Elgar Advanced Introductions are stimulating and thoughtful introductions to major fields in the social sciences, business and law, expertly written by the world's leading scholars. Designed to be accessible yet rigorous, they offer concise and lucid surveys of the substantive and policy issues associated with discrete subject areas. This stimulating and accessible Advanced Introduction critically engages with dominant, modernist, and ahistorical narratives of development, foregrounding the overlooked dissonant discourses that are largely written out of mainstream development histories. It argues that development discourse and practice must remain aware of how historically unequal relations continue to be reproduced today and outlines a range of effective strategies for guiding change towards achieving global social justice. Features include: challenges to the claims of universality evident in much critical development scholarship exposure of critical discourses overlooked by conventional development histories identification of progressive ways to guide change towards achieving global social justice guidance on development approaches and ideas that avoid reproducing colonial forms of representation, knowledge, power, and control the foregrounding of critical postcolonial, decolonial and feminist perspectives to identify how progressive possibilities for change can emerge. This insightful Advanced Introduction will be beneficial to students and scholars of development studies, geography, sociology, anthropology, history and indigenous studies seeking an understanding of unequal global relations, knowledge production, and the exercise of global power and control. Further, it will be of great value to academics and students interested in postcolonialism, contemporary colonial legacies, and processes of decolonisation and decoloniality.

This stimulating and accessible Advanced Introduction critically engages with dominant, modernist and ahistorical narratives of development, foregrounding the overlooked dissonant discourses that are largely written out of mainstream development. It argues that development discourse and practice must remain aware of how historically unequal relations continue to be reproduced today and outlines a range of effective strategies for guiding change towards achieving global social justice.

Written by Neil M. Coe, this Advanced Introduction provides a comprehensive guide to the vibrant and expanding global production network (GPN) approach, through deftly exploring its antecedents, theoretical underpinnings, and debates and controversies in the field. The author argues overall that, during a time of profound on-going challenges within the global economic system, the need for a GPN framework has never been more pressing.

How do we try to make the world a better place, when the challenges of poverty, disease, war, conflict, and climate change continue to impact millions of lives? Global Development: The Basics is a lively and engaging introduction to the shifting landscape of global development, right from its origins, to present-day problems, and on to what the future for global development might look like. Recognising global development as an economic, political, and social project, this book tackles a series of critical questions: asking ‘what’ development is and how it is measured, where and to whom it is assumed to happen, how its approaches are developed, and whose benefit do they serve? The book invites readers to consider the complexities and challenges of the concept of development, including its historical roots in colonialism, and the geopolitical power relations which continue to set much of the agenda. It investigates whose voices are included or silenced in dominant approaches to development, and the growing importance of ‘non-traditional’ development funding and approaches. Covering key topics in the field, from economics and politics, through to gender and climate change, Global Development: The Basics is perfect for readers starting out in their understanding of global development.

Artificial intelligence-enabled digital platforms collect and process data from and about users. These companies are largely self-regulating in Western countries. How do economic theories explain the rise of a very few dominant platforms? Mansell and Steinmueller compare and contrast neoclassical, institutional and critical political economy explanations. They show how these perspectives can lead to contrasting claims about platform benefits and harms. Uneven power relationships between platform operators and their users are treated differently in these economic traditions. Sometimes leading to advocacy for regulation or for public provision of digital services. Sometimes indicating restraint and precaution. The authors challenge the reader to think beyond the inevitability of platform dominance to create new visions of how platforms might operate in the future.

Elgar Advanced Introductions are stimulating and thoughtful introductions to major fields in the social sciences and law, expertly written by the world’s leading scholars. Designed to be accessible yet rigorous, they offer concise and lucid surveys of the substantive and policy issues associated with discrete subject areas. In this Advanced Introduction, Christopher Pollitt starts a penetrating account of the theories, methods and possible trajectories of the study of public management, also examining the academic community itself, and its relationship to the world of practice. There is no more authoritative – or lively – text of such scope and focus. This is a stimulating analysis by a leading international scholar. It includes: · a global overview · a critical and authoritative analysis of the current state of the field · the location of academic research firmly in the real world context of austerity, climate and demographic change, and technological transformation · an examination of the relationship between academic study and the practice of public management · a look inside the ‘ivory tower’, at the forces changing the way the subject is studied and practised This truly unique work will be of particular interest to graduate students, advanced scholars, lecturers and trainers in public administration, public management, government, public policy, political science and development administration. Middle level and senior practitioners in public administration and public management will also find this an invaluable and sophisticated introduction.