"Harrison's examination of the Caribbean sugar industry straddles the line between a journalistic and a scholarly approach...Unique characteristics of the book are the personal vignettes and interviews with plantation workers, producers, traders, and buyers."
--"Choice"

What is life like on a sugar plantation at the end of the twentieth century? What will happen if the sugar industry collapses? How do the poverty-stricken cane cutters of rural Jamaica fit into the global economy? And how does sugar make its way from the canefield to our kitchens?

The Carribean's history is inseparable from sugar. In Jamaica entire communities depend on the sugar industry, earning a precarious living on old-fashioned plantations. For many the crop even doubles as currency. But as the advanced nations reassess the economic policies that keep sugar alive, time is running out for the island's industry.

King Sugar looks at the world sugar business, identifying the key playersproducers, markets and transnational companiesand explaining how the industry works. It explores the economics and politics of trading agreements, the mysteries of the futures market and the technology of sugar production. Based on interviews with traders, buyers and producers, it provides a unique look at the history of this commodity.

King Sugar also looks in detail at how ordinary people fit into this global industry. Through interviews with workers on a plantation she provides a vivid picture of producers and the crises they face. The book finally assesses the future of sugar, both in Jamaica and the wider world, and considers the options for those still ruled by "King Sugar."

This volume presents research focusing on environmental issues, local community and global changes resulting from socioeconomic and political forces in advanced industrialized societies. Some of the changing perceptions of technology in the environmental movement, ecological concerns, and policy issues are examined. Case studies of community problems and community development efforts are discussed within the context of local-global environmental nexus and quality of community life.

The study deals with problems and policy options facing Third World mega-cities. It examines the major sources of urban population growth and spatial concentration and analyses the conflict between economic efficiency and decentralization. It also assesses the implications of rapid urban population growth for employment generation and poverty alleviation, discusses the relationship between urban poverty and access to housing and basic social services, and examines the problems of resource mobilization to finance urban programmes. The analysis is based on data gathered from several Third-World mega-cities. The study thus provides a comparative analysis of mega-city problems and suggests the direction in which future policies need to be developed to deal more effectively with these problems.

The study of quality of urban life involves both an objective approach to analysis using spatially aggregated secondary data and a subjective approach using unit record survey data whereby people provide subjective evaluations of QOL domains. This book provides a comprehensive overview of theoretical perspectives on QOUL and methodological approaches to research design to investigate QOUL and measure QOL dimensions. It incorporates empirical investigations into QOUL in a range of cities across the world.

This collection is the first to examine how the city is written in modern Irish fiction. Focusing on the multi-faceted, layered, and ever-changing topography of the city in Irish writing, it brings together studies of Irish and Northern Irish fictions which contribute to a more complete picture of modern Irish literature and Irish urban cultural identities. It offers a critical introduction to the Irish city as it represented in fiction as a plural space to mirror the plurality of contemporary Irish identities north and south of the border. The chapters combine to provide a platform for new research in the field of Irish urban literary studies, including analyses of the fiction of authors including James Joyce, Roddy Doyle, Kate O'Brien, Hugo Hamilton, Kevin Barry, and Rosemary Jenkinson. An exciting and diverse range of fictions is introduced and examined with the aim of generating a cohesive perspective on Irish urban fictions and to stimulate further discussion in this emerging area.

This proceedings volume presents current research on transport sector development, with particular emphasis on sustainable transport development, innovation and transport enterprise growth and survival. Derived from the 2016 TranSopot Conference held in Sopot, Poland, this book aims to show the possibilities of maximizing the efficiency of transport, while keeping the negative effects at a sustainable level. Transport is an important field of human activity, both from economic and social points of view. It has been proven that the development of transport contributes to the development of regional, national and international economic relations. Currently, the three most important topics in transportation research are green transport, transport innovations and metropolitan transport. These are the areas in which the contributions presented in this book are focused. Researchers in the field of sustainable transport provide the reader with a comprehensive description of possible activities towards green transport both in the terms of various transport branches and in the supply chain as a whole. This is the framework of the second field of transport research - innovation. The authors present a wide array of a technological, organizational, process and marketing innovation, which allow transport organizers and operators to provide service in a safe, sound and economically favorable way. The analysis of these innovations and the practical implications of their introduction should be a worthwhile experience both for the transport researchers and for the transport business practitioners. Lastly, the book reflects the tendencies of rapid development in urban and metropolitan areas which forces transport policy makers to provide citizens with a comfortable and faster way of commuting that doesn't result in unacceptable congestion or other negative effects. Different concepts of metropolitan transport management are presented and their effect on the transport systems is also investigated.

Some of the most exciting architecture in the world can be found on university campuses. In Europe, America and the Far East, vice chancellors and their architects have, over several centuries, produced an extraordinary range of innovative buildings. This book has been written to highlight the importance of university architecture. It is intended as a guide to designers, to those who manage the estate we call the campus, and as an inspiration to students and academic staff. With nearly 40 per cent of school leavers attending university, the campus can influence the outlook of tomorrow's decision makers to the benefit of architecture and society at large.

Nishiyama Matsunosuke is one of the most important historians of Tokugawa (Edo) popular culture, yet until now his work has never been translated into a Western language. Edo Culture presents a selection of Nishiyama's writings that serves not only to provide an excellent introduction to Tokugawa cultural history but also to fill many gaps in our knowledge of the daily life and diversions of the urban populace of the time. Many essays focus on the most important theme of Nishiyama's work: the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries as a time of appropriation and development of Japan's culture by its urban commoners.

In Family Poverty and Homelessness in New York City , Nunez and Sribnick explore the world of New York's poor children and families, from the era of European settlements to the present day. The book examines successes and failures of past efforts, providing historical context often lacking in contemporary policy debates.

All cities are vulnerable. They have economically, socially, institutionally vulnerable urban space.

In developing countries, vulnerable urban space can be observed typically as substandard informal settlements such as slums or areas occupied by squatters. At present, slum dwellers comprise one-third of the world's urban population of 3 billion, and it has been estimated that the number of slum dwellers will double in the next 30 years if no effective action is taken. Improvement of vulnerable urban areas, which is one of the targets of Millennium Development Goals, is thus an urgent worldwide challenge in our age.

This book combines empirical and comparative analysis of improvement of vulnerable urban space and post-disaster rehabilitation in Asian and Latin American countries. The discussions presented herein will serve as a useful, thought-provoking source for researchers, practitioners and students, especially for those who are working to alleviate the vulnerability of urban space.

This book is an analysis of both contemporary Tokyo and the contemporary Olympic Games, emphasizing the role of late-stage capitalism and political economy in shaping both. The 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games were mired in scandal from the beginning of the bidding process all the way through to the end of the games. This was further exacerbated by the emergency postponement to 2021 due to the coronavirus pandemic, with many public opinion polls supporting further postponement or cancelation in 2021. The contributors to this volume look at the Tokyo 2020 Games in the context of other modern games and the struggle to use the games as an economic stimulus. They reveal the reality of the Olympic development in Tokyo based on evidence and concrete policy analysis. This is a valuable resource for scholars both of contemporary Japan and of the Olympics and other mega-events.

Written by Monica Biradavolu (a sociologist at Yale University), this innovative study examines the emergence and growing power of a new group of immigrant Indians to the United States: the transnational techno-capitalist class of entrepreneurs operating at the upper echelons of the hi-tech industry in Silicon Valley and Bangalore. Imbibing the culture of innovation and entrepreneurship in Silicon Valley, recognizing the importance of building strong networks, and relying upon their educational qualifications, professional credentials and powerful yet invisible family support, Indians are playing a central role in redefining what it means to be an 'immigrant entrepreneur' from a 'developing country'. These powerful actors are negotiating on their own terms and forging their own transnational space in the global software industry to become a transnational capitalist class, with allegiance to global capitalism and a political project of pushing the ideas and ideals of capitalism in both their 'home' and 'adopted' countries. This an important book for those in ethnic and immigrant studies.

This book, written by worldwide specialists from Canada, India, Italy, Palestine, Peru, Spain and the Netherlands, is a guide to establishing a city on a sustainable path. It addresses sustainable urban planning issues by breaking the city down to its main components. The authors analyze and discuss such topics as: urban social and economic factors, including immigration and cultural integration, the gender component, the formation of slums, and social indicators; the interaction of the city with the environment, including the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA); urban and regional economics, including specialization and dependency, asset management, and community facilities; the relationship of a city within its region; urban planning, including urban sprawl and core revitalization; housing and relocation, including such concepts as community participation; degradation and measures to reverse this situation, etc.

To date, most interpretations of urbanization have focused on the internal dynamics of regions or nations, or at best on narrow relations of international dependency. This text recognizes a complementary world-system process theory. The intent is not to argue that world-system processes totally determine urban change, but rather that patterns of urbanization within regions cannot be adequately understood without at least taking global political economic processes into account.
The book begins with a discussion of how a world-system theory of urbanization differs from other approaches. This is followed by a discussion of theoretical issues involved in the world-system approach. The final section of the book consists of empirical studies which use this theoretical perspective to shed light on urbanization patterns either within selected countries or globally. The main themes which are examined include urban primacy and city systems, urban labor force patterns, over-urbanization, and rates or levels of urban concentration.
This book contains a review of urbanization literature and discussion concerning the informal labor sector in peripheral areas, core-peripheral relations at the global level, urban primacy theory and its critique, and recent patterns of labor force structure in the world economy. The effects of the mobility of capital and labor on U.S. cities are reviewed and a comparison between the urban systems of South Korea and the Philippines is made. The authors present data on city-size hierarchy at the world level for the past 1000 years and find that changes in the world city-size distribution correspond to cycles in the world system. They conclude that regional studiesand global analyses support interpretations of urbanization using the world-system paradigm.
From the Preface:
The processes of urbanization have long been regarded as integral to socioeconomic development. However, scholarly opinion about global urban patterns is divided, ranging from claims that the growth of urban population in a given region is an inevitable concomitant of modernization to assertions that too-rapid urban growth, especially in a region's largest city, may actually impede balanced development. Despite this diversity of opinion, observers agree that there is tremendous global unevenness in patterns of urbanization.
Our understanding of uneven development has been transformed in recent years by the emergence of the world-system perspective, which, however, has until now illuminated aspects of dependency and development other than urbanization. The purpose of this book is to use the world-system paradigm to systematically interpret processes of urbanization. The book is directed toward students of urbanization and development who may approach their subject from a variety of academic disciplines, including anthropology, political economy, geography, history, political science, and sociology.

Leading scholars on both sides of the Atlantic analyze the changes to the social structure of cities as a result of recent migration. The contributors consider the link between globalizing cities and existing zones of social exclusion, employment prospects for all residents and the likelihood of social mobility for recent arrivals. A particular feature of the book is the comparative focus of the chapters that, for the first time, seek to assess the importance of national institutional structures.

This book examines the relationship between urban migrant movements, struggles and digitality which transforms public space and generates mobile commons. The authors explore heterogeneous digital forms in the context migration, border-crossing and transnational activism, displaying commonality patterns and inter-dependence.

The Sacred Identity of Ephesos offers a full-length interpretation of one of the largest known bequests in the Classical world, made to the city of Ephesos in AD 104 by a wealthy Roman equestrian, and challenges some of the basic assumptions made about the significance of the Greek cultural renaissance known as the 'Second Sophistic'. Professor Rogers shows how the civic rituals created by the foundation symbolised a contemporary social hierarchy, and how the ruling class used foundation myths - the birth of the goddess Artemis in a grove above the city - as a tangible source of power, to be wielded over new citizens and new gods. Utilising an innovative methodology for analysing large inscriptions, Professor Rogers argues that the Ephesians used their past to define their present during the Roman Empire, shedding new light on how second-century Greeks maintained their identities in relation to Romans, Christians, and Jews.

Young people are regularly cast as a threat to social order. Deconstructing Youth argues that this is due in part to the way the notion of youth is conceptualised in Western society. Drawing on Derridean deconstruction, Gabriel analyses the limits of dominant youth discourses, revealing the ways in which common sense assumptions about young people are marked by contradictory expectations that actually function to create youth as a 'problem'. With case studies on youth sexuality, violence and developmental neuroscience, she details how these contradictions go unrecognised in attempts to make sense of young people's identities and actions. Gabriel argues that this leads to the misattribution of blame to young people who are then taken to operate outside the boundaries of acceptable conduct. In response, she considers what a deconstructive approach has to offer in terms of moving beyond these conceptual limits and in opening up to more enabling possibilities for understanding youth.

This volume provides extensive information on the urban experience in Latin America. Following a general overview, the work includes chapters devoted to urbanization in specific countries. Each chapter begins with an introduction providing geographic information and a survey of the nation's urban development, and then includes historical profiles of ninety selected cities, as well as maps. Thus, the work provides both national and city-specific perspectives. Chapters also provide a list of bibliographic resources, and the work is fully indexed.

Drawing on in-depth ethnographic fieldwork, Wessendorf explores life in a super-diverse urban neighbourhood. The book presents a vivid account of the daily doings and social relations among the residents and how they pragmatically negotiate difference in their everyday lives.