Manifesto for a Moral Revolution

Manifesto for a Moral Revolution
Author: Jacqueline Novogratz
Publisher: Henry Holt and Company
Total Pages: 256
Release: 2020-05-05
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1250222869

"An instant classic." —Arianna Huffington "Will inspire people from across the political spectrum." —Jonathan Haidt Longlisted for the Porchlight Business Book of the Year Award, an essential shortlist of leadership ideas for everyone who wants to do good in this world, from Jacqueline Novogratz, author of the New York Times bestseller The Blue Sweater and founder and CEO of Acumen. In 2001, when Jacqueline Novogratz founded Acumen, a global community of socially and environmentally responsible partners dedicated to changing the way the world tackles poverty, few had heard of impact investing—Acumen’s practice of “doing well by doing good.” Nineteen years later, there’s been a seismic shift in how corporate boards and other stakeholders evaluate businesses: impact investment is not only morally defensible but now also economically advantageous, even necessary. Still, it isn’t easy to reach a success that includes profits as well as mutually favorable relationships with workers and the communities in which they live. So how can today’s leaders, who often kick off their enterprises with high hopes and short timetables, navigate the challenges of poverty and war, of egos and impatience, which have stymied generations of investors who came before? Drawing on inspiring stories from change-makers around the world and on memories of her own most difficult experiences, Jacqueline divulges the most common leadership mistakes and the mind-sets needed to rise above them. The culmination of thirty years of work developing sustainable solutions for the problems of the poor, Manifesto for a Moral Revolution offers the perspectives necessary for all those—whether ascending the corporate ladder or bringing solar light to rural villages—who seek to leave this world better off than they found it.

Peasants and the Art of Farming

Peasants and the Art of Farming
Author: Jan Douwe van der Ploeg
Publisher:
Total Pages: 158
Release: 2014-12-15
Genre: Agricultural systems
ISBN: 9781853398773

Peasants and the Art of Farming: A Chayanovian Manifesto focuses on the structure and dynamics of peasant farms and the historically highly variable relations that govern the processes of labour and production within peasant farms. Jan Douwe van der Ploeg argues that peasant agriculture can play an important, if not central, role in augmenting food production and creating sustainability. However, peasants today, as in the past, are materially neglected. By building on the pioneering work of Chayanov, this book seeks to address this neglect and to show how important peasants are in the ongoing struggles for food, food sustainability and food sovereignty. Full Text - Short description/annotation (Text)

Rural Democracy

Rural Democracy
Author: Robin Harding
Publisher: Oxford Studies in African Poli
Total Pages: 186
Release: 2020
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0198851073

How have African rulers responded to the introduction of democratic electoral competition? Despite the broadly negative picture painted by the prevailing focus on electoral fraud, clientelism, and ethnic conflict, the book argues that the full story is somewhat more promising. While these unfortunate practices may be widespread, African rulers also seek to win votes through the provision and distribution of public goods and services. The author's central argument is that in predominantly rural countries the introduction of competitive elections leads governments to implement pro-rural policies, in order to win the votes of the rural majority. As a result, across much of Africa the benefits of democratic electoral competition have accrued primarily in terms of rural development. This broad claim is supported by cross-national evidence, both from public opinion surveys and from individual level data on health and education outcomes. The argument's core assumptions about voting behavior are supported with quantitative evidence from Ghana, and qualitative historical evidence from Botswana presents further evidence for the underlying theoretical mechanism. Taken together, this body of evidence provides reasons to be optimistic about the operation of electoral accountability in Africa. African governments are responding to the accountability structures provided by electoral competition; in that sense, democracy in Africa is working. Oxford Studies in African Politics and International Relations is a series for scholars and students working on African politics and International Relations and related disciplines. Volumes concentrate on contemporary developments in African political science, political economy, and International Relations, such as electoral politics, democratization, decentralization, the political impact of natural resources, the dynamics and consequences of conflict, and the nature of the continent's engagement with the East and West. Comparative and mixed methods work is particularly encouraged. Case studies are welcomed but should demonstrate the broader theoretical and empirical implications of the study and its wider relevance to contemporary debates. The series focuses on sub-Saharan Africa, although proposals that explain how the region engages with North Africa and other parts of the world are of interest. Series Editors: Nic Cheeseman, Professor of Democracy and International Development, University of Birmingham; and Ricardo Soares de Oliveira, Professor of the International Politics of Africa, University of Oxford.

Manifesto for New Social Movements

Manifesto for New Social Movements
Author: César Augusto Rossatto
Publisher: IAP
Total Pages: 234
Release: 2019-10-01
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1641137932

The world is currently witnessing the emergence of a new context for education, labor, and transformative social movements. Global flows of people, capital, and energy increasingly define the world we live in. The multinational corporation, with its pursuit of ever-cheaper sources of labor and materials and its disregard for human life, is the dominant form of economic organization, where capital can cross borders, but people can’t. Affirmative action, democracy, and human rights are moving in from the margins to challenge capitalist priorities of “efficiency”, i.e. exploitation. In some places, the representatives of popular movements are actually taking the reins of state power. Across the globe new progressive movements are emerging to bridge national identities and boundaries, in solidarity with transnational class, gender, and ethnic struggles. At this juncture, educators have a key role to play. The ideology of market competition has become more entrenched in schools, even as opportunities for skilled employment diminish. We must rethink the relationship between schooling and labor, developing transnational pedagogies that draw upon the myriad social struggles shaping students’ lives and communities. Critical educators need to connect with other social movements to put a radically democratic agenda, based on the principles of equity, access, and emancipation, at the center of educational praxis. Many countries in Latin America like in other continents are developing new alternatives for the reconstruction of social projects; these emerging sources of hope are the central focus of this book. Major historical change always starts with people’s social movement. Democracy can be one of the best political and social systems in the world but for it to work entails the sustainable participation of citizens. Above all, it requires that people be informed and critically educated since the quality of democracy depends on quality of education. There are 2 kinds of power: money and people. If people exercise their agency, they can be more powerful than money. There are some organizing principles of social movements, as: “don’t do for others what they should do for themselves.” Saul Alinsky wrote: Rules for Radicals: A pragmatic primer for realistic radicals; Mary Rogers: Cold Anger: A story of faith and power politics; Michael Gecan: Going Public: An organizer’s guide to citizen action; and Ernesto Cortez’s, Industrial Area Foundation, are all great sources for organized activism that do work. I put some of these principles to the test and they produced positive results, I was a founder and president of a union at my university and I lived my whole life as an activist and learned that, we can do more together than alone. Now we also have a new digital war with the Cambridge Analitica and Breitbart’s fake news manipulation; however, we also have social-justice hacktivism to counter act it, as well as other democratic social media venues that critical thinkers and activist use. The chapters in this book demonstrate the importance of widening and diversifying social movements, at the same time, emphasizes the need to build cohesive alliances among all the different fronts. What some people think is “impossible” can become a transformed reality, for those who dare attempt changing the world as global citizens.

A Revolution for Our Rights

A Revolution for Our Rights
Author: Laura Gotkowitz
Publisher: Duke University Press
Total Pages: 416
Release: 2008-02-20
Genre: History
ISBN: 0822390124

A Revolution for Our Rights is a critical reassessment of the causes and significance of the Bolivian Revolution of 1952. Historians have tended to view the revolution as the result of class-based movements that accompanied the rise of peasant leagues, mineworker unions, and reformist political projects in the 1930s. Laura Gotkowitz argues that the revolution had deeper roots in the indigenous struggles for land and justice that swept through Bolivia during the first half of the twentieth century. Challenging conventional wisdom, she demonstrates that rural indigenous activists fundamentally reshaped the military populist projects of the 1930s and 1940s. In so doing, she chronicles a hidden rural revolution—before the revolution of 1952—that fused appeals for equality with demands for a radical reconfiguration of political power, landholding, and rights. Gotkowitz combines an emphasis on national political debates and congresses with a sharply focused analysis of Indian communities and large estates in the department of Cochabamba. The fragmented nature of Cochabamba’s Indian communities and the pioneering significance of its peasant unions make it a propitious vantage point for exploring contests over competing visions of the nation, justice, and rights. Scrutinizing state authorities’ efforts to impose the law in what was considered a lawless countryside, Gotkowitz shows how, time and again, indigenous activists shrewdly exploited the ambiguous status of the state’s pro-Indian laws to press their demands for land and justice. Bolivian indigenous and social movements have captured worldwide attention during the past several years. By describing indigenous mobilization in the decades preceding the revolution of 1952, A Revolution for Our Rights illuminates a crucial chapter in the long history behind present-day struggles in Bolivia and contributes to an understanding of indigenous politics in modern Latin America more broadly.

Environmentalism

Environmentalism
Author: David Peterson Del Mar
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 206
Release: 2014-06-06
Genre: History
ISBN: 1317861051

Why are our environmental problems still growing despite a huge increase in global conservation efforts? Peterson del Mar untangles this paradox by showing how prosperity is essential to environmentalism. Industrialization drove people to look for meaning in nature even as they consumed its products more relentlessly. Hence England led the way in both manufacturing and preserving its countryside, and the United States created a matchless set of national parks as it became the world's pre-eminent economic and military power. Environmental movements have produced some impressive results, including cleaner air and the preservation of selected species and places. But agendas that challenged western prosperity and comfort seldom made much progress, and many radical environmentalists have been unabashed utopianists. Environmentalism considers a wide range of conservation and preservation movements and less organized forms of nature loving (from seaside vacations to ecotourism) to argue that these activities have commonly distracted us from the hard work of creating a sustainable and sensible relationship with the environment.

Rwanda 1994

Rwanda 1994
Author: Barrie Collins
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 287
Release: 2014-08-26
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1137022329

Through a rigorous critique of the dominant narrative of the Rwandan genocide, Collins provides an alternative argument to the debate situating the killings within a historically-specific context and drawing out a dynamic interplay between national and international actors.

Coups, Rivals, and the Modern State

Coups, Rivals, and the Modern State
Author: Beth S. Rabinowitz
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 332
Release: 2018-03-01
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1108359434

State development in Africa is risky, even life-threatening. Heads of state must weigh the advantage of promoting political and economic development against the risk of fortifying dangerous political rivals. This book takes a novel approach to the study of neopatrimonial rule by placing security concerns at the center of state-building. Using quantitative evidence from 44 African countries and in-depth case studies of Ghana and Cote d'Ivoire, Rabinowitz demonstrates that the insecurities of the African state make strategically aligning with rural leaders critical to political success. Leaders who cultivate the goodwill of the countryside are better able to endure sporadic urban unrest, subdue political challengers, minimize ethnic and regional discord, and prevent a military uprising. Such regimes are more likely to build infrastructure needed for economic and political development. In so doing, Rabinowitz upends the long-held assumption that African leaders must cater to urban constituents to secure their rule.

Bills of Health

Bills of Health
Author: Richard Lawson
Publisher: CRC Press
Total Pages: 353
Release: 2018-04-19
Genre: Medical
ISBN: 1315342707

Why is it that NHS workers are continually complaining that the service is underfunded while the Government claims that it is increasing NHS funding year on year in real terms? Is someone being economical with the truth or is there a deeper explanation? Richard Lawson shows that at least one fifth of the NHS clinical budget is spent on trying to cure illness caused by unemployment poverty bad housing and environmental pollution. The NHS has been falling behind in the race to keep up with deteriorating health caused by worsening social and environmental conditions. Bills of Health offers treatment as well as diagnosis. It identifies what needs to be done to rectify the causes of our ill-health and how this could be achieved through the creation of between one and two million jobs in the UK. Jobs that include worthwhile work in housing public transport and environmental protection as well as caring for people. Bills of Health draws up balance sheets that show not only can we afford to finance this work - but that we cannot afford not to.