Media matters. From encouraging charitable donations and delivering public health messages to promoting democratic participation and state accountability, the media can play a crucial role in development. Yet the influence of the media is not always welcome. It can also be used as a mechanism of surveillance and control or to disseminate hate speech and propaganda.
Throughout history, innovations in media have had a profound impact on protest and dissent. But while these recent developments in social media have been the subject of intense scholarly attention, there has been little consideration of the wider historical role of media technologies in protest. Drawing on the work of key theorists such as Walter Benjamin and Raymond Williams, Crisis and Critique provides a historical analysis of media practices within the context of major economic crises.
The world’s food supply is in the grip of a profound crisis. Humanity’s ability to feed itself is threatened by a wasteful, globalised agricultural industry, whose relentless pursuit of profit is stretching our planet’s ecosystems to breaking point. Rising food prices have fuelled instability across the world, while industrialised agriculture has contributed to a health crisis of massive proportions, with effects ranging from obesity and diabetes to cancers caused by pesticides.
An innovative study of the ways in which peasants across the global South are persisting and resisting in the face of neoliberal capitalism and environmental degradation.
Cooperatives the world over are successfully developing alternative models of decision-making, employment and operation without the existence of managers, executives and hierarchies. Through case studies spanning the United States, Latin America and Europe, including valuable new work on the previously neglected cooperative movement in Cuba, the author explores how cooperatives have evolved in response to the economic crisis.
A substantial and much-needed contribution to urban economics, providing both a critique of the mainstream and a compass for alternatives. Neoclassical economics, the intellectual bedrock of modern capitalism, faces growing criticisms, as many of its key assumptions and policy prescriptions are systematically challenged. Yet, there remains one field of economics where these limitations continue virtually unchallenged: the study of cities and regions in built-environment economics.
Digital technologies have spread rapidly in much of the world. Digital dividends—that is, the broader development benefits from using these technologies—have lagged behind. In many instances, digital technologies have boosted growth, expanded opportunities, and improved service delivery. Yet their aggregate impact has fallen short and is unevenly distributed. For digital technologies to benefit everyone everywhere requires closing the remaining digital divide, especially in internet access. But greater digital adoption will not be enough.
Civil Society Sustainability: Facing Up to New Challenges in Organisational Legitimacy, Credibility, and Viability
This special issue of Development in Practice focuses on the challenges faced by civil society to remain sustainable. The dominant model for many developing country non-governmental organisations and other civil society groups is one of depending on grants from international donors. However, this option is changing, often dramatically. For more information, refer to http://goo.gl/8SiiPk.
The purpose of his book is to provide a theory of applied political economy to explain the interface between society and adult education in developing countries. The author's own approach is broadly influenced by the Marxist tradition, but one that seeks to transcend many of the limitations and rigidities often prevalent in the past. He introduces adult educators to the main competing theories of development -- the modernisation, dependency, neo-liberal and various alternative approaches.
This is a pithy assessment of where adult education now stands - the traditions out of which it came, its current problems, and possible futures. The authors are particularly concerned with how its longstanding commitment to deliver social change ran into difficulties in the less favourable circumstances of the 1980s and 1990s. They argue that its purposes now need to be reconceptualised in order for it to become, once again, a relevant and effective agent of change.
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