Challenging Barriers and Exploring Pathways

Edited by Sonia McKay

Upheavals in vast areas of the world have led to a growing number of international refugees, a significant proportion of which have made their way to the West. At the same time, economic and social pressures, together with skills and labour shortages, have encouraged the migration for work of millions of workers worldwide. Although there has been a constant media focus on these two groups, little is known about their labour market experiences. This collection examines the problems faced by refugees and recent migrants in accessing employment as well as the policy frameworks that address the labour market rights of refugees and economic migrants.

ISBN: 9780415988773

Published August 20 2008 by Routledge.

The Political Economy of Copyright Protection in the Digital Era

By YiJun Tian

Copyright laws, along with other Intellectual Property Rights (IPRs), constitute the legal foundation for the "global knowledge-based economy" and copyright law now plays an increasingly important role in the creation of business fortunes, the access to and dissemination of knowledge, and human development in general.

This book examines major problems in the current IPR regime, particularly the copyright regime, in the context of digitization, knowledge economy, and globalization. The book contends that the final goals of IP law and policy-making are to enhance the progress of science and economic development, and the use and even-distribution of intellectual resource at the global level. By referring to major international IP consensus, recent developments in regional IP forums and the successful experiences of various countries, YiJun Tian is able to provide specific theoretical, policy and legislative suggestions for addressing current copyright challenges. The book contends that each nation should strengthen the coordination of its IP protection and development strategies, adopt a more systematic and heterogeneous approach, and make IP theory, policy, specific legal mechanisms, marketing forces and all other available measures work collectively to deal with digital challenges and in a way that contributes to the establishment of a knowledge equilibrium international society.

ISBN: 9780415465342

Published August 20 2008 by Routledge-Cavendish.

Location of production and the European Union

By Miroslav Jovanovic

The purpose of this book is to provide a guided tour through the theoretical foundations of spatial locations of firms and industries in an evolutionary economic framework. It addresses the issues of how a location of business in geographical space is selected and where economic activity may (re)locate in the future. The analysis is in the context of technological progress, innovation, disequilibrium and endemic uncertainty. Jovanovic raises pertinent questions such as how willing, motivated and able firms (and governments) are to adapt to constantly evolving new opportunities and challenges over time and to experiment and translate these perceptions into profitable actions. How is their ‘competitive position’ evolving relative to others and changing over time when faced with a stream of constantly arriving new opportunities, threats and obstacles? Considerations are always supported with a plethora of examples and cases from real life.

Jovanovic argues that the economy is a complex and constantly adaptive system which is almost always outside equilibrium. Building on this, he suggests that there is an important lacuna in our understanding of evolutionary spatial economics and that there is much space for further multidisciplinary research in this academic and practical area. This book offers an evolutionary and disequilibrium analysis of the subject and makes parallels, where appropriate and possible, among economics, geography, physics, biology and art. It considers key areas in theory, market and production structure, spatial location of domestic and foreign firms, as well as regional policy. In addition, there are references to policy intervention; importance of investment in local social stability, education and training; as well as to uncontrollable variables that are beyond the influence of firms, industries, regions or public authorities. The author offers various evolutionary insights and alternatives to the pure neoclassical equilibrium economic model.

ISBN: 9780415423465

Published August 19 2008 by Routledge.

Sustainability at Risk?

Edited by Aslaug Mikkelsen, Oluf Langhelle

This book analyzes the expanding oil and gas activities in the Arctic from the perspective of Sustainable Development (SD) and Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). The focus is on the territories of the Arctic rim where the current and future oil and gas activities in the Arctic are and will be located. The book raises a number of questions including how sustainable development has been framed in the Arctic and the interaction between indigenous peoples, governments and oil and gas companies.

The book is divided into three parts. In the first part of the book, oil and gas are approached through the concepts of sustainable development (SD) and Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) together with the challenge of climate change. The second part consists of case studies from Alaska, Canada, Norway and Russia where the discourses on oil and gas in the Arctic are explored and the final part of the book draws together the material from the country studies in a comparative manner.

ISBN: 9780415443302

Published August 18 2008 by Routledge.

Critical Perspectives

Edited by Cameron MacDonald, Marek Korczynski

Everyday, we are bombarded with advertising images of the smiling service worker. The book is written with the aim of focusing beneath the surface of these fairy tale images, to seek out and understand the reality of service workers’ experience. Within the sociology of work and related literatures, there are an increasing number of empirical studies of different types of service work, but there has been little progress in attempts to theorize the nature of service work, per se. This book fills this gap by bringing together major scholars from the US and UK who use a range of critical perspectives to explore key elements in the organization and experience of contemporary service work. It will make an invaluable secondary text for advanced undergraduates and graduates studying courses/modules such as sociology of work, industrial sociology, social theory and work, organization studies, and organizational theory.

ISBN: 9780415953160

Published August 18 2008 by Routledge.

Reconsidering the prospect of sanction

By David M. Kennedy

Deterrence is at the heart of the preventive aspiration of criminal justice. Deterrence, whether through preventive patrol by police officers or stiff prison sentences for violent offenders, is the principal mechanism through which the central feature of criminal justice, the exercise of state authority, works – it is hoped -- to diminish offending and enhance public safety. And however well we think deterrence works, it clearly often does not work nearly as well as we would like – and often at very great cost.

Drawing on a wide range of scholarly literatures and real-world experience, Kennedy argues that we should reframe the ways in which we think about and produce deterrence. He argues that many of the ways in which we seek to deter crime in fact facilitate offending; that simple steps such as providing clear information to offenders could transform deterrence; that communities may be far more effective than legal authorities in deterring crime; that apparently minor sanctions can deter more effectively than draconian ones; that groups, rather than individual offenders, should often be the focus of deterrence; that existing legal tools can be used in unusual but greatly more effective ways; that even serious offenders can be reached through deliberate moral engagement; and that authorities, communities, and offenders – no matter how divided – share and can occupy hidden common ground.

The result is a sophisticated but ultimately common-sense and profoundly hopeful case that we can and should use new deterrence strategies to address some of our most important crime problems. Drawing on and expanding on the lessons of groundbreaking real-world work like Boston’s Operation Ceasefire – credited with the "Boston Miracle" of the 1990s – "Deterrence and Crime Prevention" is required reading for scholars, law enforcement practitioners, and all with an interest in public safety and the health of communities.

ISBN: 9780415774154

Published August 15 2008 by Routledge.

Political economy, rural transformation and the agrarian question

Edited by A. Haroon Akram-Lodhi, Cristóbal Kay

In 2007, for the first time in human history, a majority of the world’s population lived in cities. However, on a global scale, poverty overwhelmingly retains a rural face. This book assembles an unparalleled group of internationally-eminent scholars in the field of rural development and social change in order to explore historical and contemporary processes of agrarian change and transformation and their consequent impact upon the livelihoods, poverty and well-being of those who live in the countryside. The book provides a critical analysis of the extent to which rural development trajectories have in the past and are now promoting a change in rural production processes, the accumulation of rural resources, and shifts in rural politics, and the implications of such trajectories for peasant livelihoods and rural workers in an era of globalization.

Peasants and Globalization thus explores continuity and change in the debate on the ‘agrarian question’, from its early formulation in the late 19th century to the continuing relevance it has in our times, including chapters from Terence Byres, Amiya Bagchi, Ellen Wood, Farshad Araghi, Henry Bernstein, Saturnino M Borras, Ray Kiely, Michael Watts and Philip McMichael. Collectively, the contributors argue that neoliberal social and economic policies have, in deepening the market imperative governing the contemporary world food system, not only failed to tackle to underlying causes of rural poverty but have indeed deepened the agrarian crisis currently confronting the livelihoods of peasant farmers and rural workers. This crisis does not go unchallenged, as rural social movements have emerged, for the first time, on a transnational scale. Confronting development policies that are unable to reduce, let alone eliminate, rural poverty, transnational rural social movements are attempting to construct a more just future for the world’s farmers and rural workers.

ISBN: 9780415446297

Published August 14 2008 by Routledge.

Edited by Anthony J. Langlois, Karol Edward Soltan

The political project of extending democracy to the global level is seen as the next major challenge for proponents of democracy. This volume considers some of the difficulties which need to be overcome for this extension to take place. The issues discussed include:

• Philosophical and theoretical questions about the nature of democracy and the justification of its values
• Pressing political considerations, such as the crucial role of elections in democracy promotion
• Legal developments, such as the role of international law and judicial networks
• The nature of the global political space as democratization brings challenges to the ways in which systems have traditionally been organized

Global Democracy and its Difficulties will appeal to a range of academics, scholars and students who work across fields such a political theory, international law, comparative politics and political economy. It will be of particular interest to those with an interest in the political, economic, legal and moral aspects of democratization.

ISBN: 9780415776523

Published August 12 2008 by Routledge.

By Martin Stopford

New and enlarged chapters in this substantially revised third edition cover:

• 5000 years of commercial shipping history
• shipping cycles back to 1741;
• the four shipping markets (freight rates and freight derivatives, second hand ships, newbuilding, demolition);
• latest developments in ship financing techniques
• the theory of maritime trade

With over 200 illustrations and tables Maritime Economics: third edition is essential reading for students and professionals with an interest in the shipping industry.

ISBN: 9780415275576

Published August 12 2008 by Routledge.

Cognitive Tools for Expert Collaboration in Social-Ecological Systems

By Janne Hukkinen

Sustainability is a word that means different things depending on who is using it, thus underlining the potential problems involved in experts from different fields teaming up to tackle sustainability problems. In this book, Janne Hukkinen argues for a reflexive approach to sustainability as a means of coming to grips with the threatening challenges arising out of human-environment interaction. The author illustrates his argument with a case study of natural resource management in Lapland, showing how sustainability is understood holistically by academics and professionals alike.

This book reflects an emerging cognitive turn in sustainability sciences, conceptualizing environmental challenges during action on our social and material environments, rather than in isolation. Hukkinen argues that this conceptual blending enables sustainability experts to hybridize themselves: to immerse themselves in the fields of other experts and imagine the other's work - both prerequisites of trans-disciplinary knowledge integration. This book shows how sustainability experts can reveal their intellectual engagements when designing scenarios and indicators and presents a rigorous framework for organizing expert collaboration.

ISBN: 9780415461603

Published August 11 2008 by Routledge.