In Globalizing in Hard Times, Leonardo Martinez-Diaz examines the sudden and substantial increase in cross-border ownership of commercial banks in countries where bank ownership had long been restricted by local rules. Many parties—the World Bank and the IMF, the world's largest commercial banks, their home governments, and their negotiators—had been pushing for a relaxation of ownership rules since the early 1980s and into the 1990s, when bank profitability levels in advanced industrial societies went flat. In their hunt for higher returns on assets, the major banks looked to expand business overseas, but through the mid-1990s their efforts to impose more liberal ownership regimes in nationalist countries proved largely unsuccessful.Martinez-Diaz illustrates the ongoing political resistance to liberalized ownership rules in Mexico, Indonesia, Brazil, and South Korea. He then demonstrates the importance of a series of events—the Mexican crisis and the Brazilian banking shock in 1994–1995 and the Asian crisis of 1997–1998 among them—in finally knocking down barriers to foreign ownership of banks. After these upheavals, policymakers who were worried about their political survival—and who were sometimes pressed by the IMF and foreign governments—reshaped the regulatory environment in key emerging markets. Self-proclaimed global banks eagerly grasped the opportunity to expand their operations worldwide, but after the initial shock, domestic politics reasserted themselves, often diluting the new, liberal rules.
This book traces the evolution of Atomic Physics from precision spectroscopy to the manipulation of atoms at a billionth of a degree above absolute zero. Quantum worlds can be simulated and fundamental theories, such as General Relativity and Quantum Electrodynamics, can be tested with table-top experiments.
This book presents an early modern Jesuit attitude towards Hindu and Ethiopian strains of asceticism. The Jesuits’ descriptions of both the yogis and the Ethiopian renunciates were marked by ambivalence. While critical of these ascetics, the missionaries also pointed out admirable facets of their comportment. In both the Society of Jesus’ positive and negative impressions, there are glaring ethnocentric views that shift the spotlight onto the other’s flaws. Like many historical cases, these perceptions evolved into a sort of inverted mirror image of the self that revealed differences between the European Catholic and the native renunciate.
Machine generated contents note: -- Preface -- Chapter 1 - Exile and Post-Exile in Analytical Perspective -- Chapter 2 - Escape, Deportation and Exile: The Contours of Institutionalized Exclusion -- Chapter 3 - Exile and Diaspora Politics: Mobilizing to Undo Exclusion -- Chapter 4 - Diaspora and Home Country Initiatives, Transnational Networks and State Policies -- Chapter 5 - Surviving Authoritarianism, Contributing to the Agenda of Democratization -- Chapter 6 - Undoing Exile? Remembering, Imagining, Envisioning -- Chapter 7 - The Transformational Role of Culture and Education: Impacting the Future -- Chapter 8 - Shifting Frontiers of Citizenship -- Conclusions -- About the Authors -- Index
Water is an important natural resource which forms the core of the ecological system. Human use of water depends on ambient water quality and human alterations of the landuse have an extensive influence on water quality. Water is typically referred to as polluted when its quality is adversely affected by contaminants and undergoes a marked shift in its capability to support the biological communities. The book is written for research scholars, hydrologists and environmentalists and especially students.
This is a bold new study of the recent emergence of democracy in Latin America. Leonardo Avritzer shows that traditional theories of democratization fall short in explaining this phenomenon. Scholars have long held that the postwar stability of Western Europe reveals that restricted democracy, or "democratic elitism," is the only realistic way to guard against forces such as the mass mobilizations that toppled European democracies after World War I. Avritzer challenges this view. Drawing on the ideas of Jürgen Habermas, he argues that democracy can be far more inclusive and can rely on a sphere of autonomous association and argument by citizens. He makes this argument by showing that democratic collective action has opened up a new "public space" for popular participation in Latin American politics. Unlike many theorists, Avritzer builds his case empirically. He looks at human rights movements in Argentina and Brazil, neighborhood associations in Brazil and Mexico, and election-monitoring initiatives in Mexico. Contending that such participation has not gone far enough, he proposes a way to involve citizens even more directly in policy decisions. For example, he points to experiments in "participatory budgeting" in two Brazilian cities. Ultimately, the concept of such a space beyond the reach of state administration fosters a broader view of democratic possibility, of the cultural transformation that spurred it, and of the tensions that persist, in a region where democracy is both new and different from the Old World models.
Bridge Engineering: A Global Perspective is a comprehensive review of how we create and maintain bridges - one of the most vital yet vulnerable parts of our infrastructure - and how we got where we are today.Its 800 illustrated pages in full colourprovide a unique and authoritative reference for practitioners, researchers and students alike on the state-of-the-art of bridge engineering world-wide, from local community footbridges to vast multi-modal crossings between nations.
In the past, foreign shocks arrived to national economies mainly through trade channels, and transmissions of such shocks took time to come into effect. However, after capital globalization, shocks spread to markets almost immediately. Despite the increasing macroeconomic dangers that the situation generated at emerging markets in the South, nobody at the North was ready to acknowledge the pro-cyclicality of the financial system and the inner weakness of “decontrolled” financial innovations because they were enjoying from the “great moderation.” Monetary policy was primarily centered on price stability objectives, without considering the mounting credit and asset price booms being generated by market liquidity and the problems generated by this glut. Mainstream economists, in turn, were not majorly attracted in integrating financial factors in their models. External pressures on emerging market economies (EMEs) were not eliminated after 2008, but even increased as international capital flows augmented in relevance thereafter. Initially economic authorities accurately responded to the challenge, but unconventional monetary policies in the US began to create important spillovers in EMEs. Furthermore, in contrast to a previous surge in liquidity, funds were now transmitted to EMEs throughout the bond market. The perspective of an increase in US interest rates by the FED is generating a reversal of expectations and a sudden flight to quality. Emerging countries’ currencies began to experience higher volatility levels, and depreciation movements against a newly strong US dollar are also increasingly observed. Consequently, there are increasing doubts that the “unexpected” favorable outcome observed in most EMEs at the aftermath of the Global Financial Crisis (GFC) would remain.
This book is a systematic inquiry of conspiracy theories across Latin America. Conspiracy theories project not only an interpretive logic of reality that leads people to believe in sinister machinations, but also imply a theory of power that requires mobilizing and taking action. Through history, many have fallen for the allure of conspiratorial narratives, even the most unsubstantiated and bizarre. This book traces the main conspiracy theories developing in Latin America since late colonial times and into the present, and identifies the geopolitical, socioeconomic and cultural scenarios of their diffusion and mobilization. Students and scholars of Latin American history and politics, as well as comparatists, will find in this book penetrating analyses of major conspiratorial designs in this multi-state region of the Americas.
From the award-winning team behind the International Encyclopaedia of Political Science... Moving beyond mainstream "traditional" approaches to bring you a new advanced-level introduction to political science. A perfect introduction for postgraduates who are new to political science, as well as upper-level undergraduates looking to broaden and deepen their understanding of core topics, this progressive account: Guides you through all key areas of political science: origins, methodological foundations, key topics, and current issues Takes an international and pluralist perspective with all issues explored in a comparative way related to different cultural and historical contexts Includes pulled-out descriptions of major concepts, further reading and self-assessment questions at the end of each chapter.
This book evaluates democratic innovations to allow a full analysis of the different practices that have emerged recently in Latin America. These innovations, often viewed in a positive light by a large section of democratic theorists, engendered the idea that all innovations are democratic and all democratic innovations are able to foster citizenship – a view challenged by this work. The book also evaluates the expansion of innovation to the field of judicial institutions. It will benefit democratic theorists by presenting a realistic analysis of the positive and negative aspects of democratic innovation.
This Element focuses on Latin American fossil fuel producer countries and how they are dealing with the transition towards a greener energy matrix. The challenges involved are multiple and ethical in substance. In particular, a worldwide expansion in clean energies would reduce climate change, physical risks. A rapid transition, however, induces the irruption of a new (financial) risk. The energy transition, in addition, could be thought of as a new arena for political disputes. Finally, it evaluates the relevance of monetary policy and financial regulation to tackle the issue from a macro perspective. Energy transition, however, have also long-term but uncertain consequences on the national economy. Henceforth, and in order to minimize risks, a long-term, strategic vision of the challenge confronted by the region becomes mandatory. To tackle all these problems, this Element profits from contributions of different disciplines.
A major voice in liberation theology and once silenced for a year by the pope for his outspoken views, Leonardo Boff here presents a collection of his controversial essays attacking poverty and political persecution. As a Brazilian, Boff is witness to, and active in, the liberation movement within the Catholic Church in Latin America. He claims that the Church there is redefining itself as a modern, populist movement. It is [in Latin America], writes Boff, that the Church of the future is being molded. There are more Catholics in Latin America than on any other continent. Soon more than half of the members of the Church will live here. European countries, with their demographic decline and meager religious creativity - their theology, liturgy, and pastoral ministry consisting almost entirely of syntheses of material drawn from the past - are gradually losing their universal relevance . . . It is in Latin America that the Church's principal new challenges are appearing. What is the relationship between the gospel and the liberation of the oppressed? How can Christian love be reconciled with participation in the wild class struggle taking place around us? How can Christianity help overcome the relations of international injustice prevailing in the unequal relationships between rich countries and poor ones? Advocating a sympathetic but critical relationship between liberation theology and Marxism, Boff claims that historical materialism is the social - scientific method conducive to liberation theology. He also discusses the political dimension of faith, the Church's role in the struggle for human rights, the nature of the popular Church, the rights of the poor and the oppressed, and the kind of future they may anticipate. Boff's bold reflections on these and other issues make vital reading for anyone concerned with faith and justice in today's world.
Virtues are values underlying human practices. We are at the dawn of a new era, an era of global ethics requiring some core virtues. These core virtues are hospitality, co-living, respect, tolerance, and communality. Book 1 treats the virtue of hospitality that is a right and a duty of all, and which is still to be discovered and practiced unconditionally. Book 2 deals with the virtues of co-living, respect, and tolerance, which are important virtues if the peoples of the earth are to live together in peace in our common home, the planet Earth. Finally, Book 3 deals with the virtue of communality; this is a very important virtue because a large part of humanity experiences hunger and thirst, which is something scandalous in this day and age, and which demonstrates a lack of humanity, because we possess the technical means and political framework to resolve this situation. If these core virtues become a reality, they will transform human practices into something beneficial both to human beings and to the planet Earth, our common home.
This book provides a detailed survey of the methods that were recently developed to handle advanced versions of the blind source separation problem, which involve several types of nonlinear mixtures. Another attractive feature of the book is that it is based on a coherent framework. More precisely, the authors first present a general procedure for developing blind source separation methods. Then, all reported methods are defined with respect to this procedure. This allows the reader not only to more easily follow the description of each method but also to see how these methods relate to one another. The coherence of this book also results from the fact that the same notations are used throughout the chapters for the quantities (source signals and so on) that are used in various methods. Finally, among the quite varied types of processing methods that are presented in this book, a significant part of this description is dedicated to methods based on artificial neural networks, especially recurrent ones, which are currently of high interest to the data analysis and machine learning community in general, beyond the more specific signal processing and blind source separation communities.
The history of Latin American journalism is ultimately the story of a people who have been silenced over the centuries, primarily Native Americans, women, peasants, and the urban poor. This book seeks to correct the record propounded by most English-language surveys of Latin American journalism, which tend to neglect pre-Columbian forms of reporting, the ways in which technology has been used as a tool of colonization, and the Latin American conceptual foundations of a free press. Challenging the conventional notion of a free marketplace of ideas in a region plagued with serious problems of poverty, violence, propaganda, political intolerance, poor ethics, journalism education deficiencies, and media concentration in the hands of an elite, Ferreira debunks the myth of a free press in Latin America. The diffusion of colonial presses in the New World resulted in the imposition of a structural censorship with elements that remain to this day. They include ethnic and gender discrimination, technological elitism, state and religious authoritarianism, and ideological controls. Impoverished, afraid of crime and violence, and without access to an effective democracy, ordinary Latin Americans still live silenced by ruling actors that include a dominant and concentrated media. Thus, not only is the press not free in Latin America, but it is also itself an instrument of oppression.
This book analyzes the relative balance of bargaining power between governments and the banks in charge of underwriting their debt during the first financial globalization. Brazil and Mexico, both indebted countries that underwent major changes in reputation and negotiating power as they faced financial crises, provide valuable case studies of government strategies for obtaining the best possible outcomes. Previous literature has focused on bankers’ perspectives and emphasized that debtors were submissive during negotiations, but Weller finds that governments’ negotiating power varied over time. He presents a new analytical framework that interprets when and why officials were likely to negotiate loans more or less effectively, with newly uncovered primary sources from debtors’ and creditors’ archives suggesting key causes of variation: fiscal accounts, political stability, and creditors’ exposure and reputation.
What explains the engagement of low-income young people in media initiatives for political mobilization and social change in everyday life? Favela Media Activism: Counterpublics for Human Rights in Brazil responds to this question using an in-depth ethnographic and interdisciplinary study about the trajectories in media activism among young residents of low-income and violence-ridden favelas in socially unequal Rio de Janeiro. Leonardo Custódio provides multifaceted analyses of how favela youth engage in individual and collective media activist initiatives despite social class constraints and neoliberal imperatives in their everyday life. This book details processes experienced by young favela residents while becoming individuals who act to challenge and change patterns of discrimination, governmental neglect and drug-related violence. It is an important resource for scholars interested in the nuances of political engagement among marginalized youth in today’s world of hyper-connectivity, information abundance, and the persistence of racial and social inequalities.
• Provides a self-contained and consistent treatment of the subject that does not require advanced previous knowledge of the field. • Explores the subject with a new focus on gravitational waves and astrophysical relativity, unlike current introductory textbooks. • Fully up-to-date, containing the latest developments and discoveries in the field.
How does the state separate music from noise? How can such a filtering apparatus shape the content and form of sound production in the city? As a marker of co-presence to the hearing body, sound is always open to (or rather opens up) the politics of shared existence. In the throes of the post-dictatorship period, Brazil's legislative and executive branches implemented a series of sweeping measures to address quality of life concerns, including environmental pollution and urban inequality. In São Paulo, noise control became a recurrent controversy, growing in size and scale between the 1990s and 2010s. Together with the much-debated fear of crime and the socioeconomic and cultural tensions between the rich urban center and the poor peripheries, such ecological agendas against noise as a harmful pollutant have reconfigured the presence of environmental sounds in the city. In this book, Cardoso argues that the framing of specific sounds as unavoidable, unnecessary, or as harmful "noise" has been an effective strategy to organize spaces and administer group behavior in this rapidly expanding city. He focuses on two interrelated processes. First, the series of institutional regulatory mechanisms that turn sounds into the all-embracing "noise" susceptible to state intervention. Second, the constant attempts of interested groups in either attaching or detaching specific sounds (musical events, industrial noise, traffic noise, religious sounds, etc.) from regulatory scrutiny. Sound-politics is the dynamic that emerges from both processes - the channels through which sounds enter (and leave) the sphere of state regulation.
Liberating Grace' is an important book on God's presence to human life that relates the new liberationist perspective to the best of the great theological tradition. The author unfolds the meaning of Christian grace in the light of the Latin American experience of dependency and exploitation. He shows that the turn to political involvement does not produce a detachment from the religious roots.--Gregory BaumMcGill UniversityLeonardo Boff's 'Liberating Grace' is a remarkable work. Against the background of traditional interpretations which may have fit the medieval or ancient world, Boff insists that grace must be understood within history and in terms of the kinds of experience we have today. Grace is no longer thought of as a substance but is discovered in the experience of relationships. God's liberating presence in the world permeates both personal and social relations, and this points to the political and economic arenas as keys to understanding God's free gift of love for humanity. Theology from Brazil has the aroma, flavor, and stimulation of something genuine, a grace which permeates all aspects of personal and social experience within the natural world. Boff works this view into various aspects of doctrine, including views of the Incarnation, Holy Spirit, and the Trinity. Chiefly, however, he makes 'grace' into a relevant doctrine for twentieth century living in the Third and other worlds.--Randolph Crump MillerHorace Bushnell Professor of Christian NurtureYale University Divinity School
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