Author: Duncan Green Publisher: Oxfam ISBN: 0855985933 Category : Social Science Languages : en Pages : 540
Book Description
Offers a look at the causes and effects of poverty and inequality, as well as the possible solutions. This title features research, human stories, statistics, and compelling arguments. It discusses about the world we live in and how we can make it a better place.
Author: Edward Royce Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield ISBN: 1538167573 Category : Social Science Languages : en Pages : 309
Book Description
Poverty is a serious problem in the United States, more so than commonly imagined, and more so than in other industrialized nations. Most Americans adhere to an individualistic perspective: they believe poverty is largely the result of people being deficient in intelligence, determination, education, and other personal traits. Poverty and Power, Fourth Edition challenges this viewpoint, arguing that poverty arises from the workings of four key structural systems—the economic, the political, the cultural, and the social—and ten obstacles to economic justice, including unaffordable housing, inaccessible health care, and racial and gender discrimination. The author argues that a renewed war on poverty can be successful, but only through a popular movement to bring about significant change in the workings of American economic, political, and cultural institutions. New to this Edition Enhanced conversation on why the cultural theory of poverty has such a strong appeal to the American public develops students’ critical thinking skills (Chapter 3) New segment on the influence of job seekers’ physical appearance on hiring decisions showing that success is not simply a matter of education, skills, and training (Chapter 4) New data on the “job availability problem” explains in detail why the monthly headline unemployment number is misleading, and new content on the 2021 upsurge of quits on the part of American workers portrays efforts on the part of ordinary people to improve their lives (Chapter 5) New content on how corporations have become increasingly assertive political players explores the dramatic increase in corporate lobbying efforts, the rise of billionaire political activists, and the creation of a powerful conservative political infrastructure in the United States (Chapter 6) Greater attention to racially segregated and resource-deprived Black communities covers the extraordinary hardships experienced by the residents of these areas, while a new section on the geographical isolation of the affluent discusses how isolation affects wealthy people’s beliefs and perceptions about poverty and what policies they deem acceptable (Chapter 8)
Author: Paul O'Brien Publisher: John Hunt Publishing ISBN: 1789047501 Category : Political Science Languages : en Pages : 107
Book Description
Is it actually possible? …that we might emerge from this pandemic with a peaceful global power switch from those who have too much to those who don't have enough? With billionaires able to decide the fate of nations, private corporations more powerful and less accountable than ever, and political autocrats around the world shaking our confidence in democratic institutions, power resides in all the wrong places. And so our world is in crisis. In such moments, activists find opportunities. Not to restore the pre-crises order, but to transform it. Paul O’Brien argues that progressive activists may never have a better opportunity to rewrite economic rules, systems and outcomes in favor of those who don't have enough. His book offers practical action steps for activists who want to drive a power switch that overcomes extreme inequalities in our world.
Author: Deepa Narayan Publisher: World Bank Publications ISBN: 0821381121 Category : Business & Economics Languages : en Pages : 580
Book Description
There is no peace with hunger. Only promises and promises and no fulfillment. If there is no job, there is no peace. If there is nothing to cook in the pot, there is no peace. - Oscar, a 57-year-old man, El Gorri n, Colombia They want to construct their houses near the road, and they cannot do that if they do not have peace with their enemies. So peace and the road have developed a symbiotic relation. One cannot live without the other. . . . - A community leader from a conflict-affected community on the island of Mindanao, Philippines Most conflict studies focus on the national level, but this volume focuses on the community level. It explores how communities experience and recover from violent conflict, and the surprising opportunities that can emerge for poor people to move out of poverty in these harsh contexts. 'Rising from the Ashes of Conflict' reveals how poor people s mobility is shaped by local democracy, people s associations, aid strategies, and the local economic environment in over 100 communities in seven conflict-affected countries, including Afghanistan. The findings suggest the need to rethink postconflict development assistance. This is the fourth volume in a series derived from the Moving Out of Poverty study, which explores mobility from the perspectives of poor people in more than 500 communities across 15 countries.
Author: Daron Acemoglu Publisher: Currency ISBN: 0307719227 Category : Business & Economics Languages : en Pages : 546
Book Description
Brilliant and engagingly written, Why Nations Fail answers the question that has stumped the experts for centuries: Why are some nations rich and others poor, divided by wealth and poverty, health and sickness, food and famine? Is it culture, the weather, geography? Perhaps ignorance of what the right policies are? Simply, no. None of these factors is either definitive or destiny. Otherwise, how to explain why Botswana has become one of the fastest growing countries in the world, while other African nations, such as Zimbabwe, the Congo, and Sierra Leone, are mired in poverty and violence? Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson conclusively show that it is man-made political and economic institutions that underlie economic success (or lack of it). Korea, to take just one of their fascinating examples, is a remarkably homogeneous nation, yet the people of North Korea are among the poorest on earth while their brothers and sisters in South Korea are among the richest. The south forged a society that created incentives, rewarded innovation, and allowed everyone to participate in economic opportunities. The economic success thus spurred was sustained because the government became accountable and responsive to citizens and the great mass of people. Sadly, the people of the north have endured decades of famine, political repression, and very different economic institutions—with no end in sight. The differences between the Koreas is due to the politics that created these completely different institutional trajectories. Based on fifteen years of original research Acemoglu and Robinson marshall extraordinary historical evidence from the Roman Empire, the Mayan city-states, medieval Venice, the Soviet Union, Latin America, England, Europe, the United States, and Africa to build a new theory of political economy with great relevance for the big questions of today, including: - China has built an authoritarian growth machine. Will it continue to grow at such high speed and overwhelm the West? - Are America’s best days behind it? Are we moving from a virtuous circle in which efforts by elites to aggrandize power are resisted to a vicious one that enriches and empowers a small minority? - What is the most effective way to help move billions of people from the rut of poverty to prosperity? More philanthropy from the wealthy nations of the West? Or learning the hard-won lessons of Acemoglu and Robinson’s breakthrough ideas on the interplay between inclusive political and economic institutions? Why Nations Fail will change the way you look at—and understand—the world.
Author: Rob Hopkins Publisher: Chelsea Green Publishing ISBN: 1603589066 Category : Social Science Languages : en Pages : 242
Book Description
“Big ideas that just might save the world”—The Guardian The founder of the international Transition Towns movement asks why true creative, positive thinking is in decline, asserts that it's more important now than ever, and suggests ways our communities can revive and reclaim it. In these times of deep division and deeper despair, if there is a consensus about anything in the world, it is that the future is going to be awful. There is an epidemic of loneliness, an epidemic of anxiety, a mental health crisis of vast proportions, especially among young people. There’s a rise in extremist movements and governments. Catastrophic climate change. Biodiversity loss. Food insecurity. The fracturing of ecosystems and communities beyond, it seems, repair. The future—to say nothing of the present—looks grim. But as Transition movement cofounder Rob Hopkins tells us, there is plenty of evidence that things can change, and cultures can change, rapidly, dramatically, and unexpectedly—for the better. He has seen it happen around the world and in his own town of Totnes, England, where the community is becoming its own housing developer, energy company, enterprise incubator, and local food network—with cascading benefits to the community that extend far beyond the projects themselves. We do have the capability to effect dramatic change, Hopkins argues, but we’re failing because we’ve largely allowed our most critical tool to languish: human imagination. As defined by social reformer John Dewey, imagination is the ability to look at things as if they could be otherwise. The ability, that is, to ask What if? And if there was ever a time when we needed that ability, it is now. Imagination is central to empathy, to creating better lives, to envisioning and then enacting a positive future. Yet imagination is also demonstrably in decline at precisely the moment when we need it most. In this passionate exploration, Hopkins asks why imagination is in decline, and what we must do to revive and reclaim it. Once we do, there is no end to what we might accomplish. From What Is to What If is a call to action to reclaim and unleash our collective imagination, told through the stories of individuals and communities around the world who are doing it now, as we speak, and witnessing often rapid and dramatic change for the better.
Author: Matt Andrews Publisher: Oxford University Press ISBN: 0198747489 Category : Business & Economics Languages : en Pages : 276
Book Description
Governments play a major role in the development process, and constantly introduce reforms and policies to achieve developmental objectives. Many of these interventions have limited impact, however; schools get built but children don't learn, IT systems are introduced but not used, plans are written but not implemented. These achievement deficiencies reveal gaps in capabilities, and weaknesses in the process of building state capability. This book addresses these weaknesses and gaps. It starts by providing evidence of the capability shortfalls that currently exist in many countries, showing that many governments lack basic capacities even after decades of reforms and capacity building efforts. The book then analyses this evidence, identifying capability traps that hold many governments back - particularly related to isomorphic mimicry (where governments copy best practice solutions from other countries that make them look more capable even if they are not more capable) and premature load bearing (where governments adopt new mechanisms that they cannot actually make work, given weak extant capacities). The book then describes a process that governments can use to escape these capability traps. Called PDIA (problem driven iterative adaptation), this process empowers people working in governments to find and fit solutions to the problems they face. The discussion about this process is structured in a practical manner so that readers can actually apply tools and ideas to the capability challenges they face in their own contexts. These applications will help readers devise policies and reforms that have more impact than those of the past.
Author: Barry Commoner Publisher: Knopf ISBN: 1101875933 Category : Political Science Languages : en Pages : 347
Book Description
"In the last ten years, the United States—the most powerful and technically advanced society in human history—has been confronted by a series of ominous, seemingly intractable crises. First there was the threat to the environmental survival; then there was the apparent shortage of energy: and now there is the unexpected decline of the economy. These are usually regarded as separate afflictions, each to be solved in its own terms: environmental degradation by pollution controls; the energy crisis by finding new sources of energy and new ways of conserving it; the economic crisis by manipulating prices, taxes, and interest rates. But each effort to solve one crisis seems to clash with the solution of the others—pollution control reduces energy supplies; energy conservation jobs. Inevitably, proponents of one solution become opponents of the others. Policy stagnates and remedial action is paralyzed, adding to the confusion and gloom that beset the country." So opens Barry Commoner's The Poverty of Power, the book in which America's great biologist and environmentalist addresses himself to the central question of our day. He concludes that "what confronts us is not a series of separate crises, but a single basic deficit—a fault that lies deep in the design of modern society. This book is an effort to unearth that fault, to trace its relation to the separate crises, and to consider what can be done to correct it at its root."
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Author: Duncan Green
Author: James Allen
Author: Edward Royce
Author: Paul O'Brien
Author: Deepa Narayan
Author: Daron Acemoglu
Author: Rob Hopkins
Author: Duncan Green
Author: Matt Andrews
Author: Barry Commoner