The second and expanded edition of this award-winning book provides the most up-to-date and important efforts for improving the quality of life in communities around the world. It focuses on community improvements in relation to the interdisciplinary field of clinical sociology. The first part of the book includes updated analyses of important concepts and tools for community intervention. It discusses the importance of centrally involving community members in all phases of community development activities. Part II includes several completely new chapters and focuses on projects in a number of countries -- the United States, Brazil, South Africa, Canada, the Philippines and France. It covers topics such as establishing human rights cities; involving and empowering local communities; research in communities; the healthy cities movement; and climate change. This edition includes several new gender-focused chapters, addressing local level initiatives based on the recommendations of the Committee on the Elimination and Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), women in prison, and gender factors in climate risk. The appendices include profiles of outstanding practitioners and scholar-practitioners over the last 100 years. This edition includes contributions from well-known scholars and practitioners in clinical sociology and is of interest to sociologists, social policy makers, social workers, and sustainability researchers.

Jan Marie Fritz, Jan Marie Fritz, Ph.D., C.C.S., is a Professor at the University of Cincinnati, Distinguished Visiting Professor at the University of Johannesburg, a Visiting Professor at Taylor's University (Malaysia) and a Fulbright-National Science Foundation Arctic Scholar in Iceland. She also was a Distinguished Visiting Professor with the Honors College at the University of South Florida, Fulbright Senior Scholar with the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Fulbright Distinguished Chair in Human Rights and International Studies at the Danish Institute of Human Rights and Woodrow Wilson Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, D.C. She has received a number of awards including the American Sociological Association's Distinguished Career Award for the Practice of Sociology, the Ohio Mediation Association's Better World Award and the Lester Ward Award from the Association for Applied and Clinical Sociology, She was a Vice-President of the International Sociological Association (ISA) and is the lead ISA representative to the UN. She also is a member of the ISA Executive Committee, the Mayor of Cincinnati's Gender Equality Task Force and the Steering Committee of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's National Environmental Justice Advisory Council.

Jacques Rhéaume. Ph.D, is Professor Emeritus, Department of Social and Public Communication, University of Québec in Montréal (UQAM). He was a Full Professor from 1978 until 2008. He has a doctorate in sociology (Montréal University), a master's in psychology (University of Sherbrooke) and a master's in philosophy (University of Québec in Trois-Rivières). He is a member of the SHERPA Research Institute, located in the University Integrated Center of Health and Social Services, in Montréal Center-West Area, and was the Scientific Director there for 12 years (1999-2011). He is currently an associate member of the Health and Communication Research Center at UQAM. His teaching focuses mainly on groups and organizational issues, from a psycho-sociological and clinical sociology perspective. He has conducted research in different areas including: mental health; work and management; community development; cultural diversity; and life narratives. He is a vice president of the International Sociological Association's clinical sociology division as well as a member of the International French-Speaking Sociological Association and of the Réseau International de Sociologie Clinique (International Network of Clinical Sociology) in Paris.