bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Technological Innovation and the Power of Leapfrogging
Authors: Cilliers Jakkie 
Published: April 2021

AbstractTechnological innovation and the notion of leapfrogging are imperative to Africa’s future and will shape development on the continent in ways that are difficult to anticipate. However, the impact of the shale and tight oil revolution in the USA demonstrates the potential of new technologies to leapfrog aspects of traditional development. This is most likely in the renewable energy space provided the challenges associated with energy storage can be overcome. Already the uptake of mobile phones and the internet have brought financial services to millions and mobile telephony is at the forefront of social change in Africa. Building on the example of what is happening in Ghana that was explored in Chapter 9, this chapter models the impact of a Leapfrogging scenario.
Aid, Remittances and Foreign Direct Investment
Authors: Cilliers Jakkie 
Published: April 2021

AbstractCilliers sheds light on the evolving global aid, investment and remittance landscape and what it means for Africa, with special attention to China’s growing presence on the continent, and compares that with others. Collectively the EU and its member states provide most aid although the USA is Africa’s largest single aid provider. Aid will remain important for low-income countries but its importance is declining in favour of a focus on the need to attract larger volumes of foreign direct investment (FDI). An External Support scenario explores the impact of heightened aid, remittances and FDI on Africa’s development trajectory.
Health
Authors: Cilliers Jakkie 
Published: April 2021

AbstractIn this chapter Cilliers covers Africa’s unique epidemiological history from the early migration of homo sapiens to the devastation of HIV/AIDS and, more recently, the unfolding impact of COVID-19. It explains how humans’ proximity to nature, slow urbanisation and Africa’s distinct climatic conditions have led to an unusually high burden of communicable diseases, particularly the HIV/AIDS pandemic. The chapter also explains the double-burden of communicable and non-communicable disease evident in Africa. The chapter highlights the central role that infrastructural improvements and urban planning play in supporting better health outcomes and impact that poor basic infrastructure and lack of urban planning has in much of Africa. The chapter places a particular emphasis on the central role of potable water and water-borne sanitation in preventing the spread of disease. Finally, scenario analysis is used to demonstrate the relationship between health and economics.
Getting to Africa’s Demographic Dividend
Authors: Cilliers Jakkie 
Published: April 2021

AbstractIn this chapter, Cilliers defines the demographic dividend and explains its relationship to economic growth, with a focus on the African continent. It first covers the fundamentals of the relationship between population and economics, then offers an in-depth discussion of two key concepts, the demographic transition and demographic dividend. The chapter demonstrates that sub-Saharan Africa’s high fertility rates are a drag on development rather than an advantage, as the region can only expect to enjoy a demographic dividend after mid-century. It then uses scenario analysis to demonstrate that, given the right policy conditions, Africa can accelerate population-driven economic growth by reducing its fertility rate through interventions in education, infrastructure, human capital and, most importantly, women’s empowerment.
Boosting Education
Authors: Cilliers Jakkie 
Published: April 2021

AbstractIn this chapter Cilliers provides an overview of trends in education in Africa and compares that with progress in other regions. In addition to a review of common educational outcomes such as measuring years of schooling, he places attention on the poor quality of education and roles of gender exclusion. That is followed by a summary of future education requirements and a scenario, Boosting Education, that explores the impact of improvements in the quality and quantity of education in Africa while taking advantage of technology to promote learning outcomes and human development.
The Future of Work in Africa
Authors: Cilliers Jakkie 
Published: April 2021

AbstractIn this chapter, Cilliers addresses the challenge of widespread unemployment in Africa, and how trends collectively labelled as the ‘future of work’ could unfold on the continent. It describes the differences between the ways in which Africa will likely experience the effects of automation and digitisation on the labour market, and argues that the fourth industrial revolution is less a threat to jobs in Africa than in developed economies. Nevertheless, clear action is needed. Using Ghana as an example, the chapter explores innovative approaches to expanding inclusion in the formal sector, including enabling policies for financial inclusion and increased revenue collection. In addition, it speaks to Africa’s readiness to benefit from the emergent ‘gig economy’, and other forms of labour flexibilisation.
Visualizing Urban Social–Ecological–Technological Systems
Authors: Sauter Daniel , Randhawa Jaskirat , Tomateo Claudia , McPhearson Timon 
Published: April 2021

AbstractThe Urban Systems Lab (USL) Dataviz Platform is an interactive web application to visualize Social, Ecological, and Technological Systems (SETS). This platform is being used to encourage participatory processes, produce new knowledge, and facilitate collaborative analysis within nine Urban Resilience to Weather-related Extremes (UREx) Sustainability Research Network cities. It allows seamless shifts across contexts, scales, and perspectives for analysis within the SETS framework. How is digital space conceptualized for urban analysis and interventions? What is the capacity for reciprocal relationships between digital and physical space? How do we visually understand urban systems and complex spatial relationships? This chapter provides a comprehensive overview of the application stack and the different representational categories embedded in the Dataviz Platform. Offering a common visual language to various stakeholders, we explore new ground as we believe it has the potential to change how we think about, plan, and design our cities. (“Map devices such as a frame, scale, orientation, projection, indexing and naming reveal artificial geographies that remain unavailable to human eyes.” (Corner,.Cosgrove (ed), Mappings, Reaktion Books, London, 1999)
Social, Ecological, and Technological Strategies for Climate Adaptation
Authors: Kim Yeowon , Mannetti Lelani M. , Iwaniec David M. , Grimm Nancy B. , Berbés-Blázquez Marta , Markolf Samuel 
Published: April 2021

AbstractResilient cities are able to persist, grow, and even transform while keeping their essential identities in the face of external forces like climatechange, which threatens lives, livelihoods, and the structures and processes of the urban environment (United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction, How to make cities more resilient: a handbook for local government leaders. Switzerland, Geneva, 2017). Scenario development is a novel approach to visioning resilient futures for cities. As an instrument for synthesizing data and envisioning urban futures, scenarios combine diverse datasets such as biophysical models, stakeholder perspectives, and demographic information (Carpenter et al. Ecol Soc 20:10, 2015). As a tool to envision alternative futures, participatoryscenario development explores, identifies, and evaluates potential outcomes and tradeoffs associated with the management of social–ecological change, incorporating multiple stakeholder’s collaborative subjectivity (Galafassi et al. Ecol Soc 22:2, 2017). Understanding the current landscape of city planning and governance approaches is important in developing city-specific scenarios. In particular, assessing municipal planning strategies through the lens of interactive social–ecological–technological systems (SETS) provides useful insight into the dynamics and interrelationships of these coupled systems (da Silva et al. Sustain Dev 4(2):125–145, 2012). An assessment of existing municipal strategies can also be used to inform future adaptation scenarios and strategic plans addressing extreme weather events. With the scenario development process guiding stakeholders in generating goals and visions through participatory workshops, the content analysis of governance planning documents from the SETS perspective provides key insight on specific strategies that have been considered (or overlooked) in cities. In this chapter, we (a) demonstrate an approach to examine how cities define and prioritize climate adaptation strategies in their governance planning documents, (b) examine how governance strategies address current and future climate vulnerabilities as exemplified by nine cities in North and Latin America where we conducted a content analysis of municipal planning documents, and (c) suggest a codebook to explore the diverse SETS strategies proposed to address climate challenges—specifically related to extreme weather events such as heat, drought, and flooding.
Setting the Stage for Co-Production
Authors: Cook Elizabeth M. , Berbés-Blázquez Marta , Mannetti Lelani M. , Grimm Nancy B. , Iwaniec David M. , Muñoz-Erickson Tischa A. 
Published: April 2021

AbstractParticipatory scenario visioning aims to expose, integrate, and reconcile perspectives and expectations about a sustainable, resilient future from a variety of actors and stakeholders. This chapter considers the settings in which transdisciplinary participatory visioning takes place, highlighting lessons learned from the Urban Resilience to Extremes Sustainability Research Network (UREx SRN). It reflects on the benefits of engaging in the co-production process and the challenges that must be considered amid this process.
Assessing Future Resilience, Equity, and Sustainability in Scenario Planning
Authors: Berbés-Blázquez Marta , Grimm Nancy B. , Cook Elizabeth M. , Iwaniec David M. , Muñoz-Erickson Tischa A. , Hobbins Vivian , Wahl Darin 
Published: April 2021

AbstractIn the absence of strong international agreements, many municipal governments are leading efforts to build resilience to climate change in general and to extreme weather events in particular. However, it is notoriously difficult to guide and activate processes of change in complex adaptive systems such as cities. Participatory scenario planning with city professionals and members of civil society provides an opportunity to coproduce positive visions of the future. Yet, not all visions are created equal. In this chapter, we introduce the Resilience, Equity, and Sustainability Qualitative (RESQ) assessment tool that we have applied to compare positive scenario visions for cities in the USA and Latin America. We use the tool to examine the visions of the two desert cities in the UrbanResilience to Extreme Events Sustainability Research Network (UREx SRN), which are Hermosillo (Mexico) and Phoenix (United States).
IOs and Climate Change: Toward Global Eco-Social Policy
Authors: Lakeman Silvana 
Published: April 2021

AbstractIn the twenty-first century, climate change poses a major challenge to the work of IOs. This chapter contextualizes the historical shift from more compartmentalized understandings of climate change at the IO level, toward the current understanding of climate change as a pervasive threat to social policy across various issue areas. Fueled by ongoing discourse surrounding the Sustainable Development Agenda at the United Nations, a multiplicity of IOs are framing social policy issues in relation to climate change that may have traditionally been viewed as largely separate. The cross-cutting nature of the issue for IOs is highlighted, and as illustrated via an exploration of climate insurance as a social policy tool, climate change has led to compelling developments regarding the archetypal roles of IOs as actors of soft governance, raising questions for the future of IOs in the context of climate change and social policy engagement.
Water as Global Social Policy—International Organizations, Resource Scarcity, and Environmental Security
Authors: Schmidt Jeremy J. 
Published: April 2021

AbstractWater is an important area of global social policy. This chapter provides historical context for understanding how international organizations developed a distinctly global orientation to water policy alongside the emergence of global hydrology in the mid-twentieth century. Subsequently, international organizations linked concerns over water scarcity to integrated approaches to resource management. As human impacts on the global water system accelerated into the twenty-first century, international organizations influenced the shift from concerns over resource scarcity to those over environmental security. Water security is now central to how international organizations frame and respond to risks affecting interconnected environmental and economic systems.
International Organizations and the Architecture of Arguments in Global Social Governance
Authors: Martens Kerstin , Niemann Dennis , Kaasch Alexandra 
Published: April 2021

AbstractThe concluding chapter resumes the arguments made in the introduction to this volume. It summarizes the empirical findings of the individual contributions and highlights prevailing cross-cutting issues and themes. It also depicts further and future avenues of research resulting from this volume. Overall, it becomes evident that International organizations (IOs) have been part of the architecture of arguments in global social governance for a long time. They have been populating diverse social fields in which they more often cooperate or coexist in issue-related or individual regional niches than contest each other. However, they often share a field with other actors, too. IOs have also proven strong in exercising soft governance as the broadcasters of new ideas. Thus, they have cognitive authority over their specific field. However, birth characteristics, such as membership rules or the design of decision-taking, as well as path-dependencies influence IO activities and discourses.
International Organizations’ Involvement in Youth Unemployment as a Global Policy Field, and the Global Financial Crisis
Authors: Fergusson Ross 
Published: April 2021

AbstractTo date, global social policy has afforded minimal attention to the ways International Organizations (IOs) have responded to youth unemployment as an important and distinctive policy field. This chapter redresses this gap in the literature by means of a critical analysis of the governance capacities of the key IOs (particularly the International Labour Organization (ILO) and the World Bank (WB)), toward developing a wider understanding of modes of global social governance. The chapter establishes the historical context of multiple IOs’ engagements in this policy field. It focuses on the evolving relationships between the ILO and the WB and their construction of, and withdrawal from, partnerships that variously facilitated and limited the pursuit of their respective strategies and goals for alleviating youth unemployment. Focusing on the ILO’s and the WB’s policy discourses, the chapter traces the trajectories of joint partnerships that were dissolved, and of externally facing partnerships that better reflect distinctive ILO and WB priorities.
International Organizations and Global Labor Standards
Authors: Römer Friederike , Henninger Jakob , Le Thuy Dung 
Published: April 2021

AbstractThis chapter compares how three International and two regional Organizations, namely the ILO, the WTO, and the World Bank, as well as ASEAN and Mercosur, approach the global governance of labor standards. Defining ‘labor standards’ is notoriously difficult. We therefore use Freedom of Association and Collective Bargaining (FACB) rights as a benchmark to assess the positions taken by the five regional organizations. We argue that two main discourses have been pursued in the global debate, a ‘social’ discourse, and a ‘neoliberal’ discourse. We find that organizations whose intrinsic features allow for an institutionalized representation of workers’ interests pursue variations of the social discourse, whereas a neoliberal position predominates in organizations where this representation is lacking. This is true both at the international and regional level. Moreover, we show that the coexistence of these two conflicting discourses has led to contestation, but also to exchange and cooperation. We furthermore outline to what extent the two discourses have changed over time. We conclude the chapter with a discussion of future challenges for the global governance of labor standards.
Global Discourses, Regional Framings and Individual Showcasing: Analyzing the World of Education IOs
Authors: Niemann Dennis , Martens Kerstin 
Published: April 2021

AbstractEducation is commonly heralded as one of the key policies for fostering future progress and well-being. Hence, education policy can be conceptualized as a social policy as it enables individuals to acquire skills for living an independent and fulfilled life while also providing states with a toolkit to stimulate economic growth and social cohesion. In this chapter, we first map the population of education International Organizations (IOs) to describe the organizational field in which the social policy discourse in the sub-area of education takes place. The assessment of what types of IOs deal with education is summarized in a typology to identify different clusters of IOs and provide accounts of both their characteristics and the different niches they have populated in the organizational field of education policy. Second, the ideas IOs hold regarding education are analyzed and it is shown how the discourse on education has developed over time within the population of IOs.
IOs’ Role in Global Social Governance: Family Policy
Authors: Mahon Rianne 
Published: April 2021

AbstractThis chapter focuses on family policy as an object of global social governance. From the 1990s to 2008, the family policy field was bifurcated. One part, focused on family norms in the North, followed the shift from the male breadwinner to the adult earner family with its work-family tensions. Here the main IOs were the ILO and the OECD. The second part focused on the South and policies targeting children in poor families. Although UNICEF clearly played an important role on the ground here, it was the World Bank that took the lead in elaborating and disseminating the core ideas. Since the 2008 crisis, the field has come together through the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) which simultaneously address both North and South. The dominant discourse is ‘inclusive growth’, challenged by the more critical discourse on the ‘care economy’.
Introduction: Operationalisation of Hybrid Peacebuilding in Asia
Authors: Uesugi Yuji 
Published: April 2021

AbstractThis introductory chapter provides an overview, main objectives, key arguments and the significance of the study. This book is a result of collective efforts by those who are interested in advancing the discourse on hybrid peacebuilding in Asia in two aspects. First, by drawing on a diverse array of relevant theoretical perspectives gained from the discussion on complexity, identity and feminism, it aims to operationalise hybrid peacebuilding theory from various perspectives of Asia, which was designed to serve as a descriptive lens to elucidate the dynamic and interactive nature of the process of hybridisation. This attempt is concurrently administered by a critical effort to refine the typology of the ‘local mid-space gatekeepers’ proposed in Hybrid Peacebuilding in Asia (Uesugi 2020). Second, by investing empirically the mechanism of hybridisation in the peacebuilding process in Cambodia and Mindanao, it seeks to demonstrate, without falling into the pitfalls of binary, how mid-space actors in these settings served or failed to serve as bridges to close cleavages in the conflict-affected society. These in-depth empirical findings are complemented by another set of case studies which focuses on two leading peacebuilding actors in Asia, China and Japan, to illustrate the need to expand the horizons of the research on hybrid peacebuilding to include the impact of non-Western approaches on the practice of peacebuilding.
A Brief Sketch of Hybrid Peacebuilding
Authors: Uesugi Yuji , Deekeling Anna , Ingstedt Anton 
Published: April 2021

AbstractThis opening literature review connects hybrid calls and criticisms to the development of peacebuilding debates at large. First, it briefly presents some of peacebuilding’s ontological aspects, as they may be found both in academia and practice. With such a contrasting framework at hand, the following section explains some core arguments in the existing literature in favour of adopting hybrid peacebuilding. Lastly, voices are raised to show how hybridity has been criticised both within its own circles and by others. Showcasing the various aspects of peacebuilding, and hybridity specifically, this chapter sets the stage for a new set of discussions in the subsequent chapters.
Bridging Gaps: From a Descriptive to a Practical Mid-Space Actor Typology?
Authors: Deekeling Anna , Simangan Dahlia 
Published: April 2021

AbstractThe concept of hybridity sheds light on the complexity of conflict settings. It helps to analyse the participation of all parties and actors involved and entangled in a social network of normative and political power, while avoiding theoretical binaries that over-simplify the process of post-conflict peacebuilding. What lacks, however, is a practical application of hybridity in peacebuilding that actively engages with bottom/local or grassroots, top/national and international actors through mediation in the mid-space to create sustainable peace. Given this practical shortcoming of hybridity, this chapter examines mid-space actors as gatekeepers and their capacities to enable dialogue among opposing parties. The aim is to offer insights for the international community, as outside intervenors, in promoting the bridge-building potentialities of gatekeepers. Specifically, externally led efforts to engage with the specific skill sets of mid-space local actors are explored. It is argued in this chapter that such engagement provides a favourable environment for sustaining peace by overcoming power struggles in and around the mid-space.
Methodischer Zugang
Authors: Schwarting Rena 
Published: April 2021

ZusammenfassungDie Brauchbarkeit eines theoretischen Zugangs bemisst sich nicht nur an seiner Allgemeinheit und Auflösungsstärke beim Beschreiben sozialer Phänomene, sondern auch an seiner Übersetzbarkeit in ein methodisch instruktives Forschungsdesign.
Overall Introduction
Authors: Shi Wenzhong , Goodchild Michael F. , Batty Michael , Kwan Mei-Po , Zhang Anshu 
Published: April 2021

AbstractUrban informatics is an interdisciplinary approach to understanding, managing, and designing the city using systematic theories and methods based on new information technologies. Integrating urban science, geomatics, and informatics, urban informatics is a particularly timely way of fusing many interdisciplinary perspectives in studying city systems. This edited book aims to meet the urgent need for works that systematically introduce the principles and technologies of urban informatics. The book gathers over 40 world-leading research teams from a wide range of disciplines, who provide comprehensive reviews of the state of the art and the latest research achievements in their various areas of urban informatics. The book is organized into six parts, respectively covering the conceptual and theoretical basis of urban informatics, urban systems and applications, urban sensing, urban big data infrastructure, urban computing, and prospects for the future of urban informatics. This introductory chapter provides a definition of urban informatics and an outline of the book’s structure and scope.