This Handbook provides a comprehensive analysis of some of the world’s most pressing global development challenges – including how they may be better understood and addressed through innovative practices and approaches to learning and teaching. Featuring 61 contributions from leading and emerging academics and practitioners, this multidisciplinary volume is organized into five thematic parts exploring: changes in global development financing, ideologies, norms and partnerships; interrelationships between development, natural environments and inequality; shifts in critical development challenges, and; new possibilities for positive change. Collectively, the handbook demonstrates that global development challenges are becoming increasingly complex and multi-faceted and are to be found in the Global ‘North’ as much as the ‘South’. It draws attention to structural inequality and disadvantage alongside possibilities for positive change. The Handbook will serve as a valuable resource for students and scholars across multiple disciplines including Development Studies, Anthropology, Geography, Global Studies, Indigenous and Postcolonial Studies, Political Science, and Urban Studies.

This Handbook provides a cutting-edge survey of the state of research on religions and global development. Part one highlights critical debates that have emerged within research on religions and development, particularly with respect to theoretical, conceptual and methodological considerations, from the perspective of development studies and its associated disciplines. Parts two to six look at different regional and national development contexts and the place of religion within these. These parts integrate and examine the critical debates raised in part one within empirical case studies from a range of religions and regions. Different religions are situated within actual locations and case studies thus allowing a detailed and contextual understanding of their relationships to development to emerge. Part seven examines the links between some important areas within development policy and practice where religion is now being considered, including: Faith-Based Organisations and Development Public Health, Religion and Development Human rights, Religion and Development Sustainable Development, Climate Change and Religion Global Institutions and Religious Engagement in Development Economic Development and Religion Religion, Development and Fragile States Development and Faith-Based Education Taking a global approach, the Handbook covers Africa, Latin America, South Asia, East and South-East Asia, and the Middle East. It is essential reading for students and researchers in development studies and religious studies, and is highly relevant to those working in area studies, as well as a range of disciplines, from theology, anthropology and economics to geography, international relations, politics and sociology.

The handbook seeks to illuminate the key concepts in the study of development-environment through showcasing some of the Majoritarian (formerly "Developing") world’s scholars in order to explore theoretical connections through critical/radical theory, “small” theory, various conceptual frameworks, and non-Western and subaltern viewpoints. The volume examines the themes around the study of the relationship between economic and social development and the environment. Part 1 covers theoretical and conceptual approaches to the study of development and environment by examining the diverse ways in which people perceive, understand, and act upon the world around them. Cross-scalar topics such as neo-liberalism and globalization, human rights, climate change, sustainability, and technology are covered in Part 2. The book shifts to examinations of resources and production in Part 3, where authors with a focus on one or more environmental resources or types of economic production are presented. Topics range from water, agriculture, and food, to energy, bioeconomy, and mining. The fourth section presents chapters where people are at the center of the development-environment nexus through topics such as gender relations, children, health, and cities. Finally, policy and governance of development and environment are explored in Part 5. The section includes both academics and practitioners who have worked with policy makers and are policy makers themselves. The book is primarily intended for scholars and graduate students in geography, environmental studies, and development studies for whom it will provide an invaluable and up-to-date guide to current thinking across the range of disciplines, which converge in the study of development and environment.

This bold and ambitious handbook is the first systematic overview of the history of development ideas, themes, and actors in the twentieth century. Taking stock of the field, the book reflects on blind spots, points out avenues for future research, and brings together a greater plurality of regions, actors, and approaches than other publications on the subject. The book offers a critical reassessment of how historical experiences have shaped contemporary understandings of development, demonstrating that the seemingly self-evident concept of development has been contingent on a combination of material conditions, power structures, and policy choices at different times and in different places. Using a world history approach, the handbook highlights similarities in development challenges across time and space, and it pays attention to the meanings of ideological, cultural, and economic divides in shaping different understandings and practices of development. Taking a thematic approach, the book shows how different actors – governments, non-governmental organizations, individuals, corporations, and international organizations – have responded to concerns regarding the conditions in their own or other societies, such as the provision of education, health, or food; approaches to infrastructure development and industrialization; the adjustment of social conditions; population policies and migration; and the maintenance of stability and security. Bringing together a range of voices from across the globe, this book will be perfect for advanced students and researchers of international development history.

Mental health has always been a low priority worldwide. Yet more than 650 million people are estimated to meet diagnostic criteria for common mental disorders such as depression and anxiety, with almost three-quarters of that burden in low- and middle-income countries. Nowhere in the world does mental health enjoy parity with physical health. Notwithstanding astonishing medical advancements in treatments for physical illnesses, mental disorder continues to have a startlingly high mortality rate. However, despite its widespread neglect, there is now an emerging international imperative to improve global mental health and wellbeing. The UN’s current international development agenda finalised at the end of 2015 contains 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), including SDG3, which seeks to ensure healthy lives and promote wellbeing for all at all ages. Although much broader in focus than the previous eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), the need for worldwide improvement in mental health has finally been recognised. This Handbook addresses the new UN agenda in the context of mental health and sustainable development, examining its implications for national and international policy-makers, decision-makers, researchers and funding agencies. Conceptual, evidence-based and practical discussions crossing a range of disciplines are presented from the world’s leading mental health experts. Together, they explore why a commitment to investing in mental health for the fulfilment of SDG3 ought to be an absolute global priority.

International commissions, academics, practitioners, and the media have long been critical of the UN’s development efforts as disjointed and not fit for purpose; yet the organization has been an essential contributor to progress and peacebuilding. This handbook explores the activities of the UN development system (UNDS), the largest operational pillar of the organization and arguably the arena in which its ideational endeavors have made the biggest contribution to thinking and standards. Contributions focus on the role of the UNDS in sustainable social, economic, and environmental development, describing how the UNDS interacts with the other major functions of the UN system, and how it performs operationally in the context of the new 2030 development agenda focused on the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The volume is divided into three sections: Realizing the SDGs: opportunities and challenges; Resources, partnerships, and management; and Imagining the future of the UN in development. Comprised of chapters by knowledgeable and authoritative UN experts, this book provides cutting-edge and up-to-date research on the strengths and weaknesses of the UNDS, with each chapter focusing on different operational and ideational aspects. Chapter 11 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.

The Routledge Handbook of Transformative Global Studies provides diverse and cutting-edge perspectives on this fast-changing field. For 30 years the world has been caught in a long ‘global interregnum,’ plunging from one crisis to the next and witnessing the emergence of new, vibrant, multiple, and sometimes contradictory forms of popular resistance and politics. This global ‘interregnum’ – or a period of uncertainty where the old hegemony is fading and the new ones have not yet been fully realized – necessitates critical self-reflection, brave intellectual speculation and (un)learning of perceived wisdoms, and greater transdisciplinary collaboration across theories, localities, and subjects. This Handbook takes up this challenge by developing fresh perspectives on globalization, development, neoliberalism, capitalism, and their progressive alternatives, addressing issues of democracy, power, inequality, insecurity, precarity, wellbeing, education, displacement, social movements, violence and war, and climate change. Throughout, it emphasizes the dynamics for system change, including bringing post-capitalist, feminist, (de)colonial, and other critical perspectives to support transformative global praxis. This volume brings together a mixture of fresh and established scholars from across disciplines and from a range of both Northern and Southern contexts. Researchers and students from around the world and across the fields of politics, sociology, international development, international relations, geography, economics, area studies, and philosophy will find this an invaluable and fresh guide to global studies in the 21st century.