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In Material Politics, author Andrew Barry reveals that as we are beginning to attend to the importance of materials in political life, materials has become increasingly bound up with the production of information about their performance, origins, and impact. * Presents an original theoretical approach to political geography by revealing the paradoxical relationship between materials and politics * Explores how political disputes have come to revolve not around objects in isolation, but objects that are entangled in ever growing quantities of information about their performance, origins, and impact * Studies the example of the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline – a fascinating experiment in transparency and corporate social responsibility – and its wide-spread negative political impact * Capitalizes on the growing interdisciplinary interest, especially within geography and social theory, about the critical role of material artefacts in political life

Even as they see their wages go down and their buying power decrease, many parents are still putting their kids' material desires first. These parents struggle with how to handle children's consumer wants, which continue unabated despite the economic downturn. And, indeed, parents and other adults continue to spend billions of dollars on children every year. Why do children seem to desire so much, so often, so soon, and why do parents capitulate so readily? To determine what forces lie behind the onslaught of Nintendo Wiis and Bratz dolls, Allison J. Pugh spent three years observing and interviewing children and their families. In Longing and Belonging: Parents, Children, and Consumer Culture, Pugh teases out the complex factors that contribute to how we buy, from lunchroom conversations about Game Boys to the stark inequalities facing American children. Pugh finds that children's desires stem less from striving for status or falling victim to advertising than from their yearning to join the conversation at school or in the neighborhood. Most parents respond to children's need to belong by buying the particular goods and experiences that act as passports in children's social worlds, because they sympathize with their children's fear of being different from their peers. Even under financial constraints, families prioritize children \"feeling normal\". Pugh masterfully illuminates the surprising similarities in the fears and hopes of parents and children from vastly different social contexts, showing that while corporate marketing and materialism play a part in the commodification of childhood, at the heart of the matter is the desire to belong.

Over the course of nearly thirty years, the environmental justice movement has changed the politics of environmental activism and influenced environmental policy. In the process, it has turned the attention of environmental activists and regulatory agencies to issues of pollution, toxics, and human health as they affect ordinary people, especially people of color. This book argues that the environmental justice movement has also begun to transform science and engineering. The chapters present case studies of technical experts' encounters with environmental justice activists and issues, exploring the transformative potential of these interactions. Technoscience and Environmental Justice first examines the scientific practices and identities of technical experts who work with environmental justice organizations, whether by becoming activists themselves or by sharing scientific information with communities. It then explore scientists' and engineers' activities in such mainstream scientific institutions as regulatory agencies and universities, where environmental justice concerns have been (partially) institutionalized as a response to environmental justice activism. All of the chapters grapple with the difficulty of transformation that experts face, but the studies also show how environmental justice activism has created opportunities for changing technical practices and, in a few cases, has even accomplished significant transformations.The hardcover edition does not include a dust jacket.

Refugees and displaced people are increasingly moving to cities around the world, seeking out the social, economic, and political opportunity that urban areas provide. Against this backdrop digital technologies are fundamentally changing how refugees and displaced people engage with urban landscapes and economies where they settle. Urban Refugees and Digital Technology draws on contemporary data gathered from refugee communities in Bogotá, Nairobi, and Kuala Lumpur to build a new theoretical understanding of how technological change influences the ways urban refugees contribute to the social, economic, and political networks in their cities of arrival. This data is presented against the broader history of technological change in urban areas since the start of industrialization, showing how displaced people across time have used technologized urban spaces to shape the societies where they settle. The case studies and history demonstrate how refugees' interactions with environments that are often hostile to their presence spur novel adaptations to idiosyncratic features of a city's technological landscape. A wide-ranging study across histories and geographies of urban displacement, Urban Refugees and Digital Technology introduces readers to the myriad ways technological change creates spaces for urban refugees to build rich political, social, and economic lives in cities.

This study examines the mechanisms through which totalitarian regimes manipulate‎aesthetic taste to consolidate ideological control and enforce political ‎compliance. Drawing on comparative case studies of Nazi Germany, the‎ Soviet Union, Maoist China, North Korea, Fascist Italy, and other authoritarian ‎systems, the research demonstrates how such regimes strategically leverage ‎cultural, artistic, and aesthetic domains to construct homogenized narratives ‎aligned with their ideological imperatives. Theoretical engagement with‎ the works of Kant, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Adorno, Sontag, Rancière, and ‎others illuminates both the philosophical foundations and practical manifestations‎ of aesthetic standardization. The analysis further explores modes of‎ resistance that have contested such homogenization, including avant-garde ‎artistic movements, subcultural formations, individual acts of defiance, and‎ alternative aesthetic frameworks. By synthesizing historical evidence with interdisciplinary ‎theory, this study contributes to scholarly discourse on the intersection ‎of ideology, power, and aesthetics in totalitarian systems.

Assessing the influence of scientific advice in societies that increasingly question scientific authority and expertise.

A growing number of governments are working to improve their performance by creating systems to measure and help them understand their performance.These systems for monitoring and evaluation (M&E) are used to measure the quantity, quality and targeting of the goods and services--the outputs--that the state provides and to measure the outcomes and.

Between 2006 and 2010 the World Bank sought to unmask the role of science, technology, and innovation in Ugandan industry. This report presents insights from this research based on case studies of six sectors: agriculture, health, energy, information and communication technology (ICT), transport, and logistics. Based on more than 80 interviews cutting across Uganda's small and medium-sized enterprises, universities, and government entities, the report's findings are intended to offer the government and its partners in industry increased clarity about how better to harness science, technology, and innovation to propel the economy. Enabling implementation of the recent Uganda national science, technology, and innovation policy is a parallel goal of the report. The policy articulates the government's intent to foster research and development that builds the human capital that Uganda requires for a knowledge-based economy. The case studies from which this report's recommendations are drawn depict a diverse range of experiences across industrial sectors in terms of generating, applying, and adapting science and technology to contribute to Uganda's development. Despite the relatively small size of the country's investments in science and technology, the past 20 years have seen considerable advances in building capacity in science and technology, developing related institutions and human resources, advancing collaboration and communication, and expanding the base of available knowledge. But given Uganda's limited investments in science and technology, policies should prioritize near-term investments that benefit key sectors. This report identifies those near-term investments as well as longer-term ones (three to five years in the future).

This article demonstrates how scholarship and political positions can be negotiated when democratic and authoritarian systems converge in an international context; it takes as a case study cooperation among members of the International Association for Folklore and Ethnology (IAFE) and its successor organization, the International Association of European Ethnology and Folklore (IAEEF) in 1930s Europe. In particular, it examines how leading Swedish folklorists and ethnologists experienced the influence of Nazi politics as they sought international cooperation in their field. Attempts to dialogue with colleagues whose home countries had adopted fascism were combined with attempts to prevent Nazi dominance of the IAFE and IAEEF. This paper examines the discourses that circulated among different scholars and groups and demonstrates how these discourses constructed people, stances, and fields, sometimes in contradictory or self-serving ways. Discourse-historical analysis thus reveals how scholars from different countries negotiate the connections between scholarship and politics in varying political contexts.

This paper discusses the identification and documentation of Asante heritage assets in an initiative between the World Bank and the Asanteman Council, the traditional governing authority of the Asante people of Ghana. The paper develops a documentation model based on recommended international standards for safeguarding this patrimony. The authors make proposals for engaging and strengthening traditional authorities and other stakeholders in the documentation, valuation, and preservation of Asante heritage. In addition, they make recommendations for the creation of appropriate institutions and strategies to use these assets for wealth creation and development and its replication elsewhere.