"This comprehensive volume - containing 27 chapters and contributions from six continents - presents and discusses key principles, perspectives, and practices of social learning in the context of sustainability. Social learning is explored from a range of fields challenged by sustainability including: organizational learning, environmental management and corporate social responsibility; multi-stakeholder governance; education, learning and educational psychology; multiple land-use and integrated rural development; and consumerism and critical consumer education. An entire section of the book is devoted to a number of reflective case studies of people, organizations and communities using forms of social learning in moving towards sustainability. 'This book brings together a range of ideas, stories, and discussions about purposeful learning in communities aimed at creating a world that is more sustainable than the one currently in prospect. ...The book is designed to expand the network of conversations through which our society can confront various perspectives, discover emerging patterns, and apply learning to a variety of emotional and social contexts.' From the Foreword by Fritjof Capra, co-founder of the Center of Ecoliteracy. 'Joining what is so clear and refreshing in this book with the larger movements toward a critically democratic and activist education that is worthy of its name, is but one step in the struggle for sustainability. But it is an essential step if we are to use the insights that are included in this book.' From the Afterword by Michael Apple, author of 'Educating the ""Right"" Way: Markets, Standards, God, and Inequality'."

Latin American Identities After 1980 takes an interdisciplinary approach to Latin American social and cultural identities. With broad regional coverage, and an emphasis on Canadian perspectives, it focuses on Latin American contact with other cultures and nations. Its sound scholarship combines evidence-based case studies with the Latin American tradition of the essay, particularly in areas where the discourse of the establishment does not match political, social, and cultural realities and where it is difficult to uncover the purposely covert. This study of the cultural and social Latin America begins with an interpretation of the new Pax Americana, designed in the 1980s by the North in agreement with the Southern elites. As the agreement ties the hands of national governments and establishes new regional and global strategies, a pan–Latin American identity is emphasized over individual national identities. The multi-faceted impacts and effects of globalization in Bolivia, Ecuador, Mexico, Cuba, Brazil, Chile, Argentina, and the Caribbean are examined, with an emphasis on social change, the transnationalization and commodification of Latin American and Caribbean arts and the adaptation of cultural identities in a globalized context as understood by Latin American authors writing from transnational perspectives.

`This book raises the theoretical level of rural studies to new heights...the Handbook of Rural Studies will likely become a key resource on the bookshelves of the next generation of graduate students...′ - Gary Paul Green, University of Wisconsin-Madison `This Handbook powerfully demonstrates that rural spaces, rural societies and rural natures are at the very forefront of critical social science endeavour. Read this book, become a rural social scientist′ - Henry Buller, University of Exeter `An outstandingly comprehensive review of theory, research and the study of rural questions...an essential reference for students, scholars, politicians, developers and rural activists′ - Imre Kovach, Institute for Political Sciences, Budapest `This collection is an essential addition to any rural scholar′s library and will be a critical resource for both established rural scholars and rising graduate students interested in rural research topics′ - Peter B Nelson, Middlebury College `The Handbook of Rural Studies is a tour de force on changing rural people and places in a rapidly urbanizing global economy -- the most comprehensive interdisciplinary treatment of "rural" available anywhere. This is absolutely must reading for social scientists concerned about finding a prominent place for "rural" in scholarly discourse, institutional analysis, and public policy debates on the political economy of space′ - Daniel T Lichter, Policy Analysis and Management, Cornell University The Handbook represents the vitality and theoretical innovation at work in rural studies. It shows how political economy and the ′cultural turn′ have led to very significant new thinking in the cultural representations of: rurality; nature; sustainability; new economies; power and rurality; new consumerism; and exclusion and rurality. It is organized in three sections: approaches to rural studies; rural research: key theoretical co-ordinates and new rural relations. In a rich and textured discussion, the Handbook of Rural Studies explains the key moments in which the theorization of culture, nature, politics, agency, and space in rural contexts have transmitted ideas back into wider social science.

This report examines how the two global mega-trends of population ageing and rising inequalities have been developing and interacting, both within and across generations.

This publication is about the world's surface ice on land outside the two polar ice sheets. It provides a sound and well illustrated review on the basis of available data, the global distribution of glaciers and ice caps and their changes since maximum extents of the so-called Little ice Age. The work also presents the latest state of knowledge on glacier changes and discusses the challenges of the 21st century for the monitoring of glaciers and ice caps.