Showing posts with label Perspective. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Perspective. Show all posts

Monday, September 28, 2015

African Politics in Comparative Perspective, 2 edition




African Politics in Comparative Perspective, 2 edition by Goran Hyden


English | 2012 | ISBN: 1107030471, 1107651417 | 322 pages | PDF | 1,3 MB




This revised and expanded second edition of African Politics in Comparative Perspective reviews fifty years of research on politics in Africa and addresses some issues in a new light, keeping in mind the changes in Africa since the first edition was written in 2004. The book synthesizes insights from different scholarly approaches and offers an original interpretation of the knowledge accumulated in the field. Goran Hyden discusses how research on African politics relates to the study of politics in other regions and mainstream theories in comparative politics. He focuses on such key issues as why politics trumps economics, rule is personal, state is weak and policies are made with a communal rather than an individual lens. The book also discusses why in the light of these conditions agriculture is problematic, gender contested, ethnicity manipulated and relations with Western powers a matter of defiance.












Party Primaries in Comparative Perspective




Party Primaries in Comparative Perspective by Giulia Sandri and Antonella Seddone


English | 2015 | ISBN: 1472450388 | 226 pages | PDF | 1,5 MB




Review


"This book offers useful observations about why many parties in parliamentary democracies have been adopting or expanding their use of primaries, and about why and how this change may matter. Several chapters helpfully explore differences between primaries for selecting legislative candidates and those for selecting party leaders." –Susan Scarrow, University of Houston, USA




"This book represents a valuable attempt to think through the concept of the primary election, and to analyse the empirical reasons for, and the consequences of, its adoption by political parties. Given the spread of primaries to parties beyond the USA specifically and presidential systems more generally, this book is a timely and very useful addition to the comparative literature on party politics." –Paul Webb, University of Sussex, UK












Bioethics in Perspective: Corporate Power, Public Health and Political Economy




Bioethics in Perspective: Corporate Power, Public Health and Political Economy by Scott Mann


English | 2010 | ISBN: 0521756561 | 294 pages | PDF | 1 MB




In Bioethics in Perspective Scott Mann demonstrates the importance of issues of corporate power, global inequality and sustainability in shaping health outcomes around the world. The text develops a comprehensive ethical and practical critique of the neoliberal economic ideas which have guided policy in the English-speaking world. It explores the consequences of such policies for health and healthcare around the world, in terms of increasing health inequalities, serious food and water shortages, inadequate health care provision and the marketing of dangerous and unnecessary drugs. With clear proposals for political and economic reform to effectively address these problems, Bioethics in Perspective provides an important counterbalance to much conventional commentary on bioethics. It takes readers with little or no prior knowledge of ethics, economics or medicine quickly and easily into advanced debates and discussions about the causes and consequences of health and illness around the world.












Saturday, September 26, 2015

Global Perspective for Competitive Enterprise, Economy and Ecology: Proceedings of the 16th ISPE International... (repost)




Global Perspective for Competitive Enterprise, Economy and Ecology: Proceedings of the 16th ISPE International Conference on Concurrent Engineering by Shuo-Yan Chou, Amy Trappey, Jerzy Pokojski, Shana Smith


English | 2009 | ISBN: 184882761X | 907 pages | PDF | 15,8 MB




The general theme of the CE2009 Conference is the recognised requirement for advancements in Concurrent Engineering (CE) with a global perspective for competitive enterprise, economy and ecology. CE appeared in the "80s as the concept of parallel performing engineering design activities and the integration of all related processes. This concept is based on the general assumption that different components of the product life cycle should be considered together and relatively early. The main goal of CE is to make processes more efficient and more resistant to errors.




Since then the whole CE approach has evolved into different forms with different names and has become omnipresent. The industrial presence of CE differs from well established corporation implementations to SME applications. The last twenty years have brought many changes to the organization of product design and manufacturing: engineers have developed narrower specializations; engineers have developed a global presence; engineers work in firms which are final producers or suppliers; sometimes firms create alliances; engineers cooperate and collaborate; and they use different methods and tools their engineering activities. As a result the CE approach supports engineers in many ways.




The role of information systems in CE has always been treated as very important. First methodologies and tools were concentrated on offering the possibility to contact people and processes, to make the right information and knowledge available at the right time. The presence of computer tools in CE is treated as standard.




If one looks now at what is going on and at how many different issues are important in design, manufacturing, supply, distribution, etc., one will understand why the context of CE is so rich and so complicated, why there are so many CE specializations and why the main topic of the CE2009 Conference is of great relevance. The plurality of CE specialization has been reflected by the range of CE 2009 Conference tracks, which include Systems Engineering, Advanced Manufacture, Product Design, Design for Sustainability, Knowledge Engineering, Supply Chain Management, Collaborative Engineering, Web Technologies and Service Solutions. Apart from the enumerated tracks, the conference also has seven special sessions: Radio Frequency Identification, Collaborative Product Development, Multi-disciplinary Design and Optimization, Design Knowledge Utilization, Competitive Supply Chain Performance, Value Engineering and Competitive Design.




The proceedings contain 84 papers, demonstrating the multitude of different perspectives contained in this volume. There are papers which are theoretic and conceptual, as well as papers which have very strong industrial roots. There are also very detailed, highly specialized paper, which are closely linked to specific industrial case studies. The reader will also find papers which are based on real processes, but which operate on abstract models and which offer a bridge between industrial reality and academic research.




CE does not develop equally in each area; the direction of development depends on many factors. The content of this volume reflects the variety of issues in today"s CE methods and phenomena; consequently, readers will be able to build their own view of the present problems and methods involved in CE.












Saturday, September 19, 2015

Israel in Comparative Perspective: Challenging the Conventional Wisdom (Suny Series in Israeli Studies)




Israel in Comparative Perspective: Challenging the Conventional Wisdom (Suny Series in Israeli Studies) by Michael N. Barnett


English | Feb. 1996 | ISBN: 0791428311 | 296 Pages | PDF | 5.03 MB




Because Israel is unique in many dimensions, many social scientists consider it a historical peculiarity. Neither East nor West, developed nor undeveloped, capitalist nor socialist, Third World nor First World, Israel has little in common with other countries and their historical experiences. This book of original essays challenges the image of Israeli uniqueness and the status of the Israeli case and at the same time corrects some common misperceptions about the comparative method in general and case selection in particular. At the same time, it compares Israeli and Arab experiences and addresses critical issues in Middle Eastern studies. To challenge the image of Israeli uniqueness, the authors situate Israel"s history in comparative context; employ macrohistorical concepts both to reexamine the Israeli case and to build bridges between Israel and other historical experiences; and use the Israeli case to reconsider existing social science theories. [Articles by Michael Barnett, Yehezkal Dror, Rebecca Kook, Ian Lustick, Joel Migdal, Gershon Shafir, Gabriel Sheffer, Shibley Telhami, and Mark Tessler and Ina Warriner] Israel in Comparative Perspective demonstrates how our understanding of the region can be enriched by using models and theories developed in other regions to reexamine Israeli history.








Friday, September 18, 2015

Art, Literature and Culture from a Marxist Perspective




Art, Literature and Culture from a Marxist Perspective by Tony McKenna


English | 2015 | ISBN: 1137526602 | 218 pages | PDF | 3,3 MB




Art, Literature and Culture from a Marxist Perspective provides a journey through some of the most salient and abiding instances of art, literature, TV series and film. The analysis ranges from more classical works such as the paintings of Van Gogh or the writing of Balzac and Brontë, right through to those on the cutting edge of contemporary culture including HBO"s Breaking Bad, Game of Thrones, Harry Potter, The Hunger Games, The Walking Dead and the music of Tupac Shakur.




The author demonstrates, with a lucid and literary style, how these works are able to weave into a fantasy fabric the fundamental forms of the historical realities in which we are enmeshed. McKenna shows how each is stamped with that historical necessity.












The World Economy: A Millennial Perspective (Repost)




Angus Maddison, "The World Economy: A Millennial Perspective"


2001 | pages: 385 | ISBN: 9264186085 | PDF | 2,2 mb




Angus Maddison provides a comprehensive view of the growth and levels of world population since the year 1000. In this period, world population rose 22-fold, while per capita gross domestic product increased 13-fold and world GDP nearly 300-fold. The biggest gains occurred in the wealthy regions of today (Western Europe, North America, Australasia and Japan). The gap between the world leader, the United States and the poorest region, Africa, is now 20 to 1. In the year 1000, today"s wealthiest countries were poorer than Asia and Africa. The book has several objectives. The first is a pioneering effort to quantify the economic performance of nations over the very long term. The second is to identify the forces which explain the success of the wealthy countries and explore the obstacles, which hindered advance in regions which lagged behind. The third is to scrutinize the interaction between the rich and the rest to assess the degree to which this relationship was exploitative. This monumental reference is a "must" for scholars of economics and economic history, and casual readers will also find much of interest. The book is a sequel to the author"s Monitoring the World Economy: 1820 -1992 (OECD,1995), and his 1998 Chinese Economic Performance in the Long Run (OECD, 1998).



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