Intense attention has been paid to Detroit as a site of urban crisis. This crisis, however, has not only yielded the massive devaluation of real estate that has so often been noted; it has also yielded an explosive production of seemingly valueless urban property that has facilitated the imagination and practice of alternative urbanisms. The first sustained study of Detroit’s alternative urba…
The 'just about managing'. 'Hardworking families'. 'Alarm-clock Britain'. In recent years British political discourse has been filled with these slogans, as politicians claim to speak on behalf of families who are in work, but struggling to get by. This book allows us to hear from some of these families directly. At a time when the impact of austerity is more relevant than ever, Just Managin…
This open access book states that the endemic societal faultlines of our times are deeply intertwined and that they confront us with challenges affecting the security and sustainability of our societies. It states that new ways of inhabiting and cultivating our planet are needed to keep it healthy for future generations. This requires a fundamental shift from the current anthropocentric and eco…
While the rise of social protection in the global North has been widely researched, we know little about the history of social protection in the global South. This volume investigates the experiences of four middle-income countries - Brazil, India, China and South Africa - from 1920 to 2020, analysing if, when, and how these countries articulated a concern about social issues and social cohesio…
This open access book enhances and systematizes our understanding of IOs in global social governance. It provides studies on a variety of social policy fields in which different, but also the same, International Organizations (IOs) operate. The chapters shed light on IO involvement in a particular social policy field by describing the population of participating IOs; exploring how a partic…
This open access book honors the work of Michael Cernea, who was the World Bank’s first professional sociologist, by taking on and extending his arguments for "putting people first.” Cernea led a community of social scientists in formulating and promoting a comprehensive set of innovative and original social policies on development issues, which the World Bank adopted and implemented. This …
This open access collection is devoted to an in-depth, qualitative analysis of practices of cross-national solidarity in response to the current political and social crises, from citizens’ initiatives to networks of cooperation among civil society actors. The book analyses existing informal groups at the grassroots, furthering transnational solidarity in three thematic areas: disabili…
This open access book examines recent advances in how artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics have elicited widespread debate over their benefits and drawbacks for humanity. The emergent technologies have for instance implications within medicine and health care, employment, transport, manufacturing, agriculture, and armed conflict. While there has been considerable attention devoted to robot…
This book provides a critical account of the third sector and its future in Europe. It offers an original conceptualization of the third sector in its European manifestations alongside an overview of its major contours, including its structure, sources of support, and recent trends. It also assesses the impact of this sector in Europe which considers its contributions to European economic devel…
A key, intensifying change affecting rural areas in the last few decades has been a decline in the proportion of national populations whose principal livelihood is farming. The corresponding re-distribution of population has typically resulted in a net population loss to rural areas, and diversification of rural activity. The corporatization and technological modification of food production has…