Work, Health, and Environment Book Series: Call for Manuscripts
Series Editors:
Charles Levenstein, Robert Forrant, John Wooding
With sixteen titles published as of 2011, this series was launched at the beginning of a new millennium when, even then, it was evident that the brave talk of a new golden age for workers was the cruel and empty rhetoric of promises unfulfilled. Around the world workers and communities have fallen victim to unsafe workplaces and polluted environments. Too many people remain without well-paying jobs or are hopelessly under-employed. With the global financial system in disarray, the tension remains intense between jobs and sustainable worker and community health.
• In the United States far too many workers needed more than one job to lift them beyond the poverty level.
• Across Europe unemployment rates are intractably high and several countries are dramatically cutting the social safety net.
• In Asia and much of the developing world workers slave in unsafe factories for wages that are appalling low.
• In Africa, ravaged by AIDS and war, only the lucky few can put bread on the table. In most of the globe the threat of environmental catastrophe and the erosions of indigenous cultures continue unabated.
• The world over millions of working families subsists on less than $2US a day while the assault on workers’ basic workplace rights accelerates.
Books in the series explore these issues and we invite manuscripts and book proposals for series consideration.
To be sure, gains have been made. Certainly medical advances and public health initiatives have ended the fear of disease and early death for many. Standards of living have improved for some and the growing awareness of threats to health and environment has made many more people willing to fight for healthy lives. But much remains to be done in the face of the “free marketers” who attack the role that democracy and government can play in protecting the lives of citizens throughout the world.
Does this mean that there is nothing we can do? We must understand this era with good analysis and innovative strategies guided by the very best research. We need to engage with and understand what is going on in the world and develop and propose viable alternatives and progressive strategies. This in essence is the purpose of this book series and the point of our focus.
We have titled the series WORK, HEALTH, AND ENVIRONMENT. The conjunction of topics is deliberate and critical. We begin at the point of production. Work is essential to all our lives. Work is where things are made, good as well as bad. While work can bring income and meaning, it can also bring danger and threats to health. The point of production is where goods and services are produced but it is also where environmental contamination and pollution originate.
The starting point for the series is that work, health, and environment are intimately linked. In this series we publish works that analyze and describe the relationship between what goes on in the workplace and its public health and environmental consequences. We define health and environment broadly. For us health is not limited to the absence of disease or to individual well-being. It must also mean a healthy and sustainable economy, a democratic and participatory politics, a workplace where the rights of workers are respected and enforced, and communities that are resilient, crime free and nurturing of the physical and mental health of all.
Again, if you are doing research in these areas and are in search of a publication outlet please forward an abstract so that we might consider your work for the series with Baywood Press. Send your abstract to Charles Levenstein: chuck_lev@comcast.net.
For books in the series visit: baywood.com/books/BooksBySeries.asp?Series=13
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