This lucid and comprehensive book explores the ways in which the State, the market and the citizen can collaborate to satisfy people's health care needs. It argues that health care is not a commodity like any other. It asks if its unique properties mean that there is a role for social regulation and political management. Apples and oranges can be left to the buyers and the sellers. Health care may require an input from the consensus, the experts, the insurers, the politicians and the bureaucrats as well. David Reisman makes a fresh contribution to the debate. He argues that the three policy issues that are of primary importance are choice, equality and cost. He explores the balance between the patient, the practitioner and public opinion; the disparities in outcome indicators and access to medical care; and the escalation in prices and quantities at the expense of other areas of social life. Reisman concludes that, despite its significance for the individual and the nation, there is no single definition of health or health care. The maximand is a mix. Yet decisions have to be made. This thought-provoking and insightful book will be of use to students and scholars of public policy, social policy and health economics. It will also be of interest to medical practitioners who want to situate hard choices about health and illness in a broad multidisciplinary context.

The Wisconsin Uprising of 2011 was one of the largest sustained collective actions in the history of the United States. Newly-elected Governor Scott Walker introduced a shock proposal that threatened the existence of public unions and access to basic health care, then insisted on rapid passage. The protests that erupted were neither planned nor coordinated. The largest, in Madison, consolidated literally overnight into a horizontally organized leaderless and leaderful community. That community featured a high level of internal social order, complete with distribution of food and basic medical care, group assemblies for collective decision making, written rules and crowd marshaling to enforce them, and a moral community that made a profound emotional impact on its members. The resistance created a functioning commune inside the Wisconsin State Capitol Building. In contrast to what many social movement theories would predict, this round-the-clock protest grew to enormous size and lasted for weeks without direction from formal organizations. This book, written by a protest insider, argues based on immersive ethnographic observation and extensive interviewing that the movement had minimal direction from organizations or structure from political processes. Instead, it emerged interactively from collective effervescence, improvised non-hierarchical mechanisms of communication, and an escalating obligation for like-minded people to join and maintain their participation. Overall, the findings demonstrate that a large and complex collective action can occur without direction from formal organizations.

John Kent has written the first full scholarly study of British and French policy in their West African colonies during the Second World War and its aftermath. His detailed analysis shows how the broader requirements of Anglo-French relations in Europe and the wider world shaped the formulation and execution of the two colonial powers' policy in Black Africa. He examines the guiding principles of the policy-makers in London and Paris and the problems experienced by the colonial administrators themselves. This is a genuinely comparative study, thoroughly grounded in both French and British archives, and it sheds new light on the development of Anglo-French co-operation in colonial matters in this period.

Austerity as Public Mood explores how politicians and the media mobilise nostalgic and socially conservative ideas of work and community in order to justify cuts to public services and create divisions between the deserving and undeserving. It examines the powerful appeal of these concepts as part of a wider public mood marked by guilt, nostalgia and resentment - particularly around the inequalities produced by global capitalism and changes to the nature of work. In doing so, the book engages with urgent questions about the contemporary political climate. Focusing on the UK, it challenges accounts of neoliberalism which frame it as primarily an individualising force and localist definitions of community as mitigating its damaging effects. Finally, it explores how resistance to austerity can challenge these tendencies by offering a politics of solidarity and hope, and a forum for experimentation with alternative forms of collectivity.

In the post-COVID-19 era, it is essential to adhere to an international framework for sustainable development goals (SDGs), which requires the management of the economic, social, and environmental shocks and disasters. While many have suffered across the world from the COVID-19 pandemic, these SDGs work to ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all ages, as well as inclusive and sustainable economic growth. Frameworks for Sustainable Development Goals to Manage Economic, Social, and Environmental Shocks and Disasters provides an updated view of the newest trends, novel practices, and latest tendencies concerning the benefits, advantages, opportunities, and challenges of building an internationally successful framework for SDGs. Covering topics such as business longevity, green innovation, and vaccination willingness, this premier reference source is an excellent resource for government officials, business leaders and executives, human resource managers, economists, sociologists, students and faculty of higher education, librarians, researchers, and academicians.

This book examines language education policy in European migrant-hosting countries. By applying the Multiple Streams Framework to detailed case studies on Austria and Italy, it sheds light on the factors and processes that innovate education policy. The book illustrates an education policy design that values language diversity and inclusion, and compares underlying policymaking processes with less innovative experiences. Combining empirical analysis and qualitative research methods, it assesses the ways in which language is intrinsically linked to identity and political power within societies, and how language policy and migration might become a firmer part of European policy agendas. Sitting at the intersection between policy studies, language education studies and integration studies, the book offers recommendations for how education policy can promote a more inclusive society. It will appeal to scholars, practitioners and students who have an interest in policymaking, education policy and migrant integration.

This book examines an interdependent approach to happiness and well-being, one that contrasts starkly with dominant approaches that have originated from Western culture(s). It highlights the diversity of potential pathways towards happiness and well-being globally, and answers calls - voiced in the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals - for more socially and environmentally sustainable models. Leading global organizations including the OECD, UNICEF, and UNESCO are now proposing human happiness and well-being as a more sustainable alternative to a myopic focus on GDP growth. Yet, the definition of well-being offered by these organizations derives largely from the philosophies, social sciences, and institutional patterns of Europe and the United States. Across seven chapters this book carefully probes the inadequacy of these approaches to well-being globally and reveals the distorting effect this has on how we imagine our world, organize institutions, and plan our collective future(s). It shares a wealth of evidence and examples from across East Asia - a region where interdependence remains foregrounded - and concludes by provocatively arguing that interdependence may provide a more sustainable approach to happiness and well-being in the 21st century. A timely and accessible book, it offers fresh insights for scholars and policymakers working in the areas of psychology, health, sociology, education, international development, public policy, and philosophy. This is an open access book.

This visionary book seeks to uncover the main barriers to achieving greater social justice in existing twenty-first century capitalism. Developing a comprehensive consequentialist theory of justice applied to today's global situation, Mike Berry adopts the thesis that, in order to move towards a more just world, the weaknesses of liberal democracy must be overcome through reconstructing robust, resilient social democracies. Arguing for the necessary interrelation of justice and democracy, the book presents a detailed analysis of the development of and threats to western democracy in the current phase of global capitalism. Chapters offer a progressive case for a reconstructed social democracy, rather than piecemeal reform of existing liberal democratic regimes. Berry examines how the oligarchic trajectory of capitalism must be stymied through radical institutional change and continual monitoring. The book concludes that this is a continuing political project, calling for new modes of mobilisation and the ecological emergence of new values and world views. Introducing the critical role of uncertainty and the relevance of real time to the question of progress defined as increasing justice, this book will be critical reading for scholars and students of political philosophy, political economy and public policy. It will also be beneficial for progressive policy makers and advisers questioning existing policy platforms and settings.

Winner of the 2021 Sara A. Whaley Prize of the National Women's Studies Association (NWSA) A first-of-its-kind study of the working-class culture of resistance on the Honduran North Coast and the radical organizing that challenged US capital and foreign intervention at the onset of the Cold War, examining gender, race, and place. On May 1, 1954, striking banana workers on the North Coast of Honduras brought the regional economy to a standstill, invigorating the Honduran labor movement and placing a series of demands on the US-controlled banana industry. Their actions ultimately galvanized a broader working-class struggle and reawakened long-suppressed leftist ideals. The first account of its kind in English, Roots of Resistance explores contemporary Honduran labor history through the story of the great banana strike of 1954 and centers the role of women in the narrative of the labor movement. Drawing on extensive firsthand oral history and archival research, Suyapa G. Portillo Villeda examines the radical organizing that challenged US capital and foreign intervention in Honduras at the onset of the Cold War. She reveals the everyday acts of resistance that laid the groundwork for the 1954 strike and argues that these often-overlooked forms of resistance should inform analyses of present-day labor and community organizing. Roots of Resistance highlights the complexities of transnational company hierarchies, gender and race relations, and labor organizing that led to the banana workers' strike and how these dynamics continue to reverberate in Honduras today.