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This prescient Handbook examines how legacies of colonialism, gender, class, and other markers of inequality intersect with contemporary humanitarianism at multiple levels.
Why the paradigm of the world-class university is an implausible dream for most institutions of higher education Universities have become major actors on the global stage. Yet, as they strive to be “world-class,” institutions of higher education are shifting away from their core missions of cultivating democratic citizenship, fostering critical thinking, and safeguarding academic freedom. In the contest to raise their national and global profiles, universities are embracing a new form of utilitarianism, one that favors market power over academic values. In this book, James Mittelman explains why the world-class university is an implausible dream for most institutions and proposes viable ...
Although the academic study of development is well established, as is also its policy implementation, less considered are the broader, more popular understandings of development that often shape agendas and priorities, particularly in representative democracies. Through its accessible and provocative chapters, Popular Representations of Development introduces the idea that while the issue of ‘development’ – defined broadly as problems of poverty and social deprivation, and the various agencies and processes seeking to address these – is normally one that is discussed by social scientists and policy makers, it also has a wider ‘popular’ dimension. Development is something that can...
Robert Chambers returns with a new book that reviews, together for the first time, some of the revolutionary changes in the methodologies and methods of development inquiry that have occurred in the past forty years, and reflects on their transformative potential for the future. This book breaks new ground by describing and analysing the evolution of a sequence of approaches. Starting with the dinosaurs of large-scale multi-subject questionnaire surveys, and the biased visits and perceptions of rural development tourism and urban-based professionals, there follows a look at the explosive proliferation of methodologies and methods of recent years. These include rapid rural appraisal (RRA) par...
Rethinking Gender in Development Practice is about the ways in which issues of gender—including violence against women and girls, entrenched gender roles and expectations, the exclusion of non-binary genders, and the participation of disempowered genders—affect and are affected by development practice. This volume, which pulls together papers from Development in Practice, provides accounts from researchers and practitioners working with women in countries from Africa to the Pacific. The book offers a global perspective, but with the inclusion of local voices, on the way gender can impact daily living in the Global South. This book includes groundbreaking articles by some of development s...
Post-conflict scenarios are often proposed for Arab countries that have witnessed significant changes and civil wars. Yet the plans for reconciliation, transitional justice, and the return of the displaced often overlook the real conditions that make these recommendations impossible. This book provides a critical analysis of current post-conflict frameworks for Syria and Iraq. Drawing on empirical research, the book shows that reconciliation and reconstruction scenarios need to be considered alongside the realities on the ground. It argues that Iraq and Syria exist in a condition of 'conflict transformation' rather than of 'conflict termination', because the extreme changes that accompanied ...
Critics question the representativeness of NGOs, the democratic quality of their internal procedures, and their accountability to the wider public. This volume, written jointly by academics and practitioners, clarifies the issues at stake and controversially discusses proposals for reform.
"Drawing on a wide range of case studies from across the globe, this book explores such areas as: health and population growth, conflict and security, global inequality and poverty, fair trade and trade liberalization, gender and education, foreign aid and debt, and sustainability and the environment. This issues-driven text focuses on the debates that have generated the most interest and passion among practitioners and non-practitioners alike. Always attentive to the contested and plural nature of the field, it makes the case for a genuinely interdisciplinary approach which takes full account of the impact of globalization."--Publisher
Do you enjoy being alone? Are you often lonely? Regardless of how you answer these questions, I would like to offer you some new ways of seeing them. A conscious and mindful life and experience of solitude is the best way to prevent loneliness. Based on interviews with 150 people worldwide as well as current findings from international research on loneliness and results from philosophy, sociology and political science, this book encourages you to embrace and appreciate solitude and loneliness as important companions in life. Solitude is an important process and resource that enables us to become aware of our own wishes, fears and needs. By better understanding how to be alone, we can develop...
Social entrepreneurship increasingly assumes a position of strength in the dynamic milieu of late-modern democratic societies. A plethora of companies have now arisen—everything from mighty social enterprises like Warby Parker and TOMS to tiny outfits like Clean Slate and Bright Endeavors—whose business-focused approach to social problems is not merely additive but integral to their missions. These companies respond not only to a felt proliferation of humanitarian and environmental predicaments, but also to enormous shifts in in public feelings and technological sensibilities. These predicaments and make social entrepreneurships urgently needed and remarkably complicated. But if social e...