Results by title

336 books match the query 'Political Economy' and 13 start with w

cover of What Is Africa’s Problem

What Is Africa’s Problem

Yoweri K. Museveni

University of Minnesota Press, 2000

The president of Uganda addresses key questions about Africa’s future.

Recent seismic shifts in Congo and Rwanda have exposed the continued volatility of the state of affairs in central Africa. As African states have shaken off their postcolonial despots, new leaders with sweeping ideas about a pan-African alliance have emerged-and yet the internecine struggles go on. What is Africa’s problem? As one of the leaders expressing a broad and forceful vision for Africa’s future, Uganda’s Yoweri K. Museveni is perhaps better placed than anyone in the world to address the very question his book poses.

In 1986, after more than a decade of armed struggle, a rebellion led by Museveni toppled the dictatorship of Idi Amin, and Museveni, at 42, became president of Uganda, a country at that time in near total disarray. Since then, Uganda has made remarkable strides in political, civic, and economic arenas, and Museveni has assumed the role of "the éminence grise of the new leadership in central Africa" (Philip Gourevitch, New Yorker). As such, he has proven a powerful force for change, not just in Uganda but across the turbulent span of African states.This collection of Museveni’s writings and speeches lays out the possibilities for social change in Africa. Working with a broad historical understanding and an intimate knowledge of the problems at hand, Museveni describes how movements can be formed to foster democracy, how class consciousness can transcend tribal differences in the development of democratic institutions, and how the politics of identity operate in postcolonial Africa. Museveni’s own contributions to the overthrow of Zaire’s Mobutu Sese Seko and to the political transformation of Uganda suggest the kind of change that may sweep Africa in decades to come. What Is Africa’s Problem? gives a firsthand look at what those changes might be, how they might come about, and what they might mean.
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cover of What Makes Women Sick: Gender and the Political Economy of Health

What Makes Women Sick

Gender and the Political Economy of Health

Lesley Doyal

Rutgers University Press, 1995

What makes women sick? To an Ecuadorean woman, it’s nervios from constant worry about her children’s illnesses. To a woman working in a New Mexico electronics factory, it’s the solvents that leave her with a form of dementia. To a Ugandan woman, it’s HIV from her husband's sleeping with the widow of an AIDS patient. To a Bangladeshi woman, it’s a fatal infection following an IUD insertion. What they all share is a recognition that their sickness is somehow caused by  situations they face every day at home and at work.

In this clearly written and compelling book, Lesley Doyal investigates the effects of social, economic, and cultural conditions on women’s health. The “fault line” of gender that continues to divide all societies has, Doyal demonstrates, profound and pervasive consequences for the health of women throughout the world. Her broad synthesis highlights variations between men and women in patterns of health and illness, and it identifies inequalities in medical care that separate groups of women from each other. Doyal’s wide-ranging arguments, her wealth of data, her use of women’s voices from many cultures—and her examples of women mobilizing to find their own solutions—make this book required reading for everyone concerned with women’s health.

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cover of What Makes Women Sick: Gender and the Political Economy of Health

What Makes Women Sick

Gender and the Political Economy of Health

Lesley Doyal

Rutgers University Press, 1995

What makes women sick? To an Ecuadorean woman, it’s nervios from constant worry about her children’s illnesses. To a woman working in a New Mexico electronics factory, it’s the solvents that leave her with a form of dementia. To a Ugandan woman, it’s HIV from her husband's sleeping with the widow of an AIDS patient. To a Bangladeshi woman, it’s a fatal infection following an IUD insertion. What they all share is a recognition that their sickness is somehow caused by  situations they face every day at home and at work.

In this clearly written and compelling book, Lesley Doyal investigates the effects of social, economic, and cultural conditions on women’s health. The “fault line” of gender that continues to divide all societies has, Doyal demonstrates, profound and pervasive consequences for the health of women throughout the world. Her broad synthesis highlights variations between men and women in patterns of health and illness, and it identifies inequalities in medical care that separate groups of women from each other. Doyal’s wide-ranging arguments, her wealth of data, her use of women’s voices from many cultures—and her examples of women mobilizing to find their own solutions—make this book required reading for everyone concerned with women’s health.

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cover of When Good Jobs Go Bad: Globalization, De-unionization, and Declining Job Quality in the North American Auto Industry

When Good Jobs Go Bad

Globalization, De-unionization, and Declining Job Quality in the North American Auto Industry

Rothstein, Jeffrey S

Rutgers University Press, 2016

From Chinese factories making cheap toys for export, to sweatshops in Bangladesh where name-brand garments are sewn—studies on the impact of globalization on workers have tended to focus on the worst jobs and the worst conditions. But in When Good Jobs Go Bad, Jeffrey Rothstein looks at the impact of globalization on a major industry—the North American auto industry—to reveal that globalization has had a deleterious effect on even the most valued of blue-collar jobs.
 
Rothstein argues that the consolidation of the Mexican and U.S.-Canadian auto industries, the expanding number of foreign automakers in North America, and the spread of lean production have all undermined organized labor and harmed workers. Focusing on three General Motors plants assembling SUVs—an older plant in Janesville, Wisconsin; a newer and more viable plant in Arlington, Texas; and a “greenfield site” (a brand-new, state-of-the-art facility) in Silao, Mexico—When Good Jobs Go Bad shows how global competition has made nonstop, monotonous, standardized routines crucial for the survival of a plant, and it explains why workers and their local unions struggle to resist. For instance, in the United States, General Motors forced workers to accept intensified labor by threatening to close plants, which led local unions to adopt “keep the plant open” as their main goal. At its new factory in Silao, GM had hand-picked the union—one opposed to strikes and committed to labor-management cooperation—before it hired the first worker. 
 
Rothstein’s engaging comparative analysis, which incorporates the viewpoints of workers, union officials, and management, sheds new light on labor’s loss of bargaining power in recent decades, and highlights the negative impact of globalization on all jobs, both good and bad, from the sweatshop to the assembly line.
 
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cover of Where FDI Goes in Decentralized Authoritarian Countries: The Politics of Taiwanese Site Selection for Investment in Mainland China

Where FDI Goes in Decentralized Authoritarian Countries

The Politics of Taiwanese Site Selection for Investment in Mainland China

Kelan Lu

University of Michigan Press, 2023

Among all the decentralized authoritarian countries, China is distinctive not only because of its emergence as one of the largest foreign direct investment (FDI) recipient countries with one of the highest levels of fiscal decentralization, but also because of the combination of its fiscal decentralization and the cadre promotion system as incentive institutions for attracting FDI inflows. China is an important case to empirically investigate the impact of fiscal autonomy on adversarial investment because it has become the largest investment destination of its long-term adversary, Taiwan, with Taiwanese FDI being among the largest FDI in mainland China. Given the special role played by local Chinese governments in attracting and hosting Taiwanese FDI, it is important to study the differences between where Taiwanese FDI and other FDI goes.

Given the uniqueness of the China case and that of Taiwanese investment in mainland China, this book explores the following questions. What determines where FDI goes in authoritarian countries like China? Fiscal decentralization has been argued to be a driving force of skyrocketing FDI inflows in China due to its impact on local governments’ incentives. However, is the impact of fiscal autonomy on FDI monolithic with the dynamically changing levels of FDI inflows at the lower administrative levels in China, especially with its special cadre management system? Does the impact of fiscal decentralization on FDI strengthen or weaken or stay the same when attracting FDI inflows from adversarial states? And what are the implications of such adversarial investment—especially as it diffuses from coastal cities to the interior regions, or from key cities to peripheral regions—of decentralized authoritarian countries targeted by this investment?

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cover of Which Way Goes Capitalism?: In Search of Adequate Policies in a Dramatically Changing World

Which Way Goes Capitalism?

In Search of Adequate Policies in a Dramatically Changing World

Daniel Daianu

Central European University Press, 2009

In this title, a well-known academic economist and former finance minister gives a lucid and well balanced overview of the current financial turbulences that have hit the developed economies. Strongly criticizing the excesses of neoliberal capitalism, Daianu calls for implementing necessary regulatory reforms in the financial sector and for restoration of a proper balance between the functions of the state and the market. Daianu goes back to some of the roots of the current crisis and the flaws or weaknesses of the global financial system. In doing so, he extensively discusses the monetary union of the Euro, and the critical question whether, how and when additional countries can and should join the club. This is a timely volume with a very strong and important warning.
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cover of Women and Work: Feminism, Labour, and Social Reproduction

Women and Work

Feminism, Labour, and Social Reproduction

Susan Ferguson

Pluto Press, 2019

"A masterful analysis of three centuries of feminist deliberations on work, carefully tracing how the fault lines of social-reproduction theory emerged."—Historical Materialism  
 
Feminism is once again on the political agenda. Across the world women are taking to the streets to protest unfair working conditions, abortion laws, and sexual violence. They are demanding decent wages, better schools and free childcare.
 
But why do some feminists choose to fight for more women CEOs, while others fight for a world without CEOs?
 
To understand these divergent approaches, Susan Ferguson looks at the ideas that have inspired women to protest, exploring the ways in which feminists have placed work at the center of their struggle for emancipation. Two distinct trajectories emerge: “equality feminism” and “social reproduction feminism.” Ferguson argues that socialists have too often embraced the “liberal” tendencies of equality feminism, while neglecting the insights of social reproduction feminism. Engaging with feminist anti-work critiques, She proposes that women's emancipation depends upon a radical reimagining of all labor and advocates for a renewed social reproduction framework as a powerful basis for an inclusive feminist politics. Chapters here include;
 
*The Rational-Humanist Roots of Equality Feminism
*Socialist Feminism: Two Approaches to Understanding Women's Work
*Equal Work for and against Capital
*Anti-Racist Feminism and Women's Work
*A Political Economy of 'Women's Work': Producing Patriarchal Capitalism
*Renewing Social Reproduction Feminism
*The Social Reproduction Strike: Life-Making Beyond Capitalism
 
Women and Work offers a timely and important look at the intersectionality of feminism and workers rights. Scholars and students will both find valuable insights into the history of feminist theory and social movement.
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cover of Women and the Media in Capitalism and Socialism: An Ecofeminist Inquiry

Women and the Media in Capitalism and Socialism

An Ecofeminist Inquiry

Edited by Martina Topic

Intellect Books, 2023

A close look at who shapes the news—and how that affects women.
 
Women and the Media in Capitalism and Socialism examines the news media in capitalist, socialist, and mixed governments to understand the position of women—both their work as journalists and their perception by readers and viewers. Drawing on case studies from around the world, the contributors ask: Who creates the news about women? Who is empowered to act as a news source? And what is the impact? The contributors then apply these questions to an array of examples, including sports journalists in the United Kingdom, reports about violence against women in Spain, news creation in Nigeria, and media representation of female politicians in Croatia.
 
Grounded in ecofeminism, the volume argues that women hold unequal positions in both capitalist and socialist societies and that these imbalances can only be erased through structural changes. This exciting international collaboration contributes to research on women in the media and grows our understanding of how gender inequities are experienced in different political economies.
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cover of Women in 1900: Gateway to the Political Economy of the 20th Century

Women in 1900

Gateway to the Political Economy of the 20th Century

Christine E. Bose

Temple University Press, 2001

This interdisciplinary volume provides a historical and international framework for understanding the changing role of women in the political economy of Latin America and the Caribbean. The contributors challenge the traditional policies, goals, and effects of development, and examine such topics as colonialism and women's subordination; the links to economic, social, and political trends in North America; the gendered division of paid and unpaid work; differing economic structures, cultural and class patterns; women's organized resistance; and the relationship of gender to class, race, and ethnicity/nationality.
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cover of Women on the Polish Labor Market

Women on the Polish Labor Market

Henryk Domanski

Central European University Press, 2001

Can women succeed? Is women's work appreciated equally to men's? Do women's salaries reflect the quality and quantity of work they do? Does gender make a difference? These questions, which often emerge even in democratic societies and free-market economies, are much more acute in the new democracies of Central and Eastern Europe. Gender has been an issue thus far neglected in transition economies. Drawing on official statistics, an international multidisciplinary team of sociologists, economists, demographers and geographers examines how women have been affected by the labor market reforms in Poland in the transition period of the 1990s. The issues discussed include occupational segregation, the social mobility of women, demographic change, the power and participation of women in public life, women's organizations, and labor market reform.
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cover of Work Of Cities

Work Of Cities

Susan E. Clarke

University of Minnesota Press, 1998

Examines the new role of cities in a global economy.

Are cities obsolete relics of an earlier era? In this pathbreaking book, Susan E. Clarke and Gary L. Gaile contend that contrary to this conventional wisdom, cities are growing in importance. Far from irrelevant, local governments are vital political arenas for the new work of cities-empowering their citizens to adapt and serve as catalysts for the global economy.

Using Robert Reich’s The Work of Nations as a point of departure, the authors argue that globalism, coupled with increasing disparities of wealth and power, changes not only the work of nations but also the role of communities. Clarke and Gaile begin by detailing the transformation of the United States to a postindustrial economy situated in a “global web.” They then examine the emergence of local entrepreneurial policy choices in the context of economic and political restructuring and in the absence of federal resources. Using empirical data to test assumptions about what leads cities to choose new policies, Clarke and Gaile explore local context through four case studies: Cleveland, Tacoma, Syracuse, and Jacksonville. They discuss human capital as the linchpin of globalization, arguing that analytical ability, information skills, and the capacity to innovate are all key to wealth creation. In conclusion, they contend that inattention to the decline in human and social capital will ultimately undermine any local development efforts-unless local policymakers craft responses to globalization that integrate rather than isolate citizens.The Work of Cities is both bold and nuanced, pragmatic yet compassionate in its recommendations. It is essential reading for anyone who cares about the fate of our metropolitan communities and the people who live there. 0-8166-2892-0 Cloth $47.95xx0-8166-2893-9 Paper $18.95240 pages 9 tables, 2 figures 5 7/8 x 9 July Globalization and Community Series, volume 1Translation inquiries: University of Minnesota Press
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cover of World Crisis Effects on Social Security in Latin America and the Caribbean: Lessons and Policies

World Crisis Effects on Social Security in Latin America and the Caribbean

Lessons and Policies

Carmelo Mesa-Lago

University of London Press, 2010

Written by a top scholar on social security in Latin America and the Caribbean, this book assesses the effects of the world economic crisis on social security and welfare in the region. Drawing on the impact of and lessons from previous crises, Carmelo Mesa-Lago identifies the strengths and weakness of Latin American social security before the current global crisis. He evaluates the event's actual and potential effects on pensions, health care, and social assistance programs, based on a taxonomy of three groups of countries. The book ends with a summary of policies adopted by some countries and the author's own recommendations on social policies to lessen the adverse outcomes of the financial crisis. Latin America's pioneering social-welfare reforms make this book important for other regions of the world, both developed and developing.
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cover of World War and World Peace in the Age of Digital Capitalism

World War and World Peace in the Age of Digital Capitalism

By Christian Fuchs

University of Westminster Press, 2025

World politics has become highly polarised, and a new world war has become more likely. The United Nations’ 2024 Pact for the Future expressed concerns about ‘the growing risks of a nuclear war which could pose an existential threat to humanity’. Will humanity descend into barbarism, or will we realise the dangers of our global problems, weapons of mass destruction, and climate catastrophe to avoid annihilation and create perpetual world peace?

In World War and World Peace in the Age of Digital Capitalism, Christian Fuchs asks: how do violence and war manifest themselves in global digital capitalism? How do digital capitalism and digital technologies manifest themselves in violence and warfare? What are the prospects for world peace today?

To prevent world war and advance world peace we need a better understanding of war and violence and their contexts and causes. We need to ask what war is, what violence is, what war and peace look like today and how they have changed in the 21st century. This book addresses these urgent questions and provides possible answers.

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