|
Showing 1 - 25 of
34 matches in All Departments
The ways in which rapid urbanization of the Global South are
transforming food systems and food supply chains, and the food
security of urban populations is an often neglected topic. This
international group of authors addresses this profound
transformation from a variety of different perspectives and
disciplinary lenses, providing an important corrective to the
dominant view that food insecurity is a rural problem requiring
increases in agricultural production. Starting from the premise
that food security in urban areas is primarily a challenge of food
access, the chapters explore the various economic, social, and
governance policies and structures that constrain and inhibit the
access of all to food of sufficient quantity and quality. As the
Global South continues to urbanize, the challenge of feeding hungry
cities will become even more daunting, and this Handbook explains
why the existing food system, although undergoing rapid change, is
inadequate for this task and cannot meet the challenge without
substantial reform. The Handbook as a whole, and the individual
chapters, provide comprehensive overviews of relevant themes mixed
with empirical, real-world examples for university readership
teaching and taking courses on food systems, migration and
urbanization, urban policy and planning, geography, agricultural
economics, public health, and international development. It will
also introduce practitioners to current debates in the field and
provide strong support for the renewed, and growing, focus on the
food security of urban populations. The Handbook's comprehensive
overviews of relevant themes mixed with empirical, real-world
examples are ideal for university readership. It will also
introduce practitioners to current debates in the field and provide
strong support for the renewed, and growing, focus on the food
security of urban populations.
Urban population growth is extremely rapid across Africa and this
book places urban food and nutrition security firmly on the
development and policy agenda. It shows that current efforts to
address food poverty in Africa that focus entirely on small-scale
farmers, to the exclusion of broader socio-economic and
infrastructural approaches, are misplaced and will remain largely
ineffective in ameliorating food and nutrition insecurity for the
majority of Africans. Using original data from the African Food
Security Urban Network's (AFSUN) extensive database it is
demonstrated that the primary food security challenge for urban
households is access to food. Already linked into global food
systems and value chains, Africa's supply of food is not
necessarily in jeopardy. Rather, the widespread poverty and
informal urban fabric that characterizes Africa's emerging cities
impinge directly on households' capacity to access food that is
readily available. Through the analysis of empirical data collected
from 6,500 households in eleven cities in nine countries in
Southern Africa, the authors identify the complexity of factors and
dynamics that create the circumstances of widespread food and
nutrition insecurity under which urban citizens live. They also
provide useful policy approaches to address these conditions that
currently thwart the latent development potential of Africa's
expanding urban population.
This text examines the power of development to imagine new worlds
and to constantly reinvent itself as the solution to problems of
national and global disorder. The common thread of the enclosed
essays is the language and rhetoric of the development text. By
conceptualizing development as a discourse, the book argues that
development cannot simply be reduced to the outworking of deeper
economic logics and structures but has its own logic, internal
coherence and effects. The text discusses three main questions: how
and why does the language of development change over time?; what
role does geography play in the language and practices of
development?; and is it possible to imagine a world in which
development has no redeeming features or power? At the same time,
the book rejects the postmodern concept that the texts of
development must be situated within the power-laden political and
institutional context out of which they arise and to which they
speak.
Urban population growth is extremely rapid across Africa and this
book places urban food and nutrition security firmly on the
development and policy agenda. It shows that current efforts to
address food poverty in Africa that focus entirely on small-scale
farmers, to the exclusion of broader socio-economic and
infrastructural approaches, are misplaced and will remain largely
ineffective in ameliorating food and nutrition insecurity for the
majority of Africans. Using original data from the African Food
Security Urban Network's (AFSUN) extensive database it is
demonstrated that the primary food security challenge for urban
households is access to food. Already linked into global food
systems and value chains, Africa's supply of food is not
necessarily in jeopardy. Rather, the widespread poverty and
informal urban fabric that characterizes Africa's emerging cities
impinge directly on households' capacity to access food that is
readily available. Through the analysis of empirical data collected
from 6,500 households in eleven cities in nine countries in
Southern Africa, the authors identify the complexity of factors and
dynamics that create the circumstances of widespread food and
nutrition insecurity under which urban citizens live. They also
provide useful policy approaches to address these conditions that
currently thwart the latent development potential of Africa's
expanding urban population.
This book examines the power of development to imagine new worlds and to constantly reinvent itself as the solution to problems of national and global disorder, yet argues that development cannot simply be reduced to the outworking of deeper economic logics and structures, but has its own logic, internal coherence and effects.
Conceptualizing development as discourse, the enclosed essays discuss the changing language of development, argue the role of geography in development practices, and entertain the possibility that development has no redeeming features or power when situated within its political and institutional context.
Combining abstract analyses of development discourse with concrete global case studies of how that discourse is constructed and operates in particular times and places, The Power of Development stakes out the terrain for post-marxist development studies in a post-marxian world.
Countries across Africa are rapidly transitioning from rural to
urban societies. The UN projects that 60% of people living in
Africa will be in urban areas by 2050, with the urban population on
the continent tripling over the next 50 years. The challenge of
building inclusive and sustainable cities in the context of rapid
urbanization is arguably the critical development issue of the 21st
Century and creating food secure cities is key to promoting health,
prosperity, equity, and ecological sustainability. The expansion of
Africa's urban population is taking place largely in secondary
cities: these are broadly defined as cities with fewer than half a
million people that are not national political or economic centres.
The implications of secondary urbanization have recently been
described by the Cities Alliance as "a real knowledge gap",
requiring much additional research not least because it poses new
intellectual challenges for academic researchers and governance
challenges for policy-makers. International researchers coming from
multiple points of view including food studies, urban studies, and
sustainability studies, are starting to heed the call for further
research into the implications for food security of rapidly growing
secondary cities in Africa. This book will combine this research
and feature comparable case studies, intersecting trends, and shed
light on broad concepts including governance, sustainability,
health, economic development, and inclusivity. This is an open
access book.
This book powerfully demonstrates that some of the most resourceful entrepreneurs in the South African informal economy are migrants and refugees. Yet far from being lauded, they take their life into their hands when they trade on South Africa’s “mean streets”.
The book draws attention to what they bring to their adopted country through research into previously unexamined areas of migrant entrepreneurship. Ranging from studies of how migrants have created booming agglomeration economies in Jeppe and Ivory Park in Johannesburg, to guanxi networks of Chinese entrepreneurs, to competition and cooperation among Somali shop owners, to cross-border informal traders, to the informal transport operators between South Africa and Zimbabwe, the chapters in this book reveal the positive economic contributions of migrants. These include generating employment, paying rents, providing cheaper goods to poor consumers, and supporting formal sector wholesalers and retailers. As well, Mean Streets highlights the xenophobic responses to migrant and refugee entrepreneurs and the challenges they face in running a successful business on the streets.
Mean Streets is a refreshingly rich empirical documentation of the economic prospects and possibilities for South Africa of the creativity and entrepreneurship of international migrants. It is mostly a study of missed opportunities for the South African state and government, who prefer to confront immigrants with legal obstacles and regulatory mechanisms than offer them the police, official and social protection they crave to excel as businesses.
The world recently watched with dismay as South African citizens
violently attacked foreign nationals in communities across the
country. Tens of thousands of migrants were displaced, amid mass
looting and destruction of foreign-owned homes, property and
businesses. Senior officials and politicians seemed bemused and
perplexed by the xenophobic violence. The media was quick to
advance several theories about the mayhem. One focused on
historical factors, particularly South Africa’s divisive and
alienating apartheid past. Another blamed poverty and the daily
struggle for existence in many of South Africa’s poorer
communities. A third criticized the ANC government for poor service
delivery and a failure to redistribute the fruits of the
post-apartheid economic boom to the poor. Finally, the country’s
immigration policies were seen as at fault. None of these theories
explicitly tackles the phenomenon of xenophobia itself. In late
2006 SAMP undertook a national survey of the attitudes of the South
African population towards foreign nationals in the country. The
data from this survey allows us to analyze the state of the
nation’s mind on immigration, immigrants and refugees in the period
immediately prior to the recent upsurge of xenophobic violence in
South Africa. By comparing the results with those of previous
surveys conducted by SAMP in the 1990s, we are also able to see if
attitudes have changed and in what ways. Are they better now than
they were in the days that prompted the South African Human Rights
Commission to set up its Roll Back Xenophobia Campaign and partner
with SAMP in a study of immigration, xenophobia and human rights in
the country? Has xenophobia softened or hardened in the intervening
years? Are xenophobic attitudes as widespread and vitriolic as they
were then? How many South Africans were poised, in 2006, to turn
their negative thoughts about foreign nationals into actions to
“cleanse” their neighbourhoods and streets of fellow Africans? The
2006 SAMP Xenophobia Survey shows that South Africa exhibits levels
of intolerance and hostility to outsiders unlike virtually anything
seen in other parts of the world. For example: Compared to citizens
of other countries worldwide, South Africans are the least open to
outsiders and want the greatest restrictions on immigration.
Earlier data showed a hardening of attitudes in the late 1990s. The
proportion of people wanting strict limits or a total prohibition
on immigration rose from 65% in 1997 to 78% in 1999 and the
proportion of those favouring immigration if there were jobs
available fell from 29% to 12%. Similarly restrictive views still
prevail. Two changes were evident in 2006, one positive and one
negative. On the positive side,the proportion who agree to
employed-related immigration rose from 12% in 1999 to 23% in 2006.
In part, this reflects the immigration policy shift in 2002 which
promoted a new skills-based approach. On the negative, the
proportion of those wanting a total ban on immigration increased
from 25% in to 35% in 2006. And 84% feel that South Africa is
allowing “too many” foreign nationals into the country. Nearly 50%
support or strongly support the deportation of foreign nationals
including those living legally in South Africa. Only 18% strongly
oppose such a policy. Nearly three-quarters (74%) support a policy
of deporting anyone who is not contributing economically to South
Africa. Some 61% support the deportation of foreign nationals who
test positive for HIV or have AIDS with a mere 9% strongly opposed.
If migrants are allowed in, South Africans want them to come alone,
as they were forced to in the apartheid period. Less than 20% think
it should be easier for families of migrants to come with them to
South Africa.
South Africa's gold mining workforce has the highest prevalence
rates of tuberculosis and HIV infection of any industrial sector in
the country. The contract migrant labour system, which has long
outlived apartheid, is responsible for this unacceptable situation.
The spread of HIV to rural communities in Southern Africa is not
well understood. The accepted wisdom is that migrants leave for the
mines, engage in high-risk behaviour, contract the virus and return
to infect their rural partners. This model fails to deal with the
phenomenon of rural-rural transmission and cases of HIV discordance
(when the female migrant is infected and the male migrant not). Nor
does it reveal whether all rural partners are equally at risk of
infection. This study examines the vulnerability of rural partners
in southern Mozambique and southern Swaziland, which are two major
source areas for migrant miners. It presents the results of surveys
with miners and partners in these two sending-areas and affords the
opportunity to compare two different mine-sending areas. The two
areas are not only geographically and culturally different, they
have had contrasting experiences with the mine labour system over
the last two decades. The spread of HIV in Southern Africa in the
1990s coincided with major downsizing and retrenchment in the gold
mining industry which impacted differently on Mozambique and
Swaziland. Swaziland has been in decline as a source of mine
migrants while Mozambique remained a relatively stable source of
mine migrants. The study therefore aims not only to shed light on
vulnerability in mine sending areas, but also to draw out any
contrasts that might exist between two mine-sending areas that were
inserted into the mine migrant labour system in different ways
during the expansion of the HIV epidemic.
The relationship between migration, development and remittances in
Lesotho has been exhaustively studied for the period up to 1990.
This was an era when the vast majority of migrants from Lesotho
were young men working on the South African gold mines and over 50
percent of households had a migrant mineworker. Since 1990,
patterns of migration to South Africa have changed dramatically.
The reconfiguration of migration between the two countries has had
a marked impact on remittance flows to Lesotho. The central
question addressed in this report is how the change in patterns of
migration from and within Lesotho since 1990 has impacted on
remittance flows and usage.
|
You may like...
Sound Of Freedom
Jim Caviezel, Mira Sorvino, …
DVD
R325
R218
Discovery Miles 2 180
Loot
Nadine Gordimer
Paperback
(2)
R398
R330
Discovery Miles 3 300
|