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Books > Social sciences > Sociology, social studies > Social issues > General
The lockdown of the first wave caused unprecedented devastation.
And in 2022, Omicron has trigged a new challenge. When India's
lockdown was first announced in March 2020, acclaimed journalist
Barkha Dutt started an extraordinary series of road trips,
recording the human story of the pandemic, one which she continues
even today as we wrestle with the virus's latest avatar. In this
book, she tells India's pandemic story through the stories of the
people she covered - the migrant workers and politicians,
businessmen and bureaucrats, doctors and nurses, factory workers
and farmers, teachers and students, husbands and wives, parents and
children. And through these accounts, she draws a startling picture
not just of our plague years but the very nature of our country
with its deep-rooted inequalities across class, caste and gender.
Moving, gripping and vivid, To Hell and Back is an outstanding work
by one of our foremost journalists, working at the height of her
powers.
Make no mistake: modern information warfare is here and January 6th
was just the first battle. That day, an unhinged mindset led to an
attack on the Capitol, the most serious assault on American
democracy since the end of the Civil War. And that thinking
portends even darker days ahead. In The Breach, a former House
Republican and the first member of Congress to sound the alarm
about QAnon, Denver Riggleman, provides readers with an
unprecedented behind-the-scenes look at the January 6th select
committee's investigation. Riggleman, who joined the committee as
senior technical advisor, lays out the full intent and scope of the
plot to overturn the election. The book includes previously
unpublished texts from key political leaders. And it also contains
shocking details about the Trump White House's links to militant
extremist groups?even during the almost-eight-hour period on
January 6th when the White House supposedly had no phone calls. The
man responsible for unearthing Mark Meadows's infamous texts shows
how data analysis shapes the contours of our new war, telling how
the committee uncovered many of its explosive findings and sharing
revealing stories from his time in the Trump-era GOP. With unique
insights from within the far-right movement and from the front
lines of the courageous team investigating it, Riggleman shows how
our democracy is balanced on a knife's edge between disinformation
and truth. Here is a revelatory peek at the inner workings of the
January 6th committee and a clear-eyed look at the existential
threats facing the republic?and a blueprint for how America can
fight to survive the darkest night before the dawn.
Exploring the Tomato engages with an apparently simple fruit in
order to reveal major changes to society and economy. It treats the
tomato as an object of fascination and as a probe into major
historical changes in twentieth century capitalism. From first
domestication to genetic modification, from Aztec salsa to
supermarket pizza, the tomato has been continually transformed in
the ways it has been produced, exchanged and consumed. This book
explores what brings about a variety that is at once biological,
historical and socio-economic. A conceptual framework of
'instituted economic process' demonstrates how different tomato
forms are an expression of dynamic processes in capitalist
economies and societies during the twentieth century. As both an
early pioneer in mass production and a contemporary contributor to
the creation of global cuisines, the tomato has been subject to
intense innovation. Computerised total ecologies under glass,
producing fresh tomatoes of all shapes, colours and sizes, compete
with sun and southern climates across the world. To enter the
variety of tomato worlds is to discover the variety of capitalism.
Written in an accessible style, this book makes a major
contribution to the emerging field of economic sociology and to our
understanding of the innovation process. It should be read by
anyone concerned with social science, particularly economists and
sociologists, as well as those interested in food and the history
of food.
'There are few scholarly books about climate change that take the
issue of the distribution of its costs, and of the costs and
benefits of its mitigation, as seriously as their absolute value.
This is probably the best of those books that I have come across.
Rigorously rooted in Gough's earlier work on theories of human
need, the book is relentless in its pursuit of equity in respect of
climate change and responses to it. Not everyone will agree with
all its conclusions - for example that ''green capitalism merits
the term contradiction'' - but they are unfailingly
thought-provoking, as all good scholarship should be. Highly
recommended.' - Paul Ekins, UCL Institute for Sustainable
Resources, UK 'Gough applies his trademark scholarship on universal
human needs to the urgent question of social policy for the
transition to a de-carbonised world. Based on a clear-eyed analysis
of a wide swathe of the social science literature, and an
eco-social political economy perspective, his approach is both
pragmatic and deeply rooted in ethics and social justice. Highly
recommended and suitable for teaching at all levels.' - Juliet B.
Schor, Boston College This exceptional book considers how far
catastrophic global warming can be averted in an economic system
that is greedy for growth, without worsening deprivation and
inequality. The satisfaction of human needs - as opposed to wants -
is the only viable measure for negotiating trade-offs between
climate change, capitalism and human wellbeing, now and in the
future. The author critically examines the political economy of
capitalism and offers a long-term, interdisciplinary analysis of
the prospects for keeping the rise in global temperatures below two
degrees, while also improving equity and social justice. A
three-stage transition is proposed with useful practical policies.
First, 'green growth': cut carbon emissions from production across
the world. Second, 'recompose' patterns of consumption in the rich
world, cutting high-energy luxuries in favour of low-energy routes
to meeting basic needs. Third, because the first two are perilously
insufficient, move towards an economy that flourishes without
growth. Heat, Greed and Human Need is vital for researchers and
students of the environment, public and social policy, economics,
political theory and development studies. For those advocating
political, social and environmental reform this book presents
excellent practical eco-social policies to achieve both sustainable
consumption and social justice.
Across the world, HSBC likes to sell itself as 'the world's local
bank', the friendly face of corporate and personal finance. And
yet, a decade ago, the same bank was hit with a record US fine of
$1.9 billion for facilitating money laundering for 'drug kingpins
and rogue nations'. In pursuit of their goal of becoming the
biggest bank in the world, between 2003 to 2010, HSBC allowed El
Chapo and the Sinaloa cartel, one of the most notorious and
murderous criminal organizations in the world, to turn its
ill-gotten money into clean dollars and thereby grow one of the
deadliest drugs empires the world has ever seen. Just how did 'the
world's local bank' find itself enabling Mexico's leading drugs
cartel, and the biggest drugs trafficking organization in the
world, to launder cash through the bank's branch network and
systems? How did a bank, which boasts 'we're committed to helping
protect the world's financial system on which millions of people
depend, by only doing business with customers who meet our high
standards of transparency' come to facilitate Mexico's richest drug
baron? And how did a bank that as recently as 2002 had been named
'one of the best-run organizations in the world' become so entwined
with such a criminal, with one of the most barbaric groups of
gangsters on the planet? Too Big to Jail is an extraordinary story
brilliantly told by writer, commentator and former editor of The
Independent, Chris Blackhurst, that starts in Hong Kong and ranges
across London, Washington, the Cayman Islands and Mexico, where
HSBC saw the opportunity to become the largest bank in the world,
and El Chapo seized the chance to fuel his murderous empire by
laundering his drug proceeds through the bank. It brings together
an extraordinary cast of politicians, bankers, drug dealers, FBI
officers and whistle-blowers, and asks what price does greed have?
Whose job is it to police global finance? And why did not a single
person go to prison for facilitating the murderous expansion of a
global drug empire? Are some corporations now so big as to be above
the law?
This book takes a compelling approach to describing what is needed
to create the kind of future that most people on Earth really want.
Our global society is hopelessly addicted to a particular vision of
the world and a future that has become both unsustainable and
undesirable. Addicted to Growth frames our current predicament as a
societal addiction to a 'growth at all costs' economic paradigm.
While economic growth has produced many benefits, its side effects
are now producing existential problems that are rapidly getting
worse. Robert Costanza considers lessons from what works at the
individual level to overcome addictions and applies them to a
societal scale. Costanza recognises that the first step to recovery
is recognising the addiction and that it is leading to disaster;
however, simply pointing out the dire consequences of our societal
addiction is only the first step and can be counterproductive by
itself in motivating change. The key next step is creating a truly
shared vision of the kind of world we all want, and the book
explores creative ways to implement this societal therapy. The
final step is using that shared vision to motivate the changes
needed to achieve it, including adaptive transformations of our
economic systems, property rights regimes, and governance
institutions. An exciting contribution from a key thinker in the
field, this book will be a valuable resource to students and
scholars of public policy and sustainability studies, and anyone
interested in understanding and overcoming our societal addiction
to growth.
Make no mistake: modern information warfare is here and January 6th
was just the first battle. That day, an unhinged mindset led to an
attack on the Capitol, the most serious assault on American
democracy since the end of the Civil War. And that thinking
portends even darker days ahead. In The Breach, a former House
Republican and the first member of Congress to sound the alarm
about QAnon, Denver Riggleman, provides readers with an
unprecedented behind-the-scenes look at the January 6th select
committee's investigation. Riggleman, who joined the committee as
senior technical advisor, lays out the full intent and scope of the
plot to overturn the election. The book includes previously
unpublished texts from key political leaders. And it also contains
shocking details about the Trump White House's links to militant
extremist groups, even during the almost-eight-hour period on
January 6th when the White House supposedly had no phone calls. The
man responsible for unearthing Mark Meadows's infamous texts shows
how data analysis shapes the contours of our new war, telling how
the committee uncovered many of its explosive findings and sharing
revealing stories from his time in the Trump-era GOP. With unique
insights from within the far-right movement and from the front
lines of the courageous team investigating it, Riggleman shows how
our democracy is balanced on a knife's edge between disinformation
and truth. Here is a revelatory peek at the inner workings of the
January 6th committee and a clear-eyed look at the existential
threats facing the republic, and a blueprint for how America can
fight to survive the darkest night before the dawn.
Though Graeco-Roman antiquity (‘classics’) has often been considered the handmaid of colonialism, its various forms have nonetheless endured through many of the continent’s decolonising transitions. Southern Africa is no exception. This book canvasses the variety of forms classics has taken in Zimbabwe, Mozambique and especially South Africa, and even the dynamics of transformation itself.
How does (u)Mzantsi classics (of southern Africa) look in an era of profound change, whether violent or otherwise? What are its future prospects? Contributors focus on pedagogies, historical consciousness, the creative arts and popular culture.
The volume, in its overall shape, responds to the idea of dialogue – in both the Greek form associated with Plato’s rendition of Socrates’ wisdom and in the African concept of ubuntu. Here are dialogues between scholars, both emerging and established, as well as students – some of whom were directly impacted by the Fallist protests.
Rather than offering an apologia for classics, these dialogues engage with pressing questions of relevance, identity, change, the canon, and the dynamics of decolonisation and potential recolonisation. The goal is to interrogate classics – the ways it has been taught, studied, perceived, transformed and even lived – from many points of view.
Why have so few countries managed to leave systematic corruption
behind, while in many others modernization is still a mere facade?
How do we escape the trap of corruption, to reach a governance
system based on ethical universalism? In this unique book, Alina
Mungiu-Pippidi and Michael Johnston lead a team of eminent
researchers on an illuminating path towards deconstructing the few
virtuous circles in contemporary governance. The book combines a
solid theoretical framework with quantitative evidence and case
studies from around the world. While extracting lessons to be
learned from the success cases covered, Transitions to Good
Governance avoids being prescriptive and successfully contributes
to the understanding of virtuous circles in contemporary good
governance. Offering a balanced but always grounded perspective,
this collection combines analytic narratives of existing virtuous
circles and how they were established, with an analysis of the
global evidence. In doing so the authors explain why governance is
so resistant to change, and describe the lessons to be remembered
for international anti-corruption efforts. Exploring the primacy of
politics over economic development, and in order to understand how
vicious circles can be broken, the expert contributions trace the
progress of countries that have successfully transitioned.
Unprecedentedly, this book goes beyond the tests of different
variables to showcase human agency on every continent, and reveals
why some nations make the best and others the worst of the same
development legacies. This comprehensive examination of virtuous
circles of governance will appeal to all scholars with an interest
in transitions, democratization, anti-corruption and good
governance. Policy-makers and practitioners in the fields of
international development, good governance and democracy support
will find it an invaluable resource. Contributors include: A.
Bozzini, D. Bupuet Corleto, C. Goebel, M. Johnston, V. Kalnins, L.
Khatib, A. Kupatadze, M. Martini, A. Mungiu-Pippidi, P. Navia, R.
Pineiro, D. Sebudubudu, E. Villarreal, B.W. Wilson, J.-S. You
Recently the topic of civil society has generated a wave of
interest, and a wealth of new information. Until now no publication
has attempted to organize and consolidate this knowledge.
The International Encyclopedia of Civil Society fills this gap,
establishing a common set of understandings and terminology, and an
analytical starting point for future research. Global in scope and
authoritative in content, the Encyclopedia offers succinct
summaries of core concepts and theories; definitions of terms;
biographical entries on important figures and organizational
profiles. In addition, it serves as a reliable and up-to-date guide
to additional sources of information.
In sum, the Encyclopedia provides an overview of the contours of
civil society, social capital, philanthropy and nonprofits across
cultures and historical periods. For researchers in nonprofit and
civil society studies, political science, economics, management and
social enterprise, this is the most systematic appraisal of a
rapidly growing field.
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