[PDF] Uncertain Futures eBook

Author : Edmund Berger
Publisher : John Hunt Publishing
Page : 146 pages
File Size : 40,20 MB
Release : 2017-02-24
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 1785355015

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Uncertain Futures: An Assessment of the Conditions of the Present provides a detailed look into the economic and political conditions of our present moment from a Marxist perspective. Key aspects of Marxist economic theory are illustrated in clear ways in order to provide an easy introduction to Marxist thought and their applicability. The book also examines the sluggish recovery from the Great Recession, in the context of the long-term feasibility of sustaining the capitalist system by placing it into a historical framework. It considers the necessity of social democratic reforms while calling for an anarchic re-invigoration of the politics of everyday life.

Author : Jens Beckert
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 368 pages
File Size : 50,44 MB
Release : 2018-07-12
Category : Business & Economics
ISBN : 0192552759

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Uncertain Futures considers how economic actors visualize the future and decide how to act in conditions of radical uncertainty. It starts from the premise that dynamic capitalist economies are characterized by relentless innovation and novelty and hence exhibit an indeterminacy that cannot be reduced to measurable risk. The organizing question then becomes how economic actors form expectations and make decisions despite the uncertainty they face. This edited volume lays the foundations for a new model of economic reasoning by showing how, in conditions of uncertainty, economic actors combine calculation with imaginaries and narratives to form fictional expectations that coordinate action and provide the confidence to act. It draws on groundbreaking research in economic sociology, economics, anthropology, and psychology to present theoretically grounded empirical case studies. These demonstrate how grand narratives, central bank forward guidance, economic forecasts, finance models, business plans, visions of technological futures, and new era stories influence behaviour and become instruments of power in markets and societies. The market impact of shared calculative devices, social narratives, and contingent imaginaries underlines the rationale for a new form of narrative economics.

Author : Ignasi Clemente
Publisher : John Wiley & Sons
Page : 244 pages
File Size : 47,5 MB
Release : 2015-08-06
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN : 111890978X

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This book examines children and young people’s attempts to participate in conversations about their own treatment throughout uncertain cancer trajectories, including the events leading up to diagnosis, treatment, remission, relapse, and cure or death. Clearly and compellingly written, Clemente relies on a new multi-layered method to identify six cancer communication strategies Illustrates that communication is central to how children, parents, and healthcare professionals constitute, influence, and make sense of the social worlds they inhabit—or that they want to inhabit Provides ethnographic case studies of childhood cancer patients in Spain, using children's own words Examines the challenges of how to talk to and how to encourage patients' involvement in reatment discussions In his critique of the “telling” versus “not telling” debates, Clemente argues that communication should be adjusted to the children’s own needs, and that children's own questions can indicate how much or little they want to be involved Uncertain Futures is the winner of the 15th Annual Modest Reixach Prize.

Author : Olga Ulturgasheva
Publisher : Berghahn Books
Page : 234 pages
File Size : 39,51 MB
Release : 2022-08-12
Category : Nature
ISBN : 1800735944

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The volume examines complex intersections of environmental conditions, geopolitical tensions and local innovative reactions characterising ‘the Arctic’ in the early twenty-first century. What happens in the region (such as permafrost thaw or methane release) not only sweeps rapidly through local ecosystems but also has profound global implications. Bringing together a unique combination of authors who are local practitioners, indigenous scholars and international researchers, the book provides nuanced views of the social consequences of climate change and environmental risks across human and non-human realms.

Author : Vito Tanzi
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Page : 249 pages
File Size : 26,98 MB
Release : 2022-05-19
Category : Business & Economics
ISBN : 1009117939

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This book revisits a distinction introduced in 1921 by economists Frank Knight and John Maynard Keynes: that between statistically predictable future events ('risks') and statistically unpredictable, uncertain events ('uncertainties'). Governments have generally ignored the latter, perceiving phenomena such as pandemics, natural disasters and climate change as uncontrollable Acts of God. As a result, there has been little if any preparation for future catastrophes. Our modern society is more interconnected and more globalized than ever. Dealing with uncertain future events requires a stronger and more globally coordinated government response. This book suggests a larger, more global government role in dealing with these disasters and keeping economic inequalities low. Major institutional changes, such as regulating the private sector for the common good and dealing with special harms, risks and crises, especially those concerning climate change and pandemics, are necessary in order to achieve any semblance of future progress for humankind.

Author : Robert Goodspeed
Publisher :
Page : 288 pages
File Size : 25,12 MB
Release : 2020
Category : City planning
ISBN : 9781558444003

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""Describes the emerging use of collaborative scenario planning practices in urban and regional planning, and includes case studies, an overview of digital tools, and a project evaluation framework. Concludes with a discussion of how scenarios can be used to address urban inequalities. Intended for a broad audience"--Provided by the publisher"--

Author : Carol Cohn
Publisher : John Wiley & Sons
Page : 362 pages
File Size : 30,33 MB
Release : 2013-04-03
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 0745660665

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Where are the women? In traditional historical and scholarly accounts of the making and fighting of wars, women are often nowhere to be seen. With few exceptions, war stories are told as if men were the only ones who plan, fight, are injured by, and negotiate ends to wars. As the pages of this book tell, though, those accounts are far from complete. Women can be found at every turn in the (gendered) phenomena of war. Women have participated in the making, fighting, and concluding of wars throughout history, and their participation is only increasing at the turn of the 21st century. Women experience war in multiple ways: as soldiers, as fighters, as civilians, as caregivers, as sex workers, as sexual slaves, refugees and internally displaced persons, as anti-war activists, as community peace-builders, and more. This book at once provides a glimpse into where women are in war, and gives readers the tools to understood women’s (told and untold) war experiences in the greater context of the gendered nature of global social and political life.

Author : Ignasi Clemente
Publisher : John Wiley & Sons
Page : 244 pages
File Size : 42,70 MB
Release : 2015-10-12
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN : 1118909712

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This book examines children and young people’s attempts to participate in conversations about their own treatment throughout uncertain cancer trajectories, including the events leading up to diagnosis, treatment, remission, relapse, and cure or death. Clearly and compellingly written, Clemente relies on a new multi-layered method to identify six cancer communication strategies Illustrates that communication is central to how children, parents, and healthcare professionals constitute, influence, and make sense of the social worlds they inhabit—or that they want to inhabit Provides ethnographic case studies of childhood cancer patients in Spain, using children's own words Examines the challenges of how to talk to and how to encourage patients' involvement in reatment discussions In his critique of the “telling” versus “not telling” debates, Clemente argues that communication should be adjusted to the children’s own needs, and that children's own questions can indicate how much or little they want to be involved Uncertain Futures is the winner of the 15th Annual Modest Reixach Prize.

Author : Jens Beckert
Publisher : Harvard University Press
Page : 384 pages
File Size : 40,59 MB
Release : 2016-06-07
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 0674545893

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In a capitalist system, consumers, investors, and corporations orient their activities toward a future that contains opportunities and risks. How actors assess uncertainty is a problem that economists have tried to solve through general equilibrium and rational expectations theory. Powerful as these analytical tools are, they underestimate the future’s unknowability by assuming that markets, in the aggregate, correctly forecast what is to come. Jens Beckert adds a new chapter to the theory of capitalism by demonstrating how fictional expectations drive modern economies—or throw them into crisis when the imagined futures fail to materialize. Collectively held images of how the future will unfold are critical because they free economic actors from paralyzing doubt, enabling them to commit resources and coordinate decisions even if those expectations prove inaccurate. Beckert distinguishes fictional expectations from performativity theory, which holds that predictions tend to become self-fulfilling prophecies. Economic forecasts are important not because they produce the futures they envision but because they create the expectations that generate economic activity in the first place. Actors pursue money, investments, innovations, and consumption only if they believe the objects obtained through market exchanges will retain value. We accept money because we believe in its future purchasing power. We accept the risk of capital investments and innovation because we expect profit. And we purchase consumer goods based on dreams of satisfaction. As Imagined Futures shows, those who ignore the role of real uncertainty and fictional expectations in market dynamics misunderstand the nature of capitalism.

Author : William C. Tweed
Publisher : Univ of California Press
Page : 248 pages
File Size : 48,70 MB
Release : 2010-10-06
Category : Nature
ISBN : 0520947304

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In this provocative walking meditation, writer and former park ranger William Tweed takes us to California’s spectacular High Sierra to discover a new vision for our national parks as they approach their 100th anniversary. Tweed, who worked among the Sierra Nevada’s big peaks and big trees for more than thirty years, has now hiked more than 200 miles along California’s John Muir Trail in a personal search for answers: How do we address the climate change we are seeing even now—in melting glaciers in Glacier National Park, changing rainy seasons on Mt Rainer, and more fire in the West’s iconic parks. Should we intervene where we can to preserve biodiversity? Should the parks merely become ecosystem museums that exhibit famous landscapes and species? Asking how we can make these magnificent parks relevant for the next generation, Tweed, through his journey, ultimately shows why we must do just that.