This book comments on growing authoritarianism in democracy and suggests how it ought to be instead. It asks if some degree of authoritarianism is the need of the hour to address potentially existential issues facing the human race. Readers are encouraged to analyse the state of democracy in their own countries and verify if it meets their expectations, or if it is just a myth or an imposter, or a necessary but imperfect compulsion in the absence of a perfect alternative. The book presents a commentary on the state of democracy in some of the world's leading democracies. It aims to challenge the human mind, which seems to be getting accustomed to not having to think, thanks to a constant bombardment of information-real and fake and in-between-that it receives through social and print media, which is freely accessible through smartphone to which it has become addicted. It discusses how the drivers of capitalism - through their business-like connections with powerful and influential politicians and celebrities-could be cleverly manipulating the gullible human mind and exploiting the system to their own material benefit.

This book shares graduate student experiences, lessons, and life learnings from research with Inuit communities in the Canadian Arctic. The results of graduate student research are often disseminated in a thesis or dissertation, but their personal experiences building relationships with Inuit, working together to design and conduct research, and how this shaped their research approach and outcomes, are rarely captured. As such, there are limited resources available to new researchers that share information about the practical aspects of community-based research in the Arctic. The book is intended to provide a glimpse into what it is like to do research together with Inuit, and in doing so, contribute to the development of more productive and equitable relationships between Inuit and researchers. The chapters are written as structured narratives in the first-person and include reflections, and lessons learned.

Illustrated with pioneering maps and country analyses by a network of researchers from across the Mediterranean, this book takes a territorial approach as a way toward a shared vision for a truly integrated Euro-Mediterranean region. At a time when the region is undergoing rapid change, the main goal of the book is to challenge misconceptions with common geographic data, on issues such as transport, energy, agriculture and water. The book suggests avenues for Europe to regain a part of the influence it has lost on its Mediterranean neighbourhood and policies common to Europe and its southern neighbours. The wide range of geographic country analyses, from Morocco to Turkey and including the occupied Palestinian territory and Jordan, are complemented with new maps at the scale of the wider Euro-Mediterranean region. The contributions contend that cross-border cooperation, common transport networks and shared environmental management can foster partnership when diplomatic relations are stalling. The Gibraltar case study shows that while competition is rising between the two sides of the strait their potential complementarity is also very high. The book calls for a Euro-Mediterranean local data collaborative platform to drive a common 'Neighbourhoods Territorial Agenda' for North-South shared vision and action. This timely and enlightening book is essential reading for those studying regional, European, Mediterranean and Arab world issues. It will appeal to policymakers and actors involved in cross-border cooperation, territorial development, environment, cultural knowledge and networking. Contributors include: M. Ababsa, P. Beckouche, N. Ben Cheikh, P. Besnard, Y. Cohen, G. Faour, J. Hilal, O. Isik, E. Larrea, J.-Y. Moisseron, Z. Ouadah-Bedidi, D. Pages El Karoui, H. Pecout, R. Tabib, A. Ulied, G. Van Hamme, I. Zboun

This book examines regional integration in Africa, with a particular focus on the Southern African Development Community (SADC). It argues that the SADC's pursuit of a rationalist and state-centric form of integration for Southern Africa is limited, as it overlooks the contributory role and efficacy of non-state actors, who are relegated to the periphery. The book demonstrates that civil society networks in Southern Africa constitute well-governed, self-organised entities that function just like formal regional arrangements driven by state actors and technocrats. The book amplifies this point by deploying New Institutionalism and the New Regionalism Approach to examine the role and efficacy of non-state actors in building regions from below. The book develops a unique typology that shows how Southern African regional civil society networks adopt strategies, norms and rules to establish an efficient form of alternative integration in the region. Based on a critical analysis of this self-organised regionalism, the book projects the reality that alternative regionalism driven by non-state actors is possible. This book expands the study of regionalism in the SADC, and makes a significant and innovative contribution to the study of contemporary regionalism.

This book demonstrates the flow of the international trade of secondhand goods and examines the socio-economic background and mechanisms of the trade. It highlights the actors involved in the trade of secondhand goods and how traditionally secondhand good have largely been traded through social or ethnic networks in order to effectively transfer quality and market information. The development of information technology and emergence of new information platforms have changed these business models. The policies and regulations relating to the trade of secondhand goods are explored, alongside the negative impact of these trades, and the growing awareness of the circular economy. This book illustrates how importing countries as well as international institutions have developed regulations in order to balance these two issues. It will relevant to students and economists interested in development economics and economics geography.

Innovation is the driving force of the dynamics of regions and cities. Innovation however, is not an autonomous miracle, but is emerging out of knowledge creation and adoption. Thus, knowledge production is at the heart of economic progress. Zoltan Acs offers in this book an overview of the relationship between successful entrepreneurship and knowledge-intensive areas. His ideas form a blend of elements from the new economic geography, the new growth theory and the new innovation economics theory, and provide a thorough analysis of the changing economic landscape in the USA. economic growth at the regional level, and reaches conclusions as to why some regions grow but others decline. While the analysis draws on industrial organization, labour economics, regional science, geography and entrepreneurship, the book focuses on innovation and the growth of cities with the use of endogenous growth theory. long-run regional growth, and explores the issues of how technology and entrepreneurship can foster and promote growth at the regional level.

This book explores how Pacific Island communities are responding to the challenges wrought by climate change-most notably fresh water accessibility, the growing threat of disease, and crop failure. The Pacific Island nations are not alone in facing these challenges, but their responses are unique in that they arise from traditional and community-based understandings of climate and disaster. Knowledge sharing, community education, and widespread participation in decision-making have promoted social resilience to such challenges across the Pacific. In this exploration of the Pacific Island countries, Bryant-Tokalau demonstrates that by understanding the inter-relatedness of local expertise, customary resource management, traditional knowledge and practice, as well as the roles of leaders and institutions, local "knowledge-practice-belief systems" can be used to inform adaptation to disasters wherever they occur.

This edited volume brings together debates from the Global South and Global East to explore alternatives to conventional planning in Southern cities. Embracing the evolving post-colonial theory, the volume offers 'fragments' of the urban that provide clues to the larger, often-repeated ontological question that continues to hold: Why and what does theory from the South mean? The chapters derive from and speak to the simultaneously homogenous and heterogeneous South. They focus on presenting the alternative realities of Southern cities as critical analytical lenses that can build up to the theorisation of the Southern urban with a potential to (re)understand the contemporary urban world. The contributions explore locally rooted knowledge systems, premised on social and cultural practices, as possible conduits to evolving planning methods. In doing so, the volume breaks apart the linear modernity that urban theory from the North relies on. Chapters [Chapter-1] and [Chapter-11] are available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License via link.springer.com.

This book addresses the role of cooperation, networks and institutions in the context of regional innovation systems. It emphasises the importance of these factors in the emergence of local innovation systems, using detailed examples of clusters which have reached different stages of maturity. The authors address the topic from an empirical, theoretical and political perspective, and highlight the local mechanisms which are involved in the development of innovation systems. They offer a comprehensive overview of different approaches in the field and present numerous case studies which stress the influence of networks and local institutions. Significantly, they also introduce several new approaches to regional innovation systems, including contributions which explicitly discuss the design and potential of policy measures to promote regional development. The policy recommendations are based on sound theorising which, in turn, is based on extensive empirical research. This book is a valuable addition to a complex and growing literature which offers new perspectives and insights on cooperation, networks and institutions, and their role in the development of local systems of innovation. The combination of empirical, theoretical and policy-oriented approaches will ensure this book is essential reading for academics and policymakers in the fields of regional economics, innovation research and economic geography.

The book seeks to comprehend how indigenous knowledge systems of local communities can be effectively used in disaster management of various types. A prime example is the 2015 Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction, promoting indigenous environmental management knowledge and practices. Traditional knowledge of indigenous peoples includes information and insight that supplement conventional science and environmental observations, a comprehensive understanding of the environment, natural resources, culture, and human interactions with them which is not documented before. A great deal of this knowledge have been lost in translation. In this book, the authors attempt to keep a record of each and every traditional knowledge study of the indigenous communities in managing the disasters. The use of indigenous knowledge systems in disaster understanding and management is the primary focus of the chapters.   This book is organized into four major sections. The first part gives an overview and help in conceptualizing the different concepts of hazard and disaster perception and how response and adaptation are connected with it. This part also discusses the concept of the connection between hazard and sustainable development and how the understanding of risk reduction and resilience can happen with the help of indigenous knowledge, insights, and strategies. The second part of the book introduces the different approaches to disaster and risk management. It establishes how vulnerability influences the risk associated with a hazard and the responses can be both positive and negative in disaster management. The approaches of the indigenous communities in managing a disaster, their resilience, capacity building, and community-based preparedness will be the area of prime focus in this chapter. Part 3 of this book describes the concept of sustainability through indigenous knowledge and practice. The sole highlight of this chapter is the indigenous knowledge efficacies in disaster identification, risk reduction, climate risk management, and climate action. The last section of the book explores how to meet the gaps between local knowledge and policy formulation. It highlights how traditional knowledge of the indigenous communities can prove to be beneficial in developing a holistic regional-based policy framework which will be easily accepted by the target stakeholders since they will be more acquainted with the local strategies and methods. This section ends with an assessment and discussion of the gaps and future scopes in disaster risk reduction through integrating local knowledge and modern technologies.

This book offers a spatial insights on the social mediasphere in the context of digital shutdowns and reflects the dimensions of political economy and of social media in general. Internet shutdowns have been found to be more prevalent in developing countries than in developed countries, with India leading in Internet shutdowns in the world. Internet shutdowns have occurred in India for several reasons, mainly to hinder the spreading of information through social media - this is discussed in detail along with political motives behind this and how this can conflict with government policies, such as the flagship program "Digital India" which is ostensibly meant to improve the infrastructure and expansion of digital information throughout the country. This book suggests new dimensions in the digital spatiality. Furthermore, the digital space is defined and discussed, including its role and how this might be reflected in concepts around spatiality and spaces. More concretely, the book considers the following questions: How is social media reflected in spatial sciences? How does the space differ from more tangible spaces, such as the hydrosphere or atmosphere? How do (computer/mobile phone) screens behave as a space/place in the context of behavioural sciences? How is this reflected in what is shaping and reshaping the spatiality of digital gadgets? Do digital gadgets change the socialization process that's often considered a path towards how we develop in society? How do internet shutdowns affect the political economy and what patterns can be seen in how individuals, companies and the internet industry in particular react to these shutdowns in India?

This book discusses environmental crime and individual wrongdoing. It uses the theory of convenience throughout to examine financial motives, attractive opportunities, and personal willingness to explain deviant behavior. This book focusses primarily on the case study of the Island of Tjome in Norway, an attractive resort where building permits were repeatedly granted to rich people in a protected zone along the shoreline. This book investigates how these crimes were detected and investigated by police over a few years with the help of whistleblowers. It discusses the interplay between the potentially corrupt public officials, professionals like architects and attorneys, and rich individuals, as an interesting and challenging arena for law enforcement. It covers attorneys' defense strategies, evaluates private internal policing, and provides insights for those investigating individuals involved in environmental crime. It also examines the Vest Tank toxic waste dumping case and the resulting explosion where unusually both the chairperson and the chief executive were successfully sentenced to prison because of environmental crime, unlike many other environmental crime cases where individuals avoid prison. The case studies are drawn from Norway to supplement more well-known case studies from the USA.

Irish migrants in new communities: Seeking the Fair Land? comprises the second collection of essays by these editors exploring fresh aspects and perspectives on the subject of the Irish diaspora. This volume, edited by Mairtin O Cathain and Micheal O hAodha, develops many of the oral history themes of the first book and concentrates more on issues surrounding the adaptation of migrants to new or host environments and cultures. These new places often have a jarring effect, as well as a welcoming air, and the Irish bring their own interpretations, hostilities, and suspicions, all of which are explored in a fascinating and original number of new perspectives.

Contested Waters provides an in-depth analysis of trans-boundary water conflict involving the Indus Basin in Pakistan. The book focuses on both national scale and local scale case studies to illustrate how these water conflicts are both discursively and materially driven by human institutions and politics. Through case studies of controversy over large dams, local flooding and irrigation methods, Daanish Mustafa highlights the various deeply political and institutional factors driving water conflict - specifically the disparity between national scale strategies of water politics and local scale water politics - and calls for engagement with water conflict in political terms.

Migration Crises in 21st Century Africa explores the ever-expanding crises of migrations from various regions of Africa to other parts of the world; notably the pattern that utilizes the pre-existing trans-Saharan trade route via North Africa and the Mediterranean to Europe's southern fringes. Dr. Adebusuyi Isaac Adeniran explores key interrelated factors in astonishing depth, examining the nature of mobility in pre-modern African society; the impact of governance structures, demographics and economics; and the roles of both state and non-state actors. Adeniran additionally interrogates possible interventions and considers what the future of mobility within and beyond the boundaries of Africa might look like in an increasingly mobile world.

This book critically interrogates how young people are introduced to landscapes through environmental education, outdoor recreation, and youth-led learning, drawing on diverse examples of green, blue, outdoor, or natural landscapes. Understanding the relationships between young people and unfamiliar landscapes is vital for young people's current and future education and wellbeing, but how landscapes and young people are socially constructed as unfamiliar is controversial and contested. Young people are constructed as unfamiliar within certain landscapes along lines of race, gender or class: this book examines the cultures of outdoor learning that perpetuate exclusions and inclusions, and how unfamiliarity is encountered, experienced, constructed, and reproduced. This interdisciplinary text, drawing on Human Geography, Education, Leisure and Heritage Studies, and Anthropology, challenges commonly-held assumptions about how and why young people are educated in unfamiliar landscapes. Practice is at the heart of this book, which features three 'conversations with practitioners' who draw on their personal and professional experiences. The chapters are organised into five themes: (1) The unfamiliar outdoors; (2) The unfamiliar past; (3) Embodying difference in unfamiliar landscapes; (4) Being well, and being unfamiliar; and (5) Digital and sonic encounters with unfamiliarity. Educational practitioners, researchers and students will find this book essential for taking forward more inclusive outdoor and youth-led education.

In Populations as Brands Aaro Tupasela extends the fields of critical data studies and nation branding into the realm of state controlled biobanking and healthcare data. Using examples from two Nordic countries - Denmark and Finland - he explores how these countries have begun to market and brand their resources using methods and practices drawn from the commercial sector. Tupasela identifies changes during the past ten years that suggest that state collected and maintained resources have become the object of valuation practices. Tupasela argues that this phenomenon constitutes a novel form of nation branding in which relations between the states, individuals and the private sector are re-aligned. The author locates the historical underpinnings of population branding in the field of medical genetics starting in the early 1960s but transforming significantly during the 2010s into a professional marketing activity undertaken at multiple levels and sites. In studying this recent phenomenon, Tupasela provides examples of how marketing material has become increasingly professional and targeted towards a broader audience, including the public. The book will be of particular interest to scholars of critical data studies and nation branding, as well as students of science and technology studies, sociology and marketing.

In this timely and expansive book, Wakefield-Rann investigates how emerging disease ecologies are undermining definitions of health and immunity that have persisted since the 19th century, and had a formative influence over the design of not only homes, but entire cities. This wide-ranging account traces the links between the history of medicine, modernist design and architecture, the rise of inflammatory disease, the microbiomes of buildings and humans, antimicrobial resistance, and novel chemical pollutants, to show how indoor environments have made us as we have made them. In highlighting the processes that have been missed in designing perfectly controlled interior habitats, Life Indoors shows the limitations of dominant practices, classifications and philosophies to apprehend current indoor pathogen ecologies.

This handbook presents a collection of high-quality, authoritative scientific contributions on cross-border migration, written by a carefully selected group of recognized migration experts from around the globe. In recent years, cross-border migration has become an important and intriguing issue, from both a scientific and policy perspective. In the 'age of migration', the volume of cross-border movements of people continues to rise, while the nature of migration flows - in terms of the determinants, length of stay, effects on the sending and host countries, and legal status of migrants - is changing dramatically. Based on a detailed economic-geographical analysis, this handbook studies the motives for cross-border migration, the socio-economic implications for sending countries and regions, the locational choice determinants for cross-border migrants, and the manifold economic-geographic consequences for host countries and regions. Given the complexity of migration decisions and their local or regional impacts, a systematic typology of migrants (motives, legal status, level of education, gender, age, singles or families, etc.) is provided, together with an assessment of push factors in the place of origin and pull factors at the destination. On the basis of a solid analytical framework and reliable empirical evidence, it examines the impacts of emigration for sending areas and of immigration for receiving areas, and provides a comprehensive discussion of the policy dimensions of cross-border migration.

Boundaries--lines imposed on the landscape--shape our lives, dictating everything from which candidates we vote for to what schools our children attend to the communities with which we identify. In "Creating the American West," historian Derek R. Everett examines the function of these internal lines in American history generally and in the West in particular. Drawing lines to create states in the trans-Mississippi West, he points out, imposed a specific form of political organization that made the West truly American.

Everett examines how settlers lobbied for boundaries and how politicians imposed them. He examines the origins of boundary-making in the United States from the colonial era through the Louisiana Purchase. Case studies then explore the ethnic, sectional, political, and economic angles of boundaries. Everett first examines the boundaries between Arkansas and its neighboring Native cultures, and the pseudo war between Missouri and Iowa. He then traces the lines splitting the Oregon Country and the states of California and Nevada, and considers the ethnic and political consequences of the boundary between New Mexico and Colorado. He explains the evolution of the line splitting the Dakotas, and concludes with a discussion of ways in which state boundaries can contribute toward new interpretations of borderlands history.

A major theme in the history of state boundaries is the question of whether to use geometric or geographic lines--in other words, lines corresponding to parallels and meridians or those fashioned by natural features. With the distribution of western land, Everett shows, geography gave way to geometry and transformed the West. The end of boundary-making in the late nineteenth century is not the end of the story, however. These lines continue to complicate a host of issues including water rights, taxes, political representation, and immigration. "Creating the American West" shows how the past continues to shape the present.

Environmental and developmental matters have long proved key to North Korea's "revolutionary" industrial and economic strategies. They have equally been important to Pyongyang's diplomatic and geo-political efforts both during the Warsaw Pact period and in our contemporary era following the collapse of its supportive and collaborative partners. However, while environmental issues have been very important to North Korea, academic analysis and commentary addressing this field of governmental and institutional functionality has been almost entirely lacking. This book fills this analytical void. Taking a narrative view of developmental approach throughout the political and ideological history of North Korea, Winstanley-Chesters first considers its impact on its landscapes and topographies in general throughout the era of the Kim dynasty. Second, in light of recent academic analysis suggesting North Korea as a space of Charismatic politics, the book focuses on the specificity of individual developmental sectors and projects, such as those addressing forestry and hydrology, seeking to trace general trends into these more particular environmental fields.

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