Authors: E. S. Savas.
Paperback, 335 pages
Publisher: CQ Press
Publication Date: 2005-05-30


Reviews :

   

In Privatization in the City, E .S. Savas comprehensively examines the evolution and implementation of former New York Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani's aggressive privatization program in the face of a city council generally hostile to privatization. Savas identifies, examines, evaluates, and documents all forms of privatization employed, including contracting, competitive sourcing, divestment, leases, vouchers, franchises, default, withdrawal, and voluntarism. He contrasts these efforts in New York with privatization in several other cities across the country, ranging from Indianapolis to Phoenix. After analyzing the costs and benefits--both quantitative and qualitative--of New York's privatization program, Savas concludes that significant savings were achieved during Giuliani's eight years in office.

...

Authors:
Paperback, 208 pages
Publisher: Food First
Publication Date: 2000-09-15


Reviews :

    In December 1999, thousands of protestors took to the streets in the "Battle in Seattle." Their target was a meeting of the World Trade Organization (WTO). For all its talk of being dedicated to the welfare of the Third World and the global poor, WTO rules and agreements actually further a "new colonialism" and directly subvert the power and voice of the Third World. This results in damage to local and national economies, and destruction of natural resources, livelihoods, jobs, and culture. Views from the South is a rare collection of essays by Third World activists and scholars who describe in pointed detail the effects of the WTO and other Bretton Woods institutions. They demand profound changes of these bureaucracies if they are permitted to survive....

Authors:
Paperback, 310 pages
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Publication Date: 2006-03-06
Edition: 1

Reviews :

    Negotiations between governments shape the world political economy and in turn the lives of people everywhere. Developing countries have become far more influential in talks in the World Trade Organization, including infamous stalemates in Seattle in 1999 and Cancún in 2003, as well as bilateral and regional talks like those that created NAFTA. Yet social science does not understand well enough the process of negotiation, and least of all the roles of developing countries, in these situations. This book sheds light on three aspects of this otherwise opaque process: the strategies developing countries use; coalition formation; and how they learn and influence other participants' beliefs. This book will be valuable for many readers interested in negotiation, international political economy, trade, development, global governance, or international law. Developing country negotiators and those who train them will find practical insights on how to avoid pitfalls and negotiate better....

Authors: William Danko.
Paperback, 287 pages
Publisher: Atlantida
Publication Date: 1998
Edition: Tra

Authors: Srinivas R Melkote. H Leslie Steeves.
Paperback, 422 pages
Publisher: Sage Publications Pvt. Ltd
Publication Date: 2001-12
Edition: 2nd

Reviews :

    This second edition of Communication for Development in the Third World builds on the framework provided by the earlier edition. However, this edition is organized conceptually where the first edition was organized historically.

It is updated to include the literature on development and communications from the 1990s and integrate it with the theory and practice of development communication....

Authors: Brian Van Arkadie. Raymond Mallon.
Paperback, 308 pages
Publisher: Asia Pacific Press
Publication Date: 2003-08


Reviews :

    The book provides a factual account of the economic reform process and economic performance in Viet Nam that should be a useful reference to a broad cross-section of readers. The authors offer a distinctive interpretation of the process of economic reform and the performance of the economy, drawing on their direct observation of the policy-making process and changes in the Vietnamese economy since the late 1980s, as well as domestic and international research. There is considerable discussion of reform processes, the internal debates and pressures that led to reforms. There is a particularly strong focus on the role of institutions, incentives and human capital in encouraging business investment and promoting economic growth....

Authors: Karin E. Tice.
Paperback, 240 pages
Publisher: University of Texas Press
Publication Date: 1995


Reviews :

   

"This book is the first effort to describe molas in full sociocultural context, systematically dealing with the history, symbolism, production, distribution, and even linkages to politics and kinship, as well as economics.... This book should equally interest those who care about gender studies, economic development, handicrafts, and Latin American indigenous or peasant populations."

—Choice

Brightly colored and intricately designed, molas have become popular with buyers across the United States, Europe, and Japan, many of whom have never heard of the San Blas Kuna of Panama who make the fabric pictures that adorn the clothing, wall hangings, and other goods we buy.

In this study, Karin Tice explores the impact of the commercialization of mola production on Kuna society, one of the most important, yet least studied, social changes to occur in San Blas in this century. She argues that far from being a cohesive force, commercialization has resulted in social differentiation between the genders and among Kuna women residing in different parts of the region. She also situates this political economic history within a larger global context of international trade, political intrigue, and ethnic tourism to offer insights concerning commercial craft production that apply far beyond the Kuna case.

These findings, based on extensive ethnographic field research, constitute important reading for scholars and students of anthropology, women's studies, and economics. They also offer an indigenous perspective on the twentieth-century version of Columbus's landing—the arrival of a cruise ship bearing wealthy, souvenir-seeking tourists.

...

Authors: Michael W. Cuneo.
Paperback, 224 pages
Publisher: The Johns Hopkins University Press
Publication Date: 1999-07-21


Reviews :

   

"Satan's smoke has made its way into the temple of God through some crack." -- Pope Paul VI, 1972

The words of Pope Paul echoed the feelings of many on the Catholic right, who believed that the mainstream Catholic Church had fallen into decline. In The Smoke of Satan, sociologist Michael W. Cuneo explores what these fundamentalists believed that smoke to be and how they planned to halt its spread. From conservatives and their steadfast moral militancy, to separatists and their belief in the need for alternative communities, to Marianists and their tenets of mystical prophecy -- Cuneo thoughtfully portrays the motivations of these individuals who have taken as their task the preservation of authentic Catholicism in North America.

A provocative study in contemporary sociology and the first full-scale account of Roman Catholic fundamentalism, The Smoke of Satan offers new insight into the Catholic Church and explores the nature of religion in society.

...

    The Smoke of Satan: Conservative and Traditionalist Dissent in Contemporary American Catholicism is a crisp, witty, thorough, and fresh study of the inner workings of the Catholic right. Sociologist Michael W. Cuneo concentrates on three groups: anti-abortion activists, Catholic separatists (who believe that the American Church revoked its authority regarding true Catholicism by distorting the intentions of Vatican II), and mystics and apocalypticists. As Cuneo explains, these groups believe that "the Catholic church in the United States has strip-malled its liturgical life, compromised its doctrine, and squandered its moral capital. Once defiant and blessedly haughty, the church is now a cheap floozy, cozying up to the modern world, smiling, winking, desperate for flattery and approval." In analyzing each of these groups and their distinctive methods of protest against the purported corruption of the American Church, Cunea provides fascinating anecdotes based on wide reading and firsthand encounters. All of them, it seems, pose variations of one essential question--and it is surely one of the most vexing questions at this point in American Christian history: what, exactly, constitutes an ultimate authority worth trusting? --Michael Joseph Gross...

Authors: Stuart R. Lynn.
Hardcover, 550 pages
Publisher: Prentice Hall
Publication Date: 2002-03-10


Reviews :

    Presents contemporary coverage of economic development issues throughout the world. Written in a clear and straightforward manner, this introduction to the complex subject of developing economies covers such topics as human capital, technology, the environment, and population growth, as well as trade, taxation, urbanization, and agriculture. ...

Authors: Charles Perrow.
Paperback, 272 pages
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Publication Date: 2005-03-07


Reviews :

    American society today is shaped not nearly as much by vast open spaces as it is by vast, bureaucratic organizations. Over half the working population toils away at enterprises with 500 or more employees--up from zero percent in 1800. Is this institutional immensity the logical outcome of technological forces in an all-efficient market, as some have argued? In this book, the first organizational history of nineteenth-century America, Yale sociologist Charles Perrow says no. He shows that there was nothing inevitable about the surge in corporate size and power by century's end. Critics railed against the nationalizing of the economy, against corporations' monopoly powers, political subversion, environmental destruction, and "wage slavery." How did a nation committed to individual freedom, family firms, public goods, and decentralized power become transformed in one century?

Bountiful resources, a mass market, and the industrial revolution gave entrepreneurs broad scope. In Europe, the state and the church kept private organizations small and required consideration of the public good. In America, the courts and business-steeped legislators removed regulatory constraints over the century, centralizing industry and privatizing the railroads. Despite resistance, the corporate form became the model for the next century. Bureaucratic structure spread to government and the nonprofits. Writing in the tradition of Max Weber, Perrow concludes that the driving force of our history is not technology, politics, or culture, but large, bureaucratic organizations.

Perrow, the author of award-winning books on organizations, employs his witty, trenchant, and graceful style here to maximum effect. Colorful vignettes abound: today's headlines echo past battles for unchecked organizational freedom; socially responsible alternatives that were tried are explored along with the historical contingencies that sent us down one road rather than another. No other book takes the role of organizations in America's development as seriously. The resultant insights presage a new historical genre....