Download or read book Social Housing in Europe written by Kathleen Scanlon and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2014-09-29 with total page 494 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: All countries aim to improve housing conditions for their citizens but many have been forced by the financial crisis to reduce government expenditure. Social housing is at the crux of this tension. Policy-makers, practitioners and academics want to know how other systems work and are looking for something written in clear English, where there is a depth of understanding of the literature in other languages and direct contributions from country experts across the continent. Social Housing in Europe combines a comparative overview of European social housing written by scholars with in-depth chapters written by international housing experts. The countries covered include Austria, Denmark, England, France, Germany, Hungary, Ireland, The Netherlands and Sweden, with a further chapter devoted to CEE countries other than Hungary. The book provides an up-to-date international comparison of social housing policy and practice. It offers an analysis of how the social housing system currently works in each country, supported by relevant statistics. It identifies European trends in the sector, and opportunities for innovation and improvement. These country-specific chapters are accompanied by topical thematic chapters dealing with subjects such as the role of social housing in urban regeneration, the privatisation of social housing, financing models, and the impact of European Union state aid regulations on the definitions and financing of social housing.

Download or read book Social Science and Policy Challenges written by Georgios Papanagnou and published by UNESCO. This book was released on 2011-01-01 with total page 301 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Producing scientific knowledge that can inform solutions and guide policy-making is one of the most important functions of social science. Nonetheless, if social science is to become more relevant and influential so as to impact on the drawing and execution of policy, certain measures need to be taken to narrow its distance from the policy sphere. This decision is less obvious than it seems. Both research and experience have proved that policy-making is a complex, often sub-rational, interactive process that involves a wide range of actors such as decision makers, bureaucrats, researchers, organized interests, citizen and civil society representatives and research brokers. In addition, social science often needs to defend both its relevance to policy and its own scientific status. Moving away from instrumental visions of the link between social research and policy, this collective volume aims to highlight the more constructed nature of the use of social knowledge.

Download or read book The Light Green Society written by Michael Bess and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2003-11-15 with total page 404 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The accelerating interpenetration of nature and culture is the hallmark of the new "light-green" social order that has emerged in postwar France, argues Michael Bess in this penetrating new history. On one hand, a preoccupation with natural qualities and equilibrium has increasingly infused France's economic and cultural life. On the other, human activities have laid an ever more potent and pervasive touch on the environment, whether through the intrusion of agriculture, industry, and urban growth, or through the much subtler and more well-intentioned efforts of ecological management. The Light-Green Society limns sharply these trends over the last fifty years. The rise of environmentalism in the 1960s stemmed from a fervent desire to "save" wild nature-nature conceived as a qualitatively distinct domain, wholly separate from human designs and endeavors. And yet, Bess shows, after forty years of environmentalist agitation, much of it remarkably successful in achieving its aims, the old conception of nature as a "separate sphere" has become largely untenable. In the light-green society, where ecology and technological modernity continually flow together, a new hybrid vision of intermingled nature-culture has increasingly taken its place.

Download or read book The Vietnamese City in Transition written by Patrick Gubry and published by Institute of Southeast Asian. This book was released on 2010 with total page 365 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Since the Doi Moi policy of economic renovation was introduced in 1986, Vietnam has undergone deep transformations as a result of the transition to a socialist-oriented market economy. Social and urban transition has taken place in parallel, as urban dynamics were spurred on by Vietnamese public and private stakeholders, and by external agents such as international organizations and international solidarity organizations, experts, consultants and bilateral aid organizations.Here are the results of research carried out by French, Canadian and Vietnamese teams from the north and south of the country on the overarching theme of Vietnamese cities in transition. Some of this research deals with urban dynamics, some with the issues at stake within such dynamics, or with the strategies of the most significant stakeholders in urban transition: civil society, donors within the framework of official aid for development, consultants and international consultancy firms. These projects were carried out between 2001 and 2004 as part of the Urban Research Programme for Development (PRUD), and mainly focus on Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City, or both in the case of comparative studies.Is there such a thing as a Vietnamese model of an Asian city? It seems that urban transition in Vietnam is not taking place in as radical and abrupt a manner as in China. The country's capacity for absorbing external models, the quest for a third way between state intervention and economic liberalism, and the fact that the country's architectural heritage is taken into account in urban planning, are just some of the reasons for its particularity. The issues addressed in each chapter, as well as the proposals for further research suggested by the contributors, should act as a catalyst for urban research in Vietnam.

Download or read book The Politics of the Environment written by Neil Carter and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2018-08-09 with total page 459 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Revised to include new discussions on climate justice, green political parties, climate legislation and recent environmental struggles.

Download or read book The Making of a Social Disease written by David S. Barnes and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2023-11-10 with total page 484 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this first English-language study of popular and scientific responses to tuberculosis in nineteenth-century France, David Barnes provides a much-needed historical perspective on a disease that is making an alarming comeback in the United States and Europe. Barnes argues that French perceptions of the disease—ranging from the early romantic image of a consumptive woman to the later view of a scourge spread by the poor—owed more to the power structures of nineteenth-century society than to medical science. By 1900, the war against tuberculosis had become a war against the dirty habits of the working class. Lucid and original, Barnes's study broadens our understanding of how and why societies assign moral meanings to deadly diseases.

Download or read book OECD Environmental Performance Reviews Chile 2016 written by OECD and published by OECD Publishing. This book was released on 2016-07-21 with total page 247 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This report is the second Environmental Performance Review of Chile. It evaluates progress towards sustainable development and green growth, with a focus on climate change and biodiversity conservation and sustainable use.

Download or read book Constructing Social Problems written by Malcolm Spector and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-07-05 with total page 197 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: There is no adequate definition of social problems within sociology, and there is not and never has been a sociology of social problems. That observation is the point of departure of this book. The authors aim to provide such a definition and to prepare the ground for the empirical study of social problems. They are aware that their objective will strike many fellow sociologists as ambitious, perhaps even arrogant. Their work challenges sociologists who have, over a period of fifty years, written treatises on social problems, produced textbooks cataloguing the nature, distribution, and causes of these problems, and taught many sociology courses. It is only natural that the authors' work will be viewed as controversial in light of the large literature which has established a "sociology of" a wide range of social problems-the sociology of race relations, prostitution, poverty, crime, mental illness, and so forth. In the 1970s when the authors were preparing for a seminar on the sociology of social problems, their review of the "literature" revealed the absence of any systematic, coherent statement of theory or method in the study of social problems. For many years the subject was listed and offered by university departments of sociology as a "service course" to present undergraduates with what they should know about the various "social pathologies" that exist in their society. This conception of social problems for several decades has been reflected in the substance and quality of the literature dominated by textbooks. In 'Constructing Social Problems', the authors propose that social problems be conceived as the claims-making activities of individuals or groups regarding social conditions they consider unjust, immoral, or harmful and that should be addressed. This perspective, as the authors have formulated it, conceives of social problems as a process of interaction that produces social problems as social facts in society. The authors further propose that this process and the social facts it produces are the data to be researched for the sociology of social problems. This volume will be of interest to those concerned with the discipline of sociology, especially its current theoretical development and growth.

Download or read book Social Innovations in the Urban Context written by Taco Brandsen and published by Springer. This book was released on 2016-04-05 with total page 309 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book addresses the practice of social innovation, which is currently very much in the public eye. New ideas and approaches are needed to tackle the severe and wicked problems with which contemporary societies are struggling. Especially in times of economic crisis, social innovation is regarded as one of the crucial elements needed to move forward. Our knowledge of its dynamics has significantly progressed, thanks to an abundance of studies on social innovation both general and sector-specific. However, despite the valuable research conducted over the past years, the systematic analysis of social innovation is still contested and incomplete. The questions asked in the book will be the following: 1. What is the nature of social innovations? 2.What patterns can be identified in social innovations emerging at the local level? 3.How is the emergence and spread of social innovations related to urban governance? More precisely, which conditions and arrangements facilitate and hinders social innovation? We explore these questions using different types of data and methods, and studying different contexts. In particular, we focus on innovations that aim at solving problems of the young unemployed, single parents and migrants. This analysis is based on original research carried out in the period 2010-2013 in the framework of a European project with a specific empirical research strategy. Research was carried out in 20 cities in 10 different European countries.

Download or read book Offshoring and the Internationalization of Employment written by Peter Auer and published by International Labour Organization. This book was released on 2006 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection of papers examines key trends in the internationalisation of employment, drawing on the proceedings of an ILO conference held in Annecy, France in April 2005. The papers focus on three related issues: the impacts of trade and investment abroad, including the offshoring of production of goods and services, and effects on the winners and losers in terms of employment; adjustment methods for coping with the short and medium term problems related to the globalisation of employment; and the importance of international instruments to help ensure a level playing field in trade and promote development, drawing on established rights and international labour standards.

Download or read book Energy Transitions written by Olivier Labussière and published by Springer. This book was released on 2018-04-30 with total page 361 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book elucidates what it means to transition to alternative sources of energy and discusses the potential for this energy transition to be a more democratic process. The book dynamically describes a recent sociotechnical study of a number of energy transitions occurring in several countries - France, Germany and Tunisia, and involving different energy technologies - including solar, on/off-shore wind, smart grids, biomass, low-energy buildings, and carbon capture and storage. Drawing on a pragmatist tradition of social inquiry, the authors examine the consequences of energy transition processes for the actors and entities that are affected by them, as well as the spaces for political participation they offer. This critical inquiry is organised according to foundational categories that have defined the energy transition - ‘renewable’ energy resources, markets, economic instruments, technological demonstration, spatiality (‘scale’) and temporality (‘horizon(s)’). Using a set of select case studies, this book systematically investigates the role these categories play in the current developments in energy transitions.

Download or read book The Seine River Basin written by Nicolas Flipo and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2021-01-30 with total page 430 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This open access book reviews the water-agro-food and socio-eco-system of the Seine River basin (76,000 km2), and offers a historical perspective on the river’s long-term contamination. The Seine basin is inhabited by circa 17 million people and is impacted by intensive agricultural practices and industrial activities. These pressures have gradually affected its hydrological, chemical and ecological functioning, leading to a maximum chemical degradation between the 1960s and the 1990s. Over the last three decades, while major water-quality improvements have been observed, new issues (e.g. endocrine disruptors, microplastics) have also emerged. The state of the Seine River network, from the headwaters to estuary, is increasingly controlled by the balance between pressures and social responses. This socio-ecosystem provides a unique example of the functioning of a territory under heavy anthropogenic pressure during the Anthropocene era. The achievements made were possible due to the long-term PIREN Seine research program, established in 1989 and today part of the French socio-ecological research network “Zones Ateliers”, itself part of the international Long-term Socio-economic and Ecological Research Network (LTSER). Written by experts in the field, the book provides an introduction to the water budget and the territorial metabolism of the Seine basin, and studies the trajectories and impact of various pollutants in the Seine River. It offers insights into the ecological functioning, the integration of agricultural practices, the analysis of aquatic organic matter, and the evolution of fish assemblages in the Seine basin, and also presents research perspectives and approaches to improve the water quality of the Seine River. Given its scope, it will appeal to environmental managers, scientists and policymakers interested in the long-term contamination of the Seine River.

Download or read book The Rise and Fall of Infrastructures written by Arnulf Grübler and published by . This book was released on 1990 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Policy Paradigms in Theory and Practice written by John Hogan and published by Springer. This book was released on 2015-07-13 with total page 267 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The contributors investigate policy paradigms and their ability to explain the policy process actors, ideas, discourses and strategies employed to provide readers with a better understanding of public policy and its dynamics.

Download or read book The Effects of Financial Crises on the Binding Force of Contracts Renegotiation Rescission or Revision written by Başak Başoğlu and published by Springer. This book was released on 2016-02-25 with total page 340 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is about one of the most controversial dilemmas of contract law: whether or not the unexpected change of circumstances due to the effects of financial crises may under certain conditions be taken into account. Growing interconnectedness of global economies facilitates the spread of the effects of the financial crises. Financial crises cause severe difficulties for persons to fulfill their contractual obligations. During the financial crises, performance of contractual obligations may become excessively onerous or may cause an excessive loss for one of the contracting parties and consequently destroy the contractual equilibrium and legitimate the governmental interventions. Uncomfortable economic climate leads to one of the most controversial dilemmas of the contract law: whether the binding force of the contract is absolute or not. In other words, unstable economic circumstances impose the need to devote special attention to review and perhaps to narrow the binding nature of a contract. Principle of good faith and fair dealing motivate a variety of theoretical bases in order to overcome the legal consequences of financial crises. In this book, all these theoretical bases are analyzed with special focus on the available remedies, namely renegotiation, rescission or revision and the circumstances which enables the revocation of these remedies. The book collects the 19 national reports and the general report originally presented in the session regarding the Effects of Financial Crises on the Binding Force of Contracts: Renegotiation, Rescission or Revision during the XIXth congress of the International Academy of Comparative Law, held in Vienna, July 2014.

Download or read book Redefining and Combating Poverty written by Council of Europe and published by Council of Europe. This book was released on 2012-01-01 with total page 408 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: We are at a point in history where economic inequalities are more widespread each day. The situation of extreme poverty experienced by the majority of the populations in developing countries ("Third World" countries) often coincides with an absence of democracy and the violation of the most fundamental rights. But in so-called "First World" countries a non-negligible proportion of inhabitants also live in impoverished conditions (albeit mainly "relative" poverty) and are denied their rights. The European situation, which this publication aims to analyse, is painful: the entire continent is afflicted by increasing poverty and consequently by the erosion of living conditions and social conflicts.The economic and financial crisis has resulted in the loss of millions of jobs, and created job insecurity for many still working. Economic insecurity raises social tensions, aggravating xenophobia, for instance. Yet the economic and financial crisis could present a good opportunity to rethink the economic and social system as a whole. Indeed, poverty in modern societies has never been purely a question of lack of wealth. It is therefore urgent today to devise a new discourse on poverty. In pursuit of this goal, the Council of Europe is following up this publication in the framework of the project "Human rights of people experiencing poverty", co-financed by the European Commission.

Download or read book From the City to the Desert written by Raffael Beier and published by Logos Verlag Berlin GmbH. This book was released on 2019-08-23 with total page 359 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In recent years, large-scale housing and resettlement projects have experienced a renaissance in many developing countries and are increasingly shaping new urban peripheries. One prominent example is Morocco's Villes Sans Bidonville (cities without shantytowns) programme that aims at eradicating all shantytowns in Morocco by resettling its population to apartment blocks at the urban peripheries. Analysing the specific resettlement project of Karyan Central, a 90-year-old shantytown in Casablanca, this book sheds light on both process and outcome of resettlement from the perspective of affected people. It draws on rich empirical data from a structure household survey (n=871), qualitative interviews with different stakeholder, document analysis, and non-participant observation gathered during four months of field research. The author emphasises that the VSB programme, although formally part of anti-poverty and urban inclusion policies, puts primary focus on the clearance of the shantytown. Largely based on ill-informed policy assumptions, stigmatisation, rent-seeking, and opaque implementation practices, the VSB programme interpreted adequate housing in a narrow sense. By showing how social interactions, employment patterns, and access to urban functions have changed because of resettlement, the book provides sound empirical evidence that housing means more than four walls and a roof.