Marginality And Crisis

Marginality and Crisis: Globalization and Identity in Contemporary Africa extends the scope and understanding of the effects of globalization and its forces on Africa. With each chapter written by specialists who recognize that the future of Africa is entwined with that of the rest of the world, this volume explains with fresh vigor the new thinking on the historical specificity, value, opportunity, and shortcomings of globalization for a continent many regard as marginalized and in crisis. In the face of much pessimism, several questions have engaged the attention of this young generation of African scholars: Where is Africa in relation to globalization? Where are the things that make Africa Africa (such as economy, politics, culture, identity, and human relations) headed? Are Africa's communities helpless against global forces or empowered by new avenues of access? How do scholars and policymakers engage the problems of globalization vis-^-vis Africa's ethnic, linguistic, and other identities? What are the economic and political trajectories in various countries and localities? An invaluable source for scholars, students, and the general reader, the essays in this book have confidently and clearly explored and explained the crises that have engulfed the continent in the age of globalization. Unlike other works that have dwelt only on the continent's victimhood, this volume identifies key areas in which Africa can become more proactive and outward-looking in response to the forces and values that take the globe as their reference points.

The Oxford Handbook of Migration Crises focuses on two interrelated aspects of migration crises: the contexts that give rise to such crises, and the role of the media and public officials in framing migratory flows as crises. It critically examines what crises are, where they arise, and how this concept is used in scholarship and policy.

This book represents the first full-length critical and interdisciplinary assessment of Loïc Wacquant's work in English. Wacquant's challenging critique of the neo-liberal government of crime and the punitive culture to which this is related has shaken criminology to its foundations. In a bold political analysis he describes how the US-led revolution in law and order has dismantled the welfare state, replacing it with a disciplinary and penal state. Wacquant's analysis also details the spread of neo-liberal crime control measures and the underpinning 'pornographic' discourses of crime across the developed world, although critics have questioned the extent to which this model of criminal justice really is gaining the worldwide dominance alleged. Written by criminologists and policy analysts, Criminalisation and advanced marginality offers a constructive but critical application of Wacquant's ideas. The contributors welcome the opportunity presented by Wacquant's work to re-engage with a radical politics of law and order, criminalisation and marginality, whilst raising issues of gender, resistance, conflict and history which, they argue, help to enrich and further develop Wacquant's analyses. The book concludes with a chapter from Professor Wacquant himself responding to the commentaries upon his work. It fills an important gap in the existing literature and will be exciting reading for academics and students of criminology, social policy and the social sciences more broadly.

This Handbook provides authoritative up-to-date scholarship and debate concerning creativity at work, and offers a timely opportunity to re-evaluate our understanding of creativity, work, and the pivotal relationship between them. Far from being a new arrival on the scene, the context of work has always been a place shaped and sharpened by creativity, as well as a site that determines, where, when, how, and for whom creativity emerges. Structured in four parts – Working with Creativity (the present); Putting Creativity to Work (in an organizational context); Working in the Creative Industries (creative labour); and Making Creativity Work (the future) – the Handbook is an inspirational learning resource, helping us to work with creativity in innovative ways. Providing a cutting edge, interdisciplinary, diverse, and critical collection of academic and practitioner insights, this Handbook ultimately conveys a message of hope: if we take better care of creativity, our creativity will better care for us.

Masculinity, fast-changing and regularly declared to be in the throes of crisis, is attracting more popular and scholarly debate in China than ever before. At the same time, Chinese literature since 1989 has been characterized as brimming with countercultural ‘attitude’. This book probes the link between literary rebellion and manhood in China, showing how, as male writers critique the outcomes of decades of market reform, they also ask the same question: how best to be a man in the new postsocialist order? In this first full-length discussion of masculinity in post-1989 Chinese literature, Pamela Hunt offers a detailed analysis of four contemporary authors in particular: Zhu Wen, Feng Tang, Xu Zechen, and Han Han. In a series of insightful readings, she explores how all four writers show the same preoccupation with the figure of the man on the edges of society. Drawing on longstanding Chinese and global models of maverick, as well as marginal masculinity, and responding to a desire to retain a measure of masculine authority, their characters all engage in forms of transgression that still rely heavily on heteronormative and patriarchal values. Rebel Men argues that masculinity, so often overlooked in literary analysis of contemporary China, continues to be renegotiated, debated, and agonized over, and is ultimately reconstructed as more powerful than before. ‘An exceptionally lucid, elegant study of masculinity in mainland Chinese fiction of the 1990s and 2000s. Both historically and theoretically informed, Rebel Men: Masculinity and Attitude in Postsocialist Chinese Literature offers a major new perspective on post-1989 Chinese counterculture.’ —Julia Lovell, Birkbeck, University of London

Modernization, Urbanization, and the Urban Crisis

What is the hottest American export since 9/11? The contributors to this provocative volume contend that it is Western style globalism—the dominant free market ideology that determines everything from most favored nation status to the declaration of war. In this much-needed post September 11th analysis, an interdisciplinary author team shows how central concepts like globalization, liberty, free markets, and free trade are increasingly being subordinated to and lumped together with the war on terrorism led by the U.S. and its allies.

This edited collection uses a history of economic thought perspective to explore the evolving role of Latin America within the context of globalization. In particular, it examines the region’s resilience in the face of the global financial crisis. Economic Development and Global Crisis explains that Latin America is a region with distinct characteristics and peculiarities which have been shaped from the colonial era up to the present day. The contributions suggest that several features which were perceived as economic backwardness have turned out to be advantageous, and this may explain why Latin America is withstanding the crisis much better than Europe, Japan and the USA. This book will be of interest to scholars working in the areas of economic development, economic history, the history of economic thought and Latin American studies.