Social transformation

Gillian Youngs discusses some of the broad themes featured in The United Nations Development Programme : A Better Way? by Craig Murphy. She looks at the central role of the concept of human development in the progress of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the pivotal contribution of the annual Human Development Report published by the UNDP from 1990 onwards.

Dans le cadre de l'intérêt porté aux impacts des investissements chinois en Afrique sub-saharienne (ASS), cet article porte sur l'engagement de ces pays africains dans un partenariat avec des grandes entreprises d'Etat chinoises qui investissent dans les secteurs d'infrastructures et de ressources naturelles. Après avoir démontré l'ampleur des différents types d'investissements chinois, l'attention porte sur les caractéristiques propres à ces

Cet article évalue la part croissante du secteur privé chinois en Afrique. Actuellement l’attention se porte sur les entreprises publiques chinoises qui investissent dans le secteur minier et peu d’intérêt est accordé aux entreprises du secteur privé. Cette étude comble ce manque en évaluant les caractéristiques et les motivations des entreprises privées chinoises et leurs impacts sur le développement. Les

Tax revenues are the lifeblood of democratic government and the social contract, but the majority of multinational businesses have been structured so as to enable tax avoidance in every jurisdiction in which they operate. John Christensen and Richard Murphy of the tax justice network argue that policy measures are required to redress the distortions that have arisen as globalized companies have left nationally based tax regimes floundering. Businesses should adopt corporate social responsibility standards on taxation, including requirements to publish all necessary accounting information and to refrain from the use of profits-laundering vehicles created without substantial economic purpose.

I am grateful to Hans Binswanger and Swaminathan Aiyar for sharing material relevant to this study, to Ruth Alsop for sharing evidence and alerting me to numerous references, and to P. Sundaram, Andrea Cornwall and Mark Robinson for useful insights.

Arturo Escobar examines the increasing number of conflicts over natural resources around the world in response to neo-liberal globalization. He argues that such escalating environmental conflicts can be conceptually understood through three inter-related rubrics: economic, ecological, and cultural. His interest is in the relationship between difference and equality of access in economic, ecological, and cultural distribution conflicts in order to

Larry Lohmann briefly sketches ten processes of ignorance-creation facilitated by the new carbon markets, focusing particularly on the Kyoto Protocol and the European Union Emissions Trading Scheme. He queries what the quest for climate justice becomes once it is incorporated into a development or carbon market framework.

Production by order of a lead firm that 'governs' its value chain by defining and enforcing standards without aspiring to gain ownership control of its suppliers is becoming a dominant form of industrial organisation. This trend has far-reaching consequences for developing countries, among others, affecting the degree of inclusion of poor producers, their income earning opportunities, the allocation of risks, and consumer prices. This paper serves a triple purpose. First, it tries to disentangle the multiple factors that determine the concrete form of value chain governance; second, it proposes a framework for the analysis of the developmental impacts of these different forms of value chain governance; and, third, it derives policy conclusions from this analysis.

This paper explores the reality of patriarchal privileging and resistance within a society which has undergone dramatic change over the past twenty-five years. Using Foucault's ideas of power and resistance (1980; 1988; 1989) and Connell's ideas of the patriarchal dividend (1995 a and b) it first explores these key concepts. It then draws together a wide range of empirical evidence to document the ongoing reality of patriarchal privileging in the world of paid work and the family in Ireland. It then however identifies and illustrates fourteen analytically different types of resistance including the creation of an alternative power base in the family; facilitating the emergence of new child rearing structures; naming the ‘enemy within’; naming aspects of culture which are not ‘woman friendly’; whistle blowing; targeting key structures; negative power etc. It concludes by suggesting (drawing on Acker, 1998) that although the institutional structures reflect the needs and wishes of powerful men, choices can still be made by individual men and women.

Keywords Friendship, Identity, Ireland, Organisation, Paid Work, Patriarchal Dividend, Power, Resistance, Transformation, Whistle Blowing Blowing

This article explores how the Welsh Government's recent policy innovations in climate change and environmental sustainability can be read in terms of their imaginative capacity for transformation. The Welsh Government is one of only a few governments in the world to have a legal duty to sustainable development, which includes the pioneering Well-being of Future Generations Act (2015). The legislation has received international attention and praise from the United Nations but, as yet, the Welsh Government's imaginaries of socioecological transformation have received little scrutiny regarding the kinds of ideas about the future and possibilities for change they set in motion. The article considers imaginaries as providing the very grounds of possibility for transformation, being comprised of stories and narratives about what kinds of futures are possible and desirable, intermingled with emotional-affective " atmospheres " that can promote or hinder people's engagement with environmental issues. The article focuses on three aspects of the Welsh Government's imaginaries related to socioecological transformation, namely; resilience and anticipatory discourse, linear time, and " conspiracies of optimism ". A number of tensions are drawn out that highlight how the Welsh Government's seemingly progressive rhetoric risks being undermined by the conceptions of time and change it employs. Thus, the article contributes to wider critical analyses of how new politics and modes of governance of and for the (proposed) Anthropocene are taking shape.

Peter Rosset examines the current global food price crisis, identifying both long-and short-term causes. He argues that to escape the crisis, countries must rebuild and protect domestic peasant and family farmer food production and public inventories. The 'food sovereignty' paradigm put forth by the global peasant and farmer alliance, La Via Campesina, may well offer our only way out of the current conundrum.

This article examines the phenomenon of heroic metamorphosis: what it is, how it unfolds, and why it is important. First, we describe six types of transformation of the hero: mental, moral, emotional, spiritual, physical, and motivational. We then argue that these metamorphoses serve five functions: they foster developmental growth, promote healing, cultivate social unity, advance society, and deepen cosmic understanding. Internal and external sources of transformation are discussed, with emphasis on the importance of mentorship in producing metamorphic growth. Next we describe the three arcs of heroic transformation: egocentricity to sociocentricity, dependence to autonomy, and stagnation to growth. We then discuss three activities that promote heroic metamorphosis as well as those that hinder it. Implications for research on human growth and development are discussed.

Migration from China to Africa has intensified of late on the back of initiatives by the Chinese government. Despite being a significant issue, there has been no systematic attempt to assess the economic, social and political impacts of it. This paper begins by setting out broad analytical dimensions covering the motivations to migrate and wider processes of development. The paper then assesses available data on migration trends, which are marked by speculation. Two further sections cover the policies of China towards internationalisation and Africa and the economic and sociopolitical dimensions, respectively. Economically, many large-scale Chinese firms operate in key resource sectors, but for most Africans, the Chinese presence is marked by traders in the markets. Socially, the Chinese have been welcomed in Africa although integration has been limited. However, tensions have arisen in some countries and have been exploited by African politicians.

The 2008 Greek crisis has resulted in unexpected social-ecological transformations, including a back-to-the-land trend whereby people seek to reconnect to land-based activities. While it's been theorized that back-to-the-land trends contribute to enhancing people's resilience and may play a role in the growth of sustainable farming and rural revitalization, much remains unknown regarding the processes involved. Based on a qualitative and quantitative analysis of 76 interviews of Greek back-to-the-landers, this article provides an in-depth assessment of the resources mobilized to go back-to-the-land as well as livelihood and land management outcomes. This article argues that using a livelihood approach contributes to further understanding counterurbanisation and back-to-the-land movements by shedding light on how people transform their livelihoods. The article posits that back-to-the-land trends need to be approached as livelihood transformations that are linked to a diverse set of mobilities and assets, rather than solely a migration process. The research shows that the Greek back-to-the-land trend is not homogeneous, ranging from subsistence to market-oriented small-scale farms and involves both rural and urban spaces; yet it is mostly 'invisible' to the State. These different types of back-to-the-land strategies reflect different initial starting points and may shift once capacity is acquired, illustrating the dynamic nature of back-to-the-land transformations. For instance, people with limited initial land knowledge experimented on urban plots before farming in rural areas. Most opted to engage in small-scale organic farming, hinting at the importance of the back-to-land trend for the growth of sustainable food systems in Greece. While going back-to-the-land helped households cope with crisis, there were limits to their ability to make a living and enhance their capacity without external support, especially in the context of a long-term crisis. Different back-to-the-land strategies require targeted support at different stages to ensure their viability and long-term sustainability.

This intervention contributes to recent work in urban geography that integrates the conceptual frameworks of assemblages and actor-network theory by highlighting two additional directions that require a more rigorous and detailed theorization. The first direction concerns the relationship between contingency and necessity in urban assemblages and actor-networks and this paper delineates four specific propositions as a starting point for further reflection. The second direction suggests that urban assemblages and actor-networks require a more explicit vocabulary for thinking about competition and cooperation within and between cities. To this end, the paper introduces a new concept – delayed asymmetric counterforces – that can foster a better understanding of competition-induced urban change and destabilization. The novel concept is developed in conjunction with a typology of delays in competitive urban dynamics, which helps illuminate how delayed asymmetric counterforces are both a cause and an effect of the complexity inherent in the urban realm.

Progress is the idea that mankind has slowly, gradually and continuously advanced from the original condition of cultural deprivation, ignorance and insecurity to constantly higher levels of civilization. Progress is always relative to the values which are taken into account. The same progress may be conceived as progressive or non-progressive (depending on the assumed value preferences).

We must always ask: Progress for whom? and In which respect?

But progress relatively is not absolute and complete. In some area measures of progress on which most people would probably agree. e.g. human life expectancy : average length of life in 20th century is twice as long as in the middle ages. But in some areas criteria of progress become highly contestable. Progress in one area may often occur only at the cost of regress in another.

Lynn Freedman argues that strategies for meeting the MDGs should be premised on an understanding of health systems as core social institutions that help define the very experience of poverty and citizenship. MDG 5 on maternal mortality provides a strategic entry point for addressing health systems.

dismisses the Worldwide Governance Indicators (WGI) as an "elaborate and unsupported hypothesis" because of the failure to demonstrate the "construct validity" of these indicators. We argue that "construct validity" is not a useful tool to assess the merits of the WGI, and even if it were, Thomas provides no evidence of any practical consequences of failure to meet the criteria of construct validity.

It is becoming increasingly apparent that creativity and imagination are key to envisioning alternatives to the problems of postnormal times. At the same time, educational institutions all over the globe are still mired in assumptions from the machine/industrial age, preparing students for reproduction and conformity rather than creativity. This article outlines the philosophical foundations of an educational approach in which creativity is central to scholarship, where learners move from being consumers to creators and from bystanders to participants in the postnormal dance of knowledge.

Despite forces struggling to reduce global warming growing stronger, there has been mixed success in generating substantive policy implementation, while the global spread of the coronavirus has prompted strong and far-reaching governmental responses around the world. This paper addresses the complex and partly contradictory responses to these two crises, investigating their social anatomies. Using temporality, spatiality, and epistemic authority as the main conceptual vehicles, the two crises are systematically compared. Despite sharing a number of similarities, the most striking difference between the two crises is the urgency of action to counter the rapid spread of the pandemic as compared to the slow and meager action to mitigate longstanding, well-documented, and accelerating climate change. Although the tide now seems to have turned towards a quick and massive effort to restore the status quo-including attempts to restart the existing economic growth models, which imply an obvious risk for substantially increasing CO 2 emissions-the article finally points at some signs of an opening window of opportunity for green growth and degrowth initiatives. However, these signs have to be realistically interpreted in relation to the broader context of power relations in terms of governance configurations and regulatory strategies worldwide at different levels of society.

"ABSTRACT: This study provides an empirically based analysis of corrupt governmental networks. We conducted 45 interviews in Hungary with different organizational actors who were actually participating in corrupt transactions or at least had first-hand
experiences of corruption. Given the secret nature of the topic, this article provides a unique insight into the phenomenon. Our findings show that corrupt elite cliques consciously design and coordinate multilevel structures of corrupt networks within and among organizations that involve a large amount of people. We identified the major network elements and their functions in corrupt transactions. The article also provides a typology of corrupt networks. The networks have different structural characteristics based on location of the ‘‘cash cows,’’ points from where the system is fed, and the actors’ positions of power. Our findings are compared with the already existing literature on dark networks, terrorist, and organized crime formations."

Cities play a crucial role in shaping coupled human-environment systems at local and global scales. With a view to amounting sustainability deficits, urban stakeholders thus require transformative capacity to perform radical change within and across the multiple socio-ecological and socio-technical systems embedded in cities. However, existing (transformative) ‘capacity’ concepts refer to distinct subjects and purposes and do not adequately address the particularities of urban contexts and/or practical operationalization. Therefore, this paper suggests an integrated conceptual framework for developing ‘urban transformative capacity’, drawing on contributions from a range of research areas. It identifies 10 key components and a range of factors that describe the forms of agency and interaction, development processes and relational dimensions involved in building up urban transformative capacity, emphasizing the vital role of place and scale in this. It thus establishes a baseline and direction for capacity growth. This allows recognizing the particular requirements and assets of diverse types of cities and urban contexts in the global North and South, and offers strategic orientation for urban policy making, planning practice and research.

Demonic geography is an approach to practicing human geography that operates from the premise that there are no such immaterial entities as 'souls', 'spirits', 'minds', integrated, stable 'selves', or conscious 'free will'. This paper elaborates the theoretical framework of demonic geography by spelling out how it is different from non-representational theory and by articulating it with recent developments in experimental psychology, neuroscience, and the philosophy of mind. Counterintuitively, the paper shows that the deflationary, materialistic ontology of human nature espoused by demonic geography need not lead to meaninglessness, unhappiness, or the collapse of moral behaviour. Instead, subscribing to demonic geography opens up new ways to find meaning, to pursue happiness, and to live the good life.

Abstract Despite important advances following the challenge to equilibrium-based models in range ecology, pastoralism is still largely seen as a coping strategy that allows herders to get along with an ‘inadequate’ resource base. This stance can be traced to a long-established approach in the disciplines that inform pastoral development planning (natural resource management, range ecology, animal science) to rely on analytical tools based on standard statistics and average values. However, pastoralism is better understood as a sui generis production system, that deliberately exploits the transient concentrations of nutrients that represent the most reliable feature of dryland environments; a system geared at maximising the production of economic value while stabilising its performance in environments where ‘uncertainty’ is harnessed for production. As average values and standard statistics fail to capture non-uniform distribution (relied upon for production in dryland pastoral- ism), they should not uniquely or uncritically inform pastoral development planning.

RESUMÉ
Malgré les importants progrès réalisés suite à la remise en question des modèles d’équilibre appliqués à l’écologie pastorale, le pastoralisme reste largement considéré comme une stratégie d’ajustement permettant tout juste aux éleveurs de survivre à partir de ressources ‘insuffisantes’. Cette position trouve son origine dans une approche adoptée depuis longtemps par les disciplines qui façonnent la planification du développement pastoral (gestion des ressources naturelles, écologie pastorale, zootechnie) qui consiste à s’appuyer sur des outils analytiques basés sur des statistiques standardisées et des valeurs moyennes. Pourtant, le pastoralisme se comprend mieux comme un système de production sui generis, qui exploite délibérément les concentrations éphémères de substances nutritives, ce dernier point constituant la principale caractéristique des terres arides; comme un système conçu pour maximiser la valeur de la production tout en stabilisant ses performances dans des environnements où ‘l’incertitude’ est exploitée pour la production. Les valeurs moyennes et statistiques standardisées ne permettent pas de prendre en compte la répartition non-uniforme (sur laquelle repose la production pastorale dans les milieux arides) et par conséquent ne doivent pas constituer les seules sources de la planification du développement pastoral.

In the contemporary world we face a systemic crisis where multiple dimensions converge, including an economic crisis, a financial crisis, a climate crisis, an energy crisis, a food crisis, and runaway land grabbing. Peter Rosset argues for a paradigm shift toward food sovereignty based on genuine agrarian reform and sustainable peasant agriculture, which he sees as the only way to address the multiple crises.

Despite the decades-long efforts of sustainability science and related policy and action programs, humanity
has not gotten closer to global sustainability. With its focus on the natural sciences, sustainability science is
not able to contribute sufficiently to the global transition to sustainability. This Perspective argues for transforming
sustainability science into a transdisciplinary enterprise that can generate positive social and environmental
change globally. In such transformation, the social sciences, humanities, and the arts can play an
important role to address the complex problems of culture, institutions, and human behavior. To realize a
truly integrated sustainability science, we need renewed research and public policies that reshape the
research ecosystem of universities, funding agencies, science communications, policymaking, and decision
making. Sustainability science must also engage with society and creatively employ all available sources of
knowledge in favor of creating a sustainable Earth.

Decentralisation has been advocated by donors and development agencies as an instrument to ensure broader participation of citizens as well as to improve local governance leading to poverty reduction from the bottom up. On the basis of a comprehensive review of nine case studies documented in the literature, this study questions this assumption. According to our findings, a clear link between decentralisation and a reduction in poverty cannot be established. Two important policy lessons emerge from this study. First, in an environment where the central state barely fulfils basic functions and is not interested in giving power and resources to local tiers of government, decentralisation should not be a priority for donors as it could be rather counter-productive. Second, in countries that fulfil basic prerequisites, decentralisation could be a powerful tool for poverty reduction.

Entertainment computing is on its way getting an established research arena in industry and academia as well. To bring all the different contributing research communities together shared resources (e.g. email distribution list, conference series, and journals), organizational structures (e.g. special interests groups, technical committees, etc.) and unifying ideas are helpful. One unifying idea in this diverse community of entertainment researchers and developers might be a normative position to enhance human living through social transformation by entertainment technology.