This book assesses the role of microfinance in the construction of livelihoods for poverty reduction in the Northern Savannah of Ghana, analysing the current microfinance landscape and financial services in the region. The book analyses the current microfinance landscape and financial services in Ghana. In doing so, it demonstrates the key factors for designing microfinance products and services to ensure greater uptake and outreach enhancing the sustainability of microfinance service providers. Chapters explore the impact of access to microfinance on livelihood diversification, asset accumulation patterns and welfare outcomes. In addition to assessing the role as well as of microfinance as an anti-poverty tool, the book presents new theoretical frameworks and models, including the microfinance livelisystem framework (MFL). This unique framework, which combines and goes beyond existing frameworks, situates the microfinance industry within national and international financial and economic ecosystems and presents the interrelationships between institutions providing services for the construction of livelihoods. Offering new theoretical frameworks and models developed for the microfinance industry with universal application, this book will be of particular use to students and scholars of Development Studies, Development Finance, Poverty and Inequality Studies, Rural Development and Sustainable Finance.

South Asians constitute the largest expatriate population in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries. Their contribution in the socio-economic, technological and educational development of GCC nations is immense. This book offers one of the first systematic analysis of South Asia-Gulf migration dynamics and its varied impact on countries such as India, Nepal, Bangladesh, Pakistan and Sri Lanka. It deals with public policy, socio-economic mobility, remittance policy, global financial crisis and labour issues. Bringing together essays from contributors from around the world, the volume reveals not only the multi-dimensionality of the migration process between the two regions, but also the diversity and the underlying unity of the South Asian countries. This book will be invaluable to scholars and students of migration studies, development studies and sociology as well as policy-makers, administrators, academics, and non-governmental organisations in the field.

By exploring the experiences of community activists and organizations working with information and communication technology (ICT) to build communities, this book offers a grounded and informed study of the role ICT plays in people's lives. The author emphasizes the importance of networks built around trust, shared spaces and local knowledge bases in the formation of significant relationships in contemporary Western societies and in doing so, questions many of the assumptions which inform the rhetorics of the information age.

* Integrates contributions from a diverse range of nations, utilising a broad range of theoretical tools and methodologies, to offer a cross-national perspective considering the way in which community responses to Covid-19 interacted with structural and political characteristics, as well as with the responses of national governments to the pandemic in terms of 'lockdown' restrictions and public health policy * Fascinating reading for students and academics in social psychology, and the social sciences, as well as policymakers and charities who wish to harness, support, and sustain these initiatives without controlling them * Explores the invaluable support and advice provided by community groups and organisations, including practical tasks such as grocery shopping, as well as emotional and financial support to community members, many of whom were struggling with physical and mental health issues as well as economic disadvantage

This book provides a first-hand account of land conflict and power relations in one of the most resource-rich states in India - Jharkhand. Through the eyes of the state, corporate, and indigenous actors, it reveals how conflict over land in Jharkhand is firmly embedded in the ideological foundations of the key actors in the region. Based on thorough research on the ground and interviews with state, corporate, and indigenous actors, the book explores a host of themes such as: the need and efficacy of state-led modernisation programmes, the market as the best regulator, and 'ideas' of development. The volume highlights how land conflicts in Jharkhand will persist until the ideological differences are recognised and welcomed in hopes of making way for collaborative governance. This work will be a key intervention in the fields of area studies, especially South Asian studies, public policy, politics, and development studies.

This book provides a first-hand account of land conflict and power relations in one of the most resource-rich states in India - Jharkhand. Through the eyes of the state, corporate, and indigenous actors, it reveals how conflict over land in Jharkhand is firmly embedded in the ideological foundations of the key actors in the region. Based on thorough research on the ground and interviews with state, corporate, and indigenous actors, the book explores a host of themes such as: the need and efficacy of state-led modernisation programmes, the market as the best regulator, and 'ideas' of development. The volume highlights how land conflicts in Jharkhand will persist until the ideological differences are recognised and welcomed in hopes of making way for collaborative governance. This work will be a key intervention in the fields of area studies, especially South Asian studies, public policy, politics, and development studies.

This specially commissioned volume of original essays, first published in 1990, provides a unique view of conflict, territorial behaviour and reconciliation between groups - social, racial, religious and nationalist - within states in both the developed and the developing worlds. The volume as a whole shows the wide range of geographical solutions which have been adopted in attempts to limit conflict and foster stability. This title underlines the importance of a geographical perspective on intergroup conflict and reconciliation, and provides a broad range of real-world experience in carefully chosen case studies. Shared Space: Divided Space will be of interest students of the social sciences as well as to general readers, who will find this title to be accessible and authoritative.

Four decades of statehood for Israel has meant four decades of nationalistic, cultural, and ethnic conflicts. Throughout these growing pains, Israel has experienced a remarkable lack of class struggle unusually so during the transition to a capitalistic society. Divided We Stand shows that the lack of class struggle is no accident; it is a result of political design and necessity. In Israel, the state has been the predominating social agent and has therefore been in a position to supervise class struggle within the boundaries of its own rules. With an in-depth look at the class system and the lack of class struggle, this book provides an interesting perspective and analysis of Israeli society. This well-written book makes a strong contribution to the understanding of the nature and the patterns of social inequality in Israel. Choice Divided We Stand monitors the development of class structure in Israel from 1948 to the mid-1980s by using information on the economy and on individuals' positions in the economy (gathered by the Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics). Numerous tables complement the written content by examining certain variables--such as immigration, gender, ethnic origin, mobility, types of industry and religion--over three decades. This book also analyzes the structural transformation of the society and explores the process of allocation and reallocation of Israeli citizens. Divided We Stand can be a practical, informative source for academics and students of sociology, political development, and Middle East affairs. As Israel continues to define itself, the book can serve as a useful guide and study to one of the more unexplored aspects of Israeli society.

For a period of over seventy years after the 1917 revolutions in Russia, talking about the past, either political or personal, became dangerous. The new policy of glasnost at the end of the 1980s resulted in a flood of reminiscence, almost nightly on television and more formally collected by new Russian oral history groups and western researchers. This book is a fascinating collection of life stories and family history interview material collected by the editors and two Russian groups of interviewers.

This book: analyses conflicting notions of identity and belonging in contemporary Europe. Addressing the creation, negotiation and (re)use of diverse spaces and places of belonging, the book examines their fascinating complexities in the context of a changing Europe. takes an innovative interdisciplinary approach to examine renegotiations of belonging played out through cultural encounters with difference and change, in diverse public spaces and contested places. employs analyses of diverse case studies to draw out the significance of the participation or exclusion of differing community, grassroots and activist groups in such practices and discourses of belonging in relation to the contemporary emergence of identity conflicts and political uses of the past across Europe. analyses the ways in which people's sense of belonging is connected to cultural, heritage and memory practices undertaken in different public spaces, including museums, cultural and community centres, city monuments and built heritage, neglected urban spaces, and online fora. provides a valuable contribution to the existing bodies of work on identities, migration, public space, memory and heritage. It will be of interest to scholars and students with an interest in contested belonging, public spaces and the role of culture and heritage.

This book, first published in 1981, explores why it is that the modern built environment, while successfully providing material comfort and technical efficiency, none the less breeds despair and depression rather than inspires hope and commitment. The source of this paradox, where material benefits appear to have been gained only at the expense of intangible values and qualities is found in humanism, the persistent and powerful belief that all problems can be solved through the use of human reason. But humanism has become increasingly confused, rationalistic, callously devoted to efficiency, and authoritarian. These confusions and contradictions, together with the anti-nature stance of humanism and its failure to teach humane behaviour, lead the author to conclude that humanism is best rejected. Such rejection does not advocate the inhuman and anti-human, but requires instead a return to the 'humility' that lies at the origin of humanism - a respect for objects, creatures, environments and people. This 'environmental humility' is explored in the context of individuality of settings, ways of seeing landscapes, appropriation and ways of building places. This title will be of interest to students of human geography.

In this comprehensive overview of the state of the art in the field, group workers and social scientists explore group research issues. Learn how they grapple with the major problems associated with doing research on treatment groups. While discussing the outcomes of their group treatment programs, the authors address such issues as non-random assignment, impact of group process on outcome, retrospective research design, the unit of analysis, multivariate analysis, single-case designs, and small samples. Each insightful chapter illustrates the decisions and compromises that researchers must make to explore group phenomenon and treatment. Advances in Group Work Research is an ideal supplementary text or casebook for practice-research courses. It will also be useful for those interested in empirical group work, group research, and practice research generally.This book presents a sample of papers from the last three years'Annual Symposium on Empirical Foundations of Group Work.

Urban gambling, linked to poverty, crime and corruption, was once considered a blight on U.S. cities. Gambling then followed the exodus of Americans into the suburbs after World War II and now most Americans live within a four hour drive of a casino. What explains the success of places like Las Vegas? The self-contained casino resort removes gambling and its social problems from cities and provides Americans the comfort of gambling in a setting matched to their suburban lifestyle. In a detailed look at the growth of the earliest casino resorts to the "pleasure palaces" and riverboat casinos of today, Suburban Xanadu locates the rise of the casino resort in suburbanization and the significance of this development for today.

The book explores the story of two women living in remote town Mitzpe Ramon, in the Negev Desert in south Israel. These women lived in poverty and worked under oppressive conditions for all their lives until one day they began to resist. Standing for the rights of working women and mothers, they led protests and strikes that shook the entire country for weeks. In An Anatomy of Feminist Resistance: Rebel in the Wilderness, Dahan Kalev's innovative perspective examines both the public and private spheres of these woman's lives and reveals the existence of a third sphere in which women are able to find their voices. This study deciphers what causes women to accept conditions of oppression, under what circumstances will women begin to resist, and what are the political transformations rebellious women undergo while fighting oppression.

The book explores the notion of Gypsy and Traveller ethnicity and provides a critique of the conceptual basis of racial and ethnic categorisation. An analysis of the post-war housing situation is given in order to illustrate a connection between social and economic conditions, legislation affecting gypsies and travellers and the visibility and general consciousness of the gypsy and traveller population. The originality of the book lies in its argument that the position of gypsies and travellers largely arises out of social conditions and interaction rather than political, biological or ideological determinants. It puts forward the notion of an ethnic narrative of traveller identity and illustrates how variations of this have been defensively deployed by some travellers and elaborated on by theorists. Belton focuses on the social generation of travellers as a cultural, ethnic and racial categorization, offering a rational explanation of the development of an itinerant population that is less ambiguous and more informative in terms of the social nature of the gypsy and traveller position than interpretations based on 'blood', 'breed', 'stock', ethnicity or race that dominate the literature.

Since the late 1970s the role of key world cities such as Los Angeles, New York and London as centres of global control and co-ordination has come under increasing scrutiny. This book provides an overview and critique of work on the global context of metropolitan growth, world city formation and the theory it has generated. Suggesting 'post-imperialism' as the most appropriate framework for analysis, the author demonstrates the extent to which urban and regional development, both in Britain and elsewhere, were linked to a colonial mode of production, and highlights the effects of its disappearance. Against this background, the author charts the transformation of London from imperial capital in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries to world city in the capitalist world economy of today.

Russia is one of the few countries in the world where intellectuals existed as a social group and shared a unique social identity. This book focuses on one of the most important and influential groups of Russian intellectuals - the 1960s generation of shestidesyatniki - often considered the last embodiment of the classical tradition of the intelligentsia. They devoted their lives to defending 'socialism with a human face', authored Perestroika, and were subsequently demonised when the reforms failed. It investigates how these intellectuals were affected by the transition to the new post-Soviet Russia, and how they responded to the criticism. Unlike other studies on this subject, which view the Russian intelligentsia as simply an objectively existing group, this book portrays the intelligentsia as a cultural story or myth, revealing that the intelligentsia's existence is a function of the intellectuals' abilities to construct moral arguments. Drawing from extensive original empirical research, including life-story interviews with the Russian intellectuals, it shows how the shestidesyatniki creatively mobilised the myth as they attempted to repair their damaged public image.

First published in 1992. In this volume the authors discuss that although the idea that the main object of social security is to regulate the lives of poor people rather than to relieve their poverty which fell into disfavour in the post-war heyday of the welfare state; that this idea has more recently returned, as mass unemployment increases the pressure on welfare budgets and the weakness of the British economy calls into question our ability to maintain social spending.

This study analyses the way in which tribal ties are maintained in the development of a tribally mixed, middle class community in Kampala, Uganda. Political independence in the early nineteen sixties in much of Africa created expectations of increased development, education and living standards. There was hope that ethnic tensions arising from false colonial boundaries might be transcended by newly emerging socio-economic status-groups. However, the new national boundaries suddenly made aliens of peoples who had migrated and settled in towns distant from their home countries. The interplay of nationality, ethnicity and socio-economic status or class was given a new theatre. Hope was dramatically tempered by nationalist and ethnic conflicts which cut across ethnically mixed, small status groups of neighbours and friends. In Kampala, Uganda, this rapidly unfolding drama resulted in the expulsion of two Kenyan ethnic groups and polarised peoples from northern and southern Uganda. The essentialisation of ethnic and national identity imposed by colonialism was thus taken on in this new situation by the people themselves, with the result that they became 'cultural' starting-points of social and political judgement. Originally published in 1969.

The book is structured as follows: * An introduction of old Bantu culture * An account of modern Bantu life * Discussion of the influence exerted by Christianity and Education upon communal life of the Bantu * Examination of special aspects of Bantu culture as they have been modified by Western civilization: language and music * The economic, political and legal positions of the native tribes in South Africa are also covered. First published in 1934.

Tavistock Press was established as a co-operative venture between the Tavistock Institute and Routledge & Kegan Paul (RKP) in the 1950s to produce a series of major contributions across the social sciences. This volume is part of a 2001 reissue of a selection of those important works which have since gone out of print, or are difficult to locate. Published by Routledge, 112 volumes in total are being brought together under the name The International Behavioural and Social Sciences Library: Classics from the Tavistock Press. Reproduced here in facsimile, this volume was originally published in 1960 and is available individually. The collection is also available in a number of themed mini-sets of between 5 and 13 volumes, or as a complete collection.

This thematic encyclopedia provides an overview of education as undertaken in the United States and in 70 countries worldwide and links educational organization, philosophy, and practice with important global social, economic, and environmental issues facing the contemporary world. All around the world, young people attend school, be it in the steppes of Mongolia, the tiny island nations of the Pacific, or the urban centers of Mexico. How do countries meet the educational needs of their citizens? This volume is organized into 10 chapters that look at key issues in global education, including literacy, gender, religion, science and technology (STEM), arts and humanities, school violence, multicultural education and diversity, environment and sustainability, education and difference/special needs, and views on education and a country's future. Each chapter contains eight country profiles, one for the United States and one each for seven other countries. Each entry includes a brief overview of the country and its history and geography, a description of its K-12 education system, and more detailed information about that country with respect to the appropriate topic. This book allows readers to compare and contrast education throughout the world. It also analyzes, from both contemporary and historical perspectives, relationships between education and the ways in which different countries address various issues, including development, diversity, gender, and environmental sustainability. Provides readers with an overview of how education is conducted in 70 countries Shows how educational systems in different countries respond differently to major challenges facing the world today, including multiculturalism, diversity, and environmental sustainability Illustrates relationships between the philosophy and practice of education and countries' geographical position and levels of development Includes photographs that help bring the text to life Explains issues through a comprehensive overview, allowing student readers to have a better understanding of the problems facing educational systems around the world today

The work and legacy of Milton H. Erickson, M.D. - his interpersonal approaches and techniques designed to liberate potentials for self-help in either the hypnotic or waking state - are having an increasing influence on numerous mental health professionals, as well as on the whole field of psychotherapy. Jeffrey K. Zeig, Ph.D., a leading practitioner and teacher of Ericksonian psychotherapy and a former student of Erickson's, who remained close with him until Erickson's death, has written a uniquely personal view of Erickson himself, his basic ideas and techniques, his contributions to psychotherapy, and his highly individual methods of teaching.

Recent research in Africa has shown a wide range of political systems, from small societies of wandering hunters to large states of several million people comparable with mediaeval European feudal kingdoms. In between are many societies in which a central government is lacking; the political system is based upon a balance of power between many small groups, which with their lack of classes or specialized political offices, have been called 'ordered anarchies'. First published in 1958.

This is a detailed study of understanding in a second language, related to the actual lives of minority workers. The focus is on everyday interactions between these workers and the bureaucrats of the society in which they are now resident. It provides an important contribution to the debate about the function of language as a social practice, adding a new perspective to the psycholinguistic and experimental paradigms, currently existing in second language acquisition research.