des françaises de souche (à classe sociale égale), les mariages mixtes, les mouvements de population depuis les ZUS vers le reste du pays. La France est un miracle, il faut continuer avec notre ancien modèle d'assimilation et réduire les flux entrants, mais les immigrés qui sont là on peut totalement les assimiler.

C'est pour ça par exemple que je ne suis pas du tout pour la rémigration. On a un problème avec une partie importante des hommes (surtout les aînés) fils d'immigrés d'une partie de l'Afrique, du Maghreb et de Turquie, on a un problème d'islam radical et de séparation des communautés, mais ça peut se résoudre si on valorise la spécificité française et qu'on ne cède pas aux communautarismes.

I HAVE SEVERAL :DD going to try to link you to non-academic sources, though, since most of the academic articles I have are in journals and have restricted access.

Here's a 1947 American article on Vietnam under French rule. Do that that even though it's thoroughly biased, gets a ton of things wrong, and is evidently siding with France and against the communists, there's still this concession:

>Ever card has always been stacked against the Annamites and in favor of the French... [t]he simple fact is that the French in Viet Nam have become so used to treating the Annamites as an inferior race, to be exploited for their benefit, that this situation does not even seem perculiar to them.

Harsh words indeed, and it gives you a good look at a contemporary opinion from a person in a country that was siding with to France.

Here's the Encyclopaedia Britannica article on the effects of colonial rule, it's got the basics all covered and it does go into the massive disparity between the lives of the well off and the average person which existed. Note also this mention:

>Two other aspects of French colonial policy are significant when considering the attitude of the Vietnamese people, especially their educated minority, toward the colonial regime: one was the absence of any kind of civil liberties for the native population, and the other was the exclusion of the Vietnamese from the modern sector of the economy, especially industry and trade

This pretty basic rundown of events under colonial rule corroborates that account:

>Nationalism of the sort spread by the Free School Movement was squelched by the French as soon as it became a threat. After 1908, overt opposition in Vietnam was minimal. In 1927, a Nationalist Party was formed in Vietnam but this was repressed and many of its members moved to South China. Generally speaking, conditions were strictly controlled within Vietnam, and the radical and outspoken opponents to colonization were those who had left the country to be educated in France. They were able to travel and study, discussing the future of Vietnam and methods through which they could overthrow the colonial government.

If you can get hold of it somehow, I'd recommend Vietnamese Peasants Under French Domination, 1861-1945, it's an interesting look at the situation. I don't actually have a copy on hand now, though. Other stuff... well, the history of the Hanoi Hilton is always good- I know it's wikipedia but wiki does have sources at the bottom, it's useful for that. David G. Marr's book on Vietnamese Anticolonialism also covers the origins of that form of thinking- chapter 4 is particularly relevant. The Yen Bai mutiny is also very pertinent, and I'd suggest taking a read of Radicalism and the Origins of Vietnamese Revolution if you have the time as well.

It's a lot more comlpex than that. Third century Roman empire went to through many crises, not least of which was a fiscal crisis. Long term trends (i.e. no more slaves, political strife, etc.) combined with a poor understanding of the effects of debasing the value of coins led to crippling inflation across the empire, or whatever was left of it.

I don't know a good source in English for this, but if you happen to read French:

https://www.amazon.fr/Nouvelle-Histoire-lAntiquit%C3%A9-mutation-Constantin/dp/2020258196/ref=pd_sim_14_1?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=5G1581RGBNEEB92HRC7P

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1942790163

There's lots of critical terms books, and the "authoritative" book tends to vary from field to field.

If you legitimately want a primer, though, I've found Routledge Key Guides really helpful. There's one explicitly for Sociology, but I've also found the ones on Post-colonial Studies and Gender really useful. They're often taught in introductory college classes.

This is the book: https://www.amazon.com/CliffsTestPrep-CSET-Science-Tony-Napoli-ebook/dp/B00BOE1PQY

Lacan est toujours publié en français, il suffit de commander les éditions en poche sur n'importe quelle boutique en ligne.

https://www.amazon.fr/S%C3%A9minaire-Ecrits-techniques-Freud-1953-1954/dp/2020352354/ref=mp_s_a_1_6?keywords=lacan+seminaire&qid=1573628217&sprefix=lacan&sr=8-6

Yeah Roy! I see your book is finally listed at Amazon https://www.amazon.com/dp/1942790163/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=white+hats%2C+swamp+creatures&qid=1570237774&s=books&sr=1-1

I'm doing a quick video on it as I speak. Will link it here when I'm done...;)

There is a biological basis for differences between individuals, however the differences are largely arbitrary and meaningless considering the highly globalized society we live in and the amount of crossbreeding we've done. We give them meaning by applying them to a system of value and acting on and reinforcing that system. This makes the implications and ramifications of race a very real thing and makes the "race is culturally constructed" argument a little bit incomplete in modern understanding.

Nearly everything in our lives has a culturally constructed meaning, but we shouldn't sell it short.

If you want to learn more there is a good book on the subject that's short and explains things pretty easily.

Race, and identity in general, is a complicated subject that I struggle to explain regularly. The guys in that book do a far better job than I could.

Hey buddy, thx for the tip about dictionaries, I'm glad you know how to use them.
But to try to burst my bubble (and maybe learn something about the concepts of ethnicity and/or ethnic groups), you should check out some of these other small books first:


-https://books.google.pt/books/about/Ethnicity.html?id=jYsYJSDXflYC&redir_esc=y


-https://www.amazon.co.uk/Race-Ethnicity-Basics-Peter-Kivisto/dp/0415773741


-https://www.amazon.com/Ethnicity-Oxford-Readers-John-Hutchinson/dp/0192892746


-https://books.google.pt/books/about/The_Ethnicity_Reader.html?id=9yBQtExDppkC&redir_esc=y



To jumpstart, and I'm not even kidding, just try to read the introduction to "ethnic groups and boundaries", by Frederick Barth: the text is from 1969, and it's absolutely seminal on nowadays' understanding of ethnic group formation and, above all, ethnic group persistence in time. (link to pdf: http://www.bylany.com/kvetina/kvetina_etnoarcheologie/literatura_eseje/2_literatura.pdf)


If you wanna go further down this road, check "ethnicity without groups", by Rogers Brubaker: the best modern critical thinking around ethnicity and group formation, IMO. (link to pdf: https://is.muni.cz/el/1423/podzim2015/SOC587/um/Brubaker_Ethnicity_without_Groups.pdf)



Now, lets move on to the next part of your comment. I did love the end of it. The part where you assume I have a bachelor's degree (IF I even managed to graduate yet, ofc - 'cause I'm so dumb) is nice.

But the best part is that amazing scientific lesson you gave us all: "Since the beginning of life animals have had hunting grounds they fought for, later evolved to humans with specific racial, social traits with country borders."


Seriously, I am thinking about printing this and framing it.
Thx a bunch, bud. I should start making calls, because entire academic fields will disappear and universities will close down: you just solved social science AND evolutionary science in a single sentence!


Finally, I just want to clear this up for ya, buddy: I do not have any spanish comments, and the fact that you think that I'm mexican (and that what I wrote in my reddit's history is spanish) says a lot more about your ignorance than it says about me.


Cheers

I personally know someone who died in Parkland, Florida. I live in Philadelphia. I personally know someone who died in the Texas shooting. More Americans are having to worry about this shit because it's happening more frequently, especially since the repeal of regulations on AK-15-type weapons that expired in 2004.

It's a problem that's really easily addressed on a base level by starting with gun reform. I don't really get how you're trying to argue against common sense resolutions that will reduce the harm of the status quo. Yeah, we have a lot of things to worry about, but seriously taking a look at our legislation and our gun culture is a really good place to start.

You're neglecting regulations and advancements in technology since 1986 with your machine guns argument. They weren't readily available or mass produced. We didn't have a mass murder culture back then. We didn't even have that many mass murders back then. 1966 was really the first major mass murder in years. We passed legislation to prevent and curtail this over time.

I suggest you read Gun Control in the United States: A Reference Guide.

PS: Disastercenter.com is not a government website. It is a site that aggregates some government datasets without analysis or context—or really, content. You could have easily sourced something like...I dunno a first-hand source like the FBI or actual crime analytics like the CDC report. You literally linked to a website that's only copyrighted until 2015. My data actually directly contradicts your tired 2014 claim of a "spike" (note, the relative crime rate went down, actually, a dip). Crime was up to its highest in 2016 at 12%.

As someone who has spent the last few months reading social theory dense enough to induce a headache in a single paragraph (which itself is a 3/4 of a single-spaced size-10 page long), this article was nothing.

If you are interested, the book was called Social Theory: The Multicultural and Classic Readings, 4th edition

Dissapointing. you where this close.

Probably the cognitive dissonance got hold on you and you defaulted to the standard federalist propanganda story of what happened and why.

Its easy to demonstrate that the version of event you said dosn't hold any water.

>Right, the answer to both of those questions is that the current state of affairs is much more preferable than continuing to have our Constitution be the responsibility of the British government.

Of course. but why the hurry? There was no hard deadline, the negociation could had waited untill the next morning... or even the next week, month. The only deadline was those given by the treat of Trudeau to go to westminster by himself without the provinces consent.

>Trudeau got most of the provinces to buy into this but the separatist Quebec government of the day wanted unreasonable concessions

That is false. Very false. On many different level.

First... "Concession"? "unreasonable"? Levesque was integral part of the negociation for the whole process, except the last few hours. He was even at one point the sole supporter of a proposition from Trudeau. Please read a somewhat neutral account of the event at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patriation#The_conference

separatist? you dont seem to understand that Levesque was firstly a democrat. It was after the lost of the referendum, Levesque was willing to follow the will of the peoples and participate in canada, even if a great many of his minister disagreed. His attitude continued even after the patriation and was named "le beau risque" when he wanted to make an alliance with Mulroney in 1984.. Many of his minister prefered to leave instead of cooperating with a federal party. The PQ almost imploded and its gouvernemnt felt. Levesque had a high moral integrety, of the sort we dont see often.

Separatism had nothing to do with rené levesque position at the patriation negociation.

> that either the whole project would be scuttled or they could use the issue as a cudgel against federalists

You reverse cause and effect. At this point fo time, the federal as we know it didnt existed, and a lot of different proposal where on the table. Quebec was not the only one with different point of view.

Anyway, if the quebec position was only to give and advantage to separatist.. why didnt the next federalist quebec gouvernemnt signed right away? Why all the successive quebec gouvernemnt, separatist or federalist, didnt signed it? That proposition dosnt make any sense.

>Modern Canada isn't terribly concerned with the culture wars of the past few decades

we can all see that. The problem is that its not really just a culture war, its also a "balance of power" war. And the casuality are canada itself, because you dont want to fix problems for fear it would all crumble.

>and even Quebecers must be aware of the damage the constant sovereignty nonsense has caused their province (there's a reason Toronto's population and economy started to explode at the same time Montreal stagnated).

That statement is mostly false. Its off by at least 60 years. The start of the decline of Montreal occured after the first war, when the main canadian trade client shifted from britain/europe to the USA. Toronto was then better positionned than Montreal. The decline accelerated with the construction of the st-lawrence seaway in 1959. Its been argued that the decline of financial power in quebec (ruled exclusiveley from english peoples) directly lead to the quiet revolution of Jean Lesage.

Anyway, there where damage... But not at the scale some claim to. Those who migrated to the west of the river left an empty space for french-quebecker to finally be able to have social mobility... leading to the quiet revolution.

>The last time we tried to change the Constitution the vote came within a couple percentage points of tearing the nation apart

Yes, and you admitted why.

>Quite frankly it's not worth the risk to tinker with something that really isn't all that broken

... seriously? Who are you trying to convince? It is broken, the country is at a standstill for the last 30 years! When a guy like brad Wall say that building a pipeline is a "nation building exercise", it show how disunited the country really is.

>our country has much more important shit to deal with.

All the important shit require to open the constitution, so....

Lets go back to my original question no 2:

> how Trudeau convinced regions/provinces to sign this in the back of quebec? Those regions/provinces, by your admission, who don't play well together?

I dont know how is your french, but this book show in detail what really happened, by cross referencing the document of the foreign office of london and our conterpart in canada.

There is a lot in this book, and the sources are impossible to dismiss and are rock solid.

Trudeau manipulated/corrupted two supreme court justice (including the cheif justice!), and mixed the executive and judiciary; Lévesque would later remark: "In other words, Trudeau's goals might be unconstitutional, illegitimate, and even 'go against the principles of federalism,' but they were legal!".

London taugh the same as Levesque: the maneuver Trudeau used to get the patriation was like a "coup d'état".

bonus fact: London would had recognised a souverign quebec and taugh it was viable economically, both in 1980 and 1995.

But back at the Kitchen accord. Tatcher warned Trudeau that his plan to come to london with a unilateral proposition would be rejected but the brittish parliment, making his treat empty. Trudeau then played with the resentment and contempt of other provinces toward Levesque because levesque supported briefly a previous Trudeau proposition (you cant make that up...) to make the others provinces accept a compromise quickly. why quickly? because the provinces didnt knew the treat of unilateral patriation was empty, and felt pressured because the proposal Trudeau would had presented would force the provinces to campaign against the public will in a referendum, leading to political suicide.

the provinces accepted to lower their powers to make the deal quickly... deliberatly ignoring the objections of quebec that it would irremediably hinder quebec ability to protect and promote its language and culture. They've thrown Quebec and francophones under the bus for the sake of their political career/political parties. They sacrificed someone else future instead of some more of their own powers.

Quebec protested, but the treshold for "legitimacy" was left from the supreme court as an arbitrary decision... To be made by Trudeau. The same supreme court with the crooked chief justice.

The queen admitted her regret that quebec was excluded...

So there you have it, Your canada was built by deceit, lies, manipulation, and good old backstabbing. The provinces got "united" to prevent trudeau to gain too much, and ditched quebec specific need to achieve it. What a nice family!

Since then, each provinces got back to bickering and playing for themselves. Very uncanadian...

Canada unity is as much as risk from the english provinces than from quebec. Every provinces are independantist, quebec was just more vocal about it.

Constructive Drinking