The adoption of technology has provided opportunities for increased participation in global affairs both at an individual and organizational level. As a discipline, e-adoption focuses on the requirements, policies, and implications of widespread technology use in developed and developing countries. E-Adoption and Technologies for Empowering Developing Countries: Global Advances reviews the impact technology has had on individuals and organizations whose access to media and resources is otherwise limited. With overviews of topics including electronic voting, electronic delivery systems, social Web applications, and online educational environments, this reference work provides a foundation for understanding the interplay between technology and societal growth and development.

China's commitments in Central Asia illustrate how regional foreign policy works and how long-standing principles of Chinese foreign policy might be revised in the near future. China's rise has 'moved' Asia, which is why it seems that what we have traditionally regarded as the geographic and political scope of Asia might actually considerably change in the near future. Nadine Godehardt gives crucial insights into the Chinese expert discourse on Central Asia - analyzing how Chinese experts define Central Asia when they talk and write about policy issues related to China's immediate Western neighbourhood. In this context, she gives an inside perspective on Chinese voices whose meanings are rarely examined in Chinese International Relations studies.

Development has remained elusive in Africa. Through theoretical contributions and case studies focusing on Southern Africa's former white settler states, South Africa and Zimbabwe, this volume responds to the current need to rethink (and unthink) development in the region. The authors explore how Africa can adapt Western development models suited to its political, economic, social and cultural circumstances, while rejecting development practices and discourses based on exploitative capitalist and colonial tendencies. Beyond the legacies of colonialism, the volume also explores other factors impacting development, including regional politics, corruption, poor policies on empowerment and indigenization, and socio-economic and cultural barriers.

In Guinea, situated against the background of central government struggles, rural elites use identity politics through contemporary political reforms to maintain their privileges and perpetuate a generations-old local social contract that bridges ethnic and religious divides. Simultaneously, administrative reform and national unrest lead to the creative re-combination of sources of authority and practices of legitimate rule. Past periods of colonization, socialism and authoritarian regime are reflected in contemporary struggles to make sense of participatory democracy and the future of the embattled Guinean national state.

This book provides an in-depth and broad study on rural Latin America over a 60-year period. Using a case study approach of Mexico and Venezuela, peasants and lower rural classes are examined at the local, meso and national levels. Additionally, the study analyzes government policies, development, and leadership in each country. Latin America has tried to ride the waves of globalization, worldwide economic and environmental crises; the author examines Mexico and Venezuela's relations with the political hegemony of superpowers like the US, EU and China. The material will appeal to researchers, graduate students and policy makers in the fields of rural development, Latin American politics, and international relations.

This book critically analyses the ways in which Africa has shifted from the periphery of global trade, international relations and politics to the centre of the world stage because of its existing and potential economic prowess and purchasing power that the continent has to offer.

Assimilation Blues contributes to an expanding body of comparative family studies. . . . a springboard for the development of more directly comparative analysis. Family research involving issues of race and class should flow naturally from insights suggested by this work. As a significant contribution to the way we think about families, black-white relations, and social change, the book is well worth serious examination by scholars, as well as individals who find themselves in similar circumstances. Contemporary Sociology This incisive study uses a phenomenological approach in its examination of black families in a white community. It goes beyond the probability statistics of attitude and behavior surveys to let the families speak for themselves about their experiences. Assimilation Blues provides an in-depth look at the realities of being a middle-class black parent, living, working, and raising children in a predominantly white community, through first-hand interviews. The candid responses of both parents and children about their lives and experiences raise many important issues that have immediate relevance for black families regardless of where they live.

This book uses primary evidence to assess the value of agro-input and service delivery business models in terms of their inclusiveness, effectiveness and impact from a small farmer perspective, in the form of case studies in three Indian states: Punjab, Bihar and Uttar Pradesh. The services discussed include custom rental of farm machinery and equipment, franchising for backward and forward linkage for farmers and the supermarkets for delivery of farm inputs, and extension services. The book examines agro-input and service delivery business models as institutional innovations for inclusive and effective delivery of such services in the small farmer context, based on primary data from the agencies designing and implementing such models and the farmers who make use of these inputs and services. Further, it identifies major issues and challenges in the delivery of farm inputs and services across regions and types of farmers and examines possible policy and enabling provisions to promote cost-effective and high-quality agro-input delivery channels.

Global crises not only deeply impact the economy and people's livelihoods, they also unsettle basic ideas and assumptions about the meaning and drivers of development. This collection of theoretical and empirical studies explores the substance and politics of policy change following the 2007/8 crisis from the perspective of developing countries.

Development is not an all-powerful machinery imposing its will upon powerless actors. Rather, it is a complex process that brings together multiple actors with diverse agendas. Participants' power in affecting outcomes results from their ability to mobilize discursive and material resources and to control and manipulate time and spatial contexts. This work critically examines development practices and various forms of collective action based on detailed ethnographical analysis of the Yacyreta hydroelectric project. The story unfolds in the borderlands of Paraguay and Argentina in the heart of the Latin American Southern Cone where local political cultures are responding to global forces that now dictate economic integration. Although relatively unknown today to the world, this area promises to exert a strong global impact in the near future.

The saga of the Yacyreta hydroelectric project on the Argentina-Paraguay border not only illustrates the radical change in the power dynamics of the Latin American Southern Cone region, but also reflects the transformation of development discourse and practice during the last decades. It examines the relationship between the weakened role of the nation-state in decision making and the emergence of nongovernmental organizations and grassroots movements as key development actors. Because the Yacyreta dam is being built in the borderlands of two countries as a binational undertaking, it threatens the boundedness of nation-states precisely where sovereignty is traditionally guarded--the national frontiers. Under these and other global challenges of deterritorialation such as processes of regional integration encouraged by Mercosur (Common Market of the South), popular conflicts have become spatialized, reflecting both the resilience of national imaginings and histories of exclusion and exploitation.

This study demystifies populist and romanticized academic constructions of subaltern groups. It shows that the outcomes of popular struggles can be one of accomodation and cooperation and not resistance. Nonetheless, they constitute serious threats to planned development. It challenges current approaches in development that advocate participation, empowerment, and communication.

This book addresses the essential topic of child survival in Tanzania, especially focusing on the role of mutual assistance, which has received little attention to date. Further, it identifies a range of key factors for child survival by combining a literature review, regional data analysis, and case studies. These studies center on rural villages in high Under-5 mortality rate (U5MR) regions and assess their strengths and weaknesses regarding child survival. By focusing on deprived rural areas as of 2002 and evaluating the improvements in the 2012 census data, the book also highlights the potential held by rural semi -subsistence economies. An analysis of the focus villages indicates that children in food-sharing circles had better chances of survival. However, food sharing is not necessarily inclusive; a significant number of children have fallen out of such circles, especially in mainland villages. Furthermore, monetary support for children's medicine has often failed to arrive in time. Lastly, the book argues that, in addition to direct factors such as access to health services, water and sanitation, food intake, and education, it is essential that children receive inclusive support at various levels: family, community, village, national, and international.

This book sets out to develop a new framework for the analysis and understanding of large natural disasters occurring in developing countries in the last three decades, and their effects on the economy and society. In doing so, it challenges many of the accepted wisdoms of disaster theory upon which policy prescriptions are built. A number of important issues are addressed and analysed within this framework. The reliability of current statistics about disasters is questioned, and the effects of disaster situations on the main economic aggregates are examined. The author also looks at the importance of indirect disaster effects, the motivations of disaster response, and the impact of both capital loss and disaster response on output. He assesses the minimum level of additional investment required to secure a balanced recovery, and the extent to which a society's structure and dynamics determine people's vulnerability to disasters. Finally, the overall effects of disaster situations on economy and society are considered. The author concludes that although disasters are primarily a problem of development, they are not necessarily a problem for development. What we should be looking at are the underlying social and economic processes within developing countries which structure the impact of natural disasters, rather than at disasters as unforeseen events requiring large scale intervention. An important feature of the book is the deconstruction of the notion of disaster. Disasters, the author points out, cannot be analysed in isolation from the particular social and political setting in which they occur.

Over the next 40 years the number of people aged 60 and over in the world is set to grow by one and a quarter billion. More than 80 per cent of these people will be living in developing regions, such as Asia, Africa and Latin America. What are the implications of this for the world and what will old age be like for these people? This original book provides a sophisticated analysis of links between development, population ageing and the experiences of older people. Drawing on a broad array of evidence, it challenges a number of widely held misconceptions and generalisations. The book highlights the diversity and complexity of international experiences and argues that the effects of population ageing on development are strongly influenced by policy choices. It argues that pension programmes in developing countries often promote inequality and clientelism, that health policies over-look basic provision and lifelong promotion, and that care needs continue to be neglected. It includes country case study chapters which analyse the experiences of India, South Africa and Argentina. The book will be of interest to people working in a wide range of academic disciplines, including economics, gerontology, social policy and development studies. It will also provide a key reference point for policy makers and practitioners concerned with developing countries.

50 years ago, World Bank President Robert McNamara promised to end poverty. Alleviation was to rely on economic growth, resulting in higher incomes stimulated by Bank loans processed by deskbound Washington staff, trickling down to the poorest. Instead, child poverty and homelessness are on the increase everywhere. In this book, anthropologist and former World Bank Advisor Glynn Cochrane argues that instead of Washington's "management by seclusion," poverty alleviation requires personal engagement with the poorest by helpers with hands-on local and cultural skills. Here, the author argues, the insights provided by anthropological fieldwork have a crucial role to play.

This book evaluates the extent to which post-conflict reconstruction has addressed problems of horizontal inequalities through country case studies on Burundi, Rwanda, Nepal, Peru, Guatemala, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Afghanistan, and four thematic studies on macro-economic policies, privatisation, PRSP's, and employment generation.

This book presents recent findings on the structure and evolution of the Southern Andes. Through a detailed description of a series of orogenic segments reviewed by the different groups that have worked with structural and geophysical tools in each area over the last several years, it illustrates the diversity of mechanisms that have impacted strong orogenic gradients and consequently mountain morphology, from the southern Pampean flat subduction zone to the southern tip of the continent (33-56 S). The book also revises our conventional understanding of the source of the different Mesozoic to Cenozoic sections exhumed in the orogenic wedge, with the objective of discussing basin mechanisms through time. A final chapter discusses probable orogenic controls that have acted together in order to explain structure, the different deformational stages and intra-orogenic extensional collapses that affected the fold and thrust belt over time.

Exploring a wide variety of case studies and developmental issues from a capability perspective, this book is an original contribution to both development and children's studies that raises a strong case for placing children's issues at the core of human development.

Throughout the Pacific region, people are faced with dramatic changes, often described as processes of "glocalization"; individuals and groups espouse multilayered forms of identity, in which global modes of thinking and doing are embedded in renewed perceptions of local or regional specificities. Consequently, new forms of resistance and resilience - the processes by which communities attempt to regain their original social, political, and economic status and structure after disruption or displacement - emerge. Through case studies from across the Pacific which transcend the conventional "local-global" dichotomy, this volume aims to explore these complex and interwoven phenomena from a new perspective.

This edited collection outlines the accomplishments, shortcomings, and future policy prospects of the 2005 UNESCO Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions, arguing that the Convention is not broad enough to confront the challenges concerning human rights, sustainability, and cultural diversity as a whole.

Although uncertainty is intertwined with all human activity, plans, and aspirations, it is experienced differently: at times it is obsessed over and at times it is ignored. This ethnography shows how Rashaida in north-eastern Sudan deal with unknowns from day-to-day unpredictability to life-threatening dangers. It argues that the amplification of uncertainty in some cases and its extenuation in others can be better understood by focusing on forms that can either hold the world together or invite doubt. Uncertainty, then, need not be seen solely as a debilitating problem, but also as an opportunity to create other futures.

The contributors explore diverse contexts of performance to discuss peoples' own reflections on political subjectivities, governance and development. The volume refocuses anthropological engagement with ethics, aesthetics, and politics to examine the transformative potential of political performance, both for individuals and wider collectives.

Foreign exploitation of economic crises in the developing world has been a central claim of neoliberal critics over the past decade. This important and recurring international economic theme is the subject of closer scrutiny in this new collection, where contributors offer competing interpretations of the interaction between international and domestic forces after crises. In revisiting the aftermath of recent crises in key emerging markets, the collection uncovers the extent to which foreign firms, governments and institutions liberalized and penetrated these economies.

Drug Law Reform in East and Southeast Asia is a multi-author look at drugs in East and Southeast Asia, on drug policy, patterns and trends, local problems, human rights abuses, treatment prospects, and potential reforms. From the history of drugs in Asia, the book examines recent trends in illicit drugs, especially the present enormous amphetamine problems. It addresses recent policy shifts, especially harm reduction responses to the devastating drug-associated HIV epidemics. It explores further necessary reform, especially in regard to the abysmally inhuman current emphasis on detention and the death penalty for drug offences, and present the most recent evidence on effective and humane approaches to drug treatments. As the first comprehensive collection on illicit drug and harm reduction in East and Southeast Asia, it will be a vital resource for health professionals, policymakers, and others working there and elsewhere on drug policy reform. As the first comprehensive collection on illicit drugs and harm reduction in East and Southeast Asia, it will be a vital resource for health professionals, policymakers, and others working on East and Southeast Asia--and elsewhere--on drug policy."

Combining theoretical and empirical insights, this book provides an in-depth analysis of South Asia's transition in the areas of democracy, political economy and security since the end of the Cold War. It provides a close scrutiny to the state of democracy and political economy in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh.

This edited volume explores development in the so-called 'fragile', 'failed' and 'pariah' states. It examines the literature on both fragile states and their development, and offers eleven case studies on countries ranking in the 'very high alert' and 'very high warning' categories in the Fund for Peace Failed States Index.