The Nordic model rests on two pillars: the social safety net and the provision of services like education, childcare, and healthcare for all. It can also be characterized as an “employment model,” since its financial viability depends upon a high labor participation rate with very few working poor. Economist Torben M. Andersen lays out the model’s structure and highlights factors important for understanding its economic performance. He then looks into specific policy areas based on Denmark’s experiences and addresses the challenges arising from new technologies and globalization.

Rising inequality is one of the most prominent characteristics of the modern age of globalized economies. To some observers, inequality is a natural consequence of economic growth that ought to be accepted to ensure a prosperous future. To others, rising inequality is a cause for alarm—not just because it is unfair, but also because, as Pope Francis has said, “inequality is the root of social evil. ” By most measures, the Nordic countries consistently rank among the best not only when it comes to equality, but also when it comes to business friendliness. Political scientist Carsten Jensen delves into what is exceptional about equality in the region, and outlines “the four equalities” that set it apart: economic (the distance between the poor and rich is relatively low), inter-generational (success in life is not dependent on the status of one’s parents), gender (women are highly integrated into the labor market and independent from the family), and health (the poor have access to the same medical treatments as the well-off). All four types of equalities have their origins in unique political settlements made in the 20th century. The resulting special social market economies of these countries affect their growth and levels of equality even today.

Robert Codrington (1830-1922) trained to be a priest at Oxford University. He volunteered to work in Nelson, New Zealand, from 1860-4 and was appointed as headmaster of the Melanesian Mission training school on Norfolk Island in 1867. He spent the next twenty years in this post and for eight of these he was the head of the Mission travelling through the Melanesian region. Throughout his time in the region he attempted to gain an ethnographic understanding of the people whom he was serving. To this end he studied local languages and translated scriptures into Mota, the lingua franca of the Mission. However, for Codrington material artefacts were fundamental to his understanding of Melanesian life. He took a lively interest in material culture as a collector and donated objects to a number of museums, including the British Museum and The Pitt Rivers Museum. His specialist knowledge made him a valued informant for scholars of Melanesia who regularly consulted him. He is regarded today as one of the founding scholars of Pacific anthropology. This book intends to provide a more comprehensive understanding of how Codrington formed his collection, through the study of his written anthropological works, correspondence with other collectors and scholars and particularly through the private correspondence with his brother and his five journals written between 1867 and 1882. The book also highlights his equally important contribution to the development of material culture studies in the region and how his work has influenced Melanesian studies to the present day.

Winner of the Religion News Association's Award for Best Nonfiction Religion Book!“An important contribution to the making of a field of study, which is just now beginning to take shape.” —Thiago Henrique Mota, European Review of Latin American and Caribbean Studies“A profound exploration of the hidden history of Muslims in the Americas and beyond. . . . An eye-opening book.” —Juan Galvan, Caribbean Conjunctures"[Offers] new perspectives on the contribution of Islam to the culture of Latin America and the Caribbean [and also] sheds an important light on the Muslim minority [there] in the context of Global Islam." —Atilla Kus, International Journal of Latin American ReligionsThe "Muslim World" is often narrowly conceived as tied to the Middle East and North Africa, or more broadly as encompassing Africa’s Sahel region, South and Southeast Asia, and parts of the Balkans. But what about Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC)? It is this question that inspired Ken Chitwood's book.Chitwood traces the story of Muslims in LAC: their deep roots in the region, as well as the current connections among the multiple networks of people, ideas, economies, politics, and religion that extend across the Americas and beyond. Moving from pre-Columbian encounters to the present day, his rich account leaves the reader with a deeper understanding of an integral, but little recognized, part of the Americas and global Islam.

This book has two main objectives - to provide an overview of Danish research in the Afghan province of Nuristan, as well as to understand the scholar, collector, and man, Lennart Edelberg, who was crucial to its shaping. Ethnography as an academic discipline in Denmark was still in its embryonic stages, when Edelberg visited Nuristan for the first time in 1948 as a member of the Third Danish Expedition to Central Asia (1947-52). Parallel to his work as an upper-secondary schoolteacher in Ribe, Edelberg developed his work in Nuristan throughout the following decades. Through different perspectives from people who worked with him, or shared his research interests, the contributions to this book constitute a mosaic. This mosaic represents Lennart Edelberg, his research interests as well as their legacy for contemporary scholarship.

Science in the Arctic changed dramatically over the course of the nineteenth century, when early, scattered attempts in the region to gather knowledge about all aspects of the natural world transitioned to a more unified Arctic science under the First International Polar Year in 1882. The IPY brought together researchers from multiple countries with the aim of undertaking systematic and coordinated experiments and observations in the Arctic and Antarctic. Harsh conditions, intense isolation, and acute danger inevitably impacted the making and communicating of scientific knowledge. At the same time, changes in ideas about what it meant to be an authoritative observer of natural phenomena were linked to tensions in imperial ambitions, national identities, and international collaborations of the IPY. Through a focused study of travel narratives in the British, Danish, Canadian, and American contexts, Nanna Katrine Lüders Kaalund uncovers not only the transnational nature of Arctic exploration, but also how the publication and reception of literature about it shaped an extreme environment, its explorers, and their scientific practices. She reveals how, far beyond the metropole - in the vast area we understand today as the North American and Greenlandic Arctic - explorations and the narratives that followed ultimately influenced the production of field science in the nineteenth century.

“Impressive for its comprehensive coverage, accessible language, engaging descriptions, and nuanced framing of the various problems at work.” —Michael Stanley-Baker, Asian Medicine “Presents a powerful critique of our current system of biomedical innovation dominated by the aggressive pursuit of intellectual property. Drawing on rich case studies from China, India, and Japan, Ibata-Arens shows that government can foster the creation of an innovative commons, sandboxes in which private and public actors can collaborate to create needed innovations. ” —Steve Casper, Keck Graduate Institute"Provides an essential counter-narrative to the pervasive rhetoric that we must rely on the closed intellectual property rights system and private markets to fund and produce medical innovations.... This book stands as a call for a new ethic of worldwide collaboration, an ethic that must be at the forefront of any efforts to change the current system if the commons-based approach that Ibata-Arens describes, and that the world sorely needs, is ever to be adopted." —Joshua Sarnoff, DePaul University College of Law“A fascinating and enlightening book that resonates singularly with the current pandemic, and also with the environmental crisis. Based on a rich conceptualization and in-depth analysis of various examples, the book invites us to question the effectiveness and sustainability of the Western system of biomedical innovation … and to turn our gaze to alternative innovation systems that are much older but that have renewed relevance in the last decades.” —Etienne Nouguez, Sciences Po ParisDespite a century of advances in modern medicine, as well as the rapid development of Covid vaccines, the global pharmaceutical industry has largely failed to bring to market drugs that actually cure disease. Why? And looking further ... How can government policies stimulate investment in the development of curative drugs? Is there an untapped potential for "natural medicines" in new drug discovery? How have private–public sector partnerships transformed the ways we innovate? To what extent are medicinal plant biodiversity and human health codependent?Addressing this range of increasingly critical questions, Kathryn Ibata-Arens analyzes the rise and decline of the global innovation system for new drug development and proposes a policy framework for fast-tracking the implementation of new discoveries and preparing for future pandemics.

Translingual Inheritance tells a new story of the early days of democracy in the United States, when English had not yet become the only dominant language. Drawing on translingual theory, which exposes how language use contrasts with the political constructions of named languages, Elizabeth Kimball argues that Philadelphians developed complex metalinguistic conceptions of what language is and how it mattered in their relations. In-depth chapters introduce the democratically active communities of Philadelphia between 1750 and 1830 and introduce the three most populous: Germans, Quakers (the Society of Friends), and African Americans. These communities had ways of knowing and using their own languages to create identities and serve the common good outside of English. They used these practices to articulate plans and pedagogies for schools, exercise their faith, and express the promise of the young democracy. Kimball draws on primary sources and archival texts that have been little seen or considered to show how citizens consciously took on the question of language and its place in building their young country and how such practice is at the root of what made democracy possible.

President Rafael Correa (2007-2017) led the Ecuadoran Citizens’ Revolution that claimed to challenge the tenets of neoliberalism and the legacies of colonialism. The Correa administration promised to advance Indigenous and Afro-descendant rights and redistribute resources to the most vulnerable. In many cases, these promises proved to be hollow. Using two decades of ethnographic research, Undoing Multiculturalism examines why these intentions did not become a reality, and how the Correa administration undermined the progress of Indigenous people. A main complication was pursuing independence from multilateral organizations in the context of skyrocketing commodity prices, which caused a new reliance on natural resource extraction. Indigenous, Afro-descendant, and other organized groups resisted the expansion of extractive industries into their territories because they threatened their livelihoods and safety. As the Citizens’ Revolution and other “Pink Tide” governments struggled to finance budgets and maintain power, they watered down subnational forms of self-government, slowed down land redistribution, weakened the politicized cultural identities that gave strength to social movements, and reversed other fundamental gains of the multicultural era.

Alan Ward combines constitutional history and political science to compare all nine of Australia’s political systems: federal, state and territory. Guided by a model of parliamentary government drawn from comparative politics, he considers the selection of the government; the prime minister and cabinet; government control of the lower house; the primacy of the lower house in bicameral systems; the head of state, and the influence of Australian federalism on parliamentary government. He also considers the growth of executive democracy in Australia, with its dominant executive.

"Presents a well-organized brief to refute many of the 'durable myths' of how U.S. political economy operates. Ideal for an undergraduate course on inequality." —Kathleen Odell Korgen, Contemporary SociologyOne of the most durable myths of US political economy is that we take from the rich and give to the poor—penalizing the rich for their hard work and rewarding the undeserving. Mark Mattern turns that story on its head.Documenting the everyday, institutionalized ways that income and wealth are transferred upward in the United States, Mattern shows how in fact the bottom subsidizes the top. His provocative analysis, describing in detail the processes and policy choices that systematically favor the rich, is both a tale of "Robin Hood in reverse" and a call for a more equitable, democratic political economy.

While there is arguably universal agreement that corruption plagues countries worldwide, do we agree as well on what corruption is and how to fight it? Do the left and right on the political spectrum hold conflicting views on the issue? Is there a difference in how successful left vs. right governments are in curbing corruption? These are the questions that inspired The Corruption Debates.Stephen Morris explores left and right anticorruption ideologies broadly, then turns to promises, policies, and outcomes in the Americas. He also reaches beyond differences rooted in left/right dichotomies to develop an alternative hypothesis, one reflecting an in-power vs. out-of-power dynamic. His book captures the inherently political nature of not only corruption, but, equally, our understanding of it.

Many experts attribute the Nordic region’s high levels of happiness to factors such as greater relative national wealth, wellfunctioning institutions, or the welfare state model. Instead, economist Christian Bjørnskov argues that the true key to national happiness is social trust — the ability to trust other people one does not know personally. The populations in three of the five Nordic countries are also characterized by a very strong sense of personal freedom. These two factors contribute to a fuller and richer life. Bjørnskov ends by discussing to what extent these elements can be exported to other parts of the world.

“Excellently details the ins and outs of intelligence. .

Even stronger than its outstanding predecessor, the third edition of Understanding Contemporary India provides context for and evaluates more than a decade of challenges and changes in India.Entirely new chapters on geography, politics, the economy, international relations, religion, and environmental challenges, along with updated material throughout (including the impact of the novel coronavirus), result in an indispensable volume that describes and analyzes the paradoxical nature of the world’s largest and most diverse democracy.

"Smart cities" use surveillance, big data processing and interactive technologies to reshape urban life. Transit riders can see the bus coming on a map on their phones. Cities can measure and analyze the garbage collected from every household. Businesses can track individuals' movements and precisely target advertisements. Google's failed Sidewalk Labs proposal in Toronto, which drew sharp criticism over surveillance and privacy concerns, is just one of the many smart city projects which have been proposed or are underway in Canada. Iqaluit, Edmonton, Guelph, Montreal, Toronto and other cities and towns are all grappling with how to use these technologies. Some cities have quickly partnered with digital giants like Uber, Bell and IBM. Others have kept their distance. Big tech companies are hard at work recruiting customers and shaping – sometimes making – public policy on data collection and privacy. Smart Cities for Canada: Promise and Perils is the first book on smart cities in Canada. In this collection, experts from across the country investigate what this new approach means for the problems cities face, and expose the larger issues about urban planning and democracy raised by smart city technology. This is a valuable, timely, independent‐minded book for Canadians.