The impetus for this volume comes from reflecting on many years of experience, successes and failures in development evaluation in Asia and Africa, and from recent work supported by the Rockefeller Foundation on Rethinking, Reshaping, and Reforming Evaluation. The concepts, frameworks and ideas presented in this volume are a useful contribution to the ongoing efforts at rethinking, reforming and reshaping international development evaluation. They come from leading thinkers and practitioners in development, evaluation, research and academia who have recognized that development evaluation must evolve if it is to respond to the challenges of the 21st Century and play a meaningful role in social and economic transformation. This volume will be of great interest to evaluation scholars, practitioners, and students, particularly to those interested in international development projects, programs, and policies. This book will be appropriate for a wide range of courses, included Introduction to Evaluation, International Development Evaluation, Program Evaluation, Policy Evaluation, and evaluation courses in International Development, International Relations, Public Policy, Public Health, Human Services, Sociology, and Psychology.

THE BOOK TAKES A GLIMPSE OF HEALTH CARE ISSUES FROM THE AUTHORS PERSPECTIVE DURING HIS FORMATIVE YEARS, HIS YEARS IN PRACTICE, AND WHAT HE CALLS THE CURRENT DARK WALLS OF MEDICINE-- AS WE HAVE SOME 47 MILLION AMERICANS WITHOUT HEALTH CARE INSURANCE, NUMEROUS OTHERS WHO ARE UNDERINSURED, THE RISING COST OF HEALTH CARE, AND HOW THESE SITUATIONS HAVE LED TO HIS STRONG BELIEF THAT WE NEED AN OVERHAUL IN THE WAY HEALTH CARE IS DELIVERED IN THIS NATION. THE AUTHOR SETS FORTH A PROPOSAL THAT HE FEELS WOULD ALLOW FOR UNIVERSAL ACCESS TO HEALTH CARE FOR ALL, WHILE ENSURING QUALITY AND COST EFFECTIVE SERVICES. HE TAKES A LOOK AT HOW HEALTH CARE IS DELIVERED IN OTHER NATIONS AS WELL. FINALLY HE LOVES AMERICA AND BELIEVES THAT WE CAN, AS A NATION, CONTINUE TO BE THE LEADER IN HEALTHCARE IN THE WORLD.

How should we proceed with advanced research of humanities and social sciences in collaboration? What are the pressing issues of this new trend in a cataclysmic time for civilization? This book, originated with a Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) Topic-Setting Program, addresses these challenging questions in four parts for innovating twenty-first-century humanities and social sciences. It broadens the horizon for reviewing multi-disciplinary landscapes of risks and regulation of new technologies by focusing on paradigmatic cases from the fields of life and environment. Here, genome editing for reproductive treatment and renewable energy under the constraint of climate change in Japanese and global contexts are involved. The volume comprises a combination of topics and aspects such as public policy and philosophy of science, medicine and law, climate ethics, and the economics of electricity. This edited collection will thus motivate forward-thinking readers across the diverse spectrum of social sciences and humanities to survey themes of their own interests in multi-disciplinary studies. In so doing, they can explore the evolving frontiers of those disciplines and the depths of individual contributions by experts in philosophy, ethics, law, economics, and science, technology, and society (STS), including bioscience.

This book explores the shift towards individual responsibility that is increasingly evident in welfare systems across the world. The book will be of interest to students and scholars across sociology, social policy, and political science, with a particular focus on migration, minorities, political discourse, securitisation, social justice and human rights. "This book offers a compelling read, analysing how workfare is legitimated in the Central European context, through the innovative metaphor of "political farming." The analytical framework brings together several distinct streams of theorizing (critical discourse studies, critical security studies, governmentality, boundary-making, and the dynamics of ethnic relations) seamlessly and effectively. Through a very nuanced discursive analysis, Kissova shows how the poor, the offenders, and the "unadaptable" - categories policymakers use to talk about material need recipients - are linked pathologically with criminality, abuse of the system and other negative perceptions. This is a must-read text for anyone interested in how political actors justify questionable legislation that cements inequality in today's neoliberal milieu." - B. Nadya Jaworsky, Associate Professor, Sociology, Masaryk University, Czech Republic "Lenka Kissova's book is clearly written and carefully researched. Her interdisciplinary insight and discursive analysis of parliamentary debates on Slovak "workfare" policies illustrates the deliberate, precise and politicized colocation of Roma marginalization and economic disadvantage, in a manner that starkly illustrates systemic racism dressed up as morally necessary regulatory reform. Moreover, her research has broader comparative and methodological relevance given how she layers in and utilizes governmentality, securitization and legitimation theory, unmasking how neoliberal economic assumptions and dog whistle politics, woven into the speech of politicians, works to demonize recipients as real or potential cheats and criminals, enact further social exclusion and heighten inequality and fear while not-so-subtly promoting existing prejudices. Her overarching metaphor-that of parliamentarians engaging in "political farming" where their ideas seed and take root in fertile soil of the national landscape resulting in regulatory "products"-effectively demonstrates how social reality generally and state regulation specifically can be constructed divorced from actual evidence, a process beyond her specific case and critically relevant to our times." - Barbara J. Falk, Professor, Department of Defence Studies, Canadian Forces College/Royal Military College of Canada, Fellow, Centre for European, Russian and Eurasian Studies, University of Toronto, Canada

Culture's Engine offers an insightful and penetrating analysis of the enduring relationship between technology and society. William Gosling explores in absorbing historical detail how humans have experienced change through a sequence of technological revolutions, each giving rise to new social organisation, which in turn influences the shape and timing of the next such revolution. Gosling argues that it is through this dialogue that successful technology sets the direction and pace of all cultural evolution. The state of technology at any time is the major influence on the world, and not just the material world. This book then is not a history of technology, still less of science. It fundamentally questions how technology and social forces interact, leading to these successive revolutions and their outcomes.

This book explores Native American literary responses to biomedical discourses and biomedicalization processes as they circulate in social and cultural contexts. Native American communities resist reductivism of biomedicine that excludes Indigenous (and non-Western) epistemologies and instead draw attention to how illness, healing, treatment, and genetic research are socially constructed and dependent on inherently racialist thinking. This volume highlights how interventions into the hegemony of biomedicine are vigorously addressed in Native American literature. The book covers tuberculosis and diabetes epidemics, the emergence of Native American DNA, discoveries in biotechnology, and the problematics of a biomedical model of psychiatry. The book analyzes work by Louise Erdrich, Sherman Alexie, LeAnne Howe, Linda Hogan, Heid E. Erdrich, Elissa Washuta and Frances Washburn. The book will appeal to scholars of Native American and Indigenous Studies, as well as to others with an interest in literature and medicine.

Economic Cycles and Social Movements: Past, Present and Future offers diverse perspectives on the complex interrelationship between social challenges and economic crises in the Modern World System. Written with a balance of quantitative, qualitative and theoretical contributions and insights, this volume provides a great opportunity to reflect upon the ongoing conceptual and empirical challenges when confronting the complex interrelations of various economic cycles and social movements. By engaging wide-ranging ideas and theoretical points of view from different disciplines, different countries and different perspectives, this study breaks new ground and offers novel insights into the way the capitalist world economy functions as well as the way social and political movements react to these constraints. Different chapters in this volume bring about novel interdisciplinary approaches to study business cycles, economic changes and social as well as political movements, offer new interpretations and, while examining the complexity of socioeconomic cycles in the long run, present epistemological challenges and a wide variety of empirical data that will increase our understanding of these complex interactions.

Young people are very often the driving forces of political participation that aims to change societies and political systems. Rather than being depoliticized, young people in different national contexts are giving rise to alternative politics. Drawing on original survey data collected in 2018, this edited volume provides a detailed analysis of youth participation in nine European countries by focusing on socialization processes, different modes of participation and the mobilization of youth politics. "This volume is an indispensable guide to understanding young European's experience and engagement of politics, the inequalities that shape young people's political engagement and are sometimes replicated through them, and young people's commitment to saving the environment and spreading democratic ideals. Based on compelling and extensive research across nine nations, this volume makes important advances in key debates on youth politics and provides critical empirical insights into which young people engage, influences on young people's politics, how young people engage, why some young people don't engage, and trends across nations. The volume succeeds in the herculean task of focusing on specific national contexts while also rendering a comprehensive picture of youth politics and inequality in Europe today." -Jennifer Earl, Professor of Sociology, University of Arizona, USA "Forecasts by social scientists of young people's increasingly apathetic stance towards political participation appear to have been misplaced. This text, drawing data and analysis across and between nine European countries, captures the changing nature of political 'activism' by young people. It indicates how this is strongly nuanced by factors such as social class and gender identity. It also highlights important distinctions between young people's approaches towards more traditional (electoral) and more contemporary (non-institutional) forms of participation. Critically, it illuminates the many ways in which youth political participation has evolved and transformed in recent years. Wider social circumstances and experiences are identified as highly significant in preparing young people for, and influencing their levels of participation in, both protest-oriented action and electoral politics." -Howard Williamson, Professor of European Youth Policy, University of South Wales, UK "This book is an incredible guide to understanding the role and sources of inequalities on young people's political involvement. Country specific chapters allow the authors to integrate a large number of the key and most pressing issues regarding young people's relationship to politics in a single volume. Topics range from social mobility and the influence of socioeconomic (parental) resources and class; young people's practice in the social sphere; the intersection of gender with other sources of inequalities; online participation and its relationship with social inequalities; the impact of harsh economic conditions; the mobilization potential of the environmental cause; to the role of political organizations. Integrating all these pressing dimensions in a common framework and accompanying it with extensive novel empirical evidence is a great achievement and the result is a must read piece for researchers and practitioners aiming to understand the challenges young people face in developing their relationship to politics." -Gema Garcia-Albacete, Associate Professor of Political Science, University Carlos III Madrid, Spain

This book explores the ways in which socio-technical settings in medical contexts find varying articulations in a specific locale. Focusing on Japan, it consists of nine case studies on topics concerning: experiences with radiation in Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and Fukushima; patient security, end-of-life and high-tech medicine in hospitals; innovation and diffusion of medical technology; and the engineering and evaluating of novel devices in clinical trials. The individual chapters situate humans and devices in medical settings in their given semantic, pragmatic, institutional and historical context. A highly interdisciplinary approach offers deep insights beyond the manifold findings of each case study, thereby enriching academic discussions on socio-technical settings in medical contexts amongst affiliated disciplines. This volume will be of broad interest to scholars, practitioners, policy makers and students from various disciplines, including Science and Technology Studies (STS), medical humanities, social sciences, ethics and law, business and innovation studies, as well as biomedical engineering, medicine and public health.

Cities are experiencing unprecedented times. In addition of managing the best possible post-pandemic recovery, Cities are at the beginning of the 4th industrial revolution, and all want to play a relevant role in it. To achieve this, they must retain and attract the necessary talent. There is a fierce competition where cities transform to become as attractive as possible. But what makes a city attractive (from emotional and rational sides) to talented citizens? For mayors and city directors: how can I prepare my city for this goal? What kind of transformations in the medium-long term should I develop? And in the short term, what processes and technologies (SmartCity) should I put in place? And from the point of view of citizens: how do I choose the best city to develop my full potential? Which one offers me the best citizenship contract? Where am I going to enjoy the best services with the highest quality of life and lower taxes/cost of life? In addition, the city must be attractive, with a strong identity and dynamism and promising future. Can I find the cities that best suit my aesthetic and emotional preferences, and that also offer me the services that I consider a priority at the lowest cost to my pocket? Find all the answers in this book.

The social sciences have mostly ignored the role of physical buildings in shaping the social fabric of communities and groups. Although the emerging field of the sociology of architecture has started to pay attention to physical structures, Brenneman and Miller are the first to combine the light of sociological theory and the empirical method in order to understand the impact of physical structures on religious groups that build, transform, and maintain them. Religious buildings not only reflect the groups that build them or use them; these physical structures actually shape and change those who gather and worship there. Religious buildings are all around us. From Wall Street to Main Street, from sublime and historic cathedrals to humble converted storefronts, these buildings shape the global religious landscape, "building faith" among those who worship in them while providing a testament to the shape and duration of the faith of those who built them and those who maintain them. Building Faith explores the social impact of religious buildings in places as diverse as a Chicago suburb and a Guatemalan indigenous Mayan village, all the while asking the questions, "How does space shape community?" and "How do communities shape the spaces that speak for them?"

This book provides an extensive analysis and discussion of the transnational mobilization of citizens and youth, alongside the production of creative, imaginative, and constructive solutions to the European crisis. The volume provides a variety of interdisciplinary analyses, as well as a series of perspectives on populism that have not been addressed extensively, including an examination of left-wing populism, the constituent power dimension of populism, and transnational manifestations of populism, contributing to debates on political science, political sociology, social movements studies, and political and constitutional theory.

For social studies teachers reeling from the buffeting of top-down educational reforms, this volume offers answers to questions about dealing with the Common Core State Standards (CCSS). Each chapter presents and reviews pertinent standards that relate to the social studies. Each chapter also deals with significant topics in the social studies from various social sciences to processes such as inquiry to key skills needed for success in social studies such as analysis and literacy. The most important aspect of these chapters though is the array of adaptable activities that is included in each chapter. Teachers can find practical approaches to dealing with CCSS across the social studies panorama. The multiple authorships of the various chapters mean a variety of perspectives and viewpoints are presented. All of the authors have fought in the trenches of K-12 public education. Their activities reflect this in a way that will be useful to novice or veteran teachers.

At a time when diversity is taking an increasingly prominent place in public and academic debate, Situational Diversity offers a new perspective by understanding diversity framed in the local context, characterised through different forms of social differentiation. Based on ethnographic fieldwork and archival research on migration-driven diversity in two neighbourhoods in Stuttgart (Germany) and Glasgow (United Kingdom), the book presents a concept that takes into account the contingent and emergent nature of social differentiation while at the same time explaining the stability of modes of differentiation. The comparative approach provides a nuanced analysis of how diversity in urban environments occurs as a result of locally, socially and temporally specific practices. In this book, Kluckmann discusses how social work, city administration and volunteer work prefigure positions and relations of people in the context of migration. Thus, it will appeal to students and scholars of social and cultural anthropology, European ethnology, sociology, human/cultural geography, cultural studies in addition to practitioners in the fields of intercultural relations, social and public policy as well as urban development.

This original book is the first serious study investigating the crowdfunding phenomenon, which has developed deep meaning for various stakeholders benefiting from this funding collection mechanism and its innovative new role, especially in the processes of business creation and spread of entrepreneurship. The actors involved -promoters, supporters, and the platforms through which the campaigns are launched - constitute an ecosystem in continuous evolution, which has grown dramatically and allows for its further development. Irini Liakopoulou has conducted with the "multiple paper thesis" method in which original and innovative contributions are presented, applying new techniques and methodologies. The book's goal is to foster debate about crowdfunding, an under-researched topic whose implications are not fully understood but will be a vital part of social and economic life in the future.

This book examines the crucial role of psychoanalysis in understanding what AI means for us as speaking, sexed subjects. Drawing on Lacanian theory and recent clinical developments it explores what philosophy and critical theory of AI has hitherto neglected: enjoyment. Through the reconceptualization of Intelligence, the Artificial Object and the Sexual Abyss the book outlines the Sexbot as a figure who exists on the boundary of psychoanalysis and AI. Through this figure and the medium of film, the author subverts Kant's three Enlightenment questions and guides readers to transition from asking 'Does it think?' to 'Can it enjoy?' The book will appeal in particular to students and scholars of psychoanalysis, philosophy, film and media studies, critical theory, feminist theory and AI research.

Inner-City Public Schools is a beacon call for everyone to take a close look at how effective our inner city public schools have been. Dr. Diop shares some of his life stories and how the public schools in his neighborhood shaped his thinking. With education reformists extolling the value and achievement of charter schools, to the peril of public schools- Dr. Diop is honest in his evaluation of the schools he has led and how he and his teachers set and achieved immense goals, resulting in the highest math scores in the school's history. Dr. Diop is also candid as he discussed the emotional struggles faced by his sister and how those struggles enabled him to relate to the anguish many of his students face daily. This book will show everyone, that there is value in our nation's inner city public schools and his life is living proof

DAVID DUKES was born and raised in Madison, Florida. At the age of seventeen, in 1963, he led the civil rights movement in Madison. He did voter-registration work, sit-ins at restaurants, and recreational facilities, conducted training seminars, and demonstrated in support for freedom, equality, justice, and human rights for blacks in the American South.

"Alex is clearly a world citizen who disseminates on a wide variety of issues with amazing clarity. His refreshing views on a wide range of subjects are written with elegance and a light touch that does not cloud the issues."
Veeno Dewan, Editor, Voice Newspaper

"Alex Sangha has an impressively broad range of knowledge on issues that affect the world, and challenges problems that most people have come to accept. Sangha doesn't just point out the troubles in this world, but thinks of bold solutions for them."
Jenny Uechi, Managing Editor, Vancouver Observer

If you could adopt a single step and make a small difference, what would it be?
What if you could cultivate multiple small steps that lead to a bigger, better, and brighter future?
In this one of a kind social discussion guide, Vancouver visionary Alex Sangha delivers straight-talk on socio-economic, environmental, political, and spiritual issues that anyone can put to use. His mission? Getting people to think for themselves. His tools? The hard hitting articles he pens which call it like he sees it.
This valuable volume is a collection of frank and insightful essays on the world in the 21st Century, through the eyes of a social activist immersed in it.

The investigation of HAART adherence behavior and its effect on those under therapy in Uganda is important, especially because provision of HAART in low-income nations-such as those in sub-Saharan Africa, where many of the affected individuals are poverty stricken and possess little or no formal education-may result in negative public health implications, including those resulting from suboptimal adherence, such as drug resistance. In exploring the effect of HAART on sexual behavior of those under therapy, this study may augment existing knowledge pertaining to this area in resource-constrained nations. Of supreme importance, this study may assist in the formulation of strategies and policies that could enhance the effect of HAART and the quality of life for those with HIV/AIDS in developing nations such as Uganda.