Can one envision economic growth that is also sustainable because it takes into account the cultural, moral and religious values of those intended to benefit from economic development? To explore this question, the Woodstock Theological Center launched a collaborative research effort involving 40 Jesuit centers around the world, taking as its "raw material" the stories of specific, mostly poor, individuals and their communities as they were touched by economic globalization. Focusing on decisions made by the individuals as they encountered the forces of the global economy, the authors discern the values and creativity that guided these decisions and derive implications for development policy. The book's methodology draws on the Jesuit approach to discernment that stresses the ethical responsibility of all development actors. It envisions communities partnering with other development agents, such as government, business, and NGO's, based on a better understanding of the values that drive decisions.

This book is a collection of essays by Americans and Mexicans who offer their own perspectives on the difficult and controversial subject of migration. The entire text of the original 2003 document Strangers No Longer: Together on the Journey of Hope is included in an appendix.

A Companion to Media Studies is a comprehensive collection that brings together new writings by an international team to provide an overview of the theories and methodologies that have produced this most interdisciplinary of fields. Tackles a variety of central concepts and controversies, organized into six areas of study: foundations, production, media content, media audiences, effects, and futures Provides an accessible point of entry into this expansive and interdisciplinary field Includes the writings of renowned media scholars, including McQuail, Schiller, Gallagher, Wartella, and Bryant Now available in paperback for the course market.

In this new Sixth Edition of Development and Social Change: A Global Perspective, author Philip McMichael describes a world undergoing profound social, political, and economic transformations, from the post-World War II era through the present. He tells a story of development in four parts—colonialism, developmentalism, globalization, and sustainability—that shows how the global development “project” has taken different forms from one historical period to the next. Throughout the text, the underlying conceptual framework is that development is a political construct, created by dominant actors (states, multilateral institutions, corporations and economic coalitions) and based on unequal power arrangements. While rooted in ideas about progress and prosperity, development also produces crises that threaten the health and well-being of millions of people, and sparks organized resistance to its goals and policies. Frequent case studies make the intricacies of globalization concrete, meaningful, and clear. Development and Social Change: A Global Perspective challenges us to see ourselves as global citizens even as we are global consumers.

This book explores the communication processes of the Transition Movement, a community-led global social movement, as it was adapted in a local context. First it analyzes how the movement’s grand narratives of responding to “climate change” and creating greater “resiliency” were communicated into local community-based stories, responses, and actions in the Transition Town of Amherst, Massachusetts. Second, it seeks to understand the multilayered communication processes that facilitate these actions toward sustainable social change. Transition Amherst developed and/or supported projects that addressed reducing dependency on peak-oil, creating community-based-local economies, supporting sustainable food production and consumption, and participating in more efficient transportation, among others. The popularity of the model coincides with an increase in the interest in and use of the term “sustainability” by media, academics and policymakers around the world, and an increase in the global use of digital technology as a resource for information gathering and sharing. Thus this book situates itself at the intersections of a global environmental and economic crisis, the popularization of the term “sustainability,” and an increasingly digitized and networked global society in order to better understand how social change is contextualized and facilitated in a local community via a global network. This book is the first comprehensive analysis of the ways in which the theories of Transition are applied over an extended period of time in practice, on the ground in a Transition town.

Are there existing alternatives to corporate globalization? What are the prospects for and commonalities between communities and movements such as Occupy, the World Social Forum and alternative economies? Globalization Development and Social Justice advances the proposition that another globalization is not only possible, but already exists. It demonstrates that there are multiple pathways towards development with social justice and argues that enabling propositional agency, rather than oppositional agency such as resistance, is a more effective alternative to neoliberal globalization. El Khoury develops a theory of infraglobalization that emphasizes creative constitution, not just contestation, of global and local processes. The book features case studies and examples of diverse economic practice and innovative emergent political forms from the Global South and North. These case studies are located in the informal social economy and community development, as well as everyday practices, from prefigurative politics to community cooperatives and participatory planning. This book makes an important contribution to debates about the prospects for, and practices of, a transformative grassroots globalization, and to critical debates about globalization and development strategies. It will be of interest to students and scholars of international relations, globalization, social movement studies, political and economic geography, sociology, anthropology and development studies.

A comparative ethnography of the responses on the ground to austerity policies in Southern Europe