The study deals with challenging questions of long-term future of global economy and the mankind. Focusing not only on what happens in the economic sphere but also on cultural, social, political, demographic, technological, and ecological processes. It employs a holistic approach to answer fundamental questions about the course of the future.

This compelling volume analyzes the wide-scale societal impact of neoliberal economic policy on contemporary life and behavior. Synthesizing perspectives from politics and economics with insights from psychology and linguistics, it argues that market-driven public institutions promote antisocial thinking, discourage critical reflection, and inure individuals to inequity and cruelty. Chapters cite the ubiquity of violence in modern society, from the marketing of the military to impersonal mass upheavals in the job market, as devaluing human worth and thus self-worth. But the editors also assert that these currents are not terminal, and the book concludes by identifying conditions potentially leading to a more civil and egalitarian future. Included in the coverage: The language of current economics: social theory, the market, and the disappearance of relationships. Neoliberalism and education: the disfiguration of students. Slicing up societies: commercial media and the destruction of social environments. Neoliberalism and the transformation of work. Economics, the network society, and the ontology of violence. A new economic order without violence. Given the centrality of economic events on the global stage, Neoliberalism, Economic Radicalism, and the Normalization of Violence stands out as both a springboard for discussion and a call to action, to be read by political and cultural economists, political scientists, and sociologists.

Thisbook considers the ability and capacity of the food supply system in Australia to provide food security for the ever-increasing domestic and international population in the face of growing challenges in production, resource supply and failures within the food system itself. Although Australia is a net food exporting country, domestic food insecurity exists and will increase as food prices rise in the coming decades. An overview of the food supply system highlights the main challenges that are determining the future. Many of these challenges can be resolved by the Australian government, but others are in the hands of global governance to which Australia can only adapt. This booksheds light on the challenges and discusses the prospects for developing more sustainable and resilient future food systems in Australia. In addition, it covers food security and sovereigntyissues under the heading of food equity and access, food production, policy and trade, and impacts of land use planning on agriculture.

The unique features of the book include the following:

Most literature on food security pertains to developing countries. By way of contrast, thisbookexplores food security in a developed nation (Australia) that seemingly should not have food security issues. The topics covered in the book are relevant to other developed nations with growing populations and resource management challenges.

The book chapters are written by specialists to paint a comprehensive picture of the political, social, economic and environmental issues that give rise to food insecurity, and the challenges these issues present to the security of the food system in coming decades. The overall organization of the book uses a theoretically informed and multi-disciplinary approach. This enables a critical and in-depth analysis of food security by outlining the key challenges as well as prospects for the development of more sustainable and resilient agri-food systems.

Thethree principal topics in the book are dealt with by a multi-disciplinary team of authors in a way that teases out diverse points of view illustrating the complexity of food security. Author disciplines include health and nutrition, agriculture, ethics, social science, law, and practitioners managing food aid programs.

The book shows how food security relates to many technical, social and moral issues in society and how it is possible to develop successful programs to improve food security."

First published in 1997, this volume examines how Bulgaria has been an early starter, but a slow and often erratic mover in the path of stabilization and systemic transition. This book provides a most useful account of the development to date, and of the costs associated with Bulgarian strategy (or lack of), empirical analysis and theoretical reflections, especially in comparison with other transition economies. It will be of great interest to any scholar, official or businessman involved not only with Bulgaria, but more generally with post-communist countries.

This volume examines one of the major systemic changes in world economic history: the economic transformation in the Central European nations and the former Soviet states. Part I considers the dramatic adjustments in commodity structure and the geographic distribution of trade in these countries, while Part II surveys the sweeping transition of the Central and Eastern European countries' payments systems and the evolution of financial markets, exchange rates, and banking systems. Forms of integration with the global economy and proposed requirements for accession to the European Union are considered in Part III, and Part IV presents a model evaluating the record of structural adjustments in these transforming economies. The economic transformation in Central and Eastern Europe has been one of the major systemic changes in world economic history. This volume examines the dramatic changes in trade and payment systems in Central European nations and the former Soviet states during the first half of the 1990s. Part I considers the dramatic adjustments in commodity structure and the geographic distribution of trade in these countries, while Part II surveys the sweeping transition of the Central and Eastern European countries' payments systems and the evolution of financial markets, exchange rates, and banking systems. Forms of integration with the global economy and proposed requirements for accession to the European Union are considered in Part III, and Part IV presents a model evaluating the record of structural adjustments in these transforming economies. The main objective of this volume is to thoroughly cover the latest research advances in international trade and payments among these transforming economies. Written by noted authorities from prominent research centers, the chapters have a predominantly survey character and are supported by sound empirical evidence. Combining empirical research with policy evaluation and recommendations, this volume will serve as a resource for further studies on the economic transformation of the former Soviet bloc countries.

The volume brings together cutting-edge political economy analyses of the Palestinian people: those living in the occupied territory of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, those living within Israel, and refugees in Arab states. It is a must-read for those who wish to understand the historical origins and contemporary realities that face Palestinians.

The Russian Federation has a history of more than twenty years of transformation to a market economy, but as well to a knowledge society, to look back on. This study takes a look at the knowledge generation, knowledge transmission and knowledge use inside the Federation since the early 1990s. Furthermore, in light of the high dependence of the Russian economy on the oil and gas sectors this study analyzes the impact knowledge related factors have on regional income generation following thereby in the direction of Schumpeterian growth theory. The study combines descriptive with empirical analyses to paint a picture as detailed as possible of the Russian knowledge society and its innovative potential.

"New Issues in Polar Tourism" traces and analyzes a decade of growing interest in the polar regions, and the consequent challenges and opportunities of increasing tourist traffic in formerly remote and seldom-visited places. The book arises from the recently-formed International Polar Tourism Research Network(IPTRN), and documents the outcomes of its 2010 conference, held at Sweden s Abisko Scientific Research Station."

Bartholomew Paudyn investigates how governments across the globe struggle to constitute the authoritative knowledge underpinning the political economy of creditworthiness and what the (neoliberal) 'fiscal normality' means for democratic governance.

Policy makers--Republican and Democrat, liberal and conservative--call for federal intervention to fund emerging high-growth industries, believing they are starved for capital. Congressional hearings, newspapers, industry newsletters, and government reports all assert that capital gaps exist for these firms. But the widely held belief that emerging high-growth firms like those in high technology--so vital to the growth of the U.S. economy--face severe capital gaps, preventing them from starting up or growing to their full potential, is false. This book systematically brings together, for the first time, disparate sources of information from a wide variety of disciplines and synthesizes them into a compelling case against federal intervention.

Scientific studies, conventional wisdom among entrepreneurs and investors, and economic reasoning all fail to support the existence of widespread capital gaps for start-up high-growth firms. Nor does this evidence show capital in short supply in some regions, in industrial sectors including high technology, or for women and minorities. Nor do existing federal programs providing capital to emerging high-growth businesses reveal capital gaps. Rather, they either unnecessarily duplicate private investment or represent poor investment decisions. This study shows that calls for increased federal intervention, using public monies to plug capital gaps, are unjustified.

As the role of the multinational enterprise (MNE) in the economic development of countries grows, a focus on how MNEs influence the process of regulatory and legislative structures has developed among scholars of international political economy. Yusaf H. Akbar draws a conceptual link between the market strategies of MNEs and the convergence of regulatory systems internationally. Focusing on empirical evidence from Central Europe and industry-specific case studies, Akbar uses the example of the successful implementation of EU laws in Hungary as it bids to join the EU to demonstrate the profound impact of MNE strategies.

This book focuses on the economic and political relationships between Russia and Europe, which are currently characterized by the existence and escalation of contradictions. On the one hand, the common history and geographical proximity of Russia and Europe have naturally produced a close interdependence; on the other, current global political affairs and opposing positions continue to hinder the development of common economic relationships in Russia and Europe. This contributed volume describes integration processes in Russia and Europe to illustrate best practice examples and demonstrates how both parties have increasingly come to understand the importance of international cooperation, highlighting economic, legal, philosophical, political and sociological aspects.

Based on the assumption that without understanding institutions, economists cannot make satisfactory policy prescriptions, this book draws some insightful conclusions on the strengths and limitations of applied economics in the field of heritage. Sicily provides an interesting and unique backdrop against which the study is set, demonstrating the economic complexities of heritage and the range of economic tools and concepts which can be employed to analyse it. The book is a compilation of various approaches that economists trained in different branches of economics have brought to bear on heritage. It considers the political economy of heritage policy from a variety of different perspectives. These include a study of the economic problems of defining and valuing culture and, through detailed case studies in the economics of regulation, an examination of the incentives and principal-agent problems in the management of heritage policy. The authors move on to discuss the public choice view of fiscal federalism and look at the problems of assessing the efficiency of policy measures. Finally, they provide an interesting overview of the national experiences of France, Scotland and Italy in terms of heritage policy. Taking a new institutional approach, this book is as much a concise manual of applied economics as a contribution to cultural economics. It stresses the need for an interdisciplinary approach to the study of heritage and offers a unique opportunity to understand law-making and administrative procedures in the civil code tradition. It will be essential reading for students, researchers and academics of cultural economics, as well as policymakers wanting to assess the value and efficiency of heritage policies.

Delivering a sustainable transport system is not just a matter of adopting a number of technological innovations to improve performance in terms of people, planet, and profits. A broader structural and societal transition is needed in technology, as well as in institutions, behavioural patterns, and the economy as a whole. In this broader view, neither the free market nor the public sector will be the unique key player in making this transition happen. Elements of such an approach are presented in this book in a number of domains: integrating transport infrastructure and land use planning, thus connecting fields that are rather unconnected in day-to-day policies; experiments with dynamic transport optimization, including reports on pilot projects to test the viability of transitions; towards reliable transport systems, describing a reversal from supply-driven towards demand-driven approaches; and sustainable logistics and traffic management, from 'local' city distribution to global closed supply chain loops.

Society today faces multi-dimensional challenges that are hard to define and even harder to deal with. Social and economic systems throughout the world are becoming more complex and interdependent, and globalization is moving beyond the sphere of economics to engulf other aspects of life, particularly culture and security. Our current theories, strategies, and road maps are fast becoming out-dated and no new ones have emerged to take their place.
Mohamed Rabie re-examines the relevance of major ideas and systems of the recent past, including ideology and its relation to society in "Global Economic and Cultural Transformation." This book is an attempt defines and explains this transitional period and provides a new conception of economic and societal world history, which us understand how we got here and where we are going.

This book makes original contributions to the literature on clusters, human capital, and regional development by focusing on the link between entrepreneurship and economic growth, aiming for a better understanding of the dynamics of growth determined by the entrepreneur's action in the regional space. The focus is therefore on critical reflection and rethinking the articulation between three levels of analysis of economic systems, namely entrepreneurship, human capital and regional development, which have not so far been perfectly articulated in the literature of reference on endogenous growth. Although there has been significant research so far into the success and failure of clusters, the implications of these multiple research efforts fail to provide political decision-makers and company managers with critical information about which mechanisms lie behind cluster success and also about how clusters survive and prosper. The innovative approaches presented in this book on entrepreneurship, human capital mobility and regional development have considerable potential to create new and original implications for decision-makers and managers. In terms of value added, this book contributes to the literature by seeking answers to the following questions: (i) Is the growth and success of clusters over time due to concentration and transmission of business competences through spin-offs located in a given regional space? (ii) Does increased density of job options outside the workplace contribute to increased mobility of human capital between firms located within clusters, and so improve coordination in the local labor market? (iii) Do spin-offs benefit from hiring workers from successful incumbents, inasmuch as those workers are expected to perform better than other workers from different origins? Integrating theoretical frameworks, empirical research, and regional case studies (from Portugal, Spain, Norway and Turkey), the editors and contributors demonstrate that the regional dynamics of industry growth are strongly influenced by the mobility of employees towards new firms.

Although efforts have been made and continue to be made to reduce the rate of HIV transmission in the U.S. and globally, the rates continue to increase in the majority of countries. In the U.S., members of minority communities remain especially at risk of HIV transmission. An individual's discovery that he or she has contracted HIV, or that a loved one has contracted the illness, often raises significant issues that necessitate interaction with mental health professionals. Mental Health Practitioner's Guide to HIV/AIDS serves as a quick desk reference for professionals who may be less familiar with the terminology used in HIV/AIDS care and services.

They are laborers, soldiers, refugees, and orphans. In areas of the world torn by poverty, disease, and war, millions of children are invisible victims, deprived of home, family, and basic human rights. Their chances for a stable adult life are extremely slim. The powerful interdisciplinary volume Vulnerable Children brings a global child-rights perspective to the lives of indigenous, refugee, and minority children in and from crisis-prone regions. Focusing on self-determination, education, security, health, and related issues, an international panel of scholars examines the structural and political sources of children's vulnerabilities and their effects on development. The book analyzes intervention programs currently in place and identifies challenges that must be met at both the community and larger policy levels. These chapters also go a long way to explain the often-blurred line between vulnerability and resilience. Included in the coverage: Dilemmas of rights-based approaches to child well-being in an African cultural context. Poverty and minority children's education in the U.S.: case study of a Sudanese refugee family. The heterogeneity of young children's experiences in Kenya and Brazil. A world tour of interventions for children of a parent with a psychiatric illness. An exploration of fosterage of Owambo orphans in Namibia. UNICEF in Colombia: defending and nurturing childhood in media, public, and policy discourses. Vulnerable Children is a must-have volume for researchers, graduate students, and clinicians/professionals/practitioners across a range of fields, including child and school psychology, social work, maternal and child health, developmental psychology, anthropology, sociology, social policy, and public health.

In this volume, some of the leading scholars on China's development examine China's responses to the global financial crisis and their implications for China's economy, society, and the international balances of power.

This book provides a collection of concepts, algorithms, and techniques that effectively harness the power of Spatial Network Big Data. Reading this book is a first step towards understanding the immense challenges and novel applications of SNBD database systems. This book explores these challenges via investigating scalable graph-based query processing strategies and I/O efficient storage and access methods. This book will be of benefit to academics, researchers, engineers with a particular interest in network database models, network query processing, and physical storage models.

Taking as a starting point that hunger results from social exclusion and distributional inequities and that lasting, sustainable and just solutions are to be found in changing the structures that underlie our food systems, this book examines how law shapes global food systems and their ongoing transformations. Using detailed case studies, historical mapping and legal analysis, the contributors show how various actors (farmers, civil society groups, government officials, international bodies) use or could use different legal tools (legislative, jurisprudential, norm-setting) on various scales (local, national, regional, global) to achieve structural changes in food systems. Section 1, Institutionalizing New Approaches, explores the possibility of institutionalizing social change through two alternative visions for change - the right to food and food sovereignty. Individual chapters discuss Via Campesina's struggle to implement food sovereignty principles into international trade law, and present case studies on adopting food sovereignty legislation in Nicaragua and right to food legislation in Uganda. The chapters in Section 2, Regulating for Change, explore the extent to which the regulation of actors can or cannot change incentives and produce transformative results in food systems. They look at the role of the state in regulating its own actions as well as the actions of third parties and analyze various means of regulating land grabs. The final section, Governing for Better Food Systems, discusses the fragmentation of international law and the impacts of this fragmentation on the realization of human rights. These chapters trace the underpinnings of the current global food system, explore the challenges of competing regimes of intellectual property, farmers rights and human rights, and suggest new modes of governance for global and local food systems. The stakes for building better food systems are high. Our current path leaves many behind, destroying the environment and entrenching inequality and systemic poverty. While it is commonly understood that legal structures are at the heart of food systems, the legal academy has yet to make a significant contribution to recent discussions on improving food systems - this book aims to fill that gap."

Covering the period from the 1920s, when international tax policy was solely about avoiding double taxation, to the present era of international tax competition, Rixen investigates the fate of 'the power to tax' in an era of globalization, illustrating that tax sovereignty is both shaped and constrained by an international tax regime.

This volume sheds new light on economic developments in several countries of Southeast Europe. The European Union and especially the eurozone continue to experience rhythms of fiscal crisis, as can most clearly be seen in the debt crisis in the South Periphery. Despite the fact that several measures and decisions have been taken to deal with the crisis (banking union, liquidity support from the European Central Bank), proposals to reform Europe's strategic policy in order to find a way out of the crisis have been put forward. This book explores the respective roles that specific sectors, e.g. the agricultural sector, social capital, tax policies and labour immigration, can play in this regard. The importance of international economic relations (exports, imports, FDI, exchange rates) is analysed, in order to illustrate the nature of the economic developments and the major economic difficulties these countries face.

This theoretically rooted and research-based book provides insights on the JESSICA funding model which - unlike the traditional non-repayable aid - focuses on supporting sustainable urban development projects in a repayable and recyclable way. Looking through the lens of the JESSICA financial engineering mechanism used in urban transformation, it examines the functioning and performance thereof and formulates policy recommendations for the future. The aim of this volume is to contribute to a deeper understanding of the JESSICA sustainable funding model by exploring its repayable assistance mechanism to support sustainable urban development projects. The authors make several noteworthy contributions to the literature on EU cohesion policy and shed light on the use of the repayable instruments within public interventions, while providing, for the first time, a critical analysis of the JESSICA sustainable funding model from the holistic perspective which is especially relevant for supporting sustainable urban development. Financial Engineering in Sustainable Funding of Urban Development in the EU provides policy-significant findings that are important for EU cohesion policy in the field of repayable assistance to be reinvested in the long term in urban and regional transformation.