This volume explores the main challenges facing 7 well-established medium-sized language communities with regard to their survival and development at the beginning of the 21st century. The book ...provides an in-depth analysis of each case, and reaches conclusions that are relevant to other cases and to language policy theory in general.
After the attacks of September 11, 2001, the plight of Afghan women under Taliban rule was widely publicized in the United States as one of the humanitarian issues justifying intervention.Kabul ...Carnivalexplores the contradictions, ambiguities, and unintended effects of the emancipatory projects for Afghan women designed and imposed by external organizations. Building on embodiment and performance theory, this evocative ethnography describes Afghan women's responses to social anxieties about identity that have emerged as a result of the military occupation.
Offering one of the first long-term on-the-ground studies since the arrival of allied forces in 2001, Julie Billaud introduces readers to daily life in Afghanistan through portraits of women targeted by international aid policies. Examining encounters between international experts in gender and transitional justice, Afghan civil servants and NGO staff, and women unaffiliated with these organizations, Billaud unpacks some of the paradoxes that arise from competing understandings of democracy and rights practices.Kabul Carnivalreveals the ways in which the international community's concern with the visibility of women in public has ultimately created tensions and constrained women's capacity to find a culturally legitimate voice.
Small and midsized cities played a key role in the Industrial Revolution in the United States as hubs for the shipping, warehousing, and distribution of manufactured products. But as the twentieth ...century brought cheaper transportation and faster communication, these cities were hit hard by population losses and economic decline. In the twenty-first century, many former industrial hubs-from Springfield to Wichita, from Providence to Columbus-are finding pathways to reinvention. With innovative urban policies and design, once-declining cities are becoming the unlikely pioneers of postindustrial urban revitalization.Revitalizing American Citiesexplores the historical, regional, and political factors that have allowed some industrial cities to regain their footing in a changing economy. The volume discusses national patterns and drivers of growth and decline, presents case studies and comparative analyses of decline and renewal, considers approaches to the problems that accompany the vacant land and blight common to many of the country's declining cities, and examines tactics that cities can use to prosper in a changing economy. Featuring contributions from scholars and experts of urban planning, economic development, public policy, and education,Revitalizing American Citiesprovides a detailed, illuminating look at past and possible reinventions of resilient American cities.Contributors:Frank S. Alexander, Eugenie L. Birch, Paul C. Brophy, Steven Cochrane, Gilles Duranton, Sean Ellis, Kyle Fee, Edward Glaeser, Daniel Hartley, Yolanda K. Kodrzycki, Sophia Koropeckyj, Alan Mallach, Ana Patricia Muñoz, Jeremy Nowak, Laura W. Perna, Aaron Smith, Catherine Tumber, Susan M. Wachter, Kimberly A. Zeuli.
Life in debt Han, Clara
2012., 20120506, 2012, 2012-06-05, 20120101
eBook
Chile is widely known as the first experiment in neoliberalism in Latin America, carried out and made possible through state violence. Since the beginning of the transition in 1990, the state has ...pursued a national project of reconciliation construed as debts owed to the population. The state owed a "social debt" to the poor accrued through inequalities generated by economic liberalization, while society owed a "moral debt" to the victims of human rights violations. Life in Debt invites us into lives and world of a poor urban neighborhood in Santiago. Tracing relations and lives between 1999 and 2010, Clara Han explores how the moral and political subjects imagined and asserted by poverty and mental health policies and reparations for human rights violations are refracted through relational modes and their boundaries. Attending to intimate scenes and neighborhood life, Han reveals the force of relations in the making of selves in a world in which unstable work patterns, illness, and pervasive economic indebtedness are aspects of everyday life. Lucidly written, Life in Debt provides a unique meditation on both the past inhabiting actual life conditions but also on the difficulties of obligation and achievements of responsiveness.
The portrayal of Greece by the international press during the financial crisis has been seen by many independent observers as very harsh. The Greeks have often been blamed for a myriad of ...international political problems and external economic factors beyond their control. In this original and insightful work George Tzogopoulos examines international newspaper coverage of the unfolding economic crisis in Greece. American, British, French, German and Italian broadsheet and tabloid coverage is carefully analysed. The Greek Crisis in the Media debates and dissects the extent to which the Greek response to the financial crisis has been given fair and balanced coverage by the press and questions how far politics and national stereotypes have played their part in the reporting of events. By placing the Greek experiences and treatment alongside those of other EU members such as Portugal, Ireland, Italy and Spain, Tzogopoulos examines and highlights similarities and differences in the ways in which different countries tackled the challenges they faced during this crucial period and explores how and why the world's media reported these events.
The possibility of a new emancipatory and democratizing politics, explored through the lens of recent urban insurgencies.
In Promises of the Political, Erik Swyngedouw explores whether progressive ...and emancipatory politics is still possible in a post-political era. Activists and scholars have developed the concept of post-politicization to describe the process by which “the political” is replaced by techno-managerial governance. If the political domain has been systematically narrowed into a managerial apparatus in which consensual governance prevails, where can we find any possibility of a new democratic politics? Swyngedouw examines this question through the lens of recent urban insurgencies. In Zuccotti Park, Paternoster Square, Taksim Square, Tahrir Square, Hong Kong, and elsewhere, he argues, insurgents have gathered to choreograph new configurations of the democratic.
Swyngedouw grounds his argument in urban and ecological processes, struggles, and conflicts through which post-politicization has become institutionally entrenched. He casts “the city” and “nature” as emblematic of the construction of post-democratic modes of governance. He describes the disappearance of the urban polis into the politics of neoliberal planetary urbanization; and he argues that the political-managerial framing of “nature” and the environment contributes to the formation of depoliticized governance—most notably in the impotent politics of climate change. Finally, he explores the possibilities for a reassertion of the political, considering whether—after the squares are cleared, the tents folded, and everyday life resumes—the urban uprisings of the last several years signal a return of the political.
Hanan Al-Cinema Marks, Laura U
2015, 2015-09-25, 2015-10-16
eBook
An examination of experimental cinema and media art from the Arabic-speaking world that explores filmmakers' creative and philosophical inventiveness in trying times.
Inclusion and resilience Silva, Joana; Levin, Victoria; Morgandi, Matteo
2013., 2013, 05-02-2013, 2013-05
eBook, Book
Odprti dostop
This report is organized in five chapters: chapter one, a framework for Social Safety Nets (SSN) reform in the Middle East and North Africa, describes and illustrates the reasons for the region's ...growing need for SSN reform and establishes the framework for renewed SSNs. Chapter two, the challenge: poverty, exclusion and vulnerability to shocks, analyzes the challenges facing the region's poor and vulnerable households, which SSNs should focus on as a priority. Chapter three, the current state of SSNs in the Middle East and North Africa, analyzes SSN spending and assesses different aspects of the SSN systems' performance (including coverage, targeting, generosity, and the impact on poverty and inequality of both subsidy and non-subsidy SSNs). It benchmarks such performance against that of other regions and countries and identifies the gaps in existing systems. Chapter four, the political economy of SSN reforms in the Middle East and North Africa: what do citizens want? Presents new evidence on citizens preferences concerning redistribution and SSN design, using newly collected data (MENA SPEAKS surveys and the Jordan Gives behavioral experiment). It also discusses how political economy considerations could be taken into account in designing renewed SSNs in the region. Finally, chapter five, the way forward: how to make safety nets in the Middle East and North Africa more effective and innovative analyzes and proposes an agenda for reform and the path for moving forward, using global experience and the evidence presented in the preceding chapters.
The third quarter of the twentieth century was a golden age for labor in the advanced industrial countries, characterized by rising incomes, relatively egalitarian wage structures, and reasonable ...levels of job security. The subsequent quarter-century has seen less positive performance along a number of these dimensions. This period has instead been marked by rapid globalization of economic activity that has brought increased insecurity to workers. The contributors to this volume distinguish four explanations for this historic shift. These include 1) rapid development of new technologies; 2) global competition for both business and labor; 3) deregulation of industry with more reliance on markets; and 4) increased immigration of workers, especially unskilled workers, from developing countries. In addition to analyzing the causes of these trends, the contributors also investigate important consequences, ranging from changes in collective bargaining and employment relations to family formation decisions and incarceration policy.
Hip-Hop music encompasses an extraordinarily diverse range of approaches to politics. Some rap and Hip-Hop artists engage directly with elections and social justice organizations; others may use ...their platform to call out discrimination, poverty, sexism, racism, police brutality, and other social ills. InPulse of the People, Lakeyta M. Bonnette illustrates the ways rap music serves as a vehicle for the expression and advancement of the political thoughts of urban Blacks, a population frequently marginalized in American society and alienated from electoral politics.
Pulse of the Peoplelays a foundation for the study of political rap music and public opinion research and demonstrates ways in which political attitudes asserted in the music have been transformed into direct action and behavior of constituents. Bonnette examines the history of rap music and its relationship to and extension from other cultural and political vehicles in Black America, presenting criteria for identifying the specific subgenre of music that is political rap. She complements the statistics of rap music exposure with lyrical analysis of rap songs that espouse Black Nationalist and Black Feminist attitudes. Touching on a number of critical moments in American racial politicsincluding the 2008 and 2012 elections and the cases of the Jena 6, Troy Davis, and Trayvon MartinPulse of the Peoplemakes a compelling case for the influence of rap music in the political arena and greatly expands our understanding of the ways political ideologies and public opinion are formed.
