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Sociology of Law as the Science of Norms (Studies in the Sociology of Law)
by Håkan HydénThis book proposes the study of norms as a method of explaining human choice and behaviour by introducing a new scientific perspective. The science of norms may here be broadly understood as a social science which includes elements from both the behavioural and legal sciences. It is given that a science of norms is not normative in the sense of prescribing what is right or wrong in various situations. Compared with legal science, sociology of law has an interest in the operational side of legal rules and regulation. This book develops a synthesizing social science approach to better understand societal development in the wake of the increasingly significant digital technology. The underlying idea is that norms as expectations today are not primarily related to social expectations emanating from human interactions but come from systems that mankind has created for fulfilling its needs. Today the economy, via the market, and technology via digitization, generate stronger and more frequent expectations than the social system. By expanding the sociological understanding of norms, the book makes comparisons between different parts of society possible and creates a more holistic understanding of contemporary society. The book will be of interest to academics and researchers in the areas of sociology of law, legal theory, philosophy of law, sociology and social psychology.
The Sociology of Medical Regulation
by John Martyn ChamberlainThis book provides a comprehensive examination of the complex issues surrounding the regulation of the medical profession. It offers up-to-date information on the current legislative framework and institutional arrangements surrounding the regulation in the United Kingdom. Well organized and written in an accessible way, it offers an insight into key sociological theories surrounding medical regulation. It gives a historically situated analysis of the contemporary relationship between medicine, the state and the public, and an overview of relevant social scientific research. Case studies highlight the practical or applied circumstances in which issues can occur. Readers will gain insight into possible future directions for medical governance.
A Sociotheological Approach to Catholic Social Teaching: The Role of Religion in Moral Responsibility During COVID-19
by Vivencio O. BallanoThis book introduces Catholic social teaching (CST) and its teaching on the common good to the reader and applies them in the realm of public health to critically analyze the major global issues of COVID-19 that undermine public interest. It uses the sociotheological approach that combines the moral principles of CST and the holistic analysis of modern sociology and also utilizes the secondary literature as the main source of textual data. Specifically, it investigates the corporate moral irresponsibility and some unethical business practices of Big Pharma in the sale and distribution of its anti-COVID vaccines and medicines, the injustice in the inequitable global vaccine distribution, the weakening of the United States Congress’s legislative regulation against the pharmaceutical industry’s overpricing and profiteering, the inadequacy of the World Health Organization’s (WHO) law enforcement system against corruption, and the lack of social monitoring in the current public health surveillance system to safeguard the public good from corporate fraud and white-collar crime. This book highlights the contribution of sociology in providing the empirical foundation of CST’s moral analysis and in crafting appropriate Catholic social action during the pandemic. It is hoped that through this book, secular scholars, social scientists, religious leaders, moral theologians, religious educators, and Catholic lay leaders would be more appreciative of the sociotheological approach to understanding religion and COVID-19. “This book brings into dialogue two bodies of literature: documents of Catholic social teaching, and modern sociology and its core thinkers and texts...The author does especially well to describe how taking ‘the sociotheological turn’...will benefit the credibility and dissemination of Catholic social thought.”- Rev. Fr. Thomas Massaro, S.J., Professor of Moral Theology, Jesuit School of Theology, Santa Clara University, Berkeley, California.
¡Socorro! Me he quedado sin trabajo.
by Richard G Lowe Jr I. Fernandez E2eLa mayor parte de nosotros nos sentimos orgullosos de nuestra profesión y nuestro trabajo. Necesitamos el trabajo para dar de comer a nuestra familia, pagar el alquiler, reparar el coche y permitirnos un capricho de vez en cuando. Establecemos un vínculo con la gente con la que trabajamos y generalmente sentimos que ese sitio es nuestra segunda casa. No ha de sorprendernos ya que la mayoría de nosotros se pasa un tercio de su vida en la oficina. Por tanto, la perdida repentina de trabajo puede ser dolorosa, deprimente y, según el individuo y su situación económica, la entrada en una situación de emergencia. Para aquellos que viven al día, la pérdida de trabajo repentina podría suponer perder su hogar o no comer. El objetivo de este libro es ayudarte a ti, un trabajador que recientemente ha visto como se terminaba su contrato o siente que el día está llegando, a encontrar las respuestas que necesitas para realizar la transición de un trabajo a otro de la manera más llevadera posible.
Socorro! O Meu Chefe é Maluco!
by Andreia Afonso Richard G Lowe JrSobrevivendo ao chefe Whacko Melhore sua vida profissional. Aumente sua renda. Seja mais produtivo e satisfeito no trabalho. Sinta-se mais feliz e mais em controle O chefe está te deixando louco? Você está sofrendo de assédio? É o seu local de trabalho desagradável e tornando-o fisicamente ou mentalmente doente? Alguma vez você já sentiu como você quer Whack seu chefe por causa de assédio? Eu estive onde você está hoje. Os Whackos Na minha vida, eu tive todos os tipos de gerentes, de um chefe que foi declarado insano para o micromanager compulsivo e, pior de tudo, o gerente para a aposentadoria que não queria aprovar ou fazer qualquer coisa que possa balançar o barco . Eu me sentia atacada, desprezada, desvalorizada e oprimida, às vezes tudo ao mesmo tempo. Essas situações afetaram minha saúde e bem-estar e causaram um sentimento de desamparo e depressão que nada parecia consertar. A vida parecia ser nada, mas fracasso devido às constantes invalidações e negatividade. Seu chefe está te deixando louco? Seu chefe está te deixando louco ou assediando você? É ele ou ela fazendo o seu miserável, negando-lhe levanta e promoções, ou micromanaging cada movimento seu? Você está feliz com sua situação de trabalho? Você entende que não vai melhorar a menos que você faça algo sobre isso? Você prefere olhar para a frente para ir trabalhar todos os dias? Você não gostaria de ser respeitado, ganhar mais dinheiro e ir para casa sentindo-se satisfeito em fazer um trabalho bem feito? Faça alguma coisa sobre isso Bem, eu percebi que eu poderia fazer algo sobre o chefe whacko. Havia muitas opções, de uma conversa simples todo o caminho para encontrar um novo emprego. O que eu percebi é que leva dois para ser uma vítima - o vitimizador (o chefe whacko) ea vítima. Eu decidi quebrar aquela dança louca. Entenda que você pode fazer algo para corrigir a situação
Socorro! Perdi meu emprego
by Richard G Lowe Jr Rodrigo dos Santos LaraDicas do que fazer quando você fica desempregado inesperadamente - repentinamente ter que deixar o emprego pode ser um momento difícil e deprimente na sua vida. Aprenda algumas das coisas que você precisa considerar e lidar caso isso aconteça.
Socrates Comes To Wall Street
by Thomas I. WhiteFor courses in Business Ethics A fresh approach to the assumptions that underlie business practices Two recent events — the 2008 economic meltdown and the ongoing concentration of the nation’s wealth in the hands of a very small percentage of the population — have led many people to question a number of basic assumptions about business, corporations, and the workings of contemporary free-market capitalism in a global economy. Written as a dialogue between Socrates and a hypothetical contemporary CEO, Socrates Comes to Wall Street leads students to think critically about perspectives and practices that are taken as “givens” in most American business schools and corporations. Employing this original and provocative approach, author Thomas White seeks to encourage the next generation of business leaders to be more astute about the implications of their actions, and to act more prudently and more fairly than we have seen in the recent past.
Socratic Dialogue: Voicing Values (Giving Voice to Values)
by Sira Abenoza Josep M. LozanoGiving Voice to Values is a very important tool that has helped many professionals better align what they do with what they value and believe. This book introduces the methodology of Socratic Dialogue as a complementary set of tools for creating spaces of joint reflection in which one can gain clarity about one’s values and gain the confidence to voice them effectively. Socrates’ main concern was to progressively reach a higher alignment between ideas and actions: that is, to achieve a harmony between what we think, what we say and what we do. The first step to giving voice to our values involves introspection and dialogue with others – which is how we can become aware of what we really think and value. An examined life, Socrates reminds us, is a fulfilled one. Based on the authors' more than ten years’ experience teaching Socratic Dialogue to business and law students, executives and professionals, faculty, incarcerated people and other vulnerable groups, the book provides teachers and practitioners with a roadmap to conceive, design and conduct Socratic Dialogue courses and sessions. It provides context for the method and its adaptation to the challenges of the 21st century. The book also offers guidance on how to structure a Socratic Dialogue classroom, as well as a series of tried-and-true activities and exercises, practical recommendations and testimonies of the transformative impact that dialogue courses have had on participants. The book is of prime interest to professors and educators of business ethics, as well as professional consultants working to help organizations become more responsible and introduce ethical reasoning in their decisions. It also serves as a valuable resource for social educators and practitioners in prisons and rehabilitation units, as well as teachers in primary and secondary education.
Socratic Moral Psychology
by Thomas C. Brickhouse Nicholas D. SmithSocrates' moral psychology is widely thought to be 'intellectualist' in the sense that, for Socrates, every ethical failure to do what is best is exclusively the result of some cognitive failure to apprehend what is best. Until fairly recently, the view that, for Socrates, emotions and desires have no role to play in causing such failure went unchallenged. This book argues against the orthodox view of Socratic intellectualism and offers in its place a comprehensive alternative account that explains why Socrates believed that emotions, desires and appetites can influence human motivation and lead to error. Thomas C. Brickhouse and Nicholas D. Smith defend the study of Socrates' philosophy and offer a new interpretation of Socratic moral psychology. Their novel account of Socrates' conception of virtue and how it is acquired shows that Socratic moral psychology is considerably more sophisticated than scholars have supposed.
Socratic, Platonic and Aristotelian Studies: Essays in Honor of Gerasimos Santas
by Georgios AnagnostopoulosThis volume contains outstanding studies by some of the best scholars in ancient Greek Philosophy on key topics in Socratic, Platonic, and Aristotelian thought. These studies provide rigorous analyses of arguments and texts and often advance original interpretations. The essays in the volume range over a number of central themes in ancient philosophy, such as Socratic and Platonic conceptions of philosophical method; the Socratic paradoxes; Plato's view on justice; the nature of Platonic Forms, especially the Form of the Good; Aristotle's views on the faculties of the soul; Aristotle's functionalist account of the human good; Socratic, Platonic, and Aristotelian views on the nature of desire and its object. The volume will be of interest to students and scholars of ancient philosophy and classics.
Soda Politics: Taking on Big Soda (and Winning)
by Marion Nestle Mark Bittman Neal BaerSodas are astonishing products. Little more than flavored sugar-water, these drinks cost practically nothing to produce or buy, yet have turned their makers - principally Coca-Cola and PepsiCo - into a multibillion-dollar industry with global recognition, distribution, and political power. Billed as "refreshing," "tasty," "crisp," and "the real thing," sodas also happen to be so well established to contribute to poor dental hygiene, higher calorie intake, obesity, and type-2 diabetes that the first line of defense against any of these conditions is to simply stop drinking them. Habitually drinking large volumes of soda not only harms individual health, but also burdens societies with runaway healthcare costs. So how did products containing absurdly inexpensive ingredients become multibillion dollar industries and international brand icons, while also having a devastating impact on public health? In Soda Politics, Dr. Marion Nestle answers this question by detailing all of the ways that the soft drink industry works overtime to make drinking soda as common and accepted as drinking water, for adults and children. Dr. Nestle, a renowned food and nutrition policy expert and public health advocate, shows how sodas are principally miracles of advertising; Coca-Cola and PepsiCo spend billions of dollars each year to promote their sale to children, minorities, and low-income populations, in developing as well as industrialized nations. And once they have stimulated that demand, they leave no stone unturned to protect profits. That includes lobbying to prevent any measures that would discourage soda sales, strategically donating money to health organizations and researchers who can make the science about sodas appear confusing, and engaging in Corporate Social Responsibility(CSR) activities to create goodwill and silence critics. Soda Politics follows the money trail wherever it leads, revealing how hard Big Soda works to sell as much of their products as possible to an increasingly obese world. But Soda Politics does more than just diagnose a problem - it encourages readers to help find solutions. From Berkeley to Mexico City and beyond, advocates are successfully countering the relentless marketing, promotion, and political protection of sugary drinks. And their actions are having an impact - for all of the hardball and softball tactics the soft drink industry employs to maintain the status quo, soda consumption has been flat or falling for years. Health advocacy campaigns are now the single greatest threat to soda companies' profits. Soda Politics provides readers with the tools they need to keep up pressure on Big Soda in order to build healthier and more sustainable food systems.
Sodomites, Pederasts, and Tribades in Eighteenth-Century France: A Documentary History
by Jeffrey MerrickIn this book, Jeffrey Merrick brings together a rich array of primary-source documents—many of which are published or translated here for the first time—that depict in detail the policing of same-sex populations in eighteenth-century France and the ways in which Parisians regarded what they called sodomy or pederasty and tribadism. Taken together, these documents suggest that male and female same-sex relations played a more visible public role in Enlightenment-era society than was previously believed.The translated and annotated sources included here show how robust the same-sex subculture was in eighteenth-century Paris, as well as how widespread the policing of sodomy was at the time. Part 1 includes archival police records from the 1720s to the 1780s that show how the police attempted to manage sodomitical activity through surveillance and repression; part 2 includes excerpts from treatises and encyclopedias, published nouvelles (collections of news) and libelles (libelous writings), fictive portrayals, and Enlightenment treatments of the topic that include calls for legal reform. Together these sources show how contemporaries understood same-sex relations in multiple contexts and cultures, including their own. The resulting volume is an unprecedented look at the role of same-sex relations in the culture and society of the era.The product of years of archival research curated, translated, and annotated by a premier expert in the field, Sodomites, Pederasts, and Tribades in Eighteenth-Century France provides a foundational primary text for the study and teaching of the history of sexuality.
Sodomites, Pederasts, and Tribades in Eighteenth-Century France: A Documentary History
by Jeffrey MerrickIn this book, Jeffrey Merrick brings together a rich array of primary-source documents—many of which are published or translated here for the first time—that depict in detail the policing of same-sex populations in eighteenth-century France and the ways in which Parisians regarded what they called sodomy or pederasty and tribadism. Taken together, these documents suggest that male and female same-sex relations played a more visible public role in Enlightenment-era society than was previously believed.The translated and annotated sources included here show how robust the same-sex subculture was in eighteenth-century Paris, as well as how widespread the policing of sodomy was at the time. Part 1 includes archival police records from the 1720s to the 1780s that show how the police attempted to manage sodomitical activity through surveillance and repression; part 2 includes excerpts from treatises and encyclopedias, published nouvelles (collections of news) and libelles (libelous writings), fictive portrayals, and Enlightenment treatments of the topic that include calls for legal reform. Together these sources show how contemporaries understood same-sex relations in multiple contexts and cultures, including their own. The resulting volume is an unprecedented look at the role of same-sex relations in the culture and society of the era.The product of years of archival research curated, translated, and annotated by a premier expert in the field, Sodomites, Pederasts, and Tribades in Eighteenth-Century France provides a foundational primary text for the study and teaching of the history of sexuality.
Sodomscapes: Hospitality in the Flesh
by Lowell GallagherSodomscapes presents a fresh approach to the story of Lot’s wife, as it’s been read across cultures and generations, and, in the process, reorients and reinterprets foundational concepts of ethics, representation, and the politics of life. While the sudden mutation of Lot’s wife in the flight from Sodom is often read to confirm the antiscopic bias that critical thought inherits from earlier legacies of prohibited gazing, the archive of Jewish and patristic commentary holds a rival and largely overlooked vein of thought, which testifies to the counterintuitive optics required to apprehend and nurture sustainable habitations for life in view of its unforeseeable contingency. To retrieve this forgotten legacy, Gallagher weaves together sources that range from exegesis to painting and from commerce to dance: a fifteenth-century illuminated miniature, a Victorian lost-world adventure fantasy, a Russian avant-garde rendering of the flight from Sodom, Albert Memmi’s career-making first novel, a contemporary excursion into the Dead Sea healthcare tourism industry. Across millennia and media, the repeated desire to reclaim Lot’s wife turns the cautionary emblem of the mutating woman into a figural laboratory for testing the ethical bounds of the two faces of hospitality—welcome and risk. Sodomscape—the book’s name for this gesture—revisits touchstone moments in the history of figural thinking (Augustine, Erich Auerbach, Maurice Blanchot, Hans Blumenberg) and places them in conversation with key thinkers of hospitality, particularly as it bears on the phenomenological condition of attunement to the unfinished character of being in relation to others (Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Jacques Derrida, Emmanuel Levinas, Hannah Arendt). The book’s cumulative perspective identifies Lot’s wife as the resilient figure of vigilant dwelling between the substantialist dream of resemblance and the mutating dynamism of otherness. The radical in-betweenness of the figure discloses counterintuitive ways of understanding what counts as a life amid divergent claims of being-with and being-for.
The Soft Cage: Surveillance in America From Slavery to the War on Terror
by Christian ParentiOn a typical day, you might make a call on a cell phone, withdraw money at an ATM, visit the mall, and make a purchase with a credit card. Each of these routine transactions leaves a digital trail for government agencies and businesses to access. As cutting-edge historian and journalist Christian Parenti points out, these everyday intrusions on privacy, while harmless in themselves, are part of a relentless (and clandestine) expansion of routine surveillance in American life over the last two centuries-from controlling slaves in the old South to implementing early criminal justice and tracking immigrants. Parenti explores the role computers are playing in creating a whole new world of seemingly benign technologies-such as credit cards, website "cookies," and electronic toll collection-that have expanded this trend in the twenty-first century. The Soft Cage offers a compelling, vitally important history lesson for every American concerned about the expansion of surveillance into our public and private lives.
Soft Corruption: How Unethical Conduct Undermines Good Government and What To Do About It
by William E. SchluterNew Jersey has long been a breeding ground for political corruption, and most of it is perfectly legal. Public officials accept favors from lobbyists, give paid positions to relatives, and rig the electoral process to favor their cronies in a system where campaign money is used to buy government results. Such unethical behavior is known as “soft corruption,” and former New Jersey legislator William E. Schluter has been fighting it for the past fifty years. In this searing personal narrative, the former state senator recounts his fight to expose and reform these acts of government misconduct. Not afraid to cite specific cases of soft corruption in New Jersey politics, he paints a vivid portrait of public servants who care more about political power and personal gain than the public good. By recounting events that he witnessed firsthand in the Garden State, he provides dramatic illustrations of ills that afflict American politics nationwide. As he identifies five main forms of soft corruption, Schluter diagnoses the state government’s ethical malaise, and offers concrete policy suggestions for how it might be cured. Not simply a dive through the muck of New Jersey politics, Soft Corruption is an important first step to reforming our nation’s political system, a book that will inspire readers to demand that our elected officials can and must do better. Visit: www.softcorruption.com (http://www.softcorruption.com)
Soft Law and Global Health Problems: Lessons from Responses to HIV/AIDS, Malaria and Tuberculosis
by Sharifah SekalalaVarious legal approaches have been taken internationally to improve global access to essential medicines for people in developing countries. This book focuses on the millions of people suffering from AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria. Beginning with the AIDS campaign for antiretroviral (ARV) drugs, Sharifah Sekalala argues that a soft law approach is more effective than hard law by critiquing the current TRIPS flexibilities within the World Trade Organization. She then considers how soft law has also been instrumental in the fight against malaria and tuberculosis. Using these compelling case studies, this book explores lawmaking on global health and analyses the viability of current global health financing trends within new and traditional organisations such as the United Nations, the World Health Organization, UNAIDS, UNITAID and The Global Fund. This book is essential reading for legal, development, policy and health scholars, activists and policymakers working across political economy, policy studies and global health studies.
Soft Law and the Global Financial System
by Chris BrummerThe global financial crisis of 2008 has given way to a proliferation of international agreements aimed at strengthening the prudential oversight and supervision of financial market participants. Yet how these rules operate is not well understood. Because international financial rules are expressed through informal, non-binding accords, scholars tend to view them as either weak treaty substitutes or by-products of national power. Rarely, if ever, are they cast as independent variables that can inform the behavior of regulators and market participants alike. This book explains how international financial law 'works' - and presents an alternative theory for understanding its purpose, operation and limitations. Drawing on a close institutional analysis of the post-crisis financial architecture, it argues that international financial law is often bolstered by a range of reputational, market and institutional mechanisms that make it more coercive than classical theories of international law predict.
‘Soft’ Policing: The Collaborative Control of Anti-Social Behaviour (Crime Prevention and Security Management)
by Daniel MccarthyExamining multi-agency working in response to anti-social behaviour, this book investigates the way in which the police, social work teams and the youth justice service work together on early intervention initiatives to help young people, and explores the complexities and practical struggles of these partnerships.
Soft Skills and Hard Values: Meeting Education's 21st Century Challenges (Routledge Series on Life and Values Education)
by Kerry J. Kennedy Margarita Pavlova John Chi-Kin LeeTo help researchers, educators and policy makers understand and support the development of 21st-century skills in schools, this edited volume explores the various iterations of "soft" skills with a particular focus on their implications for values and evaluates ways in which "soft skills" and "hard" values can be integrated. Discourse throughout the 21st century has focused on the changing nature of work, the need for new skill sets and the disruptive effects of new technologies. This has been a neo-liberal discourse that subordinated personal and individual needs to the needs of a productive workforce delivering more and more efficiencies linked to higher and higher profits. The solution is often seen to be in the development of a school curriculum that focuses on work-ready skills for an increasingly complex work environment and its demands. Agencies such as OECD and UNESCO highlight the need to link the skills agenda with complementary values. Yet this process is at a very early stage. The proponents of the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) for example highlight the impact of new technologies, not just on work but also on the social world. Yet they neglect to explore the values that would be needed in these new disruptive environments. This book takes up that issue and lays out the multiple value systems that are available for this new 21st century world. It is an important resource for policy makers, academics and teachers with responsibility for a new generation.
Soft Skills for the Effective Lawyer
by Randall KiserIn this groundbreaking book, Randall Kiser presents a multi-disciplinary, practice-based introduction to the major soft skills for lawyers: self-awareness, self-development, social proficiency, wisdom, leadership, and professionalism. The work serves as both a map and a vehicle for developing the skills essential to self-knowledge and fulfillment, organizational respect and accomplishment, client satisfaction and appreciation, and professional improvement and distinction. It identifies the most important soft skills for attorneys, describes and applies hundreds of studies regarding psychology, law, and soft skills, and provides concrete steps and methods to improve soft skills. The book should be read by law students, attorneys, and anyone else interested in how lawyers should practice law.
Software Rights: How Patent Law Transformed Software Development in America
by Gerardo Con DiazA new perspective on United States software development, seen through the patent battles that shaped our technological landscape This first comprehensive history of software patenting explores how patent law made software development the powerful industry that it is today. Historian Gerardo Con Díaz reveals how patent law has transformed the ways computing firms make, own, and profit from software. He shows that securing patent protection for computer programs has been a central concern among computer developers since the 1950s and traces how patents and copyrights became inseparable from software development in the Internet age. Software patents, he argues, facilitated the emergence of software as a product and a technology, enabled firms to challenge each other’s place in the computing industry, and expanded the range of creations for which American intellectual property law provides protection. Powerful market forces, aggressive litigation strategies, and new cultures of computing usage and development transformed software into one of the most controversial technologies ever to encounter the American patent system.
Software Similarity and Classification
by Yang Xiang Silvio CesareSoftware similarity and classification is an emerging topic with wide applications. It is applicable to the areas of malware detection, software theft detection, plagiarism detection, and software clone detection. Extracting program features, processing those features into suitable representations, and constructing distance metrics to define similarity and dissimilarity are the key methods to identify software variants, clones, derivatives, and classes of software. Software Similarity and Classification reviews the literature of those core concepts, in addition to relevant literature in each application and demonstrates that considering these applied problems as a similarity and classification problem enables techniques to be shared between areas. Additionally, the authors present in-depth case studies using the software similarity and classification techniques developed throughout the book.
Soil in Criminal and Environmental Forensics
by Henk Kars Lida EijkelThis introductory volume to a new series on Soil Forensics gives a kaleidoscopic view of a developing forensic expertise. Forensic practitioners and academic researchers demonstrate, by their joint contributions, the extent and complexity of soil forensics. their reports exemplify the broad range of sciences and techniques applied in all stages of forensic soil examinations, from investigations at crime scenes to providing evidence that can be used in court proceedings. Moreover the necessity is depicted of co-operation as a condition for any work in soil forensics between scientists of different disciplines, but no less between scientists and law enforcers. Soils play a role in environmental crimes and liability, as trace evidence in criminal investigations and, when searching for and evaluating, buried human remains. This book shows soil forensics as practiced in this legal context, emerging and solidifying in many countries all over the world, differing in some respects because of differences in legal systems but ultimately sharing common grounds.
Soil Law and Governance in India (International Yearbook of Soil Law and Policy)
by Bharat H. DesaiThis curated book addresses, in the scholarly realm, the problems of soil degradation and provides some practical solutions for them to save soil life. It comprises ten specially invited chapters that address the global soil framework, soil challenges in India, existing policy, law and institutional framework as well as other perspectives.Soil is our biological capital. The soil health is critical for survival of the humans (and other life forms) since almost 95% of our food comes from it. It also has significant potential as a sink for carbon through sequestering. Excessive and inappropriate land use leads to various forms of land degradation that becomes contributing factor for hunger, migration and even wars. There are several multilateral environmental agreements (MEAs) including UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) that hold relevance for addressing the global soil problematique. The UNCCD Strategic Framework (2018-2030) has declared desertification/land degradation and drought (DLDD) as “challenges of a global dimension”. As a result, sustainable soil management (SSM) has emerged as an important goal for attaining Sustainable Development Goals 2030 (SDGs 2030).In the backdrop of these globally ordained processes, India appears to be seriously pursuing the Land Degradation Neutrality (LDN) target within the framework of the UNCCD. As a corollary, India has set an ambitious goal of halting any further land degradation by 2030 and rehabilitate at least 30 million hectares of degraded wasteland, forest land and agricultural land.This ideational effort by eminent legal scholars, soil scientists and practitioners aim to promote concerted teaching and research in the field of soil law and governance in the University Faculties of Law, National Law Schools, Institutions of Eminence and other legal and scientific bodies. The ‘seeds sown’ in the soil of knowledge through this effort will, hopefully, provide an impetus for more in-depth research concerning soil law and governance in India and beyond.