Product Description: This book addresses key questions on biofuels within agrarian political economy, political sociology and political ecology. Contributions are based on fresh empirical materials from different parts of the world. The book starts with four key questions in agrarian political economy: Who owns what? Who does what? Who gets what? And what do they do with the surplus wealth? It also addresses the emergent social and political relations in the biofuel complex and, given the impacts on natural resources and sustainability, engages with questions about people-environment interactions...read more

Over the past decade, substantial resources have been spent on tackling avian influenza and building a global capacity for a pandemic response. The catastrophic costs of the 1918 influenza pandemic are well documented, and the swine flu pandemic of 2009-10 has raised the alarm yet again. Across the world, surveillance systems have been upgraded, stockpiles of antiviral drugs and influenza vaccines have been created, veterinary and public health systems have been improved and poultry production and marketing has been dramatically restructured. What are the lessons from this experience? And what does this suggest for the future? This book explores how virus genetics, ecology and epidemiology intersect with economic, political and policy processes in a variety of places - from Bangkok to Washington, to Jakarta, Cairo, Rome and London. It focuses on the interaction of the international and national responses - and in particular the experiences of Cambodia, Vietnam, Indonesia and Thailand. It asks how effective is the disease surveillance and response system - can it respond to a new pandemic threat? The comparative analysis reveals the challenges and limitations of a technocratic, centralised response, and the need to take seriously local contexts. Drawing from these experiences, the book concludes with a discussion of future prospects and challenges, examining in particular what a 'One World, One Health' approach - where approaches to animal, human and ecosystem health are integrated - would look like in practice. Published in association with the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC).

This volume brings together authors from diverse experiences and analytical traditions, encouraging a conversation between science and technology and development studies around issues of science, citizenship and globalization. The book reflects on the nature of expertise; the framing of knowledge; processes of public engagement; and issues of rights, justice and democracy. Different case studies cover issues ranging from medical genetics, agricultural biotechnology, occupational health and HIV/AIDS in settings including rural Sierra Leone, urban Britain, China, South Africa, India and Brazil.

Product Description: Global environmental change will be with us forever, but how it happens in the future, and with what effect on the planet and its peoples, depends to a large extent on how the international agreements, national politics and local actions play out...read more

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The purpose of this book is to reveal how agricultural research and extension, far from being discrete, rational acts, are in fact part of a process of coming to terms with conflicting interests and viewpoints, a process in which choices are made, alliances formed, exclusions effected, and worldviews imposed. By going beyond Farmer First, this theoretically informed perspective describes agricultural development as what it is: a highly ideological and political process. As Robert Chambers notes in his foreword, the concerns of Farmer First with performance and Beyond Farmer First with process indicate that a radical rethinking of knowledge, power and agricultural science is well under way.