In 1992, Calhuasí, an isolated Andean town, got its first road. Newly connected to Ecuador's large cities, Calhuasí experienced rapid social-spatial change, which Kate Swanson richly describes in Begging as a Path to Progress. Based on nineteen months of fieldwork, Swanson's study pays particular attention to the ideas and practices surrounding youth. While begging seems to be inconsistent with—or even an affront to—ideas about childhood in the developed world, Swanson demonstrates that the majority of income earned from begging goes toward funding Ecuadorian children's educations in hopes of securing more prosperous futures. Examining beggars' organized migration networks, as well as the degree to which children can express agency and fulfill personal ambitions through begging, Swanson argues that Calhuasí's beggars are capable of canny engagement with the forces of change. She also shows how frequent movement between rural and urban Ecuador has altered both, masculinizing the countryside and complicating the Ecuadorian conflation of whiteness and cities. Finally, her study unpacks ongoing conflicts over programs to “clean up” Quito and other major cities, noting that revanchist efforts have had multiple effects—spurring more dangerous transnational migration, for example, while also providing some women and children with tourist-friendly local spaces in which to sell a notion of Andean authenticity.

Using data and insights from over ten years of field research in Cambodia this book explores how inequality persists in a hypermobile world.

One of the oldest survival pursuits undertaken by the weak and the downtrodden people across the world has been begging. Going back to the ancient Christian biblical times up to the present epoch as well as across varying spatial settings, in situations of trouble and tribulations, parts of various communities have resorted to beggary to either overcome immediate adversities or longer term calamities. Drawing on insights from two polar theoretical lenses of Social Constructionism and Social Deconstructionism, and guided by a pithy study of the begging across the African continent especially by Zimbabweans, this book troubles the various contours related to the subject of begging. Inter alia, the book considers the concept of begging, the causes of the prevalence of begging across the world and particularly among Zimbabweans, the challenges and benefits associated with the pursuit of alms, the impact of begging in foreign lands as well as some of the strategies that beggars employ to maximize their collections and/ or profits. What can be discerned from the book is that for many, begging is one of the last resort undertakings with low pickings. However, from a utilitarian perspective, begging has helped to sustain the impoverished livelihoods of Zimbabweans, both inside and outside the borders of the country since the advent of a debilitating crisis experienced from the turn of the new millennium. On the whole, this book seeks to provoke further researches on an important socio-economic area that affects many African communities but has so far been scantily researched. The book is handy for students and practitioners in economic history, African studies, economics, risk and disaster management, social anthropology, political science, and development studies.

In Thus Spake the Dervish Alexandre Papas traces the unfamiliar history of marginal Sufis, known as dervishes, in early modern and modern Central Asia over a period of 500 years.

Ambassadors of Social Progress examines the ways in which blind activists from the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe entered the postwar international disability movement and shaped its content and its course. Maria Cristina Galmarini shows that the international work of socialist blind activists was defined by the larger politics of the Cold War and, in many respects, represented a field of competition with the West in which the East could shine. Yet, her study also reveals that socialist blind politics went beyond propaganda. When socialist activists joined the international blind movement, they initiated an exchange of experiences that profoundly impacted everyone involved. Not only did the international blind movement turn global disability welfare from philanthropy to self-advocacy, but it also gave East European and Soviet activists a new set of ideas and technologies to improve their own national movements. By analyzing the intersection of disability and politics, Ambassadors of Social Progress enables a deeper, bottom-up understanding of cultural relations during the Cold War. Galmarini significantly contributes to the little-studied history of disability in socialist Europe, and ultimately shows that disability activism did not start as an import from the West in the post-1989 period, but rather had a long and meaningful tradition that was rooted in the socialist system of welfare and needed to be reinvented when this system fell apart.

The voices of birds have always been a source of fascination. Nature's Music brings together some of the world's experts on birdsong, to review the advances that have taken place in our understanding of how and why birds sing, what their songs and calls mean, and how they have evolved. All contributors have strived to speak, not only to fellow experts, but also to the general reader. The result is a book of readable science, richly illustrated with recordings and pictures of the sounds of birds. Bird song is much more than just one behaviour of a single, particular group of organisms. It is a model for the study of a wide variety of animal behaviour systems, ecological, evolutionary and neurobiological. Bird song sits at the intersection of breeding, social and cognitive behaviour and ecology. As such interest in this book will extend far beyond the purely ornithological - to behavioural ecologists psychologists and neurobiologists of all kinds.* The scoop on local dialects in birdsong* How birdsongs are used for fighting and flirting* The writers are all international authorities on their subject