Development researchers face many challenges in producing robust and persuasive analyses, often within a short time-frame. This edited volume tackles these challenges head-on, using examples from other fields to provide practical guidance to research producers and users.

Development researchers face many challenges in producing robust and persuasive analyses, often within a short time-frame. This edited volume tackles these challenges head-on, using examples from other fields to provide practical guidance to research producers and users.

The added value of mixed methods research in poverty and vulnerability is now widely established. Nevertheless, gaps and challenges remain. This volume shares experiences from research in developed and developing country contexts on how mixed methods approaches can make research more credible, usable and responsive to complexity.

Does poverty lead to environmental degradation? Do degraded environments and natural resources lead to poverty? Or, are there other forces at play? Is the relationship between poverty and the environment really as straightforward as the vicious circle portrayal of ‘poverty leading to environmental destruction leading to more poverty’ would suggest? Does it matter if the relationship is portrayed in this way? This book suggests that it does matter. Arguing that such a portrayal is unhelpful and misleading, the book brings together a diverse range of analytical frameworks and approaches that can enable a much deeper investigation of the context and nature of poverty-environment relationships. Analytical frameworks and approaches examined in the book include political ecology, a gendered lens, Critical Institutionalism, the Environmental Entitlements framework, the Institutional Analysis and Development approach, the Sustainable Livelihoods Framework, wellbeing analysis, social network analysis and frameworks for the analysis of the governance of natural resources. Recommended further reading draws on published material from the last thirty years as well as key contemporary publications, giving readers a steer towards essential texts and authors within each subject area. Key themes running through the analytical frameworks and approaches are identified and examined, including power, access, institutions and scale.

This volume creates a platform to showcase health geography research from countries in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), and draws on theoretical and methodological innovations to initiate a discussion on the complexities of the issues impacting health in the region. Through theoretically and empirically grounded contributions from a variety of researchers working across SSA, the book addresses a wide range of topics that are usually treated separately when discussing health geography in the region. By bridging the social science and health disciplines, the book introduces new ways of thinking temporally and spatially about these topics in non-geography contexts as well. In 4 sections, the text will broadly appeal to students, researchers, teachers, policy makers, and global health professionals. Section 1 addresses the social determinants of health, including gender, disability, and other inequities and inequalities associated with healthcare access. Section 2 discusses the environmental determinants of health such as food security, water and sanitation, mining, and climate change. Section 3 focuses on current and emerging challenges to health in SSA, including ageing, non-communicable disease, and infectious diseases. Section 4 concludes the text by discussing the need to develop social and environmental intervention policies and strategies to address health challenges in SSA.

Brimming with life maps, life history calendars, and extracts from transcripts and diaries, this book illustrates by example the unique principles, challenges, and applications of qualitative longitudinal research. Synthesizing current literature on qualitative longitudinal research, it brings together sociological theory and empirically driven longitudinal studies while also highlighting a range of possible research approaches. With a consistent balance of conceptual discussions with hands-on advice, it provides readers with the foundation to adapt lessons-learned from other researchers to fit their own qualitative longitudinal studies. Supported by research tools such as conceptual road maps, short data extracts, consent forms, and other data organization tools, this book provides everything postgraduate researchers need to transition from the classroom to the field.

The development of new Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) has transformed the world over the last two decades. These technologies are often seen as being inherently 'good', with the ability to make the world better, and in particular to reduce poverty. However, their darker side is frequently ignored in such accounts. ICTs undoubtedly have the potential to reduce poverty, for example by enhancing education, health delivery, rural development and entrepreneurship across Africa, Asia and Latin America. However, all too often, projects designed to do so fail to go to scale, and are unsustainable when donor funding ceases. Indeed, ICTs have actually dramatically increased inequality across the world. The central purpose of this book is to account for why this is so, and it does so primarily by laying bare the interests that have underlain the dramatic expansion of ICTs in recent years. Unless these are fully understood, it will not be possible to reclaim the use of these technologies to empower the world's poorest and most marginalised.