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Bullets into Bells: Poets & Citizens Respond to Gun Violence
By Dean Rader, Colum McCann, Brian Clements, Alexandra Teague. 2017
A powerful call to end American gun violence from celebrated poets and those most impactedFocused intensively on the crisis of…
gun violence in America, this volume brings together poems by dozens of our best-known poets, including Billy Collins, Patricia Smith, Natalie Diaz, Ocean Vuong, Danez Smith, Brenda Hillman, Natasha Threthewey, Robert Hass, Naomi Shihab Nye, Juan Felipe Herrera, Mark Doty, Rita Dove, and Yusef Komunyakaa.Each poem is followed by a response from a gun violence prevention activist, political figure, survivor, or concerned individual, including Nobel Peace Prize laureate Jody Williams; Senator Christopher Murphy; Moms Demand Action founder Shannon Watts; survivors of the Columbine, Sandy Hook, Charleston Emmanuel AME, and Virginia Tech shootings; and Samaria Rice, mother of Tamir, and Lucy McBath, mother of Jordan Davis.The result is a stunning collection of poems and prose that speaks directly to the heart and a persuasive and moving testament to the urgent need for gun control.Hotel Brasil
By Frei Betto, Jethro Soutar. 2014
According to the police, the victim was stabbed in the heart before the head was separated from the body. As…
the investigation continues other hotel clients are decapitated, usually with the head found delicately balanced on the knees of the sitting victim. A witty, touching account of life at the edge of Brazilian society, dressed up as a murder mystery.V6A
By John Mikhail Asfour, Elee Kraljii Gardiner. 2009
An anthology that refracts the experience of writers, new and established, who have been part of Vancouver's notorious Downtown Eastside…
in some way. Their work reappropriates the coding of the area and recasts the neighborhood as a site of creative energy and human dignity.Bioarchaeological and Forensic Perspectives on Violence
By Debra L. Martin, Cheryl P. Anderson. 2014
Every year, there are over 1. 6 million violent deaths worldwide, making violence one of the leading public health issues…
of our time. And with the 20th century just behind us, it's hard to forget that 191 million people lost their lives directly or indirectly through conflict. This collection of engaging case studies on violence and violent deaths reveals how violence is reconstructed from skeletal and contextual information. By sharing the complex methodologies for gleaning scientific data from human remains and the context they are found in, and complementary perspectives for examining violence from both past and contemporary societies, bioarchaeology and forensic anthropology prove to be fundamentally inseparable. This book provides a model for training forensic anthropologists and bioarchaeologists, not just in the fundamentals of excavation and skeletal analysis, but in all subfields of anthropology, to broaden their theoretical and practical approach to dealing with everyday violence.Cycle of Segregation: Social Processes and Residential Stratification
By Maria Krysan, Kyle Crowder. 2017
The Fair Housing Act of 1968 outlawed housing discrimination by race and provided an important tool for dismantling legal segregation.…
But almost fifty years later, residential segregation remains virtually unchanged in many metropolitan areas, particularly where large groups of racial and ethnic minorities live. Why does segregation persist at such high rates and what makes it so difficult to combat? In Cycle of Segregation, sociologists Maria Krysan and Kyle Crowder examine how everyday social processes shape residential stratification. Past neighborhood experiences, social networks, and daily activities all affect the mobility patterns of different racial groups in ways that have cemented segregation as a self-perpetuating cycle in the twenty-first century. Through original analyses of national-level surveys and in-depth interviews with residents of Chicago, Krysan and Crowder find that residential stratification is reinforced through the biases and blind spots that individuals exhibit in their searches for housing. People rely heavily on information from friends, family, and coworkers when choosing where to live. Because these social networks tend to be racially homogenous, people are likely to receive information primarily from members of their own racial group and move to neighborhoods that are also dominated by their group. Similarly, home-seekers who report wanting to stay close to family members can end up in segregated destinations because their relatives live in those neighborhoods. The authors suggest that even absent of family ties, people gravitate toward neighborhoods that are familiar to them through their past experiences, including where they have previously lived, and where they work, shop, and spend time. Because historical segregation has shaped so many of these experiences, even these seemingly race-neutral decisions help reinforce the cycle of residential stratification. As a result, segregation has declined much more slowly than many social scientists have expected. To overcome this cycle, Krysan and Crowder advocate multi-level policy solutions that pair inclusionary zoning and affordable housing with education and public relations campaigns that emphasize neighborhood diversity and high-opportunity areas. They argue that together, such programs can expand the number of destinations available to low-income residents and help offset the negative images many people hold about certain neighborhoods or help introduce them to places they had never considered. Cycle of Segregation demonstrates why a nuanced understanding of everyday social processes is critical for interrupting entrenched patterns of residential segregation.Mother to Mother
By Sindiwe Magona. 1998
Sindiwe Magona's novel Mother to Mother explores the South African legacy of apartheid through the lens of a woman who…
remembers a life marked by oppression and injustice. Magona decided to write this novel when she discovered that Fulbright Scholar Amy Biehl, who had been killed while working to organize the nation's first ever democratic elections in 1993, died just a few yards away from her own permanent residence in Guguletu, Capetown. She then learned that one of the boys held responsible for the killing was in fact her neighbor's son. Magona began to imagine how easily it might have been her own son caught up in the wave of violence that day. The book is based on this real-life incident, and takes the form of an epistle to Amy Biehl's mother. The murderer's mother, Mandisi, writes about her life, the life of her child, and the colonized society that not only allowed, but perpetuated violence against women and impoverished black South Africans under the reign of apartheid. The result is not an apology for the murder, but a beautifully written exploration of the society that bred such violence.Judging State-Sponsored Violence, Imagining Political Change
By Bronwyn Anne Leebaw. 2011
How should state-sponsored atrocities be judged and remembered? This controversial question animates contemporary debates on transitional justice and reconciliation. This…
book reconsiders the legacies of two institutions that transformed the theory and practice of transitional justice. Whereas the Nuremberg Trials exemplified the promise of legalism and international criminal justice, South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission promoted restorative justice and truth commissions. Leebaw argues that the two frameworks share a common problem: both rely on criminal justice strategies to investigate experiences of individual victims and perpetrators, which undermines their critical role as responses to systematic atrocities. Drawing on the work of influential transitional justice institutions and thinkers such as Judith Shklar, Hannah Arendt, José Zalaquett and Desmond Tutu, Leebaw offers a new approach to thinking about the critical role of transitional justice - one that emphasizes the importance of political judgment and investigations that examine complicity in, and resistance to, systematic atrocities.New Strategies for Social Innovation
By Steven G Anderson. 2014
Writing History in International Criminal Trials
By Richard Ashby Wilson. 2011
Why do international criminal tribunals write histories of the origins and causes of armed conflicts? Richard Ashby Wilson conducted research…
with judges, prosecutors, defense attorneys and expert witnesses in three international criminal tribunals to understand how law and history are combined in the courtroom. Historical testimony is now an integral part of international trials, with prosecutors and defense teams using background testimony to pursue decidedly legal objectives. In the Slobodan Milošević trial, the prosecution sought to demonstrate special intent to commit genocide by reference to a long-standing animus, nurtured within a nationalist mindset. For their part, the defense called historical witnesses to undermine charges of superior responsibility, and to mitigate the sentence by representing crimes as reprisals. Although legal ways of knowing are distinct from those of history, the two are effectively combined in international trials in a way that challenges us to rethink the relationship between law and history.How China Escaped the Poverty Trap
By Yuen Yuen Ang. 2016
Before markets opened in 1978, China was an impoverished planned economy governed by a Maoist bureaucracy. In just three decades…
it evolved into the world's second-largest economy and is today guided by highly entrepreneurial bureaucrats. In How China Escaped the Poverty Trap, Yuen Yuen Ang explains this astonishing metamorphosis. Rather than insist that either strong institutions of good governance foster markets or that growth enables good governance, Ang lays out a new, dynamic framework for understanding development broadly. Successful development, she contends, is a coevolutionary process in which markets and governments mutually adapt.By mapping this coevolution, Ang reveals a startling conclusion: poor and weak countries can escape the poverty trap by first harnessing weak institutions—features that defy norms of good governance—to build markets. Further, she stresses that adaptive processes, though essential for development, do not automatically occur. Highlighting three universal roadblocks to adaptation, Ang identifies how Chinese reformers crafted enabling conditions for effective improvisation.How China Escaped the Poverty Trap offers the most complete synthesis to date of the numerous interacting forces that have shaped China’s dramatic makeover and the problems it faces today. Looking beyond China, Ang also traces the coevolutionary sequence of development in late medieval Europe, antebellum United States, and contemporary Nigeria, and finds surprising parallels among these otherwise disparate cases. Indispensable to all who care about development, this groundbreaking book challenges the convention of linear thinking and points to an alternative path out of poverty traps.Confronting Poverty in Iraq: Main Findings
By World Bank. 2011
This report provides the most comprehensive and rigorous analysis of Iraqi income and expenditure in several decades. The report makes…
extensive use of the Iraq Household Socio-Economic Survey, the first nationwide income and expenditure survey since 1988. IHSES data is complemented income and expenditure data from a wide range of other measures of living standards, allowing us to analyze living standards in a holistic way. The analysis presented here was performed with two main goals-first, to inform the Government's Poverty Reduction Strategy; and second, to serve as a baseline for future assessments of changes in living standards and the identification of critical issues for deeper examination. Iraqi living standards have two unusual characteristics. First, they have fallen over the past generation. Second, they feature surprisingly little inequality. These characteristics are both rooted in Iraq's recent history of authoritarian government, war, military occupation, insurgency, and civil strife leading to infrastructure destruction and population displacement. There have been few opportunities for individuals to prosper from professional or entrepreneurial activities. Decades of neglected investment have resulted in deterioration of social services and economic infrastructure. Consequently, individuals have lacked capabilities to prosper and an investment climate conducive to prosperity. School enrollment and life expectancy have declined. Extremely low returns to education reflect the combination of poor educational quality and lack of employment opportunities. In terms of economic infrastructure, access to reliable electricity and water, and even access to paved roads are low, are further reflections of decades of neglect. While the upper end of the distribution has been pulled down by a lack of opportunities, the lower end has been supported by direct government provision of food. The Public Distribution System (PDS) provides 85 percent of food needs. While PDS has been useful as a safety net for the poor and the vulnerable, the system is expensive, inefficient, and fiscally risky. Indeed, PDS food rations account for a far greater share of public spending than does education or health. Going forward, Iraq faces two main challenges. First, although Iraq does not have to develop from scratch, it faces a formidable challenge in re-development. Second, a shift by the Government is required-from direct provision of basic subsistence toward investment in human capacities. The Government can provide an enabling environment through investments in economic infrastructure and services to business and citizens, thus allowing the population to make productive use of education and their own labor. Both challenges are now being taken up by the Poverty Reduction Strategy, which articulates a detailed set of required actions and outlines priorities for government spending.Violence and Vengeance
By Christopher R. Duncan. 1998
Between 1999 and 2000, sectarian fighting fanned across the eastern Indonesian province of North Maluku, leaving thousands dead and hundreds…
of thousands displaced. What began as local conflicts between migrants and indigenous people over administrative boundaries spiraled into a religious war pitting Muslims against Christians and continues to influence communal relationships more than a decade after the fighting stopped. Christopher R. Duncan spent several years conducting fieldwork in North Maluku, and in Violence and Vengeance, he examines how the individuals actually taking part in the fighting understood and experienced the conflict. Rather than dismiss religion as a facade for the political and economic motivations of the regional elite, Duncan explores how and why participants came to perceive the conflict as one of religious difference. He examines how these perceptions of religious violence altered the conflict, leading to large-scale massacres in houses of worship, forced conversions of entire communities, and other acts of violence that stressed religious identities. Duncan's analysis extends beyond the period of violent conflict and explores how local understandings of the violence have complicated the return of forced migrants, efforts at conflict resolution and reconciliation.Reducing Inequality for Shared Growth in China
By The World Bank. 2011
Guangdong, a province of over 93 million residents, is located on the southern coast of China, boarding with Hong Kong,…
China. As China's powerhouse for economic growth and a pioneer of reform and opening up, Guangdong has maintained an annual average GDP growth rate of 13.7 percent over the past three decades. Its historical achievements notwithstanding, Guangdong witnessed increased inequality and regional disparity. To assist the authority in developing a strategy for the new phase of reforms that promotes more inclusive and sustainable growth, Reducing Inequality for Shared Growth in Guangdong Province recommends a three-pillar approach: eliminating absolute poverty, reducing inequality in opportunities, and containing inequality in outcomes. The book also proposes a range of policy actions in these three broad areas. First, to further develop the social assistance program (i.e. the minimum living allowance program ) to address the issue of absolute poverty; Second, to improve income opportunities of the rural poor by better facilitating rural labor migration to non-farming jobs and urban labor markets, deepening rural finance reform, and providing better protection of their rights over land. Third, to invest in people through more equitable access to and financing of social services such as basic education, skills development, and health care. Further reform of the intergovernmental fiscal system is essential to the success of these efforts. This report will be of interest to central and sub-national policy makers, policy implementing agencies, researchers, development partners, and others working on economic and social development in China and in other countries. Guangdong's experience will offer great value to the rest of China and to other countries that are grappling with similar development challenges.Migration and Poverty: Towards Better Migration Opportunities for the Poor
By Marcin Sasin, Edmundo Murrugarra, Jennica Larrison. 2011
This volume uses recent research from the World Bank to document and analyze the bidirectional relationship between poverty and migration…
in developing countries. The case studies chapters compiled in this book (from Tanzania, Nepal, Albania and Nicaragua), as well as the last, policy-oriented chapter - illustrate the diversity of migration experience and tackle the complicated nexus between migration and poverty reduction. Two main messages emerge: Although evidence indicates that migration reduces poverty, it also shows that migration opportunities of the poor differ from that of the rest. In general, the evidence suggests that the poor either migrate less or migrate to low return destinations. As a consequence, many developing countries are not maximizing the poverty-reducing potential of migration. The main reason behind this outcome is difficulties in access to remunerative migration opportunities and the high costs associated with migrating. It is shown, for example, that reducing migration costs makes migration more pro-poor. The volume shows that developing countries' governments are not without means to improve this situation. Several of the country examples offer a few policy recommendations towards this end.The Pimping of Prostitution
By Julie Bindel. 2017
This book examines one of the most contested issues facing feminists, human rights activists and governments around the globe -…
the international sex trade. For decades, the liberal left has been conflicted as to whether pro-prostitution activists or abolitionists hold the correct view, and debates are ongoing as to who holds the key to the solutions facing the women and girls involved. Over the course of two years, Bindel conducted 250 interviews in almost 40 countries, cities and states, traveling around Europe, Asia, North America, Australia, New Zealand, and East and South Africa. Visiting legal brothels all around the world, Bindel got to know pimps, pornographers, survivors of the sex trade, and the women being sold by men classed as 'business entrepreneurs'. Whilst meeting feminist abolitionists, pro-prostitution campaigners, police and government officials, and the men who drive the demand, Bindel uncovered the lies, mythology and criminal activity that shroud this global trade, and suggests here a way forward for the women seeking to abolish the oldest oppression. Informed by the lived human experience of those interviewed, this book will be of great interest to feminists, students, criminal justice advocates, criminologists and human rights activists.The Invisible Poor: A Portrait of Rural Poverty in Argentina
By Dorte Verner, Gabriel Demombynes. 2010
'The Invisible Poor' seeks to raise the profile of the rural poor in Argentina, promote dialogue on rural poverty issues,…
provide the best currently available information about rural poverty, and offer a basis for discussions on how to expand household survey data collection to rural areas. Most previous work has been based on case studies or one-time surveys in a few provinces and consequently has been of limited use for drawing conclusions about rural conditions overall in Argentina. Largely because of data limitations, profound gaps exist in the understanding of rural poverty in Argentina. As a result, the rural poor have sometimes been neglected in policy discussions. This study does not directly address policy responses. Rather it seeks to provide an analytical basis for understanding the conditions of rural life, with the ultimate goal of helping policy makers improve the welfare of Argentina's rural poor through evidence-based policy.The main objective of this report is to help policymakers in the Caribbean design an agenda of policy actions to…
accelerate trade integration and growth and reduce poverty. The report is a joint response from the World Bank and the Organization of American States (OAS) to a demand statement from the member states of CARICOM, formulated by the Caribbean Regional Negotiating Machinery and the CARICOM Secretariat, to strengthen the analytical underpinnings of the linkages between trade, economic growth, and poverty. It aims at centering the Caribbean's next round of trade reforms and its overall agenda around trade on these key thematic areas. The report provides an overview of the economic and trade system context of the Caribbean, under which the new trade environment is operating. It then discusses the opportunities and challenges for the Caribbean associated with the new trade environment. It finally quantifies the gains from global trade integration using a dynamic macroeconomic analysis. The report provides policy priorities to accelerating Caribbean integration into the world economy and to reap the benefits of global competition. Each part of the report focuses on a key question and adds value by providing an in-depth analysis of the issues raised and laying the foundations for policy recommendations described in the last chapter of the report: * Part I (Overview of economic and trade system context): is Caribbean's economic and trade system sound enough to sustain the new era of its global trade relations which is being shaped? * Part II (Focuses on the analysis of the new opportunities and challenges of the new trade environment): what are the opportunities and challenges that the new trade environment offers to the Caribbean? * Part III (Presents an assessment of the impact of the EPA on growth and poverty using two types of macroeconomic models): what are the gains in terms of growth and poverty reduction of the recently negotiated EPA?Public Finance in China
By Jiwei Lou, Shuilin Wang. 2008
Since 1980, China's economy has been the envy of the world. Is annual growth rate of more than 9 percent…
during this period makes China today the world's fourth-largest economy. And this sustained growth has reduced the poverty rate from 60 percent of the population to less than 10 percent. However, such rapid growth has also increased inequalities in income and access to basic services and stressed natural resources. The government seeks to resolve these and other issues by creating a 'harmonious society' -- shifting priorities from the overriding pursuit of growth to more balanced economic and social development. This volume compiles analyses and insights from high-level Chinese policy makers and prominent international scholars that address the changes needed in public finance for success in the government's new endeavor. It examines such key policy issues as public finance and the changing role of the state; fiscal reform and revenue and expenditure assignments; intergovernmental relations and fiscal transfers; and financing and delivery of basic public goods such as compulsory education, innovation, public health, and social protection. And it offers concrete recommendations for immediate policy changes and for China's future reform agenda. 'Public Finance in China' is a must-read for specialists in public finance and for those seeking an understanding of the complex and daunting challenges China is facing.Shadowed Ground: America's Landscapes of Violence and Tragedy
By Kenneth E. Foote. 1997
Shadowed Ground explores how and why Americans have memorialized - or not - the sites of tragic and violent events…
spanning three centuries of history and every region of the country. For this revised edition, Kenneth Foote has written a new concluding chapter that looks at the evolving responses to recent acts of violence and terror, including the destruction of the Branch Davidian compound at Waco, Texas, the Oklahoma City bombing, the Columbine High School massacre, and the terrorist attacks of 9/11.Poverty and Social Exclusion in India
By World Bank Staff. 2011
Despite India's record of rapid economic growth and poverty reduction over recent decades, rising inequality in the country has been…
a subject of concern among policy makers, academics, and activists alike. Poverty and Social Exclusion in India focuses on social exclusion, which has its roots in India's historical divisions along lines of caste, tribe, and the excluded sex, that is, women. These inequalities are more structural in nature and have kept entire groups trapped, unable to take advantage of opportunities that economic growth offers. Culturally rooted systems perpetuate inequality, and, rather than a culture of poverty that afflicts disadvantaged groups, it is, in fact, these inequality traps that prevent these groups from breaking out. Combining rigorous quantitative research with a discussion of these underlying processes, this book finds that exclusion can be explained by inequality in opportunities, inequality in access to markets, and inequality in voice and agency. This report will be of interest to policy makers, development practitioners, social scientists, and academics working to foster equality in India.