Layered Inequalities


Book Description

In Colombia, since the 1990s, thousands of Afro-descendants have benefited from collective land rights. However, many peasants have been violently displaced in order to introduce industrial crops, while several other groups of peasants resisted these agribusiness land grabs. This book examines the layered inequalities in this process and analyzes the various paradoxes of recent Colombian development policies: the agribusiness expansions through land grabs; the land and labor conflicts that have overlapped in regions with agribusiness; and both the Afro-descendants and mestizos demand for land rights. (Series: Politics, Society and Community in a Globalized World / Politik, Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft in einer globalisierten Welt - Vol. 16) [Subject: Latin America Studies, Human Rights, Agricultural Studies, Business]




Global Entangled Inequalities


Book Description

This book presents studies from across Latin America to take up the challenge of exploring the plurality of social inequalities from a global perspective. Accordingly, it identifies the structural forces of social inequalities on a world scale as they shape asymmetries observed in a wide array of phenomena, such as racial and gender inequality, urbanization, migration, commodity production, indigenous mobilization, ecological conflicts, and the "new middle class". A rich contribution to the study of the interconnections between the global social structure and multiple local and national hierarchies, Global Entangled Inequalities brings consistently together a variety of conceptual approaches, ranging from ethnographies to legal genealogies, and will therefore appeal to scholars across the social sciences with interests in social theory, power analysis, intersectionality studies, urban studies, and global social and environmental justice.




Inequality


Book Description

How genomics reveals deep histories of inequality, going back many thousands of years. Inequality is an urgent global concern, with pundits, politicians, academics, and best-selling books all taking up its causes and consequences. In Inequality, Carles Lalueza-Fox offers an entirely new perspective on the subject, examining the genetic marks left by inequality on humans throughout history. Lalueza-Fox describes genetic studies, made possible by novel DNA sequencing technologies, that reveal layers of inequality in past societies, manifested in patterns of migration, social structures, and funerary practices. Through their DNA, ancient skeletons have much to tell us, yielding anonymous stories of inequality, bias, and suffering. Lalueza-Fox, a leader in paleogenomics, offers the deep history of inequality. He explores the ancestral shifts associated with migration and describes the gender bias unearthed in these migrations—the brutal sexual asymmetries, for example, between male European explorers and the women of Latin America that are revealed by DNA analysis. He considers social structures, and the evidence that high social standing was inherited—the ancient world was not a meritocracy. He untangles social and genetic factors to consider whether wealth is an advantage in reproduction, showing why we are more likely to be descended from a king than a peasant. And he explores the effects of ancient inequality on the human gene pool. Marshaling a range of evidence, Lalueza-Fox shows that understanding past inequalities is key to understanding present ones.




Debating Sex Work


Book Description

Prostitution is often referred to as "oldest profession." Critics of this expression redescribe it as "the oldest oppression." Debates about how best to understand and regulate prostitution are bound up with difficult moral, legal, and political questions. Indeed, it can be approached from numerous angles--is buying and selling sex fundamentally wrong? How can it possibly be regulated? How can sex workers be protected, if they are allowed to work at all? In this concise, for-and-against volume, ethicists Lori Watson and Jessica Flanigan engage with each other on the nature and consequences of sex work, revealing new and profound ways in which to understand it. The volume opens with a joint introduction, before Lori Watson first argues for a sex equality approach to prostitution in which buyers are criminalized and sellers are decriminalized, also known as the Nordic model. Watson defends the Nordic Model on the grounds that prostitution is an exploitative and unequal practice that only entrenches existing patterns of gendered injustice. Full decriminalization of prostitution only stymies existing occupational health and safety standards and securing worker autonomy and equality. Further, to Watson, drawing a distinction between sex trafficking and prostitution is irrelevant for public policy; what underpins them is demand, which fuels the inequalities of both. That is what needs to be addressed. In a rebuttal, Jessica Flanigan contends that sex work should be fully decriminalized because restrictions on the sale and purchase of sex violate the rights of sex workers and their clients. She argues that decriminalization is preferable to policies that could expose sex workers and their clients to criminal penalties, and leave them at the mercy of public officials. Putting these two views on sex work into conversation with one another, and opening up space for readers to weigh both approaches, the book provides a thorough, accessible exploration of the issues surrounding sex work, written with both sympathy and philosophical rigor.




The Anti-Oligarchy Constitution


Book Description

“Eminently readable, and anybody who cares about the future of American democracy in these perilous times can only hope that it will be widely read and carefully considered.” —James Pope, Washington Post “Fishkin and Forbath’s accessible work serves as both history lesson and political playbook, offering the Left an underutilized—and perhaps counterintuitive—tool in the present-day fight against social and economic injustice: the Constitution.” —Benjamin Morse, Jacobin “Rousing and authoritative...attempt[s] to recover the Constitution’s pivotal role in shaping claims of justice and equality...Makes even the present court’s capture by the ideological right a compelling platform for a revived social-democratic constitutional politics.” —New Republic Oligarchy is a threat to the American republic. When too much economic and political power is concentrated in too few hands, we risk losing the “republican form of government” the Constitution requires. Today, courts enforce the Constitution as if it had almost nothing to say about this threat. But as this revolutionary retelling of constitutional history shows, a commitment to prevent oligarchy once stood at the center of a robust tradition in American political and constitutional thought. Joseph Fishkin and William Forbath demonstrate that reformers, legislators, and even judges working in this “democracy-of-opportunity” tradition understood that the Constitution imposes a duty on legislatures to thwart oligarchy and promote a broad distribution of wealth and political power. These ideas led Jacksonians to fight special economic privileges for the few, Populists to try to break up monopoly power, and Progressives to fight for the constitutional right to form a union. But today, as we enter a new Gilded Age, this tradition in progressive American economic and political thought lies dormant. The Anti-Oligarchy Constitution begins the work of recovering it and exploring its profound implications for our deeply unequal society and badly damaged democracy.




Feminist Methodologies


Book Description

This open access book gives insights into feminist methodologies in theory and practice. By foregrounding the experiential and embodied nature of doing feminist research, this book offers valuable tools for feminist research as a continuous praxis. Emerging from a rich collective learning process, the collection offers in-depth reflections on how feminists shape research questions, understand positionality, share research results beyond academe and produce feminist intersectional knowledges. This book reveals how the authors navigate theory and practice, candidly exploring the difficulty of producing knowledge on the edge of academia and activism. From different points of view, places and disciplinary positions, artistic and creative experiments and collaborations, the book provides a multi-layered analysis. This book will be a valuable resource and asset to early career researchers and interdisciplinary feminist students who can learn more about the doing of feminist research from realistic, accessible, and practical methodological tools and knowledge. Wendy Harcourt is Professor of Gender, Diversity and Sustainable Development at the International Institute of Social Studies of the Erasmus University Rotterdam. She is Coordinator of the WEGO-ITN "Well-being, Ecology, Gender and Community" Innovation Training Network and Series Editor of the Palgrave series on Gender, Development and Social Change. She has written widely on gender and development, post-development, body politics and feminist political ecology. Karijn van den Berg is an independent feminist researcher who brings together environmental politics, feminism, activism and relations of power in her academic and political work, and strives to connect theory, practice and political organising. Constance Dupuis is a researcher at the International Institute of Social Studies of the Erasmus University Rotterdam, funded by the WEGO-ITN "Well-being, Ecology, Gender and Community" Innovation Training Network. Her work focuses on ageing and intergenerational wellbeing from decolonial and feminist political ecology perspectives. Jacqueline Gaybor is a Senior Technical Advisor at Rutgers - a Dutch centre of expertise on sexual reproductive health and rights and she is a Lecturer at the Erasmus University College, of the Erasmus University Rotterdam. .




Function Spaces and Partial Differential Equations


Book Description

This is a book written primarily for graduate students and early researchers in the fields of Analysis and Partial Differential Equations (PDEs). Coverage of the material is essentially self-contained, extensive and novel with great attention to details and rigour. The strength of the book primarily lies in its clear and detailed explanations, scope and coverage, highlighting and presenting deep and profound inter-connections between different related and seemingly unrelated disciplines within classical and modern mathematics and above all the extensive collection of examples, worked-out and hinted exercises. There are well over 700 exercises of varying level leading the reader from the basics to the most advanced levels and frontiers of research. The book can be used either for independent study or for a year-long graduate level course. In fact it has its origin in a year-long graduate course taught by the author in Oxford in 2004-5 and various parts of it in other institutions later on. A good number of distinguished researchers and faculty in mathematics worldwide have started their research career from the course that formed the basis for this book.




The Economics of East Asian Integration


Book Description

This volume is intended to be the most comprehensive textbook on economic integration in East Asia. It introduces the reader to various issues related to the topic such as institutional building of FTAs; production networks and the location choice of MNEs; R&D and innovation; infrastructure development and transport costs; international migration and service trade; monetary integration; regional disparity and poverty. It also deals with the critical energy, environmental and agricultural concerns. Each chapter contains ample data and rigorous analyses, complemented by illustrative box articles. Covering a wide range of aspects surrounding economic integration in East Asia, this well-researched text will appeal to undergraduate and postgraduate students of development studies, regional economics and Asian studies. It will be of particular value to those on courses concerned with economic and regional integration.




Graph Drawing


Book Description

This book constitutes the thoroughly refereed post-proceedings of the 10th International Symposium on Graph Drawing, GD 2002, held in Irvine, CA, USA, in August 2002. The 24 revised full papers, 9 short papers, and 7 software demonstrations presented together with a report on the GD 2002 graph drawing contest were carefully reviewed and selected from a total of 48 regular paper submissions. All current aspects of graph drawing are addressed.




Rethinking Heterodox Economics


Book Description

Contrary to traditional economic theories, heterodox approaches recognize the multidimensional nature of economic phenomena and acknowledge the influence of historical, psychological, social, and political factors. They address issues such as heterodox economics, income and gender inequality, environmental sustainability, financial crises, and the role of authority in shaping economic outcomes and offer a broader perspective for understanding the complexity of economic systems and their impact on human well-being. The book aims to help economists and economics students who want to critically examine the hypothetical presuppositions of traditional economics and to understand the complexities of the economic world more deeply understand the basic principles of heterodox economics and offer a new perspective in the discipline of economics. In the book, 23 academics working in different disciplines came together and contributed to 16 chapters with different perspectives. Each chapter aims to provide a scientific and original contribution to the literature by addressing different aspects of heterodox economics within the framework of its discipline.