Social Development
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Deconstructing Development Discourse
Writing from diverse locations, contributors critically examine some of the key terms in current development discourse. Why should language matter to those who are doing development? Surely, there are more urgent things to do than sit around mulling over semantics? But language does matter. Whether...
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Rights-Based Approaches
Case studies that provide compelling conclusions about the differences between rights-based and more traditional projects, and their relative impacts. The failure to respect, protect, or fulfil human rights is a fundamental and leading obstacle to economic development and social justice. Practically...
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A New Weave of Power, People and Politics
Lisa VeneKlasen, Valerie Miller
This field manual provides a well-tested approach for promoting citizen participation. It breaks down the traditional boxes separating human rights, rule of law, development, and governance, and reconnects them in order to create an integrated approach to rights-based political empowerment. A New We...
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How Change Happens
Has development thinking become too narrow and specialised? Does it fail to draw on learning from outside the realm of development studies about how social change happens? This report presents an overview of approaches used to explain social change from a wide range of academic perspectives, from hi...
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Promoting Local Innovation in Sudan
The aims of this publication are to focus on the collection and classification of Sudanese local innovations using a "bottom-up" approach, to take into account the historical depth and the potential use that may highlight the continuity and changes in local innovations as indicators of society trans...
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Urban Futures
Poverty and economic growth are intrinsically related but are not always synonymous. Human wellbeing is as important to economic growth as growth is to wellbeing. Poverty is multi-dimensional, encompassing both income and non-income related factors. Mobility, aspiration, dignity, respect, knowledge,...
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Funding Local Governance
International development is replete with examples of failure. This has led to notes of cynicism being struck in commentaries on development, whether in relation to failed states, donor ineptitude or the unaccountability of NGOs. Precisely because the grand visions have not been realized and macro-l...
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Play Fair at the Olympics
Nike, along with Adidas, Reebok, Fila, Puma, ASICS, and Mizuno, are investing billions of dollars in advertising and branding for the Olympics. For these corporate giants of the sportswear industry, the Athens games provide an opportunity to expand profits and build markets through an association wi...
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Social Progress and Sustainable Development
Neil Thin sets out to clarify the meaning of the social dimensions of development, with an emphasis on sustainability. He outlines a conceptual framework to facilitate better communication and understanding as a basis for improved policies, implementation strategies and learning strategies. Thin rev...
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Development and Culture
Most development policies and interventions are based on an assumption that 'modernisation' in the Western sense is the ultimate goal of human societies. Culture is therefore regarded either as an impediment to progress or as something outside the economic and political spheres and consigned to area...