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This paper will investigate the emergence of a digitalising state in the global south through a focus on new techniques of governance initiated by the information age. It will discuss the mechanisms of the digitalising state across two realms – the governance of information infrastructures evident in the transition from paper to digital data, and the governance of informational peripheries emerging across digital and territorial exclusions. The paper argues that through these dynamics, the digitalising state is engaged in a politics of digitalisation-as-urbanisation where digitalisation becomes both a product and producer of regional urbanisation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While there is a substantial body of leaving care research, the theorization of care leaving has been more limited. Only a few studies have incorporated a life course perspective, mainly in Global North contexts where life course perspectives may differ significantly from those in the Global South, including Africa. Drawing on findings from a feasibility research study, this paper contributes to the emerging international literature on theorizing care leaving by applying a life course perspective to the experiences of youth leaving care in four African countries. The paper highlights how life course can be a useful conceptual framework for understanding the experiences of care leavers with an emphasis on four core concepts: biography, linked lives, waithood, and agency. Implications for policy and practice are outlined with a focus on interdependence, participatory practice, biography, and cultural transition planning alongside efforts to redress systemic, oppressive barriers facing care leavers in society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Combining online and offline data collection during six months of ethnographic fieldwork in Southern Mozambique in early 2021, this paper explores how media and its everyday use in the Global South are impacting on, and are in turn being transformed by China. It specifically looks into the creative and personalised ways in which Chinese-made garments are sold and promoted in Mozambique via the messenger service WhatsApp. Examining how Mozambican and West African traders use WhatsApp groups and status updates to mediate the fashionability of these Chinese goods, this paper shows that the consequences of Chinese interactions with the Global South on the global media landscape transcend the mere spread of Chinese hardware and software. Going beyond dominant, state-centred narratives of Chinese influence abroad, this paper demonstrates the key role of individuals and their agency in shaping the digital impact of Global China. By doing so, it also highlights the importance of analysing media practices in their specific local contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

From chalk boards to smart boards, and from textbooks to eBooks, technology has always been integral to education. Likewise, technologies that help students to understand history may not translate well to learning mathematics. In the third paper, the authors describe how 3D printing has been used to increase engagement and understanding in middle school math classes. [Extracted from the article]

The editors of EPA: Economy and Space have announced the winners of the Ashby prizes for the most innovative papers published in the journal in 2022. Kun Wang, Junxi Qian, and Shenjing He were awarded for their paper on global destruction networks and hybrid e-waste economies in Guiyu, China. Andrea Ricci was awarded for his paper on global locational inequality. The papers have been made free to access for one year. The authors express their gratitude for the recognition and discuss the importance of their research in addressing cultural and economic issues in the Global South. [Extracted from the article]

This paper explores the voices of resistance against the Dakar Rally's decade-long operation in South America. Drawing upon the three-prong framework of environmental justice (EJ), the analysis showcases how the less powerful stakeholders in the hosting countries articulated the deleterious consequences caused by the event to the local communities and ecologies. Moreover, by situating the Dakar Rally's expeditions in South America within the global capitalist economy, the paper explains why the most prestigious car rally is an exemplary manifestation of ecological imperialism, as it is not only a showcase of unsustainable industries (represented by fossil-fuel vehicles) with European colonial hubris but also a newer stage of an ongoing centuries-old process of extracting ecological resources from the Global South to benefit the increasingly mobile, vampire-like transnational capital. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Due to the growing population and advancing economy, medical waste accumulation has come to the attention of all facets of society. Although the issue of medical waste management planning has been addressed in developed nations, it still exists in several developing nations. This paper examines the effects of barriers under the Organization action, work handling, and Human Resource Practices section on the healthcare waste management (HCWM) sector in a developing country India. In this study, three hypotheses were constructed and tested using Structural equation modeling. The questionnaire was distributed among 200 health professionals to collect their responses. Ninety-seven responses were received, and 15 barriers were identified affecting the healthcare waste management sector. The results show that all three barriers (i.e., Organizational, Waste handling, and Human resources) hinder the Healthcare waste management sector. Organizational Barriers are the most significant among other barriers. So, the hospitals have to take appropriate actions to overcome these barriers. This paper helps to complete the research gap by providing the different characteristics of barriers. The development of a model for the analysis of barriers influencing HCWM is the Author's original contribution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Due to climate change conditions, natural ventilation potential may reduce over the years and increase dependence on HVAC systems. Moreover, occupants' behaviour regarding natural ventilation is a significant parameter affecting the thermal-energy performance of residential buildings as people tend to occupy their homes differently depending on their life, work and cultural routines. Therefore, in this study, the thermal-energy performance of a Global South (GS) housing case study located in Brazil was assessed in a future weather context. This paper included two major steps: (1) Optimization procedure to create optimized models based on different occupancy patterns; and (2) Parametric analysis to explore the building's thermal-energy performance for a given constructive design option, occupant behaviour and weather data. The optimization procedure included a multi-objective optimization based on the Non-dominated Sorting Genetic Algorithm II (NSGA-II) to minimize discomfort hours and cooling energy demand, while parametric analysis explored the occupants' behaviour varieties derived from alternative occupancy patterns, ventilation availabilities and HVAC operation modes. The obtained future context simulation results indicated an increase in discomfort hours and cooling energy demand, while the most appropriate architecture design might vary depending on the occupancy behaviour. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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In view of persistent global inequalities in scientific knowledge production with clear centers and peripheries, this paper examines a lingering concern for many scientists in the Global South: why is it, at times, so hard to have scientific insights from the South recognized? This paper addresses this big question from within a long-term field immersion in a Ugandan–Australian scientific collaboration in molecular biology. I show how disciplinary hierarchies of value affect the distribution of labor between Uganda and Australia and thematize the role of place and its affective atmospheres that texture the quotidian scientific work in this project. Unsurprisingly, they tend to devalue Ugandan sites and contributions, and turn Uganda into a rather unlikely site for new insights to emerge. However, in spite of doing devalued and outsourced "menial" labor such as fieldwork, Ugandan biologists' fieldwork involves affective encounters with their experimental banana plants that thereby become differently thinkable. The paper argues that attending to affective atmospheres that infuse research sites offers clues about scientists' position in global hierarchies and at the same time can help make room for insights that emanate from unexpected places. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article advocates the transgression of incumbent theoretical divisions between rural and urban abodes of production and draws on new analyses of contemporary spaces of capital and labour antagonisms in Brazil. It does so to articulate a broadening of the definition of class and class struggle towards an emancipatory praxis that does not necessarily prioritise industrialised workers. The study has a particular focus on the reconfiguration of socio-spatial arrangements linked to 21st century commodity cultivation, extraction and trade and subsequent class tensions on the material and epistemological frontier between (hydro, agro and mineral) mega projects and the autonomous territories of rural subjects. The renewed degradation of conditions for a labour force that has always been precarious, the dissolving dichotomy between proletarianised and peasant labour, and the ongoing resistance to corporate capture by communities is evoked to contrast distinct metabolic relations within rural territories with the objectification of labour and nature under capitalism. The analysis reveals new configurations of class domination, tension and counter movements. Many critical scholars, particularly those in the Global South, have been attentive to alternate readings of the world by indigenous, African descendent, peasant and agro-extractivist communities that may be unfamiliar yet underpin vociferous, and often fatal, resistance to capital accumulation. The task to effectively situate these struggles within a theory of broader, heterogeneous class struggle and integrate this 'wealth' of collective struggle and knowledge towards societal transformation remains important work in progress. In this spirit, the paper offers some possibilities for making new conceptual and material connections between rural and urban productive spaces and across currently fragmented class formations and identities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This editorial introduces eight papers included in this special issue on COVID-19. Together, these papers draw key theoretical and political insights for critical organization studies from the pandemic along three main lines. First, they examine how COVID-19 has denaturalized global capitalism, leading to a broad interrogation of the organization of the economy and our societies. Second, they point to how COVID-19 has unveiled the close relation between capital and the state in producing inequalities old and new, a relation that neoliberalism tends to hide from view. Third, they leverage COVID-19 to give voice to the largely female disposable workforce in the Global South on whose work global commodity flows, consumption and capital accumulation rest. We conclude by pointing to the need to address constitutive interdependencies, such as those between wage work and reproductive work, the global North and the global South, the market and the state, to name only a few. We further call for expanding traditional understandings of struggle to include a broader range of social antagonisms (e.g. for sufficient time to care, education, healthcare, housing, safe public spaces, accessible to all) as part of a theoretically and politically renewed organizational research agenda fostering solidarity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Conducting primary data collection can be a fulfilling and interesting adventure producing significant learning experiences particularly for early career researchers. However, fieldwork can be marred with complex challenges and frustrations, especially if conducted in dynamic and politically sensitive environments and with highly vulnerable urban populations. This paper contributes to and advances academic scholarship on fieldwork experiences in the social sciences. Drawing from the first author's doctoral fieldwork experiences, we share our reflections on the application of the photovoice method in researching street traders in Harare, Zimbabwe. We engage with different issues that researchers could consider in the application of photovoice, especially with dynamic and marginalized urban populations like street traders. These include dealing with and managing complex and multiple ethical dilemmas, dealing with the content-quality conundrum, exploring 'missing' photographs and handling 'leftover' photographs, handling conflictual council-street trader relations, building rapport, and ensuring participant commitment, joint interpretation, and co-construction of meaning and methodological benefits of using photovoice with street traders. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first paper that reflects on the use of photovoice with street traders in Global South cities, and we hope that the insights presented here will be useful for future urban researchers working on similar topics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides an account of everyday discursive and material practises deployed by marginalised forest-dependent groups in the course of resisting the implementation of Reduced Emission from Deforestation and forest degradation (REDD +) and conservation regulations. Available literature have documented extensively that REDD + market-based models across the Global South, and Tanzania in particular, have led to increasing inequality, injustices, and exclusions. Nevertheless, there is little attention to exploring how different social actors that are unequally positioned resist exclusions. The paper explores selected case studies of marginalised forest-dependent groups in Lindi, Southern Tanzania, who creatively work to negotiate unequal power relations through a range of encounters around REDD+. Our analysis shows unequal social, spatial, and environmental ramifications of market-based conservation policies and strategies that have led to different kinds of material and discursive resistance to challenge exclusions. In doing so, it provides critical context-specific realities from the Global South and, specifically, Tanzanian scholarship to focus on both the dynamics of power and resistance in socially differentiated forest-dependent groups affected by envisioned market-based and development model-led conservation regimes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to investigate the relationship between manufacturing industry transfer and land use efficiency in china. Our study found that industrial transfer does not have a significant impact on land use efficiency in the full sample. However, when differentiating between the direction of manufacturing transfer, we found that in areas where manufacturing moves out, it inhibits land use efficiency significantly. Whereas in areas where manufacturing moves in, it has no significant impact on land use efficiency. We further analyzed the impact of manufacturing adjustment range and adjustment quality on land use efficiency. The results show that manufacturing structure adjustment has a positive impact on land use efficiency in the full sample and manufacturing immigration areas. In manufacturing emigration areas, manufacturing adjustment quality inhibits land use efficiency significantly, while manufacturing adjustment range improves land use efficiency significantly. Based on these findings, we suggest some policy recommendations to improve land use efficiency through manufacturing transfer. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

International broadcasting services are typically designed to serve public diplomacy and soft power objectives. Traditionally, Western powers have explored and benefited from this state-sponsored media category. However, countries in the Global South, like Brazil, have endeavoured to establish cross-border television services to bolster their international presence. This paper scrutinizes TV Brasil Internacional as a case study, examining its designated functions, management, and funding models. The research illuminates through document surveys and semi-structured interviews that while the channel initially reflected Brazil's external policies and public service ideals, structural alterations enabling increased governmental intervention alongside budget cuts rendered the international service dormant. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Deliberate non-enforcement of the law has been analyzed as a policy tool to redistribute income. I show that it also responds to political incentives for the provision of insurance, resembling two well-known dimensions of social policy design. I analyze data from a large informal program of social insurance in the world: informal access to electricity service. Transmission and distribution losses (TDL) in the electricity sector are counter-cyclical because non-compliance and theft increase during economic crises. By exploiting variation in political institutions, I capture political motivations for the provision of informal insurance. Using a panel of 110 developing countries (1970–2014) and instrumental variables for business cycles and regime type, I show that unlike highly entrenched autocrats, democracies tolerate increases in electricity losses during negative income shocks. This paper expands the literature on "forbearance" showing how the provision of informal insurance varies across the developing world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The chartography of physical and imaginary borders between different national communities has historically been a challenging political process, especially in the case of the Balkan Peninsula. As regards ethno-nationalism in the Western Balkans, religion is one of the rudimental and constitutive elements of a nation's identity. Yet, in theory this can only be true for a religiously homogenous nation-state, although this region is far from being home to religious homogeneity. A case in point is Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH), where the lack of religious homogeneity can be illustrated through the three different religions that dominate the two political entities in the country. Albania, another country of Western Balkans, is similar to the case of BiH in relation to religious diversity among its population, but different from it in relation to religion not being an identity element upon which its nation is founded. In view of this diversity of mixed religious heritage embedded in the state formation, this article focuses on the nature of the ethno-religious nationalism in BiH and Albania. By employing a comparative case study approach, this article sets the analytical framework for the study of ethno-religious nationalism, while addressing the state approaches, policy orientations and challenges that characterize the governance of religious diversity in these countries in the post-communist era. The concept of religious nationalism - which is operationalized in ethnic terms – is used to shed light on the two states' nation-building efforts, which have incorporated a marked religious element. The paper concludes with a cross-country analysis on how the volatility of ethno-religious coexistence in BiH and Albania has shaped their present and shall impact their future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The conception of biometric systems as a means of securing sensitive information and enhancing service delivery remains under-researched. To address this knowledge gap, we explore the case of a public-sector social security and pension organisation in Ghana using a qualitative interpretative study approach and the information security model of confidentiality-integrity-availability as an analytical lens. The study's findings indicate that integrating and using biometric identification and authentication as part of delivering social security and pension services can protect availability, confidentiality, and integrity of information. The findings further show that the use of a biometric system for social security and pension information security can contribute to reducing service turnaround time and vulnerability to fraudulent manipulation of benefits payments. The study provides implications for research, practice, and policy. For research, the paper opens up biometric systems' study from the perspective of information security and service improvement. For practice and policy, the study demonstrates the importance of aligning biometric systems' deployment and use with domain application requirements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

By showcasing Sri Lanka's repatriation of hazardous hospital waste to the United Kingdom, this paper explores how the transboundary movement of waste management business model functions in the Global South. It builds on a framework that integrates the market and legal modes of accountability, regulatory capture, and an ethic of accountability. Data were collected using online ethnography and an interpretive case study method. The study demonstrates how the adherence to market and legal modes of accountability and the violation of an ethic of accountability have created loopholes for actors to capture regulatory and institutional provisions, making the transboundary waste management business redundant in the Global South. The traditional business model pursued in waste management has proved inadequate in realizing reciprocal societal rights and responsibilities and promoting public well-being. This has resulted in an erosion of public trust in government and state agencies. Thus, we argue that accountability-based accounting and the ethic of accountability can potentially mitigate the opportunities for regulatory capture, serve the public interests, and protect the ecosystem. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Two events have brought the social movement in Bahrain to light yet again: the temporary detention of the football player Hakeem Al-Araibi in Thailand for alleged 'terrorist' acts and the imprisonment of the activist Najah Yusuf because of her criticism of the hosting of a Formula One Grand Prix. This paper sheds light on the nexus between sports journalism and politics in Bahrain. It highlights the weaponizing of sports journalism during the first few weeks of the 2011 uprising to protect the regime. The coverage of the demonstrations is analysed to inspect how the 2011 uprising was reported on by the pro-regime sports newspapers. This paper argues that sports journalism played an unprecedented political role during the uprising when it was used by the regime as a weapon to confront the protests and in the process reinforce the regime's control over the country. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The green hydrogen industry will grow tremendously in the coming decades. Peripheral regions in the Global South that offer favourable natural conditions for renewable energies are expected to become nodes of emerging global value chains. This has led to high expectations with regard to development impulses. The paper assesses the prospects of linkage-based development in the region of Antofagasta, Chile. Against the backdrop of expert interviews, secondary sources and insights gained at the first meeting of the region's green hydrogen committee, the author cautions against being overly optimistic. The green hydrogen industry in Antofagasta benefits from horizontal linkages with the mining sector and related externalities. There are prospects for forward linkages with mining and also chemicals production. Backward linkages will, most likely, be limited to generic, low value-adding tasks. This restricts industrial diversification and upgrading by suppliers. Being capital intensive, the green hydrogen industry will not create many jobs. Through taxation, the region and especially small municipalities may gain access to additional revenues though. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Peacekeepers are seen as a UN tool for promoting domestic changes in host countries, but little is known about the political consequences when officers return home. During the last 10 years, Brazilian presidents appointed a significant number of former peacekeepers to key political functions. How and why do former peacekeepers end up so involved in government affairs? To answer this question, this paper focuses on the array of skills acquired by peacekeepers in domestic missions and reinforced abroad. Drawing on a set of semi-structured interviews and questionnaires to military, former political decision-makers, and researchers, as well as other primary and secondary sources, this paper details how political articulation, experience in conflict management, and prestige empowered Brazilian military officers to resume their tradition of intervention in politics. This paper also shows that peace operations can produce deleterious outcomes for troop-contributing countries in the Global South. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent studies have focused attention on the proliferation of plans in the Global South for massive infrastructure investment to accelerate peri-urbanization and link together networks of proximate cities. This paper proposes that a focus on the national politics of the infrastructure push is an essential starting point to understand this trend, both because the national state plays a constitutive role in the processes that are shaping emerging urbanity, and because national states are themselves being transformed by this moment. In pursuing infrastructure-driven extended urbanization, national state actors seek to capitalize on moments of opportunity presented by shifts in the investment priorities of transnational financial actors, and by advances in infrastructure and logistics technologies, to gain power through the formation of political regimes based on economic growth and the distribution of rents from land development. Hence extended urbanization proceeds not as a gradual and linear process, but is instead marked by waves of disruptive and politically contentious reforms and plans intended to enable real estate, infrastructure, and logistics megaprojects. The current wave of political projects around extended urbanization is marked by distinct features, including the increasingly fragmented and decentered nature of transnational finance, and geopolitical dynamics associated with the emergence of an increasingly polycentric global order. It is consequently marked by geopolitical competition to shape emergent state agendas of extended urbanization, and by increasing variegation in the models of infrastructure-driven extended urbanization that state actors adopt. The paper illustrates these arguments with examples from Southeast Asia's mega-urban regions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As the prevalence of conflict and fragility continue to rise around the world, research is increasingly heralded as a solution. However, current ethical guidelines for working in areas suffering from institutional and social fragility, insecurity or violent conflict have been heavily critiqued as highly abstract; focussed only on data collection; detached from the realities of academia in the Global South; and potentially extractive. This article seeks to respond to that assessment by spotlighting some of the most prevalent challenges researchers face in the pursuit of ethical working practices. It explores the material and epistemic injustices that often shape and underpin research structures and relationships in these contexts. The paper draws on the authors' experiences of research in conflict-affected and fragile contexts over the last fifteen years and on workshop discussions with researchers based in fragile and conflict-affected contexts conducted in Amman, Bogotá and Dhaka in 2019-2020. The paper works from the premise that achieving ethical research in fragile spaces is not dependent solely on activity at the site of research, but also on decisions made across the entire ecosystem of a research project. It therefore interrogates the full research landscape, from funding models, to research design (including research topics, partnerships, methods, participant selection, and researcher positionality), to dissemination plans and ethical gatekeeping. The paper critically reflects on inequities in the processes of knowledge production about conflict and fragility and the key ethical challenges that researchers encounter. It highlights the need for further guidance, support and accountability to ensure ethical research practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is now well-established that business groups (BGs)—an inimitable multifirm structure that enables legally distinct firms to take coordinated action—constitute a dominant organizational form in many economies around the world. The BG phenomenon has attracted sustained scholarly attention over the last three decades. Despite the shift in BG research toward BG heterogeneity and strategic performance outcomes, prior reviews and the last meta-analysis a decade ago focus narrowly on the question of whether BGs confer a financial performance advantage on affiliated firms. We provide a more extensive account of the BG effect and an in-depth review of the theoretical approaches used in prior work by focusing only on family-controlled business groups (FBGs)—the dominant type of BG. We make three contributions. First, we develop a parsimonious organizing framework to summarize extant FBG research in a nuanced way—specifying the relationships examined, theoretical explanations advanced, and empirical evidence adduced. This summary reveals that extant FBG theorizing is predominantly structurally focused. Second, we propose a reorientation of FBG research toward a microfoundations-based approach. We develop a scheme for theoretical "taking" and "giving" of relevant microfoundational frameworks from contiguous management subfields to systematically identify potential paths ahead for future FBG theorizing. Finally, we granularly discuss illustrative microfoundation-based frameworks, outlining how their application could both enrich and better integrate FBG research with contiguous management subfields such as entrepreneurship, family business, and strategy research. We thus consolidate our understanding of FBG research, identify gaps, and suggest promising pathways for future work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we discuss challenges associated with implementing a policy for Ancillary Care (AC) for related and unrelated (serious) adverse events during an Ebola vaccine trial conducted in a remote area of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Conducting clinical trials in resourceconstrained settings can raise context-related challenges that have implications for study participants' health and wellbeing. During the Ebola vaccine study, three participants were injured in road traffic accidents, but there were unexpected difficulties when trying to apply the AC policy. First, because of the nature of the adverse events, the insurer refused to cover the costs. Second, the AC policy did not address treatments by traditional medicine, even though traditional medicines are frequently used and highly trusted in the study community. This highlighted a contrast between the researchers' well-intentioned AC approach and the participants' legitimate preferences. The way in which researchers should address their responsibility to provide AC is not straightforward; it requires contextualization. Our experience highlights the importance of involving community representatives and the local ethics committee to ensure development of an AC policy that is culturally and ethically appropriate. Additionally, the insurance contract should clearly stipulate which adverse events are linked to the trial participation, and thus eligible for coverage, to avoid controversies when claims are made. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research on public attitudes to the death penalty has been predominantly understood through single nation-states, especially within the USA. Examinations of international differences in citizens' support for the death penalty have been scarce, particularly among continents with a high volume of retentionist nations (e.g. Asia). In this paper, we draw on a dataset of 135,000 people from across 81 nations to examine differences in death penalty support. We find that residents of retentionist nations are generally more supportive of the death penalty than those from abolitionist nations. But this general difference masks important differences both within and between countries. At the country-level, residents of abolitionist nations with autocratic political systems and those with higher homicide levels were more likely to support the death penalty than residents of other abolitionist nations. At the individual level, greater support for a strong dictatorial-type leader and perceptions of political corruption are associated with increased support for the death penalty, but only in abolitionist nations. By contrast, more frequent religious worship, perceived egalitarianism in a nation, and support for the political performance of government reduced death penalty support in abolitionist nations but increased support in retentionist nations, while belief in individual responsibility and critical views towards ethnic minorities increased support for the death penalty across both abolitionist and retentionist nations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Green finance cooperation is an organic component of international cooperation among the globalization, but few studies focused on the status of green finance cooperation. Previous studies have confirmed the value of green finance cooperation within countries for green development, laying the foundation for initiating discussions on green finance cooperation between countries. This paper uses quantitative methods such as word frequency statistical analysis, visualization cloud map, and semantic network analysis to analyze the development process of Sino-US green finance cooperation on the basis of selected green finance cooperation texts. The results show that multi-dimensional parties in Sino-US green finance cooperation play a role in promoting the cooperation process and resolving differences in cooperation cognition. Secondly, the auxiliary elements of Sino-US green finance cooperation have achieved value mobilization and effective integration. Thirdly, the development effect of Sino-US green finance cooperation has a relatively sensitive response to external shocks represented by political factors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper applies a critical lens to a Master's degree program in education in one University in Norway and its stated aim of promoting critical skills in students from the global south in particular. Two groups of students, one an international mix in Oslo, and the other, South Sudanese students studying in Hawassa, Ethiopia, were compared. The study employed tenets of action research, with the aim of boosting the continuing professional development of both students and course instructors. The findings reveal varying levels of challenges related to, among others, uncritical deference towards course instructors and literature and varying levels of language proficiency which, it is argued, undermines critical thinking. Despite the above, it is argued that the degree programme furnishes an important platform for culturally diverse students to interact and foster the kind of critical thinking skills valorized in the course aims. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The ability to access the state as a taxpaying citizen is important for the purposes of building trust and reciprocity, voicing grievances and disseminating knowledge, and strengthening tax compliance and transparency. Based on original empirical data, this paper elaborates a theoretical argument of how state-citizen encounters in the case of taxation are conditioned by five interacting factors. Drawing on interviews with tax officials and taxpayers in Windhoek, Namibia, this paper shows that these five factors are weakly present and negatively reinforce each other, thereby providing insights into the Namibian tax system and everyday state-citizen tax encounters in developing countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines how financial development affects technological progress of 55 developing countries over the 2003 to 2016 period, with particular attention to the interaction between R&D spillovers and financial development. We find that financial development induces total factor productivity improvement in developing countries both directly and indirectly. While there has been a profound literature on the direct effect of financial development on total factor productivity improvement, the evidence of an indirect effect is relatively new. Specifically, the indirect effect takes place through international R&D spillovers from developed countries to developing countries. Between the two components of financial development, the financial institutional aspects exert a more significant effect on total factor productivity than that of their financial market counterparts. As this paper also re-examines the effectiveness of the North-South R&D spillovers, it conveys important implications for policymakers whose objectives are to promote technological development and economic performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scholarly work that seeks to theorize about fragmentation of media audiences has largely been restricted to the experiences of advanced democracies in the west. This has resulted in a preponderance of research endeavors that have sought to understand this phenomenon through ideas that are pertinent, perhaps solely to those contexts, and not as applicable outside, particularly in the Global South. This has potentially limited our imagination into various other ways in which audience fragmentation can manifest in these often-overlooked countries. In this paper, I use the case of online India as an example to offer a theoretical framework – that of news reading publics – for understanding audience fragmentation as a more global socio-political phenomenon that allows for rigorous comparative research, without being restrictive in scope. I draw from existing theories in communication and related disciplines and show how such a framework can be situated within existing social science theory. I argue that this framework should make us think of audience fragmentation in western contexts to be special cases of a more general model. I also show how network analysis can be used as a context-agnostic tool for identifying news reading publics and demonstrate the utility of such a method in complementing this theoretical framework. Finally, I discuss potential future research directions that this framework generates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The onset of COVID-19 resulted in the adoption of various measures such as lockdowns and alcohol bans. These interventions were new and unprecedented in the way they impacted drinking experiences across various contexts. The impact of COVID-19 lockdowns and other alcohol restrictions in non-Western contexts remains unknown. Little is known about how the strict prohibition of COVID-19 lockdowns impacted drinkers. Using grounded theory methods from an alcohol study based in Botswana with drinkers (n = 20), this paper investigated the impact of lockdowns and alcohol bans in Botswana. Key themes from the data relate to support for alcohol bans, opposition to bans, and adjusting drinking practices. Drinking at home due to COVID-19 lockdowns led to shifts in drinking practices. The paper draws attention toward the need to understand how the COVID-19 pandemic might impact drinking experiences in developing countries. Study findings point toward the complex ways in which the COVID-19 pandemic and its alcohol restrictions may shape drinking experiences in home contexts. More importantly, the paper highlights the importance of home-drinking as a focal area for research in non-Western contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As banks face heightened levels of regulatory challenges, many of them, especially those in developing countries, are struggling to maintain their reputations. This paper addresses the following questions: How do commercial banks in developing countries like Lebanon respond to institutional pressures for compliance concerning anti-money laundering (AML) and counter-financing of terrorism (CFT)? How do Regulatory Technology (RegTech) solutions contribute to solving their compliance problems in this domain and why may the potential of RegTech be limited in the Lebanese context? To answer these questions, we conducted a field study among Lebanese commercial banks and their vendors. Based on thematic analysis, findings reveal the importance of technology for enhancing compliance of Lebanese banks with international regulations, especially US ones, thereby avoiding sanctions. Thus, the adoption of RegTech is mainly due to coercive pressures, whereas the choice of RegTech solutions is highly dependent on mimetic and normative forces, and happens later. Results also show that manual processes are insufficient for compliance due to the huge number of regulations and transactions. Hence, RegTech for AML/CFT is notably adopted for the efficient screening of clients and monitoring of their transactions. These solutions enhance decision-making processes for compliance teams, which become effective when the banks ensure an adequate interaction between employees and the new technologies. However, RegTech presents several additional challenges that have to be overcome for effective compliance such as finding the right vendors and ensuring data quality. Moreover, the geopolitical context in developing countries like Lebanon limits the potential of RegTech for AML/CFT. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

At the beginning of 2020, the world was left in an unprecedented state of shock by the COVID-19 pandemic. Brazil quickly became the epicenter of new cases of contamination, where the propagation of the virus was unrestrained, despite boasting one of the strongest Universal health coverage systems in Latin America. This paper has at least three empirical contributions to the literature about economic resilience and the COVID-19 pandemic. Firstly it is a critical issue regarding the "economics versus life" trade-off, which is an essential question for developing countries, given that policymakers must decide between policies to reduce the number of COVID-19 infections without damaging the economy. Secondly, our findings suggest that the early adoption of isolation measures applied in 2020, such as the financial aid and the vaccination have been effective in controlling the effects of the pandemic, especially in vulnerable microregions. Furthermore, it was verified that the Emergency financial aid was a fundamental policy in minimizing the economic impacts of the pandemic and allowing people to practice social distancing, contributing positively to the Employment Resilience Index and negatively related to the growth rate of deaths due to COVID-19. The contribution of our study is to measure an inverted U-shaped curve to demonstrate that policymakers must achieve a minimum of families to decrease the COVID-19 deaths. These contributions are essential and straightforward findings to lead policymakers' decisions in developing countries facing financial constraints in the public budget and population reticence about physical distancing, self-quarantine and vaccination. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since its foundation in 1944, the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, soon renamed the World Bank (hereafter, "the Bank"), has shifted its initial goal of reconstructing post-World War II Europe to promoting economic development and alleviating poverty in Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Caribbean. Bank assistance is provided through loans awarded to countries that agree to policy changes that the Bank deems necessary to achieve its stated goals. Bank policies—dubbed Structural Adjustment Programs (SAPs) and, over time, superseded by Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers—have been criticized for not only failing to ameliorate underdevelopment and poverty, but for exacerbating both. The most recent Bank approach to development and poverty alleviation, the Systematic Diagnostic Reports (SDR), attempts to address these criticisms. We appraise the SDR for six Organization of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS). All share daunting economic and social challenges, including an ongoing epidemic of noncommunicable diseases (NCDs). We argue that, contrary to the Bank's claims, these challenges will continue under, and may even be exacerbated by, the policies the Report demands, and we elaborate on their implications for NCDs in the OECS and for social and health equity in the region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper used the dynamic panel data technique to examine the combined indirect effect of remittance inflows via human capital and financial inclusion on economic growth in developing and developed countries over the period between 2007 and2 018. The results from the endogeneity-robust System Generalized Method of Moments (GMM) analysis revealed that with with financial inclusion and human capital, are engines of economic growth in remittance-receiving developing countries. Specifically, better financial inclusion absorbs and efficiently channel remittance inflows into proper and productive economic activities, while developed human capital directly encourages robust economic activities. Therefore, this paper provides insights into the mechanisms that boost remittances' effect on economic growth, i.e. financial inclusion and human capital. Accordingly, we recommend that regulatory frameworks aiming to encourage inward remittances should consider developing financial inclusion and human capital to leverage remittance funds for developmental agendas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper advocates a concept, "Multilingual Intelligence" (MI), for understanding human mind in economically challenging multilingual societies of developing nations. It examines the social, cognitive and intersubjective resources a multilingual society generates, and how these contribute to the development of human intellect. The attempt here is not to replace ontologically bounded imaginaries of old concepts and theories of intelligence with a new one, but to look at human intelligence from another lens of human capacity to trans-/multilanguage. This paper discusses two paradigmatic cases - a "Multilingual Urban Poor (MUP)" and a "Multilingual Tribal Child (MTC)"- to conceptualise Multilingual Intelligence. The logic for MI is derived from the observation that because multilinguality and orality are commonplace in most societies in India, a speaker constantly trans/multi-languages and transknowledges. She reads the minds and linguistic behaviour of the interlocutors before speaking, switches between languages to enhance mutual intelligibility and, perennially lives in the realm of translation. These social-cognitive activities generate an enormous amount of cognitive flexibility, working memory, and higher inferential and metacognitive skills, making it more possible for the children to be intersubjectively attuned. Multilingual children develop a worldview that is founded primarily on connections and not on separation. Extending the two paradigmatic cases to children from other multilingual communities, this paper reflexively engages with how linguistic diversity and constraints impact human intelligence and creativity, and, if so, what should be our politics of human psychology, education and liberation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The most recent phase of services digitalisation in the global South, reflected in the widespread adoption of Internet and smart-phone technologies, has given rise to an emergent gig economy that employs tens of millions of workers across its diverse urban centres. Pre-eminent frames of analysing the global gig economy have thus far focussed significantly on issues related to platform regulation, employment relations and labour organisation. While important, these frames tend to overlook the wider informal, unwaged and self-organised foundations of gig work and labour in the global South. This article addresses the limitations of existing analytical frames by drawing upon the analysis of 55 telephonic interviews with migrant and non-migrant gig workers associated with well-known ride-hailing and home-delivery apps across two Indian cities about their experiences of the COVID-19 crisis. The article offers novel insights into the various uncertainties and challenges that gig workers in India faced during the COVID-19 national lockdown, as well as their attempts to cope with the new post-pandemic realities. Contextualising these experiences through the lens of 'digitally organised informality', the article reveals that in the absence of formal and institutionalised systems, India's gig workers rely significantly on informal socio-spatial networks of care and support that also link internal urban-rural geographies, lives and livelihoods. Conceptualising these informal networks as fundamentally contextual in understanding the development of gig labour and its social reproduction in the global South, the article however also provides a critical evaluation of their partial and contradictory nature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper seeks to relate the scholarly analysis of nationalism – and of the ways in which nation-states relate to minorities and migrants – with the actual socio-political context within which such analysis takes place. Looking back into the theories of nationalism as they have developed since World War II, the focus of nationalism theorists has shifted from the effort to explain why nations emerged and when they emerged, looking at the wider processes of industrialisation and print capitalism; to the effort to analyse nationalism from the ground up through the lived experiences of citizens; to, more recently, the effort to explain why and how nationalism persists and whether and how it evolves in more plural or more exclusionary ways. I am arguing in this paper that it is important to adopt a self-reflexive approach so as not only to link our understanding of nations and nationalism in their contemporary socio-economic and political context, but that we also need to adopt such self-reflexivity in relation to our own work and ask: why do we focus on a particular perspective or evolution? How does this relate to our wider context and positionality as scholars? In this paper, I am proposing a periodisation of nationalism studies from the post-WW II period to this day, arguing that the focus of nationalism theories was guided interactively by the wider socio-economic developments of each period. I conclude with a critical reflection on nationalism in a (post-)pandemic world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While neonatal mortality is a critical measure of national health and well-being, efforts to reduce it in post-colonial, global south national contexts continue to yield unsatisfactory (sometimes worsening) odds of such events. This paper applies the intersectionality framework and dependency theory to time-based changes in neonatal mortality in Tanzania from 1991 to 2016 as a new model for understanding these persistent odds of neonatal mortality in the underdeveloped world. Analysis of data from the Tanzania Demographic Health Survey (from 1991 to 2016) discloses an unambiguous intersection between residence, region, and socioeconomic status in Tanzania. At the national level, neonatal mortality decreased slightly between 1991 and 2016. However, the likelihood of neonates dying increased during that time for women living in rural and unprivileged areas with lower socioeconomic status. An intersectionality framework and dependency theory contextualize these findings by considering structural elements within Tanzania from 1991 to 2016. This new model affords fresh insights, recommendations, and policy discussion for reducing neonatal mortality in Tanzania and other post-colonial, global south nations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we examine whether geopolitical risk influences environmental degradation, while controlling for non-renewable energy consumption, economic growth and trade openness, using a quarterly dataset from 1985Q1 to 2019Q4. The choice of India as a case study is based on a number of reasons. India is a developing country, which produces approximately 3.2% of global GDP. Also, India produces almost 17.7% of the world population. The country also emits about 6.8% of global carbon emissions, and according to the 2020 report of the consulting firm Eurasia, India is ranked fifth in terms of geopolitical risk. This study adds to the existing literature by using the quantile-on-quantile (QQR) regression to examine the effect of geopolitical risk on environmental degradation, as well as highlighting the implications of geopolitical risk on environmental sustainability. Based on empirical estimation, we find that geopolitical risk increases and decreases carbon emissions in India. That is, geopolitical risk increases environmental degradation at middle quantiles and decreases environmental degradation at lower and higher quantiles. In addition, we find that non-renewable energy consumption, economic growth and trade openness impede environmental quality in India. Thus, we are of the opinion that policymakers, when making policy decisions on environmental quality, should factor in geopolitical risk in two areas, mitigation and channel of escalation, among other policy suggestions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study aims to specify the definitions of two terms, bigraphia and digraphia, and examine how these phenomena appear in post-socialist countries. It is currently a global phenomenon to use two or more writing systems in one country, due to the spread of English and the Internet. Bigraphia means when the function and prestige of two writing systems (or two varieties of one system) are equal. On the other hand, when there is a difference in the function and/or prestige between two writing systems, it is defined as digraphia. The paper examines the combination of writing systems in post-socialist countries such as Russia, Belarus, Serbia, and Uzbekistan. In-digraphia refers to a situation in which variations of one writing system coexist, and out-digraphia refers to a situation in which two different writing systems coexist. A narrower sense of digraphia is observed in Belarus today: Belarusian Cyrillic-Т(BC-T) is used to write Tarashkievitsa and Belarusian Cyrillic-N (BC-N) is used to write Narkamaŭka. Out-digraphia is observed in Serbia and Uzbekistan. In these countries, Cyrillic and Latin scripts are used to write Serbian and Uzbek. Out-digraphia is also confirmed in Russian texts: It is commonly thought that only Cyrillic letters are used to write Russian, but recently the use of the so-called "macaronic alphabet," which is a mix of Cyrillic and Latin letters, has become common. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sustainability discourses are dominated by Western, educated, industrialized, rich and democratic (WEIRD) perspectives. Critics call for remedies to patriarchy, capitalism, and colonialism; and for work that is inclusive of women, non-market influences, and epistemologies of the global South. Focusing on women's work, this paper interrogates the epistemic and practical injustices of geography and gender. The empirical domain is a middle-income economy, offering insight from the space between WEIRD and subsistence extremes. 15 case studies of Malay female micro-entrepreneurs draw on interview, observational and secondary data, tracing the effects of market formalization on market actors. Despite subordinate social status, the women provide reliable income streams for their families. However, their livelihoods are threatened by rapidly formalizing markets. Market formalization crowds out the small and diverse in favor of the large and multinational. To address that problem, a pro-social systems view is required, based on pluralistic conceptions of economies and markets. Drawing on Gibson-Graham's diverse economies perspective we derive 12 propositions supporting sustainable livelihoods. Sustainable livelihoods support quality of life and wellbeing, are embedded in less damaging and more inclusive (vs patriarchal, colonial and capitalistic) provisioning systems, in turn embedded in epistemologies that are reflexively conscious of power dynamics and the WEIRD hegemony. In line with the paradoxes and tensions in sustainability thinking we call for pluralism: Conscious acceptance of all economic approaches, formal and informal, state and non-state, global and local, capitalist and planned; with an emphasis on physical, emotional and social well-being, self-determination, diversity, health, and happiness for the many rather than wealth for the few. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Then, I thought that I Current Sociology i monographs should be publishing papers put together and discussed by the panels in the various ISA Research Committees (RCs) and the integrative/open sessions organized at the World Congresses and Research Forums. In this way, I hoped that I Current Sociology i monographs would not only reflect the current discussions within the ISA but that the former would lead and influence ISA members and its RCs to debate new themes that I Current Sociology i monographs were publishing. I Current Sociology i monograph issues were introduced in 2001 with Julia Evetts as editor. [Extracted from the article]

This paper investigates the impact of domestic fuel price increases on export growth in a sample of 77 developing countries over the period 2000-2014. Using a fixed-effect estimator and the local projection approach, we find that an increase in domestic gasoline or diesel price adversely affects real non-fuel export growth, with the impact phasing out within two years after the shock. The impact is mainly noticeable in countries with a high-energy dependency ratio and where access to electricity is limited. Further, large fuel price shocks do not seem to lead to disproportionately large changes in exports, suggesting that neither the gradualism nor the shock therapy approach in fuel subsidy reforms dominates. In countries where the export sector is vulnerable to fuel price shocks, appropriate mitigating measures should be designed to smooth the transition to higher fuel prices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rohingya is one of the ethnic minority groups that has faced profound ethnic violence against them in their home country, Myanmar. Almost a million Rohingya have fled to Bangladesh and are currently living in extremely precarious conditions near the Myanmar–Bangladesh border. Despite the sufferings and oppressions of all Rohingya, women, in particular, have been victims of sexual violence. Using various information sources, this paper analyzes different dimensions of the gender-based violence that has endured in Myanmar for decades. This paper also highlights the health and wellness of Rohingya women, including impacts made during the COVID-19 pandemic. Furthermore, it provides a framework for reducing gender-based violence in the Rohingya camps in Bangladesh. Even though this paper focuses on the Rohingya crisis, insights are relevant to other contexts facing similar social, political, and humanitarian crises, particularly in the Global South. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to bridge universality – as gentrification stands as a global threat to vulnerable communities – and local circumstances and geographies, by investigating structural factors, such as deindustrialisation and land rent gaps, as well as local political economies and socio-spatial structures, which are all common in the Global South. We conducted research in Belo Horizonte, Brazil, to investigate whether a neoliberal economic development policy acted as a trigger for gentrification, relying on mixed methods research to analyse evidence of economic restructuring, land rent creation, changes in resident profiles and major urban development trends in the region. Findings indicate evidence of economic restructuring and that the policy triggered higher land values. However, we did not observe evidence of gentrification in the area and attribute this to a still-relevant manufacturing sector, the extensive presence of large informal settlements, the growing numbers of suburban gated communities, the low proportion of renters, and the fact that local elites are moving southwards while the policy took place in the northern peripheries of the metropolis. Federal policies such as minimum wage increases and housing programs partially contradicted neoliberal state policies. This case study offers a lens to investigate gentrification in different latitudes and illustrates how social policies may prevent gentrification processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Governments across the developing world are adopting digital technologies to improve the performance of public sector supply chains. However, empirical evidence regarding the impact of these technologies on performance is mixed. In this paper, we evaluate the impact of using biometric authentication (BA) devices on the performance of India's food security program. The program aims to deliver subsidized food grains to nearly 160 million low-income households through approximately 500,000 fair price shops (FPSs). Nearly half of those grains do not reach the beneficiaries and are diverted to the open market for private benefit. We estimate the impact of installing BA devices on reducing diversion in more than 3,300 FPSs in the Indian state of Karnataka between 2013 and 2015 using a difference-in-differences approach. We find that BA devices reduce up to 4% of the current diversion at the last mile. We argue that this relatively low impact is due to the presence of a workaround mechanism which results in imperfect monitoring and validate the decrease in diversion mechanism by estimating the differential impact of BA devices. We complement the empirical analysis with a simulation exercise to estimate the additional value that can be unlocked by using the BA devices. We find that the value of better replenishment planning using sales and inventory information captured by BA devices can be significant. The value of better planning can be as high as six times the value of reduction in diversion, depending on the preintervention levels of demand from genuine beneficiaries and diversion at the FPSs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]