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"Social problems Congresses."
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Cybernetics and systems : social and business decisions
\"Society is now facing challenges for which the traditional management toolbox is increasingly inadequate. Well-grounded theoretical frameworks, such as systems-thinking and cybernetics, offer schemes and models that facilitate the understanding of complex phenomena, without being impacted by the passage of time. This book, through a multi-disciplinary approach, addresses the complexity of decision making and problem solving in the 21st century, featuring contributions from systems and cybernetics supported by a wide network of scientists. This book is the outcome of the WOSC 2017, the 17th Congress of the World Organization of Systems and Cybernetics, which invites scientists, policy-makers, professionals and students from across the globe to have a dynamic conversation about the dynamics of contemporary societal problems from systems and cybersystemic perspectives\"-- Provided by publisher.
Book
Finding global balance : common ground between the worlds of development and faith
This book relates the latest chapter in the story of a remarkable partnership between the worlds of faith and development, launched in 1998 by Jim Wolfensohn and then Archbishop of Canterbury, George Carey, when they convened a meeting of faith and development leaders in Lambeth Palace. The intervening years have seen the growth and enhancement of a network of world faith and development leaders who share a common passion to eradicate global poverty, extend social justice and ensure global security for all of the world's people. Periodically this group of leaders gathers together to debate issues of common concern and global significance. The most recent meeting took place in Dublin, Ireland in Janaury 2005. Debates over two days were rich and provocative, examining issues ranging from the recent Asian tsunami, to HIV/AIDS, gender and youth, and the roots of conflict, all viewed through the lens of equity. References to the ethical dimensions of poverty alleviation and the need for a strong moral underpinning as a foundation for equitable and sustainable development lay at the heart of every session. The uniqueness of this partnership is the fresh perspective it offers on critical development issues and the opportunity for faith leaders and development leaders to seek new avenues for collaboration. This book tells the story of this partnership, within the context of the Dublin meeting.
eBook
Human Development and the Environment: Challenges for the United Nations in the New Millennium
The new millennium sees humankind living in a vastly more complex, inter-linked, and mutually dependent world. There are increasing numbers of actors in world affairs today, as private and public non-state actors jostle alongside national governments in setting and implementing an ever more crowded agenda. This situation is presenting new challenges, in the fields of security, governance, development and environment, and will require innovative thinking and new forms of global governance. This book looks at the problems, processes and actors that constitute the milieu for human development and the environment. The contributions in this volume outline productive ways in which the international community and the UN system can address the major challenges of eradicating poverty and reducing the rate of environmental deterioration.
eBook
Privatizing China
Everyday life in China is increasingly shaped by a novel mix of neoliberal and socialist elements, of individual choices and state objectives. This combination of self-determination and socialism from afar has incited profound changes in the ways individuals think and act in different spheres of society. Covering a vast range of daily life-from homeowner organizations and the users of Internet cafes to self-directed professionals and informed consumers-the essays inPrivatizing Chinacreate a compelling picture of the burgeoning awareness of self-governing within the postsocialist context.
The introduction by Aihwa Ong and Li Zhang presents assemblage as a concept for studying China as a unique postsocialist society created through interactions with global forms. The authors conduct their ethnographic fieldwork in a spectrum of domains-family, community, real estate, business, taxation, politics, labor, health, professions, religion, and consumption-that are infiltrated by new techniques of the self and yet also regulated by broader socialist norms.Privatizing Chinagives readers a grounded, fine-grained intimacy with the variety and complexity of everyday conduct in China's turbulent transformation.
eBook
Global Health in Transition: A Synthesis
For many reasons, this decade is a time of rethinking many things. There is the impending turn of the millenium, an event packed with meaning. There is recent political history, which has changed the global structure of power in ways few could foresee, and there is an economic fluidity worldwide that makes every day unpredictable and the future uncertain. There are movements of people and surges of violence that seem unparalleled, and well may be. We are awash in change, and people everywhere are trying to understand that and read its implications. It is a time that provokes soul-searching: backward, into the lessons and achievements of the past, and forward, into ways for the future to be better.
The fields of health and social development are no exception. More specifically, events and conditions in the health sector point to the need to rethink some large issues. Nations everywhere are grappling with the economic and ethical dilemmas of achieving and maintaining healthy populations, since these are both cause and consequence of true development. Increasingly, the thinking is global, because there are comparisons to be learned from, connections that have implications, obligations to fulfill, and costs that are somehow shared.
As part of this dynamic, there has been an explosion of analytic documents, published since the start of this decade, that deal mainly, though not exclusively, with health in developing countries. The purpose of Global Health in Transition is to distill the essential elements from those efforts, discuss the major ideas they share and the thoughts they prompt, ask what those might mean for a next agenda in global health, and comment on the shifting context in which our current concepts of the ideal will proveor not provetheir adequacy for the future.
eBook
Animal Thinking
Do animals have cognitive maps? Do they possess knowledge? Do they plan for the future? Do they understand that others have mental lives of their own? This volume provides a state-of-the-art assessment of animal cognition, with experts from psychology, neuroscience, philosophy, ecology, and evolutionary biology addressing these questions in an integrative fashion. It summarizes the latest research, identifies areas where consensus has been reached, and takes on current controversies. Over the last thirty years, the field has shifted from the collection of anecdotes and the pursuit of the subjective experience of animals to a rigorous, hypothesis-driven experimental approach. Taking a skeptical stance, this volume stresses the notion that in many cases relatively simple rules may account for rather complex and flexible behaviors. The book critically evaluates current concepts and puts a strong focus on the psychological mechanisms that underpin animal behavior. It offers comparative analyses that reveal common principles as well as adaptations that evolved in particular species in response to specific selective pressures. It assesses experimental approaches to the study of animal navigation, decision making, social cognition, and communication and suggests directions for future research. The book promotes a research program that seeks to understand animals' cognitive abilities and behavioral routines as individuals and as members of social groups.
eBook
Child welfare and social action in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries
This collection of twelve essays represents an important contribution to the understanding of child welfare and social action in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. They challenge many assumptions about the history of childhood and child welfare policy and cover a variety of themes including the physical and sexual abuse of children, forced child migration and role of the welfare state.
eBook
Population aging : is Latin America ready?
The past half-century has seen enormous changes in the demographic makeup of Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC). In the 1950s, LAC had a small population of about 160 million people, less than today's population of Brazil. Two-thirds of Latin Americans lived in rural areas. Families were large and women had one of the highest fertility rates in the world, low levels of education, and few opportunities for work outside the household. Investments in health and education reached only a small fraction of the children, many of whom died before reaching age five. Since then, the size of the LAC population has tripled and the mostly rural population has been transformed into a largely urban population. There have been steep reductions in child mortality, and investments in health and education have increased, today reaching a majority of children. Fertility has been more than halved and the opportunities for women in education and for work outside the household have improved significantly. Life expectancy has grown by 22 years. Less obvious to the casual observer, but of significance for policy makers, a population with a large fraction of dependent children has evolved into a population with fewer dependents and a very large proportion of working-age adults. This overview seeks to introduce the reader to three groups of issues related to population aging in LAC. First is a group of issues related to the support of the aging and poverty in the life cycle. Second is the question of the health transition. Third is an understanding of the fiscal pressures that are likely to accompany population aging and to disentangle the role of demography from the role of policy in that process.
eBook