Nearly one half of the world's urban population lives in poverty and about 800 million people occupy substandard housing. This "housing crisis" has continued unabated despite over 20 years of research and policy. At the forefront of new policy initiatives, confirmed by recent conferences such as Habitat II in Istanbul, is an inititiative to afford greater priority to finance, yet, with the expediation that the provision of small quantities of finance to low-income households will bring real improvements to the quality and quantity of housing provision. This book explores the linkages between formal and informal housing finance drawing upon the lessons of NGO and micro-finance practices. Both public and private formal finance institutions have experienced great difficulty in lending below a middle-income client group, and are often reluctant to lend for the purpose of housing at all. This failure of formal finance to filter down to low-income households, and in particular to women, has led various NGOs and community groups to create and adopt innovative finance programmes, such as informal savings banks and credit rotating schemes. The authors critically assesses the impact of these

This unique study from the OECD Development Centre presents a comprehensive review by independent experts of the relationships and division of responsibility between the 22 member governments of the OECD Development Assistance Committee (DAC), and NGOs from these donor countries, working in international development. Additional chapters cover the roles of the European Union and the World Bank. Among other themes, the book looks at two very significant issues. First, at the way in which an overemphasis on evaluation may be leading NGOs to focus purely on measuring their output, thus choosing activities which are easily accountable. Second, it examines the important impacts of the evolution in the funding relationship between governments and NGOs - from matching grants to contracts - where NGOs must increasingly compete for contracts.

This book situates ethnic heterogeneity in the larger discussion of the welfare state and its redistributive outcomes, poverty and inequality. By using comprehensive, longitudinal data covering 1980 to 2010 from 17 high income countries, this analysis helps achieve a major milestone in comparative welfare state research both conceptually and methodologically. Conceptually, it elevates the relevance of growing ethnic heterogeneity in thinking about how politics and economics of the welfare state operate, collectively impacting the magnitudes of poverty and inequality. Methodologically, the analysis conducted in this book provides broader empirical tests for the many propositions and discourses found in the literature based largely on anecdotal evidence, case studies, and unjustifiably limited quantitative data. The innovative oeprationalization of the multidimensional character of both welfare state policies and ethnic heterogeneity help broaden the analytical frameworks of comparative welfare state research.

The outcome is a major advance in the way we understand the causes and redistributive consequences of the welfare state, in which ethno-racial, religious, and especially immigration heterogeneity can play a crucial role. A thorough and insightful analysis presented in this book helps students, researchers, and policymakers better understand the ethnic heterogeneity connections of the welfare state and redistribution, together with a comparative perspective of the changing faces of ethnic heterogeneity, welfare state policies, and poverty and inequality in high income countries.

Elinor Ostrom's Nobel Prize-winning work on common pool property rights has implications for some of the most pressing sustainability issues of the twenty-first century - from tackling climate change to maintaining cyberspace. In this book, Derek Wall critically examines Ostrom's work, while also exploring the following questions: is it possible to combine insights rooted in methodological individualism with a theory that stresses collectivist solutions? Is Ostrom's emphasis on largely local solutions to climate change relevant to a crisis propelled by global factors? This volume situates her ideas in terms of the constitutional analysis of her partner Vincent Ostrom and wider institutional economics. It outlines her key concerns, including a radical research methodology, commitment to indigenous people and the concept of social-ecological systems. Ostrom is recognised for producing a body of work which demonstrates how people can construct rules that allow them to exploit the environment in an ecologically sustainable way, without the need for governmental regulation, and this book argues that in a world where ecological realities increasingly threaten material prosperity, such scholarship provides a way of thinking about how humanity can create truly sustainable development. Given the inter-disciplinary nature of Ostrom's work, this book will be relevant to those working in the areas of environmental economics, political economy, political science and ecology.

"International Perspectives on Voluntary Action" presents a new perspective on the third sector. Rather than considering non-governmental organizations separately from voluntary agencies, it explores the similarities, differences and growing connections between them in both Northern and Southern contexts.Contributions by eminent authors in the field consider the differences in scale and priority that exist between the different types of third sector organizations in different settings, as well as the common challenges of accountability, legitimacy, effectiveness and governance.New models of learning and communication, including Southern ideas such as micro credit provision, are also examined; as are continuing barriers.Articulate and up-to-date, "International Perspectives on Voluntary Action" includes contributions on: Building NGO Legitimacy, Citizen Organizations as Policy Entrepreneurs; Voluntary Sector Governance in Britain and North America; Evaluating NGO Development Interventions; and Social Learning in North-South Coalitions.

We hear plenty of accounts of development failure, but what about success - how do we explain development policies that last the course, survive regime changes, and advance human and social development? This book draws on case studies of social, economic and political governance policies from Latin America, Africa and Asia to examine the circumstances in which governments and societies produce policies that overcome initial opposition and meet their aims.

Democratization in the Third World addresses many current issues of development, democratization and civil society in countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America against the background of theoretical introductions and comparisons with the Swedish historical experience of democratisations. The authors, from seven different continents, examine civil society and its relation to the state throughout the world and assess prospects for sustainable democratization.

It may seem a strange match--AI and crop irrigation or AI and the Serengeti lions but researchers in Artifical Intelligence envision expert systems as a new technology for capturing the knowledge and reasoning process of experts in agriculture, wildlife management, and many other fields. These computer programs have a relevance for developing nations that desire to close the gap between themselves and the richer nations of the world. Despite the value and appeal of expert systems for economic and technological development, Schoenhoff discloses how this technology reflects the Western preoccupation with literacy and rationality. When expert systems are introduced into developing nations, they must interact with persons who reason and articulate their knowledge in ways unfamiliar to high-tech cultures. Knowledge, particularly in poor and and traditional communities, may be expressed in proverbs rather than propositions or in folklore rather than formulas. Drawing upon diverse disicplines, the author explores whether such indigenous knowledge can be incorporated into the formal language and artificial rationality of the computer-and the imperative for working toward this incorporation.

This comprehensive second edition provides an up-to-date introduction to the nature of ecological degradation in a world of dramatic environmental change.

eBook available with sample pages: 020301961X

"Regulating for Decent Work" is a response to the dominant deregulatory approaches that have shaped labour market regulation in recent years. The inter-disciplinary and international approach invigorates current debates through the identification of new challenges, subjects and perspectives.

Drawing on field-based data and experiences from the practice of democratic decentralization and local governance over the last three decades in Ghana, this book examines whether and how democratic decentralization and local governance reforms in developing countries have produced the anticipated development outcomes. In seventeen related contributions, the authors present four relevant focal themes, including conceptual and historical trajectories of decentralization and local governance; institutional choice, democratic representation, and poverty reduction; local governance, resource capacity, and service delivery; and non-state actors, local governance and sustainable development. The book blends perspectives of scholars, practitioners, and policy-makers to provide a holistic analysis of linkages between decentralization, local governance, and sustainable development efforts, presenting a novel and useful guide for science, policy, and practice of bottom-up governance and development. It provides relevant lessons and experiences for scholars, policy-makers, and development practitioners in Africa in particular and developing countries in general.

This book discusses how to develop green transitions which benefit, include and respect marginalised social groups. Diversity and Inclusion in Environmentalism explores the challenge of taking into account issues of equity and justice in the green transformation and shows that ignoring these issues risks exacerbating the gap between the rich and the poor, the marginalised and included, and undermining widespread support for climate change mitigation. Expert contributors provide evidence and analysis in relation to the thinking and practice that has prevented us from building a broad base of people who are willing and able to take the action necessary to successfully overcome the current ecological crises. Providing examples from a wide range of marginalised and/or oppressed groups including women, disabled people, Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) people and the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer/questioning and others (LGBTQ+) community, the authors demonstrate how the issues and concerns of these groups are often undervalued in environmental policy-making and environmental social movements. Overall, this book supports environmental academics and practitioners to choose and campaign for effective, equitable and widely supported environmental policy, thereby enabling a smoother transition to sustainability. This volume will be of great interest to students, scholars and practitioners of environmental justice, social and environmental policy, planning and environmental sociology.

Anchored firmly in the course requirements, "Geography and Development" should be welcomed as a practical resource for undergraduates taking courses in human geography and development studies. It assesses economic development across the world and reviews theories and policies of economic growth and development and their effects upon the geography of the regions. Using case study material, the author's analysis includes discussion of newly industrialized countries such as South Korea and Singapore. Alternative models which allow for independent development are also explored including discussion of the flexible specialization model in Mediterranean countries and the post-industrial, service economy based on high technology.

This series aims to concern itself with the theoretical, empirical and applied research into the macro and micro accounting issues of developing countries, including the relevance to the Third World of international accounting standards. It is our hope that we can raise the level of interest in the specific problems of accounting in developing countries and raise the awareness of the real issues, so that accounting in the Third World will not just be seen as a matter of copying what is done in the industrialized countries. It is our hope that through an increasing awareness of the issues, the accounting practices advocated and the training made available will become relevant to actual needs, and will make a real contribution to the development process.

Distinguishing between sustainable development and sustainable tourism, the authors examine whether and in what, form, tourism can contribute to sustainable development and growth. Focusing on differenct types of tourism appropriate to particular situations, the team of leading contributors draw on examples from around the world - Canada, USA, Spain, Belgium, UK, Australia - to explore tourism's contribution to the economic, social , political and environmental advancement of developing countries, and the challenges to and importance of tourism in industrialised nations.

Examines the ideas and organization of new Islamic, Hindu and other movements. Considers the creation of new traditions and ethnicities in these movements as well as the key themes of liberation central to many of them, such as purity and pollution. Bhatt also looks at the relationship between right wing and progressive social movements.

Recent debt crises and consequent dislocations and distress in the under-developed world have shown that development strategies of last forty years were misconceived. No under-developed country during this peroid could become an industrially advanced country, inspite of a big development industry orchestrated by World Bank. This results from the fact that main-stream economic theory ignores international and national constraints and their interactions with the dynamics of technological transformation. These constraints distort relative prices in underdeveloped countries and make their balanced self sustaining development economically non-feasible. This book develops a completely articulated theory of economic interconnections to deal with under-developed country's situation.

HIV/AIDS is but one of a number of new and deadly diseases which threaten communities throughout the world. Together with the resurgence of diseases once thought to have been 'conquered', the human costs and social implications have begun to engage a diverse range of practitioners and scholars. The premise behind this collection of distinguished essays in that the causal relations, impacts and consequences of this disturbing trend are as much political as medical or scientific. This book is an excellent introduction to a field of growing importance.

What does cultural analysis have to offer development studies? Is culture a new paradigm for the study of development or a minefield of theoretical confusion? Can we move beyond notions of "global culture" and "local culture" to a more refined notion of cultural processes?
This collection of articles addresses these issues providing a diversity of approaches. Two themes in particular run through the contributions: the relationship between culture and political economy and the relationship between local and global processes.

It is commonly imagined that in recent years the rampant growth of consumer credit has lured American consumers into a crippling state of indebtedness, a state that has upended old cultural values of Puritan thrift and stimulated a frenzy of consumption. Drawing on the sociological concept of 'government' and informed by a historical perspective, Marron presents a much more complex and nuanced reality. From its early antecedents in nineteenth century salary lending and instalment selling, she shows how the emergence and growth of consumer credit in the United States have always been subject to shifting regimes of control and regulation.

Through various international case studies presented by both practitioners and scholars, Environmental Justice in the Anthropocene explores how an environmental justice approach is necessary for reflections on inequality in the Anthropocene and for forging societal transitions toward a more just and sustainable future. Environmental justice is a central component of sustainability politics during the Anthropocene - the current geological age in which human activity is the dominant influence on climate and the environment. Every aspect of sustainability politics requires a close analysis of equity implications, including problematizing the notion that humans as a collective are equally responsible for ushering in this new epoch. Environmental justice provides us with the tools to critically investigate the drivers and characteristics of this era and the debates over the inequitable outcomes of the Anthropocene for historically marginalized peoples. The contributors to this volume focus on a critical approach to power and issues of environmental injustice across time, space, and context, drawing from twelve national contexts: Austria, Bangladesh, Chile, China, India, Nicaragua, Hungary, Mexico, Brazil, Sweden, Tanzania, and the United States. Beyond highlighting injustices, the volume highlights forward-facing efforts at building just transitions, with a goal of identifying practical steps to connect theory and movement and envision an environmentally and ecologically just future. This interdisciplinary work will be of great interest to students, scholars, and practitioners focused on conservation, environmental politics and governance, environmental and earth sciences, environmental sociology, environment and planning, environmental justice, and global sustainability and governance. It will also be of interest to social and environmental justice advocates and activists.

Over the last three decades, the rapid growth of transport and telecommunications systems and the expansion of transnational diasporas have intensified links between the urban spaces of Europe, Africa, the Middle East and Southeast Asia. Increasing global mobility has fostered the development of 'informal' trading networks in which diaspora communities play a central role. As a consequence, the shadow economies of societies with vastly different levels of prosperity have begun to come into contact with one another. While the economic consequences of diaspora trading networks have been extensively explored over the past few decades, the impact of globalization on the economic underground has received much less attention. This volume elaborates on the definition of globalization, on its impact on illegal and illicit activities, and on the role of the 'Global City' as the intersection between the local and the global which allows for the empowerment of generally marginalized actors often through technological progress. The contributors explore the dark side of globalization, more specifically, the relations between globalization and the new dynamics of legal/illegal practices in urban settings of global cities.

The sudden fall of the Berlin Wall is one of the defining images of the late twentieth century. The subsequent unification of Germany and the decision to return Berlin to its status as capital has made the constant changes within the city a matter of public interest. It also offered Berlin the opportunity to create a new image for itself, one that can serve as a counterbalance to the politically charged recent history of Berlin as the capital of Nazi Germany and former East Berlin as the capital of the German Democratic Republic. Poised between capitalist Western Europe and the former communist powers in Eastern Europe, Berlin occupies a fascinating geopolitical space. This anthology presents a unique glimpse into the various constituencies that make up Berlin and that impact the city's challenges and promises.

Impassable roads, poorly maintained railways, bankrupt airlines, congested cities, and inefficient ports -- how do these conditions inhibit the economic progress of developing countries? With case material from Latin and central America, Southeast Asia, and Africa, author David Hilling illustrates the differences in transportation strategies and structures between the developed and developing worlds. In examining such projects as inland waterways, ports, railways, roads, and air and urban transportation networks, Hilling emphasizes the relative importance of timing, location, technology, and decision making structures in each case, and then illustrates how these factors contribute to the success or failure of economic development strategies.

This book brings into sharp focus the problems of development under conditions of structural adjustment and their relation to democratic change in Africa. Contributors to this volume are interested in specific countries such as Kenya, Sierra Leone, Nigeria, etc., but do bring to bear a rigorous comparative method which uses a political economy approach to the study of democracy, gender, industrialization, agriculture and the state. Its comparative approach in revisionist political economy allows for issues such as the new international division of labor to become central to the analysis of the relationship between developed and underdeveloped countries.

The state-centric approach, although useful, may have missed important undercurrents in civil society. An analysis of development through the state's lenses has predominated the study of Africa. The approach by contributors in this volume is equally interested in the state but is also concerned with non-state actors. This dynamic approach characterizes few texts on Africa. This work should attract those who are concerned with African development, specifically, and international political economy in general.