Author: A. Brah
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 0230378536
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 243

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Book Description
Providing critical assessment of the 'globalization thesis' through sustained analysis of the nexus of processes underlying social and cultural relations, this book examines, explores, and teases out the many contradictions embedded within different discourses of globalization. Together, the various chapters in the collection offer a wide-ranging critique of those accounts which represent globalization primarily, if not exclusively, as the classic story of European modernity with its attendant narratives of ostensibly unfettered movement of people, unmitigated economic growth and social progress.

Author: Thayer Scudder
Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing
ISBN: 1849805571
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 292

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Book Description
A work of political economy from the perspective of an anthropologist who has made a career of studying poverty and displaced people, Global Threats, Global Futures will prove rewarding reading for anyone concerned with issues of economic development, environmental and cultural degradation, and the causes and solutions of poverty. Most of all, Thayer Scudder illuminates a path, not only possible but plausible, through a destructive maze of humankind s own making if only the political will can be found to tread it. Engineering & Science Thayer Scudder is one of those gifted authors who have the experience and the vision to span multiple sectors and far flung sites in assessing where humankind and its habitat are heading. His restless curiosity in everything around him has led him to become not simply the world s leading authority on the impacts on the lives of people resettled by dam-building projects but an innovative thinker about development anthropology and the threats to the globe from poverty, fundamentalism in all its pernicious forms and environmental degradation. This iconoclastic book assails sacred cows ranging from the World Bank to the malign role of Buddhist priests in the late civil war in Sri Lanka. The work is not reassuring. But its conclusion that humans can learn to live with declining living standards is more uplifting than doom-laden. David McDowell, Former Director General of the IUCN and New Zealand Ambassador to the United Nations Neither Pollyanna nor Prophet of Doom, Professor Scudder has drawn on his 55 years of international experience and presented a clear, hard hitting, extraordinarily well documented analysis of the critical and urgent global challenges that face humankind and of the transformations that will be required to meet those challenges. This is a very important book. It should be read by an informed public, but most particularly by leaders and policy makers of the world s governments, international organizations, educational and religious institutions. Lee Talbot, George Mason University, US This is an extraordinary, bold, and exceptionally well thought out prospectus on the next century of the human condition. Declining living standards, consequential to the pervasive pursuit of growth in terms of Gross Domestic Product, is a central theme that is thoroughly documented and engagingly articulated. The decisive role in the decline of living standards played by global threats including poverty, fundamentalism, environmental degradation, wars, and excess consumption, is compellingly presented from the perspective of the author s unique career. Burton Singer, Princeton University, US This impressive study of the progressive impoverishment of the world s resources speaks with the authority of Thayer Scudder s fifty years of experience with international programs for technological development, especially those that involve river basin development and resulting population displacement and resettlement. Case studies from different continents provide the evidence for the likelihood that the majority in future generations will lead more meager lives than their twentieth century ancestors. He points to what has gone wrong in our approach to the world and its resources and to the measures necessary to offset the damage already caused. If only citizens have the political will to adopt them. Elizabeth Colson, University of California, Berkeley, US This is an important book. It has to be listened to, and for two reasons. The first is the expertise of the author: the guy has been there: this is an anthropologist who is constantly in the field. And he possesses a wide range of skills: part ethnographer, part biologist, as much a humanist as a scientist. The combination of experience and expertise is as powerful as it is unusual. Sadly, a second force in favor of this book is the temper of the times. The giddiness of the last century has been driven underground by the perils of this. Ro

Author: Jonathan Paul Marshall
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317690826
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 300

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Book Description
Climate change and ecological instability have the potential to disrupt human societies and their futures. Cultural, social and ethical life in all societies is directed towards a future that can never be observed, and never be directly acted upon, and yet is always interacting with us. Thinking and acting towards the future involves efforts of imagination that are linked to our sense of being in the world and the ecological pressures we experience. The three key ideas of this book – ecologies, ontologies and mythologies – help us understand the ways people in many different societies attempt to predict and shape their futures. Each chapter places a different emphasis on the linked domains of environmental change, embodied experience, myth and fantasy, politics, technology and intellectual reflection, in relation to imagined futures. The diverse geographic scope of the chapters includes rural Nepal, the islands of the Pacific Ocean, Sweden, coastal Scotland, North America, and remote, rural and urban Australia. This book will appeal to researchers and students in anthropology, sociology, environmental studies, cultural studies, psychology and politics.

Author: Gayle Kimball
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
ISBN: 1527525511
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 300

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Book Description
How Global Youth Values Will Change Our Future reveals the values and religious beliefs of Generations Y and Z, representing over 4,000 young people from 88 countries. This book is based on their own voices, rather than adult projections from multiple-choice surveys. It also includes futurists’ projections of significant trends to predict where society is headed. As the largest, best-educated, and most connected generation ever, today’s youth are creating a more democratic world.

Author: Roger D. Blanchard
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN:
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 324

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Book Description
A study of the future of global oil production and its implications, this illustrated book examines U.S. capacity followed by a look at the production futures of oil-producing regions: Western Europe, Mexico and Canada, South and Central America, Asia, the Middle East, the former Soviet Union, and Africa. Alternatives to oil are also discussed.

Author: Sunera Thobani
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350148113
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 272

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Book Description
The current political standoffs of the 'War on Terror' illustrate that the interaction within and between the so-called Western and Middle Eastern civilizations is constantly in flux. A recurring theme however is how Islam and Muslims signify the 'Enemy' in the Western socio-cultural imagination and have become the 'Other' against which the West identifies itself. In a unique and insightful blend of critical race, feminist and post-colonial theory, Sunera Thobani examines how Islam is foundational to the formation of Western identity at critical points in its history, including the Crusades, the Reconquista and the colonial period. More specifically, she explores how masculinity and femininity are formed at such pivotal junctures and what role feminism has played in the wars against 'radical' Islam. Exposing these symbiotic relationships, Thobani explores how the return of 'religion' is reworking the racial, gender and sexual politics by which Western society defines itself, and more specifically, defines itself against Islam. Contesting Islam, Constructing Race and Sexuality unpacks conventional as well as unconventional orthodoxies to open up new spaces in how we think about sexual and racial identity in the West and the crucial role that Islam has had and continues to have in its development.

Author: Barry B. Hughes
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Economic forecasting
Languages : en
Pages : 264

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Book Description
Literature survey and evaluation of forecasting techniques and economic models used in futures studies - surveys the controversies in social and economic forecasting; examines theoretical aspects and empirical evidence of diversity in food, energy, population, economic growth, business cycle, and technological change forecasting; studies the role of institutional framework, attitudes, political aspects, value systems, etc. In creating divergent perspectives. Bibliography, graphs, statistical tables.

Author: Kristin Herzog
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Children (Christian theology)
Languages : en
Pages : 340

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Book Description
"In Children and Our Global Future, Herzog challenges theologians, clergy and lay church leaders, educators, and interested citizens to take children seriously. She examines the concerns for children in our biblical heritage as well as in other religious traditions, and relates these findings to our cultural, ecological, and political responsibility to children in an age of globalization. Herzog also contends that neglecting children today will not only endanger their future, but also deprive adults of spiritual and social integrity."--Jacket.

Author: Carl Abbott
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 248

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Book Description
"Abbott offers a fruitful new way to read science fiction, one that also greatly enriches our understanding of western history and its impact on our collective imagination. Detailing the overlap of science fiction and western fiction - especially relating to their mutual interest in and concerns about frontier expansionism - he reveals an unsuspected common ground that informs the writings of both camps." "Reviewing the work of many Hugo and Nebula Award winners, as well as drawing upon popular film and television series (like the Buck Rogers serials), Abbott's study journeys across the far reaches of science fiction's universe."

Author: Robert Hackett
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134159358
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 256

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Book Description
Remaking Media is a unique and timely reading of the contemporary struggle to democratize communication. With a focus on activism directed towards challenging and changing media content, practices and structures, the book explores the burning question: What is the political significance and potential of democratic media activism in the western world today? Taking an innovative approach, Robert Hackett and William Carroll pay attention to an emerging social movement that appears at the cutting edge of cultural and political contention, and ground their work in three scholarly traditions that provide interpretive resources for the study of democratic media activism: political theories of democracy critical media scholarship the sociology of social movements. Remaking Media examines the democratization of the media and the efforts to transform the machinery of representation. Such an examination will prove invaluable not only to media and communication studies students, but also to students of political science.