Poor Transitions

This report provides a detailed picture of the processes that shape 'poor transitions'. The authors argue that understanding social exclusion and devising effective policies to reduce it requires imme

The first edition of Growing Up Fast attempted to counter the stereotype of poor, minority adolescent mothers and describe the diversity of their educational, work, parenting, and relationship experie

The first edition of Growing Up Fast attempted to counter the stereotype of poor, minority adolescent mothers and describe the diversity of their educational, work, parenting, and relationship experie

A study of urban nature that draws together different strands of urban ecology as well as insights derived from feminist, posthuman, and postcolonial thought.Postindustrial transitions and changing cultures of nature have produced an unprecedented degree of fascination with urban biodiversity. The “other nature” that flourishes in marginal urban spaces, at one remove from the controlled contours of metropolitan nature, is not the poor relation of rural flora and fauna. Indeed, these islands of biodiversity underline the porosity of the distinction between urban and rural. In Natura Urbana, Matthew Gandy explores urban nature as a multilayered material and symbolic entity, through the lens of urban ecology and the parallel study of diverse cultures of nature at a global scale. Gandy examines the articulation of alternative, and in some cases, counterhegemonic, sources of knowledge about urban nature produced by artists, writers, scientists, as well as curious citizens, including voice

Long running trends towards increasing inequality between the rich and poor across Europe have been exacerbated by the 2008 global financial crisis and its aftermath. As employment opportunities for y

This book examines how educational change has progressed in three contrasting areas spread across China since 1990, exploring key issues concerning rural education in poor, rich and minority areas. Of

Looks at the influence of poor urban activists' social movements in Caracas, Venezuela, demonstrating the insufficencies of top-down, simplistic explanations of the country's political transitions an

Looks at the influence of poor urban activists' social movements in Caracas, Venezuela, demonstrating the insufficencies of top-down, simplistic explanations of the country's political transitions an

The recent replacement of authoritarian rule by democracy in both South Africa and El Salvador poses a puzzle: why did the powerful and fervently anti-democratic elites of these countries abandon death squads, apartheid, and the other tools of political repression and take a chance on democracy? Forging Democracy from Below, first published in 2000, shows how popular mobilization - in El Salvador an effective guerilla army supported by peasant collaboration and in South Africa a powerful alliance of labor unions and poor urban dwellers - eventually forced the elite to the bargaining table, and why both a durable settlement and democratic government were the result. Using interviews with both insurgent and elite actors as well as statistical analysis of macroeconomic developments, Elisabeth Wood documents an 'insurgent path to democracy' and challenges the view that democracy is the result of compromise among elite factions or the modernizing influence of economic development.