- Table View
- List View
Local Government and Governance in Germany: Challenges, Responses and Perspectives (Local and Urban Governance)
by Hellmut WollmannThe book aims at outlining key political, functional, administrative and financial features of Germany’s local government system and at placing them in a (European) comparative perspective. In pursuing an “institutionalist” approach it focuses on discussing whether, how and why the position and activities of local government in the intergovernmental (“multi-level”) setting have changed vis-à-vis multiple challenges and crises. Among the latter tasks such as coping with the energy crisis, the influx of asylum seekers and refugees, the digitization of local administration and the Covid19 pandemic loom large. Ranking among the functionally and politically strongest among European countries Germany’s local government plays an important role in the German federal system and beyond in the European Union. Over the years it has proved a remarkable problem solving and innovative capacity. Hence, the German case may attract the attention of a European and international audience interested in local government and governance and practices.
Local Government and Politics in China: Challenges from below (Studies On Contemporary China Ser.)
by Yang ZhongAfter over a decade of administrative and economic reform in mainland China, the center has become increasingly remote and less important for many localities. In many ways, the mobilization capacity of the central government has been weakened. Central government policies are often ignored and local officials are often more interested in personal projects than in centrally directed economic plans. In this study of local government and politics in China, the author explores when and why local government officials comply with policy directives from above. Drawing on interviews with government officials in various municipalities and a review of county records and other government documents, he provides the first in-depth look at policy implementation at the county and township levels in the PRC. The book examines the impact of the Chinese cadre system on the behavior of local officials, local party and government structure, relationships among various levels of Chinese local government, policy supervision mechanisms at local levels, village governance of China, and more.
Local Government and the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Global Perspective (Local and Urban Governance)
by Carlos Nunes SilvaThe book provides a global perspective of local government response towards the COVID-19 pandemic through the analysis of a sample of countries in all continents. It examines the responses of local government, as well as the responses local government developed in articulation with other tiers of government and with civil society organizations, and explores the social, economic and policy impacts of the pandemic. The book offers an innovative contribution on the role of local government during the pandemic and discusses lessons for the future. The COVID-19 pandemic had a global impact on public health, in the well-being of citizens, in the economy, on civic life, in the provision of public services, and in the governance of cities and other human settlements, although in an uneven form across countries, cities and local communities. Cities and local governments have been acting decisively to apply the policy measures defined at national level to the specific local conditions. COVID-19 has exposed the inadequacy of the crisis response infrastructures and policies at both national and local levels in these countries as well as in many others across the world. But it also exposed much broader and deeper weaknesses that result from how societies are organized, namely the insecure life a substantial proportion of citizens have, as a result of economic and social policies followed in previous decades, which accentuated the impacts of the lockdown measures on employment, income, housing, among a myriad of other social dimensions. Besides the analysis of how governments, and local government, responded to the public health issues raised by the spread of the virus, the book deals also with the diversity of responses local governments have adopted and implemented in the countries, regions, cities and metropolitan areas. The analysis of these policy responses indicates that previously unthinkable policies can surprisingly be implemented at both national and local levels.
Local Government in Our Lives, Unit 7: Local Leaders
by Wright Group/McGraw-HillNIMAC-sourced textbook
Local Government, Local Legislation: Municipal Initiative in Parliament from 1858–1872
by R.J.B. MorrisIn the mid-Victorian period, when British international influence and power were at their height, concerns about local economic and social conditions were only slowly coming to be recognised as part of the obligations and expectations of central government. Adopting a legal history perspective, this study reveals how municipal authorities of this period had few public law powers to regulate local conditions, or to provide services, and thus the more enterprising went direct to Parliament to obtain – at a price – the passing specific local Bills to address their needs. Identifying and analysing for the first time the 335 local Parliamentary Bills promoted by local authorities in the period from the passing of the Local Government Act 1858 to the first annual report of the Local Government Board in 1872, the book draws three main conclusions from this huge mass of local statute book material. The first is that, far from being an uncoordinated mass of inconsistent, quixotic provisions, these Acts have a substantial degree of cohesion as a body of material. Second, the towns and cities of northern England secured more than half of them. Thirdly, the costs of promotions (and the vested interests involved in them) represented a huge and often wasteful outlay that a more pragmatic and forward-looking Parliamentary attitude could have greatly reduced.
Local Heritage, Global Context: Cultural Perspectives on Sense of Place (Heritage, Culture and Identity)
by Rosy Szymanski'Sense of place' has become a familiar phrase, used to describe emotional attachment to a particular location. As heritage management policy and practices increasingly attempt to draw on the views and expressions of interest amongst local communities, it is important to have a better grasp of what people mean by this concept, and to assess its uses and implications. Here, a range of practitioners from NGO, agency, cultural heritage and archaeological backgrounds review the meanings of 'sense of place', and where it is useful in the context of heritage management practice. This volume breaks new ground in specifically addressing place attachment from a cultural heritage perspective, and drawing on local and national interests from a diversity of cultural situations. Illustrated with case studies from around Europe and Australia, the book addresses key themes, including the rootedness amongst communities in the past; policy-making for accommodating senses of place within planning and management, for land- sea- and city-scapes; official versus unofficial views; and the often difficult balance between planning policies that extend from regional to global scale, and local actions and perceptions.
Local Histories/Global Designs: Coloniality, Subaltern Knowledges, and Border Thinking
by Walter D. MignoloThis book is an extended argument on the "coloniality" of power by one of the most innovative scholars of Latin American studies. In a shrinking world where sharp dichotomies, such as East/West and developing/developed, blur and shift, Walter Mignolo points to the inadequacy of current practice in the social sciences and area studies. He introduces the crucial notion of "colonial difference" into study of the modern colonial world. He also traces the emergence of new forms of knowledge, which he calls "border thinking."Further, he expands the horizons of those debates already under way in postcolonial studies of Asia and Africa by employing the terms and concerns of New World scholarship. His concept of "border gnosis," or what is known from the perspective of an empire's borderlands, counters the tendency of occidentalist perspectives to dominate, and thus limit, understanding.The book is divided into three parts: the first chapter deals with epistemology and postcoloniality; the next three chapters deal with the geopolitics of knowledge; the last three deal with the languages and cultures of scholarship. Here the author reintroduces the analysis of civilization from the perspective of globalization and argues that, rather than one "civilizing" process dominated by the West, the continually emerging subaltern voices break down the dichotomies characteristic of any cultural imperialism. By underscoring the fractures between globalization and mundializacion, Mignolo shows the locations of emerging border epistemologies, and of post-occidental reason.
Local Histories/Global Designs: Coloniality, Subaltern Knowledges, and Border Thinking (Princeton Studies in Culture/Power/History)
by Walter D. MignoloLocal Histories/Global Designs is an extended argument about the "coloniality" of power by one of the most innovative Latin American and Latino scholars. In a shrinking world where sharp dichotomies, such as East/West and developing/developed, blur and shift, Walter Mignolo points to the inadequacy of current practices in the social sciences and area studies. He explores the crucial notion of "colonial difference" in the study of the modern colonial world and traces the emergence of an epistemic shift, which he calls "border thinking." Further, he expands the horizons of those debates already under way in postcolonial studies of Asia and Africa by dwelling in the genealogy of thoughts of South/Central America, the Caribbean, and Latino/as in the United States. His concept of "border gnosis," or sensing and knowing by dwelling in imperial/colonial borderlands, counters the tendency of occidentalist perspectives to manage, and thus limit, understanding. In a new preface that discusses Local Histories/Global Designs as a dialogue with Hegel's Philosophy of History, Mignolo connects his argument with the unfolding of history in the first decade of the twenty-first century.
Local History and War Memories in Hokkaido (Routledge Studies in the Modern History of Asia)
by Philip A. SeatonHokkaido, the northernmost island of Japan, barely features in most histories of the Second World War. However, the combination of distinctive war experiences, a vibrant set of local historian groups, and powerful media organizations disseminating local war history, has generated an identifiable set of local collective memories. Hokkaidoʼs status as an early colonial acquisition also makes the island an important vantage point from which to reassess the course and nature of the Japanese Empire. This book argues that Hokkaido’s experiences of war and its militarized post-war constitutes a local case study with a much greater national and international significance on both theoretical and empirical grounds than first impressions might suggest. Using Japanese-language sources presented for the first time in English and a number of detailed local history case studies, it offers a fascinating and hitherto little-known perspective on the Second World War. It also combines a comprehensive theory of how war memories operate at the local level within a broad historical context that explains Hokkaidoʼs pivotal role within Japanese imperial history. Demonstrating that understanding local history and memories is essential for a nuanced understanding of national history and memories, the book will be highly valuable to students and scholars of Japanese history, Second World War history, and Asian history.
A Local History of Global Capital: Jute and Peasant Life in the Bengal Delta (Histories of Economic Life)
by Tariq AliBefore the advent of synthetic fibers and cargo containers, jute sacks were the preferred packaging material of global trade, transporting the world's grain, cotton, sugar, tobacco, coffee, wool, guano, and bacon. Jute was the second-most widely consumed fiber in the world, after cotton. While the sack circulated globally, the plant was cultivated almost exclusively by peasant smallholders in a small corner of the world: the Bengal delta. This book examines how jute fibers entangled the delta's peasantry in the rhythms and vicissitudes of global capital.Taking readers from the nineteenth-century high noon of the British Raj to the early years of post-partition Pakistan in the mid-twentieth century, Tariq Omar Ali traces how the global connections wrought by jute transformed every facet of peasant life: practices of work, leisure, domesticity, and sociality; ideas and discourses of justice, ethics, piety, and religiosity; and political commitments and actions. Ali examines how peasant life was structured and restructured with oscillations in global commodity markets, as the nineteenth-century period of peasant consumerism and prosperity gave way to debt and poverty in the twentieth century.A Local History of Global Capital traces how jute bound the Bengal delta's peasantry to turbulent global capital, and how global commodity markets shaped everyday peasant life and determined the difference between prosperity and poverty, survival and starvation.
Local Identities and Politics: Negotiating the Old and the New
by Kees TerlouwThe relation between identity and space is strong and generates many conflicts. Most people attach great importance to their local community and its identity. The possibility of change can cause turmoil and become fertile ground for staking new identities. Understanding how these changes can take place is important to the future of community cohesion across the world. This book gives a detailed analysis of how different stakeholders in two Dutch municipalities use and adapt their identity discourses to deal with changing circumstances, situating this work within a wider international context through global comparisons. The growing spatial interdependence and political pressures for municipal cooperation or amalgamation creates not only threats, but also opportunities for stakeholders in local communities to transform their local identities. By studying how local communities attach to local identities, a new conceptual framework can be formed, informed by lively accounts from residents on the rich and varied use of identity in their communities and their concerns over future developments. This is valuable reading for students, scholars and researchers working in geography, politics, sociology and cultural studies.
Local Invisibility, Postcolonial Feminisms: Asian American Contemporary Artists In California (Critical Studies In Gender, Sexuality, And Culture Ser.)
by Laura FantoneThis book offers gendered, postcolonial insights into the poetic and artistic work of four generations of female Asian American artists in the San Francisco Bay Area. Nancy Hom, Betty Kano, Flo Oy Wong, Trinh T. Minh-ha, Theresa H.K. Cha, and Hung Liu are discussed in relation to the cultural politics of their time, and their art is examined in light of the question of what it means to be an Asian American artist. Laura Fantone’s exploration of this dynamic, understudied artistic community begets a sensitive and timely reflection on the state of Asian American women in the USA and in Californian cultural institutions.
The ‘Local’ Irish in the West of Scotland, 1851–1921
by Geraldine VaughanVaughan renews perspectives on the changes brought about by Irish migrant communities in terms of identity, politics and religion. The book examines on the experience of generations of Irish migrants in the West of Scotland from the aftermath of the Great Famine until the creation of the Republic of Ireland.
Local Journalism: Critical Perspectives on the Provincial Newspaper
by Rachel Matthews and Guy HodgsonLocal Journalism investigates the range of meanings associated with the ‘local newspaper’ and considers how digital technology has disrupted the fabric of the local news industry. Divided into two parts, this book first provides a theoretical account of how normative meanings associated with the local newspaper have been challenged by the impact of digital technology and then goes on to explore these questions via case studies drawn from a variety of contexts including the US, Ireland, Denmark, the UK and Spain. It suggests three thematic ways of understanding the role of the legacy local newspaper in a post-digital environment, namely as an information provider, commercial entity and community champion. While much scholarship talks of their demise, this book argues for a more nuanced understanding of the local newspaper and its continued significance to people, places and commercial interests. Local Journalism will benefit students, academics and researchers in the areas of journalism, media studies and sociology.
Local Journalism and Local Media: Making the Local News
by Bob FranklinThe local media - local newspapers and radio, regional television, cable television and local news on the internet - represents a diverse and rapidly-changing sector of the British media landscape. Bringing together media academics, local journalists and other media professionals, this text presents a thorough, up-to-date and authoritative account of recent developments and future prospects for Britain's local newspapers, local media and local journalism. Drawing on current research and relevant literature, the book covers: *key developments in the local media scene*the distinctive editorial format of local newspapers*news sources and other sources available to local journalists*recent developments in media policy*online journalism*ethics and regulations*the impact of new technology. Situating the study within the context of local, national and multi-national media networks, this unique text provides students with a well-written and wide-ranging assessment of all aspects of the local media in the UK and as such, will be a welcome addition to the current literature.
Local Knowledge: Further Essays in Interpretive Anthropology
by Clifford GeertzIn essays covering everything from art and common sense to charisma and constructions of the self, the eminent cultural anthropologist and author of The Interpretation of Cultures deepens our understanding of human societies through the intimacies of "local knowledge. " A companion volume to The Interpretation of Cultures, this book continues Geertz's exploration of the meaning of culture and the importance of shared cultural symbolism. With a new introduction by the author.
Local Knowledge, Global Stage (Histories of Anthropology Annual)
by Frederic W. Gleach Regna DarnellThe Histories of Anthropology Annual presents localized perspectives on the discipline’s history within a global context, with a goal of increasing awareness and use of historical approaches in teaching, learning, and conducting anthropology. This tenth volume of the series, Local Knowledge, Global Stage, examines worldwide historical trends of anthropology ranging from the assertion that all British anthropology is a study of the Old Testament to the discovery of the untranslated shorthand notes of pioneering anthropologist Franz Boas. Other topics include archival research into the study of Vancouver Island’s indigenous languages, explorations of the Christian notion of virgin births in Edwin Sidney Hartland’s The Legend of Perseus, and the Canadian government’s implementation of European-model farms as a way to undermine Native culture. In addition to Boas and Hartland, the essays explore the research and personalities of Susan Golla, Claude Lévi-Strauss, and others.
Local Lives: Migration and the Politics of Place (Studies in Migration and Diaspora)
by Brigitte Bonisch-BrednichLocal Lives contests dominant trends in migration theory, demonstrating that many migrant identities have not become entirely diasporic or cosmopolitan, but remain equally focused on emplaced belonging and the anxieties of being uprooted. By addressing the question of how migrants legally and symbolically lay claim to owning and belonging to place, it refocuses our attention on the micro-politics and everyday rituals of place-making, that are central to the construction of migrant identities. Exploring immigrants' interactions with house spaces, property rights, environmental conservation, landscape, historical knowledge of place, ideas of 'local community' and place-specific 'traditions', this volume shows how, in a fluid world of movement, locality remains a deeply contested and symbolically rich place to situate identity and to constitute the self. Thematically organised and presenting a diverse range of empirical studies dealing with migrant communities in Hawaii, Britain, France, Spain, Australia, New Zealand, the Dominican Republic and Albania, Local Lives reorients research in migration and transnational studies around locality. As such, it will appeal to social scientists working on questions relating to landscape, identity and belonging; race and ethnicity; and migration and transnationalism.
Local Negotiations of English Nationhood, 1570–1680
by John M. AdrianLocal Negotiations explores the vitality of early modern local consciousness. Even in an age of emerging nationhood, English men and women were still profoundly influenced by and even drew their primary identity from the parish, the town, and the county. This book examines how early modern writers invoke local places, traditions, and ways of thinking to respond to the larger political, religious, and cultural changes of the period. The opening chapter establishes the historical basis of local identity and describes the ways in which it was transformed in the second half of the sixteenth century. Each of the succeeding five chapters then focuses on a particular author and historical moment, and explores how local habits of thought are invoked to respond to a specific national initiative (political centralization, religious uniformity, court culture, civil war, and empire). Together, these chapters illustrate both the pervasiveness of local discourse and the range of possible responses to nationhood that it engendered. "
Local Organizations and Urban Governance in East and Southeast Asia: Straddling state and society (Routledge Studies on Civil Society in Asia)
by Benjamin L. Read Robert PekkanenThis edited collection brings together enterprising pieces of new research on the many forms of organization in East and Southeast Asia that are sponsored or mandated by government, but engage widespread participation at the grassroots level. Straddling the state-society divide, these organizations play important roles in society and politics, yet remain only dimly understood. This book shines a spotlight on this phenomenon, which speaks to fundamental questions about how such societies choose to organize themselves, how institutions of local governance change over time, and how individuals respond to and make use of the power of the state. The contributors investigate organizations ranging from volunteer-based organizations that partner with government in providing services for homeless children, to state-managed networks of neighborhood- or village-level associations that perform representative as well as administrative functions and seeks to answer a number of questions: When do the "vertical," top-down imperatives of the state stifle "horizontal" solidarities, and when might the two work in harmony? Are useful social and administrative purposes served by this type of fusion? Does it amplify or merely muffle citizens’ voices? What does it tell us about existing accounts of community, social capital, "synergy," "complementarity," "subsidiarity," and related concepts? Representing seven countries: China, Japan, Vietnam, Thailand, Indonesia, Taiwan, and Singapore this volume will be of interest to undergraduates, postgraduates and academics in Asian studies, political science, sociology, anthropology, development, history, nonprofit studies.
Local Organizations For Social Development: Concepts And Cases Of Irrigation Organization
by David M FreemanOriginally published in 1989. This study is based on field research at the Niazberg site in Pakistan, a small tank system in Madhya Pradesh, India and two tanks systems located in the Sri Lankan Dry Zone
Local Parties In Political And Organizational Perspective
by Martin R. SaizAnalyzes relations between political party systems and local communities in the United States, Canada, Great Britain, Germany, Italy, and other nations. This book addresses an almost completely neglected branch of community politics: the comparative analysis of local political systems. Accordingly, Local Parties in Political and Organizational Perspective opens new views to a variety of relations between political systems and local communities in the United States, Canada, Great Britain, Italy, Germany, and other nations. The authors unite specific national case studies with an original theoretical framework, resulting in an anthology with uncommon coherency. Theoretical generalizations are tested with cross-national data; each case study, in turn, demonstrates a localized version of the larger framework, using specific historical political outcomes as examples. This book addresses an almost completely neglected branch of community politics: the comparative analysis of local political systems. Accordingly, Local Parties in Political and Organizational Perspective opens new views to a variety of relations between political systems and local communities in the United States, Canada, Great Britain, Italy, Germany, and other nations. The authors unite specific national case studies with an original theoretical framework, resulting in an anthology with uncommon coherency. Theoretical generalizations are tested with cross-national data; each case study, in turn, demonstrates a localized version of the larger framework, using specific historical political outcomes as examples. Local Parties in Political and Organizational Perspective argues that local political parties should be understood as Janus-faced: components of nationally encompassing organizations on the one hand, and specific actors in community politics on the other. As such, local parties necessarily act as the primary democratic institutions that link ordinary citizens to local governmental institutions, and transitively to the national political system. By linking ordinary citizens and the most basic local organizations with national politics, Local Parties in Political and Organizational Perspective adds significantly to the collective understanding of the nature and status of local parties in mature and developing democracies
Local Planning In Practice
by Michael Bruton David Nicholson"First Published in 1991, Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company."
Local Political Participation in Japan: A Case Study of Oita (Routledge Studies on the Asia-Pacific Region)
by Dani Daigle KidaHow Do Japanese Citizens Participate Politically? Most Japanese citizens, perhaps with a bit of a chuckle, would answer that ‘average’ Japanese do not participate in politics. While political attitudes in other countries have fluctuated corresponding to social, political, and economic climates of the times; in Japan, a consistently negative view of politics has persisted since the late 1960s. Japanese citizens perceive their government much more critically than citizens of neighboring countries. While many Japanese citizens participate in specific political acts such as signing candidate support cards, attending political rallies, or directly contacting politicians, they largely do not view these activities as political participation. Kida examines why this is the case; whether there is a connection between negative views of politics and how Japanese people self-identify their political participation; how Japanese citizens attempt to exact change or influence policy; how the government engages citizens in political participation; and the relationship between citizens’ attitudes towards government and levels of political participation. Kida explores political participation on the local level, to better understand the sources of political attitudes. While participation studies have been conducted in Japan, most are centered in large urban areas, focusing on either extreme forms of participation such as protests, or concentrated on single issue participation such as the environmental or women’s movements. This book, in contrast, explores what every day ‘regular’ in the system political participation looks like in a small traditional Japanese city – using Oita, a small city in Kyushu, as a case study. It focuses especially on the role local institutions and politicians play in influencing the kinds of participation available and subsequently, the attitudes created about participation.
Local Politics and Democratization in Russia (BASEES/Routledge Series on Russian and East European Studies)
by Cameron RossThis comprehensive study of local politics in Russia shows that the key reforms of local government, and the struggle to forge viable grassroots democracies have been inextricably linked to the wider struggle for power between the regions and the Kremlin, and to the specific nature of Russia’s highly politicized and negotiated form of asymmetrical federalism. During the Yeltsin era all attempts to create a universal and uniform system of local-self-government in the federation were a failure. Under the protection of their constitutions and charters, and the extra-constitutional rights and powers granted to them in special bilateral treaties, regional leaders, particularly in Russia’s 21 ethnic republics were able to instigate highly authoritarian regimes and to thwart the implementation key local government reforms. Thus, by the end of the Yeltsin era the number of municipalities, their type, status and powers, varied tremendously from region to region. Putin’s local government reforms also need to be viewed as an integral component of his wider centralizing political agenda, and his assault on the principles and practices of federalism. With the instigation of his ‘dictatorship of law’ and ‘power vertical’, Putin has thwarted the development of grassroots democracy and overseen the creation of local ‘electoral authoritarian’ regimes. Putin’s new system of local self-government marks a victory for the proponents of the ‘statist concept’ of local self-government over those who championed the ‘societal concept’, codified in Article 12 of the Russian Constitution. Overall, this book is an important resource for anyone seeking to understand politics in Putin’s Russia.