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This book offers a very direct and readable analysis of the main challenges facing our societies today, such as reducing inequality, protecting the planet, and in particular mobilizing our financial resources which linger in tax havens and feed speculation, instead of funding the sustainable development we need. It precisely considers the most important factors, including corporate governance, financialization, capturing political power, and the limits to adequate national economic policies in a world dominated by global finance. The book’s presentation of how sensible and productive policies are dismantled will be highly interesting for the international community, whether in the academic, corporate or government spheres.
This book provides a systematic description of the key challenges faced by Brazil today, and the main lines of action required to bring the country back on track. Brazil is not a poor country; what it presently produces is sufficient to ensure everyone a dignified and comfortable life. Its problems are not economic in the sense of lack of resources, but rather in terms of social and political organization. With President Lula governing the country as of 2023, structural challenges such as deep inequality, the environmental disaster and the financial chaos have become evident. The present book is not only about Brazil, but about the challenges it has in common with so many third-world countries. Its resources, particularly financial resources, are not going where they are needed. On the contrary, the necessary initiatives are being financially drained or under-funded. Powerful elites, in coordination with the international financial corporations and commodity traders, resist any attempt at building a more balanced society. This book seeks to combat these structural issues.
This book is about systemic change in what we consider as capitalism. Far beyond qualifications such as Industry 4.0, the view presented here is that the very structures of capitalism are currently being displaced, and that the present digital revolution is as deep in its impact as the industrial revolution was when it emerged from the agricultural age. Another mode of production is being built, and we are facing a transformation of labor relations, surplus-value extraction, means of production, the role of money and credit, the concept of national borders, and social relations. Rather than lining up what is changing in the industrial capitalism we know, this book studies the new system that is being born, as a broader look at this is necessary due to the present convergence of environmental catastrophe, explosive inequality, global financial chaos, and erosion of democracy.
This book calls for the conditions of transition to sustainability: How to take into consideration new global phenomena such as and of the dimension of climate change, the depletion of natural resources, financial crises, demographic dynamics, global urbanization, migrations and mobility, while bearing in mind short-term or local place-based issues, such as social justice or quality of life? Meeting this challenge requires an inclusive approach of sustainability. It is a matter of designing a new social contract: Sustainability requires more than developing the right markets, institutions and metrics, it requires social momentum. To do so, many issues need a clear and complete answer: How to link social justice with sustainability policies? What governance tools to do so? What linkage between one decision-making level and the other? These are major issues to design sound transitions to sustainability.
How can artists in a developing country be able to dedicate themselves to the laborious task of creating art when there are few resources? How can the government and intellectuals support artists without imposing a centralized idea of national culture? This book explores these questions and others, focusing on lived experience in the ABC region of São Paulo, Brazil. Beginning with two lectures by two renowned professors and activists of the Brazilian solidarity movement, Ladislau Dowbor and Célio Turino de Almeida, the book then opens up space for artists from diverse areas to speak about their experience in real life and real time. This work functions partly as a testimonial narrative and...
DIVAnalyzes the experiences of a generation of Japanese-Brazilians in Sao Paulo during the most authoritarian period of military rule in order to ask questions about ethnicity, the nature of diasporic identity, and Brazilian culture. /div
The resurgence of the Left in Latin America over the past decade has been so notable that it has been called “the Pink Tide.” In recent years, regimes with leftist leaders have risen to power in Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Ecuador, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Uruguay, and Venezuela. What does this trend portend for the deepening of democracy in the region? Benjamin Goldfrank has been studying the development of participatory democracy in Latin America for many years, and this book represents the culmination of his empirical investigations in Brazil, Uruguay, and Venezuela. In order to understand why participatory democracy has succeeded better in some countries than in others, he examines the efforts in urban areas that have been undertaken in the cities of Porto Alegre, Montevideo, and Caracas. His findings suggest that success is related, most crucially, to how nationally centralized political authority is and how strongly institutionalized the opposition parties are in the local arenas.
From the author of Small Change comes this engaging guide to placemaking, packed with practical skills and tools that architects, planners, urban designers and other built environment specialists need in order to engage effectively with development work in any context. Drawing on four decades of practical and teaching experience, the author offers fresh insight into the complexities faced by practitioners when working to improve the communities, lives and livelihoods of people the world over. The book shows how these complexities are a context for, rather than a barrier to, creative work. The book also critiques the single vision top down approach to design and planning. Using examples of su...