This book is a collective effort by researchers affiliated with the CERES Research School in Development Studies in the Netherlands. These experts discuss themes and concepts crucial to the overlapping fields of globalization and development research. Individual chapters examine the notions and issues of globalization, livelihood, identity, governance, transnationalism, and knowledge.

This book is a collective effort on the part of researchers affiliated with the CERES Research School in Development Studies in the Netherlands to discuss a series of themes and concepts crucial to the overlapping fields of globalization and development research. While development in the course of the 1980s and 1990s was becoming hinged onto globalization, prior approaches to development were increasingly being criticized. An impasse was announced by various actors in the field, and renewed reflection on some of the basic concepts and methods became inevitable. Much of the initial rethinking went under the sign of postmodernism and tended to give priority to micro- and actor-centered research. Later, with the emerging discussion on globalization, new macro dimensions were added, and efforts were launched to articulate local/global approaches. This book discusses a set of key themes and concepts that reflect these intellectual and historical developments. Used by politicians and researchers, they reflect the continuing concern about inequality and poverty by students and practitioners of development, and contain crucial perspectives for a critical engagement of current globalization processes and their consequences. The chapters in this book examine the notions and issues of globalization, livelihood, identity, governance, transnationalism, and knowledge.

As cities sprawl across Latin America, absorbing more and more of its people, crime and violence have become inescapable. From the paramilitary invasion of Medell!n in Colombia, the booming wealth of crack dealers in Managua, Nicaragua and police corruption in Mexico City, to the glimmers of hope in Lima, this book provides a dynamic analysis of urban insecurity. Based on new empirical evidence, interviews with local people and historical contextualization, the authors attempts to shed light on the fault-lines which have appeared in Latin American society. Neoliberal economic policy, it is argued, has intensified the gulf between elites, insulated in gated estates monitored by private security firms, and the poor, who are increasingly mistrustful of state-sponsored attempts to impose order on their slums. Rather than the current trend towards government withdrawal, the situation can only be improved by co-operation between communities and police to build new networks of trust. In the end, violence and insecurity are inseparable from social justice and democracy.