Do participatory processes open a political space to marginalized groups & individuals? Or do they co-opt & coerce groups to reinforce existing inequitable relations? In an innovative comparative study which breaks with tradition this book explores these questions by looking at Malawi & Ireland.

This volume examines the impact of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) on Africa's development post-2015. It assesses the current state of the MDGs in Africa by outlining the successes, gaps and failures of the state goals, including lessons learned. A unique feature of the book is the exposition on post-MDG's agenda for Africa's development. Chapters on poverty, south-south partnership, aid, gender, empowerment, health as well as governance and development explore what feasible alternative lie ahead for Africa beyond the expiry date of the MDGs.

As the nations in Southeastern Europe confront the changes that are sweeping across the continent, there is much talk of a new beginning for the countries. But just as surely as they face the enormous task of restructuring, their future development will certainly be influenced to a large extent by their particular experiences in the past. This collection of essays considers the problems and prospects of development from a historical perspective by examining the major Balkan states: Yugoslavia, Romania, Greece, and Bulgaria. These strategic countries are an excellent example of societies with the potential for significant economic growth, but which have developed unevenly because of external and domestic factors. This work provides an integrated overview, geographically and temporally, of each nation's development, reaching back to its emergence. In his introduction, editor Gerasimos Augustinos characterizes development as the process by which economic and technological change leads to the transformation of the institutions and values of a society. Each contributor then examines each country and its specific historical determinants, identifying the developmental strategies that have been attempted in each state and allowing for the comparison of variations. Essay one focuses on Bulgarian modernization, discussing the possibilities and limits of political and economic development through secularization. The problems of differentiated modernization form the basis of the second essay, which compares the seemingly dissimilar states of Bulgaria and Yugoslavia in the first half of the twentieth century. Essay three addresses the socialist self-management strategy that Yugoslavia adopted in anattempt to promote progress and regime legitimacy. The development of Greece through the market and entrepreneurship is the subject of the fourth essay, while Romania's rapid shift from agriculture to industrialization serves as the focus of the final essay. This comparative study will be an important reference work for courses in contemporary political systems, economic development, and European history, as well as a significant addition to public, college, and university libraries.

Sustainability of rural communities is threatened by a plethora of factors including climate change and disasters which interact in an intricate manner in making rural people vulnerable and poor. This book is the output of empirical research on communities and livelihood strategies in developing countries. It reveals how rural communities are functioning and earning their livelihoods by making the best use of the resources, local/internal or external/new and the combination of the two to counteract the various challenges they face, with the ultimate goal of becoming resilient to local or global shocks and sustaining that resilience. Local governance is identified as crucial in ensuring sustainable livelihoods as it ensures healthy collaboration between communities, on the one hand and civil society and those communities, on the other hand, in promoting self-sustaining development trajectories. Similarly, the role of social capital is not ignored as it brings in community drive and a sense of purpose, direction and solidarity among community members which facilitates problem solving in periods of crises and disasters.

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 offers a collection of original, state-of-the-art essays addressing various aspects of the economic analysis of inequality, deprivation, poverty measurement and social polarization, at both the theoretical and empirical level. Written by leading authorities in the fields of distributional analysis and normative economics, the respective chapters present detailed overviews of cutting-edge literature, as well as stand-alone research. Compiled as a tribute to Satya Ranjan Chakravarty's lifetime contributions in the fields of normative economics and distributional analysis, it represents an indispensable resource for researchers, policymakers and doctoral students working on issues pertaining to income/wealth distribution, social inclusion and poverty reduction.

This edited collection presents an alternative set of reflections on India's contemporary global role by exploring a range of influential non-Western state perspectives. Through multiple case studies, the contributors gauge the success of India's efforts to be seen as an alternative global power in the twenty-first century.

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.

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 is a collection of essays covering a range of issues related to socioeconomic inequalities and diversities. The authors, leading social scientists of diverse nationalities, represent varied perspectives. The book has essays on multiculturalism, social inclusion and exclusion of minorities and other marginalized groups such as low castes, linguistic minorities, Adivasis (tribals), persons with disability and unemployed youth. The book focuses on some innovative concepts considered necessary to understand the very process and evolution of aspects of social development such as pro-sociality, authentic responsible self and leadership ideology. The book deals with the challenges for achieving social development and societal harmony. The book will be a very useful resource for social science scholars and particularly for social and cultural psychologists, development professionals and administrators interested in the issues related to social development, social diversity and inter-group relations. The book will also be useful for policy formulation and action.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

For Heineken, 'rising Africa' is already a reality: the profits it extracts there are almost 50 per cent above the global average, and beer costs more in some African countries than it does in Europe. Heineken claims its presence boosts economic development on the continent. But is this true? Investigative journalist Olivier van Beemen has spent years seeking the answer, and his conclusion is damning: Heineken has hardly benefited Africa at all. On the contrary, there are some shocking skeletons in its African closet: tax avoidance, sexual abuse, links to genocide and other human rights violations, high-level corruption, crushing competition from indigenous brewers, and collaboration with dictators and pitiless anti-government rebels. Heineken in Africa caused a political and media furore on publication in The Netherlands, and was debated in their Parliament. It is an unmissable expose of the havoc wreaked by a global giant seeking profit in the developing world.

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.