Based on the work of twenty renowned experts from the region, this ground-breaking book traces the new face of Latin America using clear, straightfoward language that is accessible to a general audience. The current panorama in the region creates new opportunities and dangers for social cohesion in democracy and a revitalized critical approach is needed to arrive at a global interpretation of the social dynamics in Latin America.

In recent years, European societies and territories have witnessed the spatial impacts of a severe financial and socio-economic crisis. This book builds on the current debate concerning how cities and urban regions and their citizens deal with the consequences of the recent financial and socio-economic crisis. Cities in Crisis examines the political and administrative implications of austerity measures applied in southern European cities. These include cuts in local public spending and the processes of privatization of local public assets, as well as issues related to the re-scaling, recentralization or decentralization of competencies. Attention is paid to the rise of new ‘austerity regimes’, the question of their legitimacy and their spatial manifestations, and in particular to the social consequences of austerity. The contributions to this book lay the foundation for recommendations on how to improve and consolidate qualified governance arrangements in order to better address rapid economic and social changes. Such recommendations are applicable to cities and urban regions both within and outside of Europe. It identifies possible approaches, tools and partnerships to tackle the effects of the crisis and to prepare European cities for future challenges.

Is it desirable, or even necessary, to have distinct human rights for cultural identities? Do different conceptions of culture and identity, and their potential to frame human rights violations as culturally appropriate, complicate the question? How should a human right to collective identity be outlined? Claims to human rights as applying to a whole (ethnic, religious or cultural) group, instead of the individual, prove to be complex. This book reveals the pitfalls, benefits and demands that surround the debate for and against culture and identity in human rights. It connects a continuous and nuanced theoretical debate with highly topical empirical findings about collective rights for indigenous groups, which for centuries have been suppressed and marginalized and now stand at the forefront of (successfully) demanding a human right to their own culture and distinct identity. This book shows the ambivalences of those demands and discusses solutions so that human rights neither exclude marginalized cultural groups nor reproduce rigid distinctions between seemingly exclusive cultures.

This publication is the result of a collaborative effort between the Pan American Health Organization and the WHO Collaborating Center for International Health at the University of Texas Medical Branch. The chapters are based on the proceedings from a seminarworkshop held in Galveston Texas in 1998. The objective of this forum was to examine the impact of the economic globalization process and technological change on health trends in the Region of the Americas and even more specifically to explore how civil society groups can influence the formulation of healthy public policies and monitor equity in terms of both the health situation and the distribution of health care resources. This publication addresses a wide range of issues affecting health in the global economy including various types of economic organization and potential dangers the world faces as a new century begins. It centers on experiences opportunities and risks in the Americas and on the value of health in human development and of international and regional integration processes in the formulation of a new global economy. It includes articles analyzing the impact of economic reform policies on health in general as well as monographs written from the perspective of civil society groups in specific countries. The variety of viewpoints and lessons learned in this publication will be of use to decision-makers health and development experts and emerging civil society groups in Latin America and the Caribbean and can guide them in better addressing the enormous risks facing all sectors of society as a result of globalization by enabling them to take advantage of the tremendous potential this process affords.