Medellin, Colombia, used to be the most violent city on earth, but in recent years, allegedly thanks to its 'social urbanism' approach to regeneration, it has experienced a sharp decline in violence. The author explores the politics behind this decline and the complex transformations in terms of urban development policies in Medellin.

This handbook collates research evidence and presents the most up-to-date findings on child development in Sub-Saharan Africa. It discusses complex risk factors and medical conditions affecting childhood outcomes, and spotlights emerging programs for enhancing literacy and cognitive development. The panel of expert contributors offer needed context and knowledge to the discussion of previously understudied topics. Chapters present proven intervention strategies currently in use across the diverse region. In addition, this handbook provides guidelines for culturally sensitive and ethical research that will inform practice and help shape policy goals and initiatives. Topics featured in the Handbook include: * Fatherhood in the African context. * Sibling care-giving and its implications in Sub-Saharan Africa. * Nutritional status, infections, and child development * Diabetes in Sub-Saharan African children. * How to adapt tests for Sub-Saharan Africa. * Interventions aimed at children and caregivers. * A culturally sensitive approach to conducting research and promoting initial literacy development in Africa The Handbook of Applied Developmental Science in Sub-Saharan Africa is a must-have resource for researchers, professionals/scientist-practitioners, and graduate students in child, school, and developmental psychology, as well as pediatrics, social work, public health, and education.

Faith-based development organizations have become a central part of the lives of the women of rural Rajasthan, and have come to represent an important aspect of both individual and collective identities. And yet, religious teachings continue to be used to exclude women from public decision making forums and render them vulnerable to increasing levels of domestic violence. In a unique multi-disciplinary approach, combining a range of subjects, particularly gender studies, Bradley provides a unique study of the contradictory and complex role of development organisations and faith organizations in the lives of women in rural Rajasthan. This book will be of interest to students, reseachers and policy makers involved in various fields, including those of Development Studies, Religion, Gender Studies and Social Anthropology.

Making Climate Compatible Development Happen introduces readers to the concept of climate compatible development (CCD) through exploring what it might look like, how it could be achieved in practice and identifying challenges and dilemmas raised by CCD. The book brings together research that explores the assumptions underlying CCD and applies the concept in a range of geographic and sectoral settings. The volume makes a significant contribution to the theorisation and evidence-base for how development efforts can be made more climate resilient and with lower greenhouse gas emissions than a 'business as usual' approach. It provides critical reflections on the vision and conceptualisation of CCD, exploring how to encourage it, and what trade-offs and challenges may be encountered. The contributions discuss the feasibility of achieving CCD, mechanisms that may support progress towards it, challenges that may be experienced and the roles of, and impacts on, different stakeholder groups. Following a critical reflection on the concept of CCD, the potential nature of, and barriers to, CCD, it is examined in relation to agriculture, renewable energy, forestry, pastoralism, coastal areas and fisheries, with case studies taken from countries including Ghana, India, Kenya, Mongolia, Mozambique and Peru. The book provides a valuable cross-sectoral and international critical reflection on the theory and practice of CCD, and will be a resource for postgraduates, established scholars and undergraduates from any social science discipline, policymakers and practitioners studying or working on areas related to the interface between environment (climate change) and international development.

"This book focuses on the different challenges and opportunities for social transformation in India, Myanmar and Thailand, by centering communities and individuals as the main drivers of change. In doing so, it includes discussions on a wide array of issues including women's empowerment and political participation, ethno-religious tensions, plurilingualism, education reform, community-based healthcare, climate change, disaster management, ecological systems, and vulnerability reduction. Two core foundations are introduced for ensuring broader transformations. The first is the academic diplomacy project - a framework for an engaged academic enquiry focusing on causative, curative, transformative, and promotive factors. The second is a community driven collective struggle that serves as a grassroots possibility to facilitate positive social transformation by using locally available resources and enabling the participation of the resident population. As a whole, the book conveys the importance of a diversification of engagement at the grassroots level to strengthen the capacity of individuals as decisive stakeholders, where the process of social transformation makes communities more interconnected, interdependent, multicultural and vital in building an inclusive society."

This book provides a comprehensive overview of emerging challenges facing different social groups, policy-makers and the international community related to economic growth, social development and environmental change, social inclusion and regional development. The book undertakes a critical assessment of the tensions associated with the failures of mainstream regulatory approaches and impacts of social and economic policies whilst widening the discussion on the interface between the expansion of the socio-environmental demands, equity and justice. These are crucial challenges, of great importance today and of equal relevance to the Global North and South. The book explores one of the main contradictions of development, the simplification of assessments and narrow consideration of alternatives. Taking this dilemma as its departure point, it goes on to examine the justification, trends and limitations of Western-based development and possible alternatives to fundamentally modify the basis and the rationale of the development process. It considers theoretical and lived experiences of development, paying attention to multiple scales, local realities and economic frontiers. Contributing authors explore policy recommendations and discuss effective practical tools for determining the values different people hold for ecosystem services and territorial resources. They cover the monitoring of change in the provision of ecosystem services that might increase the well-being of vulnerable groups as well as strategies to promote innovation and integrated, equitable and sustainable development.

Over the last 50 years, Nepal has been considered an experiential model in determining the effectiveness and success of global human development strategies, both in theory and in practice. As such, it provides a rich array of in-depth case studies in both development success and failure. This edited collection examines these in order to propose a novel perspective on how human development occurs and how it can be aided and sustained. Aid, Technology and Development: The lessons from Nepal champions plural rationality from both a theoretical and practical perspective in order to challenge and critique the status quo in human development understanding, while simultaneously presenting a concrete framework with which to aid citizen and governmental organisations in the galvanization of human development. Including contributions by leading international social scientists and development practitioners throughout Nepal, this book will be of great interest to students, scholars and practitioners working in the field of foreign aid and development studies.

This book examines Financial regionalism in East Asia has stimulated not only a new architecture for regional governance, but also a transformation in Indonesia's national regulatory framework. As a relatively new phenomenon compared to trade regionalism, financial regionalism has successfully shaped cooperative networks among financial authorities in East Asia. In this incisive new book, Eko Saputro explores how new financial alliances and regulatory frameworks will allow Indonesia to rapidly take a new place at the global table, bringing the explosive growth that other Asian countries have seen to the archipelago nation. This book will be of equal value to academics, policy makers, students, and scholars, both in the region and abroad.

Fixing the African State explains why the predominant approach to international development produces outcomes that are incompatible with its underlying assumptions and intended objectives. Drawing on extensive ethnographic research undertaken in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania over the past decade, Brian J. Dill examines the relationship between community participation in the development process and the exercise of state power. Although the primary objective of community-based and -driven development is to shift the balance of power from the state to the benefit of non-state actors, Fixing the African State shows that, in fact, what is strengthened is both the image of a coherent, efficacious, and autonomous state, and the capacity of the state apparatus to exercise authority.

This study examines fundamental theoretical and conceptual issues of social change in Latin America in the context of detailed empirical analysis. It challenges the major assumptions and propositions that underlie globalization theory, reworking and fine tuning the concepts of imperialism and social class as relevant to understanding the 'new world order'. The study centers on the structural features of Latin America and the state policies reconcentrating power in the capitalist class at the expense of labor. The study surveys the contradictory tendencies of concentrated wealth and power and the emergence of new socio-political movements and alternative development strategies to the dominant paradigm.

How should we understand the many reports that poverty is the mother of innovation in India? What has the role of austerity been in the development of India's knowledge economy? In this critical study of Indian innovation, or 'Indovation', Thomas Birtchnell explores how the complex mobilities of 'globals' with stakes in India have transformed discourses and imaginaries about innovation in the region. He adopts a critical eye to the notion of Indovation by focusing on the various circuits of globals where India's knowledge economy is concentrated: expertise, entrepreneurship and community. Birtchnell traces the various discourses and counter-discourses around an Indian way of working and illustrates how differences in the international dimensions of austerity allow India's knowledge economy to prosper.

In the midst of growing criticism of current economic orthodoxies and welfare systems, basic income is growing in popularity. This is the first book to discuss existing at examples of basic income, in both rich and poor countries, and to consider its prospects in other places around the world.

The increasing liberalization and globalization of the world economy has not been accompanied by convergence in the various indicators of economic and social development. The papers in this volume go some way towards explaining why the increasing reliance on market forces may lead to greater divergences in economic performance. They also point to the importance for the development process of social solidarity and institutions which encourage co-operative approaches to problem solving.

This collection examines change within the major regional organizations of the Asia Pacific: The Asian Development Bank (ADB), the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) and the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF). It has two simultaneous foci: the nature of institutional change in regional organizations, and the process of regionalism in the Asia Pacific. It combines the views of both officials and practitioners, providing new insights into both its major questions.

This book analyzes various important aspects of methodology and substance regarding economic, social, and political policy in Africa directed toward achieving more effective, efficient, and equitable societal institutions. The chapters are authored by experts from within Africa and also from Africa research institutes elsewhere. The book combines practical policy significance with insightful causal and prescriptive generalizations. The emphasis is on the role of governmental decision-making and the important (but secondary) role of the marketplace, social groups, and engineering.

Local governments encounter mammouth problems, and although there is not one panacea that works internationally, this book argues that there are mechanisms to improve the local situation and theer is evidence that this can suceed. By considering a number of key case studies from Latin America, Africa and Asia, the authors review best practices in good governance, thereby demonstarting that things can improve at the local level.

The book critically examines the effects of the War on Terror on the relationships between civil society, security and aid. It argues that the War on Terror regime has greatly reshaped the field of development and it highlights the longer-lasting impacts of post-9/11 counter-terrorism responses on aid policy and practice on civil society.

Regionalism and World Order assesses the origins, significance and likely evolution of the trend towards regionalism within the world order. It analyses how states have been responding to the end of US hegemony and assesses the extent to which new regional blocs are emerging and their nature. These questions are analysed through detailed case studies of the three most advanced regions of the world economy - the Americas, the European Union, and East Asia - firstly from the standpoint of the 'core' state or states, and secondly from that of the 'peripheral' states.

A groundbreaking argument that the political spectrum today is inadequate to twenty-first century America and a major source of the confusion and hostility that characterize contemporary political discourse. As American politics descends into a battle of anger and hostility between two groups called "left" and "right," people increasingly ask: What is the essential difference between these two ideological groups? In The Myth of Left and Right, Hyrum Lewis and Verlan Lewis provide the surprising answer: nothing. As the authors argue, there is no enduring philosophy, disposition, or essence uniting the various positions associated with the liberal and conservative ideologies of today. Far from being an eternal dividing line of American politics, the political spectrum came to the United States in the 1920s and, since then, left and right have evolved in so many unpredictable and even contradictory ways that there is currently nothing other than tribal loyalty holding together the many disparate positions that fly under the banners of "liberal" and "conservative." Powerfully argued and cutting against the grain of most scholarship on polarization in America, this book shows why the idea that the political spectrum measures deeply held worldviews is the central political myth of our time and a major cause of the confusion and vitriol that characterize public discourse.

This book analyzes the changes in and development of China's Foreign Aid Policy and Mechanisms over the past 60 years. It offers readers a thorough introduction to China's Aid to Africa; its Aid to Southeast Asian Countries; its Aid Policy Toward Central Asian Countries; and its Aid to Latin America and the Caribbean Region, as well as their respective influence. Combining field research and surveys at the grass-roots level, the book argues that China's foreign aid policy is intended to help other countries and has changed the strategic pattern of Western countries imposing blockades on New China, and has thus played a key role in expanding and strengthening China's economic and political ties with many developing countries, restoring its legitimate seat in the United Nations and promoting the cause of cooperation with regard to international development. Focusing on concrete examples rather than abstruse theories, the book further argues that foreign aid requires practical policies, suitable expertise and technologies; at the same time, international development - a field largely overlooked by scholars of international relations - can offer profound principles to shape international relations and foreign aid.

Over the past three decades, South Korea's economic performance has bordered on a miracle. Few economies have achieved such spectacular growth in such a short period of time. Korea's development process provides a sharp contrast to the lackluster growth experienced by many other developing economies and represents several unique characteristics even in comparison with its neighbors Japan and Taiwan. At the same time, certain aspects of its development remain minor mysteries requiring further examination and scrutiny. At the very least, the meteoric rise of a small economy and its people to international prominence after centuries of obscurity, disenfranchisement,and privation, deserves careful investigation and worldwide attention. This collection of 24 original essays focuses on the economic policies that led to the rapid transformation of the Korean economy. Among the salient features of the Korean experience dealt with by the contributors are development policies and the record of development; export policies--exchange rate, import liberalization, factor price distortions, and changing comparative advantage; production technology and total factor productivity; macroeconomic perspectives; conglomeration, business concentration and management practices; income distribution and labor issues, and urban and regional policies. Throughout the book, the role of the government in the development process and the dominance of large businesses in the economic sphere are analyzed extensively. In seeking to trace the relationships among various economic factors and to provide some insight into the process of economic development, this volume marshalls a considerable array of statistics and institutional descriptions as a background for analysis. This book will be welcomed by those studying economic development in general and the East Asian economy in particular as well as by those currently engaged in dealing with Korea.

This book presents the fmdings of a comparative study of three European metropolitan regions: Vienna, Barcelona and Stockholm. The heart of the work consists of empirical studies carefully designed and developed in order to identify the main actors and mechanisms supporting technological innovation in each of the metropolitan regions. The authors have also highlighted the similarities and differences across regions and countries, investigating how these came to be, and discussing the possible implications. The introductory as well as the concluding Chapter was written by Manfred M. Fischer who, assisted by Attila Varga, was also responsible for Chapter 2 on the Metropolitan Region of Vienna. Javier Revilla Diez contributed Chapter 3 on the Barcelona Metropolitan Region. Folke Snickars has provided Chapter 4 which examines the Metropolitan Region of Stockholm and. All authors have reviewed and commented on the whole contents so that the volume represents a collective endeavour which has been rendered as homogeneous as possible. A particular effort has been made to ensure that the study is based on a common conceptual framework.

Refugees and asylum seekers are the subject of major debates both at national and international level. But the debates exclude a gendered perspective that considers the experiences and needs of men and women. This study provides a comprehensive account of the situation of women refugees globally and explains how they differ from men. Looking at causes of refugee flows, international laws and conventions and their application, the policies and legislation of Western governments, and lived experiences of refugees themselves, this book is a much-needed addition to the migration literature.

The current policy for climate change prioritises mitigation over adaptation. The collected papers of Climate Change as Environmental and Economic Hazard argue that although efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions are still vital, the new policy paradigm should shift the priority to adaptation, with a special focus on disaster risk reduction. It should also consider climate change not purely as a hazard and a challenge, but as a window of opportunity to shift to a new sustainable development policy model, which stresses the particular importance of communities' resilience. The papers in this volume explore the key issues linked to this shift, including: ' Increasing research into the Earth Sciences, climate reconstruction and forecasting in order to decrease the degree of uncertainty about the origin, development and implications of climate change; ' The introduction of more binding and comprehensive regulation of both greenhouse gas emissions and adaptation measures, like that in the United Kingdom; ' Matching climate policy with that for disasters and mainstreaming it into overall development strategies. The volume is a valuable addition to previous climate change research and considers a new policy approach to this new global challenge.

This unique focus on the relationship between religion and political culture in the Third World uses a comparative and thematic approach. Specific issues of religion-politics interaction in the Third World in recent times include: the rise of Islamic fundamentalist groups throughout the Middle East and otherparts of the Muslim world; the political effects of the decline of Catholicism and the rapid growth of Protestant evangical sects in Latin America; communcal conflict between Hindu nationalist groups, and the politicization of Buddhism in South East Asia. The common effect of such developments is to challenge existing forms of relationship between states and societies with religion used as a political resource.