As individuals, we depend on the services that governments provide. Collectively, we look to them to tackle the big problems - from long-term climate and demographic change to short-term crises like pandemics or war. Funding this activity, and managing the required finances sustainably, is difficult - and getting more so. But governments don't provide - or use - basic financial information that every business is required to maintain. They ignore the value of public assets and most liabilities. This leads to inefficiency and bad decision-making and piles up problems for the future. Governments need to create balance sheets that properly reflect assets and liabilities, and to understand their future obligations and revenue prospects. Net Worth - both today and for the future - should be the measure of financial strength and success.Only if this information is put at the centre of government financial decision-making can the present challenges to public finances around the world be addressed effectively, and in a way that is fair to future generations.The good news is that there are ways to deal with these problems and make government finances more resilient and fairer to future generations. The facts, and the solutions, are non-partisan, and so is this book. Responsible leaders of any political persuasion need to understand the issues and the tools that can enable them to deliver policy within these constraints.
Comprising a collection of interview essays with nineteen public intellectuals and scholars from around the world, this book reflects on some of the most pressing questions of our age: what is global inequality; what causes it; and how should we deal with it? Leading figures within the fields of History, Sociology, Economics, Anthropology and Postcolonial Studies, shed light on how their personal backgrounds, places of work, and hometowns have shaped their views on global inequality. We learn about the causes of global inequality, the historical factors that have shaped the world into an unequal place, and the challenges that humanity is confronted with in the face of the widening gap between the poor and the rich. Bringing together voices from the Global North and South, this book helps us to think more broadly about inequality and deepens our understanding of how this long-lasting phenomenon is, and has been, experienced across the globe.
This book examines the emergence of the queen consort in medieval England, beginning with the pre-Conquest era and ending with death of Margaret of France, second wife of Edward I, in 1307. Though many of the figures in this volumes are well known, such as Eleanor of Aquitaine and Eleanor of Castille, the chapters here are unique in the equal consideration given to the tenures of the lesser known consorts, including: Adeliza of Louvain, second wife of Henry I; Margaret of France, wife of Henry the Young King; and even Isabella of Gloucester, the first wife of King John. These innovative and thematic biographies highlight the evolution of the office of the queen and the visible roles that consorts played, which were integral to the creation of the identity of early English monarchy. This volume and its companions reveal the changing nature of English consortship from the Norman Conquest to today.
Britain is at a cross-roads; from the economy, to the education system, to social mobility, Britain must learn the rules of the 21st century, or face a slide into mediocrity. Brittania Unchained travels around the world, exploring the nations that are triumphing in this new age, seeking lessons Britain must implement to carve out a bright future.
This edited volume aims to problematise and rethink the contemporary European migrant crisis in the Central Mediterranean through the lens of the Black Mediterranean. Bringing together scholars working in geography, political theory, sociology, and cultural studies, this volume takes the Black Mediterranean as a starting point for asking and answering a set of crucial questions about the racialized production of borders, bodies, and citizenship in contemporary Europe: what is the role of borders in controlling migrant flows from North Africa and the Middle East?; what is the place for black bodies in the Central Mediterranean context?; what is the relevance of the citizenship in reconsidering black subjectivities in Europe? The volume will be divided into three parts. After the introduction, which will provide an overview of the theoretical framework and the individual contributions, Part I focuses on the problem of borders, Part II features essays focused on the body, and Part III isdedicated to citizenship.
This research monograph examines presidential constitutional conventions and the role they play in the political systems of four Central European countries - the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, and Poland. As primarily unwritten rules of constitutional practice, constitutional conventions represent political arrangements and as such are political in origin. Not only this, constitutional conventions, in general, and presidential constitutional conventions, in particular, have signi?cant political implications. They shape both the everyday operation and character of regimes. Central Europe represents a particularly useful example on which this role of constitutional conventions can be studied and assessed.
This book sheds light on the processes and cognitions used by managers to successfully implement strategies while navigating the strategy and change interface.
It applies the latest thinking from the resource-based literature, in particular the idea that high performing organisations have become adept at honing and utilising value creating dynamic capabilities. Key processes and cognitions help organisational leaders sense opportunities and threats as well as shrewdly seize strategic opportunities to advantageously enhance performance. The book also adopts an institutional view; that is, it assumes that organisations must satisfy their stakeholders while navigating a range of influences, including other organisations, markets, laws, quality standards, conventions, and cultural norms.
This book conceptualises corporate strategy as an amalgam of four fundamental strategies: the organisation's financial, customer value creation, resource, and non-market strategies. These strategies address the capital, product and services, and resource markets as well as various non-market institutions. Successfully integrating and implementing these four strategies allow organisations to enable their employees' multidisciplinary talents. By approaching strategy in this way, the book demonstrates why it is important to monitor changes to the organisation's strategic context and helps it identify the practices, collaborations, and projects necessary to achieve spectacular strategic change.
How are Australian comics made and read? How do changes in comics and graphic storytelling over the past forty years intersect with our changing ideas about history, culture, community, creativity and technology?
In Folio: Essays on Australian Comics, interdisciplinary scholars and world-leading makers pose questions about Australian comics, including through visual essays, asking how comics move out into community, industry, society, and disciplines both cognate and distant.
It first examines the cultures and communities of Australian comics, from Indigenous cultural contexts to DIY zine fairs, and international markets to the graphic recording industry. It then focuses on practices and readings of individual comics, exploring individual practices and analysing Australian work, from government-commissioned comics with explicit social purpose to comics that employ augmented reality.
Chapter "Lessons from My Journey into Australian Comics" is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons AttributionNonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License via Springerlink.
This Open Access book offers a mixed-method approach to analysing anti-Muslim narratives in interactions between the far right and the Western European mainstream. By exploring narratives that portray Islam as inherently other, the essays in this collection interrogate the effects of such narratives on the targeted group and mainstream society. Authors explore mechanisms, such as historical othering, media agenda building, and online mobilization of the far right, and harness historical analysis, media content, social media network analyses and qualitative surveys, to propose that the effects of such media narratives are far from purely symbolic.
This open access book explores the rise of new forms of electricity capital, examining how evolving energy systems shape energy consumption and access in five different case studies from the global South. Structured in seven chapters, it begins with a clear theoretical and conceptual foundation and is followed by five compelling case studies, grounded in research insights from Zimbabwe, Mexico, Uganda, Indonesia, and Vanuatu. The book concludes with a synthesis of these findings, paving the way for future discussions on energy poverty in the context of electricity capital in the global South.
This book explores men's attraction to violent extremist movements and terrorism.
Drawing on multi-method, interdisciplinary research, this book explores the centrality of masculinity to violent extremist recruitment narratives across the religious and political spectrum. Chapters examine the intersection of masculinity and violent extremism across a spectrum of movements including: the far right, Islamist organizations, male supremacist groups, and the far left. The book identifies key sites and points at which the construction of masculinity intersects with, stands in contrast to and challenges extremist representations of masculinity. It offers an insight into where the potential appeal of extremist narratives can be challenged most effectively and identifies areas for both policy making and future research.
Looking at discretion broadly as the exercise of controlled freedom, this edited volume introduces insights from a range of social sciences perspectives. Traditionally, discussions of discretion have drawn on legal notions of the appropriate exercise of legitimate authority specified by legislators. However, empirical and theoretical studies in the social sciences have extended our understanding of discretion, moving us beyond a narrow legal view. Contributors from a range of disciplines explore the idea of discretion and related notions of freedom and control across social and political practices and in different contexts. As this complex and important topic is discussed and examined, both total control and unconstrained freedom appear to be illusions.
In this edited volume, Kasi Lemmons, the first African-American woman auteur to solidly and steadily produce a full body of work in cinema-an oeuvre of quality, of note, of international recognition-will get the full film-studies treatment. This collection offers the first scholarly examination of Lemmons' films through various frameworks of film theory, illuminating her highly personal, unique, and rare vision. In Lemmons' worldview, the spiritual and the supernatural manifest in the natural, corporeal world. She subtly infuses her work with such images and narratives, owning her formalism, her modernist aesthetic, her cinematic preoccupations and her ontological leanings on race. Lemmons holds the varied experiences of African-American life before her lens-the ambitious bourgeoise, the spiritually lost, the ill and discarded, and the historically erased-and commits to capturing the nuances and differentiations, rather than perpetuating essentialized portrayals. This collection delves into Lemmons' iconoclastic drive and post-soul aesthetic as emanations of her attitudes toward personal agency, social agency, and social justice.
This book adopts a multidisciplinary approach to explore the intricate relationship between water, energy, and societal well-being. It combines environmental, economic, social, and technological perspectives to comprehensively analyse water's crucial role in energy generation and its essential function in supporting life. This book highlights the need for integrated strategies to address water management and energy production challenges to encourage a holistic view of these interconnected issues. The authors provide a nuanced narrative on water's pivotal role in energy security, resource conservation and sustainable development through evidence-based insights, theoretical frameworks, and global case studies. The authors argue for the need for a re-evaluation of practices and policies to achieve a balanced coexistence between human activities and natural resources. This book serves as a resource for researchers, policymakers, and practitioners, offering innovative solutions and methodologies for addressing the complexities of the water-energy nexus in the pursuit of sustainability.
This book explores the daily mobilities and immobilities of children and young people in sub-Saharan Africa. The authors draw on findings from rural and urban field research extending over many years, culminating in a 24-site study across three African countries: Ghana, Malawi, and South Africa. Wider reflections on gender, relationality, the politics of mobility, and field methodology frame the study. By bringing together diverse strands of a complex daily mobilities picture-from journeys for education, work, play/leisure and health, to associated experiences of different transport modes, road safety, and the virtual mobility now afforded by mobile phones-the book helps fill a knowledge gap with crucial significance for development policy and practice.
`The Maternal Sepsis Intervention has had a profound impact on maternal mortality and antibiotic use whilst also reducing hospital costs. The Ministry of Health is keen to explore opportunities to extending the lessons learnt and integrate them in national policy-making.'
-Dr. Richard Mugahi, Ministry of Health, Uganda.
This open access book provides an accessible introduction to the mechanics of international development and global health text for policy-makers and students across a wide range of disciplines. Antimicrobial resistance is a major threat to the well-being of patients and health systems the world over. In fragile health systems so challenged, on a day-today basis, by the overwhelming burden of both infectious and non-communicable disease, it is easy to overlook the impacts of AMR. The Maternal Sepsis Intervention, focusing on a primary cause of maternal death in Uganda, demonstrates the systemic nature of AMR and the gains that can be made through improved Infection Prevention Control and direct engagement of laboratory testing in antibiotic prescribing.
This book traces the origins and activities of the longest-standing collaborative teacher group in education, the Portfolio Group. Each chapter documents, historically and conceptually, the main intellectual moments in the evolution of the idea of knowledge communities. Authors illuminate the expansive work, research, and the leading/learning influence that the Portfolio Group has had in the local education community as well as on the international education landscape. In doing so, they illustrate the journey of a school-based, cross-institutional knowledge community and provide the proverbial light at the end of the tunnel for so many novice and newly formed groups seeking sustainability. The book demonstrates through the shared experiences of five teachers/teacher educators the ways in which varied collaborations aimed at professional development lead to teacher growth in practice, leadership, and career.
The Affordable Care Act debate was one of the most important and most public examinations of the Constitution in our history. At the forefront of that debate were the bloggers of the Volokh Conspiracy who, from before the law was even passed, engaged in a spirited, erudite, and accessible discussion of the legal issues involved in the case.
On the basis of a national research project undertaken in England, this volume explores how and why young people's engagement is so important globally in education and society, and looks at what teachers and students think about citizenship and community. The authors make recommendations to enhance understanding and the potential for engagement.
A reply to contemporary skepticism about intuitions and a priori knowledge, and a defense of neo-rationalism from a contemporary Kantian standpoint, focusing on the theory of rational intuitions and on solving the two core problems of justifying and explaining them.
This book draws on a study of student transitions in higher education institutions to both unpack the concept of a learning transition and develop pedagogic strategies to enable learners to develop their learning careers. This book provides an original perspective on teaching and learning in higher education.
An international line-up of scholars examines the role of the intellectual in the twenty-first century, looking at the gap between contemporary cultural theory and cultural practice, and asking whether knowledge and methodologies in the humanities can intervene in everyday politics and vice-versa.
This book belongs to the Port Economics and Global Supply Chain Management strand of the Palgrave Studies in Maritime Economics book series, commissioned by Hercules Haralambides.
This book discusses the main drivers that affect the introduction and growth of short sea shipping services. It describes and analyses the main operational concepts of short sea shipping and introduces relevant administrative and strategic approaches that enable its sustainable execution. Short Sea Shipping (SSS) comprises freight and passenger mobility by waterborne transport at a limited range, without crossing an ocean. Being a direct competitor to land-based transport modes, it uses ports and inland waterways to complement traditional transportation systems, increase capacity, improve flexibility, and contribute towards the goal of sustainable mobility. The reader will be introduced to various aspects of short sea shipping including benefits and shortfalls, relevant regulations and policies, and the applicability of short sea services within a given case or scenario.
This book focuses on business firms as catalysts and agents of social and economic change, and explores the argument that sustainable development is the perfect opportunity for businesses to strengthen the evolving notion of corporate social responsibility, while achieving long-term growth through innovation, research and development.
