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Learning from 50 Years of Aboriginal Alcohol Programs: Beating the Grog in Australia
by Peter d’Abbs Nicole HewlettThis open access book deals with community-based attempts on the part of Aboriginal communities and groups in Australia to address harms arising from alcohol misuse. Alcohol-related harms are viewed as both a product of colonisation and dispossession and a contributor to ongoing social, economic and health-related disadvantage, both in Australia and in other countries with colonised Indigenous populations, such as Canada, the US and New Zealand. This book contributes to an evidence-base by bringing together a selection of existing Australian documents considered by the editors to have continuing relevance to all those concerned with dealing with alcohol-related harms among Aboriginal peoples, These are contextualised in original chapters that recount key events, ideas, and programs. The book is a practical resource for all people and groups concerned with addressing Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander alcohol-related harms, both at the community level and at the level of policy-making and administration.
Effects of the Covid-19 Pandemic on Employee Well-Being: Perspectives from a Developing Economy
by Raida Abu Bakar Rosmawani Che Hashim Man Chung Low Mohammad Rezaur Razzak Sharmila JayasingamThis book contributes toward the understanding of the human experience at work during the pandemic and its implications on employee well-being in the context of Malaysia, a developing economy with its own set of unique challenges. Very little research has been done about this issue to date, particularly in Malaysia. This book aims to bridge this gap by examining the Malaysian perspective of the concept of employee well-being in detail with the overarching goal of serving as a guide toward overcoming the challenges wrought on by the ever-changing post-pandemic environment. Different conditions and experiences are discussed to contextualize the unique ways in which individuals react to difficulties with an emphasis on how organizations can assist at a micro-level to allow employees to overcome such difficulties.
Childhood, Learning & Everyday Life in Three Asia-Pacific Cities: Experiences from Melbourne, Hong Kong and Singapore (Global Childhoods in the Asia-Pacific #1)
by I-Fang Lee Sue Saltmarsh Nicola YellandThis book introduces findings from an international, cross-cultural, and interdisciplinary study of children’s everyday experiences of growing up and going to school in the context of the three global cities of Hong Kong, Singapore and Melbourne. It takes the premise that children’s learning and orientations to educational success are shaped by everyday cultural practices at home and at school, by policy contexts that both produce and respond to educational and cultural norms, and by individual and familial desires and aspirations. Drawing on research conducted with primary school-aged children in Year 4, the book considers how day-to-day routines such as going to school, engaging in extra-curricular activities outside of school, and spending time at home with family intersect with the broader milieus of education policy ideals in a changing and interconnected world. Through a combination of visual methodologies, surveys, ethnographic observations in schools, classrooms and cityscapes, re-enactments of everyday activities with children at home, and sociological education policy analysis, this book shows both the richness of children’s everyday lives and learning in global cities, as well as exploring questions that pose challenges to educational and social norms.
Effectiveness and Fairness of Chinese Higher Education Admissions Policy: Perceptions and Reforms (Exploring Education Policy in a Globalized World: Concepts, Contexts, and Practices)
by Jing SunThis book explores effectiveness and fairness in higher education admissions policy. It reviews the literatures from the 1940s until the 2010s and provides a theoretical framework. The book explores comparisons between this framework and the empirical data by interviewing policymakers from the Chinese government as well as admissions officer at Chinese universities. The book contributes to providing underlying theoretical foundation on the future Chinese higher education admissions policy reform. This book appeals to policymakers on all level of education, practitioners of admissions policy, researchers on education policy, and anyone who is interested in this field.
Children’s Lifeworlds in a Global City: Melbourne (Global Childhoods in the Asia-Pacific #3)
by Clare Bartholomaeus Nicola YellandThis book examines the connections between policy, school experiences, and everyday activities of children growing up in the global city of Melbourne, Australia. It provides an in-depth consideration of Melbourne primary school children’s lifeworlds, exploring everyday stories and practices inside and outside of school. This includes consideration of the diverse ways that educational “success” may be understood in the context of Melbourne, productively moving beyond a narrow focus only on academic achievement. Situated alongside policy and curriculum analysis, the book draws on research in Melbourne Year 4 primary school classrooms in the form of student-completed surveys, classroom ethnographies, and student responses to a learning dialogues activity, as well as video re-enactments of out-of-school life. Through this it explores key aspects of children’s lifeworlds with a focus on school timetabling and pedagogical encounters, school engagement and belonging, and activities and everyday routines outside of school. This book offers a comprehensive and holistic exploration of children’s lifeworlds in Melbourne, drawing connections between children’s lives inside and outside of school, and the broader policy contexts.
The Path to a Sustainable Civilisation: Technological, Socioeconomic and Political Change
by Mark Diesendorf Rod TaylorThe Path to a Sustainable Civilisation shows that we have unwittingly fallen into an existential crisis of our own making. We have allowed large corporations, the military and other vested interests to capture governments and influence public opinion excessively. We have created a god called ‘the market’ and allowed our most important decisions to be made by this imaginary entity, which is in fact a human system controlled by vested interests. The result has been the exploitation of our life support system, our planet, and most of its inhabitants, to the point of collapse. This book argues that the way out of our black hole is to build social movements to apply overwhelming pressure on government and big business, weaken the power of vested interests and strengthen democratic decision-making. This must be done simultaneously with action on the specific issues of climate, energy, natural resources and social justice, in order to transition to a truly sustainable civilisation.
The Uniqueness of Chinese Civilization in World History (China Academic Library)
by Guy S. AlittoThe book is a meticulous work in answering these questions which often occur to foreigners as well as modern Chinese themselves at the thought of the old China and its experience in modern times: What is Chinese civilization? How could it exist for several millennia and spread that far? Is there anything inherent in this civilization?From the standpoint of an “outsider” to this civilization, the author incorporates various elements, such as geographic factors, language, thoughts, with the recurrent themes along the two thousand years and changes throughout, rather than simply following a lineal progression. His historiographical approach, the methodology of eclectic common sense, as he termed it, is a new try in this field and will present a brand new perspective for both readers and researchers in that field.
New Geographies of Music 1: Urban Policies, Live Music, and Careers in a Changing Industry (Geographies of Media)
by Ola Johansson Séverin Guillard Joseph PalisThis book is the first installment of a trilogy that explores the spatial dimensions of music. Music has generated substantial interest among geographers, but other academic disciplines have also developed related spatial perspectives on music. This trilogy brings together multiple approaches, each book investigating a bundle of interrelated themes. New Geographies of Music 1: Urban Policies, Live Music, and Careers in a Changing Industry starts with an introduction that explores contemporary approaches to the study of popular music. The following chapters address a range of issues, including the role of live music in urban development, how knowledge about local music ecosystems circulates among cities, urban networks of music production, how musical practices in local scenes are affected by core-periphery relations, and how musicians rely on touring in order to earn a living. This is a must-read for anyone interested in the relationship between space and music.
The Never End: The Other Orwell, the Cold War, the CIA, MI6, and the Origin of Animal Farm
by John ReedThis book presents full history of the origin of Orwell’s Animal Farm, as well as a translation of the Russuian/Ukranian source work. Has George Orwell lost his saintly luster? In The Never End, rabble-rouser, dogged investigator, and consummate literary stylist John Reed collects two decades of subject-Orwell findings previously published in Pank, Guernica, Literary Hub, The Brooklyn Rail, The Rumpus, The New York Press, The Believer, Harper’s Magazine and The Paris Review. Reed’s treatment of Orwell is corrective and peerlessly contemporary; he views Orwell in a twenty-first century global context, considering Orwell’s collaboration with Cold War intelligence operations—US and UK—with unfaltering objectivity. It’s hard to imagine that Orwell—in our own moment of global doublethink—wouldn’t have wanted his devotion to contrariety applied to the literary legacy he left behind. The Never End is at once a hatchet job and a celebration. Animal Farm, based on a previously unknown Russian short story? Animal Farm, deployed by the CIA, MI6 and the Congress for Cultural Freedom? Orwell, turning over blacklists in a McCarthy-esque act of betrayal? The Cold War? Does it last forever? Russia, the “Axis of Evil,” and now China? But. Orwell. Course syllabi. Literary laurels. Snitch. Why do we keep coming back? For the wrong reasons? Or because we know Old Benjamin would want us to know the truth?
International Perspectives on School-University Partnerships: Research, Policy and Practice
by Daniela Acquaro Ondine Jayne BradburyThis book draws together international scholarship on school–university partnerships challenging thinking about purpose and sustainability as well as the power of collaboration in transcending organisational and contextual boundaries. Moving beyond transactional arrangements, the book showcase various models of school–university partnerships, and explores the role of policy, research, and practice, across the life cycle of partnerships. This edited collection presents a strong body of evidence with global significance, providing valuable insights into catalysts for partnerships, the drivers for transformational change, and generative growth resulting from authentic collaboration. An important reference for all teacher education providers, schools, and educational stakeholders, this book showcases global examples of the power of partnerships in an era necessitating cross sectoral collaboration to address contemporary societal challenges.
Stochastic Volatility and Realized Stochastic Volatility Models (SpringerBriefs in Statistics)
by Makoto Takahashi Yasuhiro Omori Toshiaki WatanabeThis treatise delves into the latest advancements in stochastic volatility models, highlighting the utilization of Markov chain Monte Carlo simulations for estimating model parameters and forecasting the volatility and quantiles of financial asset returns. The modeling of financial time series volatility constitutes a crucial aspect of finance, as it plays a vital role in predicting return distributions and managing risks. Among the various econometric models available, the stochastic volatility model has been a popular choice, particularly in comparison to other models, such as GARCH models, as it has demonstrated superior performance in previous empirical studies in terms of fit, forecasting volatility, and evaluating tail risk measures such as Value-at-Risk and Expected Shortfall. The book also explores an extension of the basic stochastic volatility model, incorporating a skewed return error distribution and a realized volatility measurement equation. The concept of realized volatility, a newly established estimator of volatility using intraday returns data, is introduced, and a comprehensive description of the resulting realized stochastic volatility model is provided. The text contains a thorough explanation of several efficient sampling algorithms for latent log volatilities, as well as an illustration of parameter estimation and volatility prediction through empirical studies utilizing various asset return data, including the yen/US dollar exchange rate, the Dow Jones Industrial Average, and the Nikkei 225 stock index. This publication is highly recommended for readers with an interest in the latest developments in stochastic volatility models and realized stochastic volatility models, particularly in regards to financial risk management.
The Delta of Chinese Management: Guanxi, Rule of Law and the Middle Way
by Jane Jian ZhangThis book explores the differential mode of people management in the Chinese context. Based on years of ethnographic research, this book illustrates how and why the guanxihu phenomena exist across different organisations and thus, the guanxi-hu could break the ‘organisational laws’ (e.g. structure and system; rules and regulations; policies and procedures). By focusing on personnel practices within organisations, the book provides an outlook for keeping indigenous management with Chinese characteristics. Most importantly, this book offers significant insights into how to ‘manage people’ in the private and public sectors within the Chinese cultural and institutional environment. The delta of Chinese management will appeal not only to academics and researchers who have an interest in management and Chinese studies, but also to expatriates and practitioners who are engaged in doing business and managing people with/in China.
Teacher Development Policy in China: Multiple Dimensions (Exploring Education Policy in a Globalized World: Concepts, Contexts, and Practices)
by Jian Li Eryong XueThis book comprehensively explores the teacher development policy in China from multiple dimensions. It examines the leading value of 'Four Good Teachers', teacher salary management policy, teacher evaluation policy, teachers’ professional title appointment policy, teachers’ ethic policy in China’s education system, 'County management and school recruitment' policy in teacher management, teachers’ honor recognition policy, and teachers’ qualification management and policy in China. This book not only shares in-depth understanding to epitomize teacher development policies in China contextually, but also provides specific suggestions to address various challenges of teacher development policies both nationally and locally.
Global Perspectives of COVID-19 Pandemic on Health, Education, and Role of Media
by Saroj Pachauri Ash PachauriThis open access book discusses the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on various aspects of life on a global scale. It analyzes the challenges in the healthcare system during the second wave of COVID-19, such as overstressed human resources in tertiary facilities, lack of trained healthcare workers, and inadequate infrastructure at secondary-level facilities. The book shows that there has been more disruption in low- and middle-income countries than in high-income countries. It presents how the pandemic drove economies into recession and offers a roadmap to advance equality of access to and sustainability of resources. It studies the impact of prolonged lockdowns, which resulted in emotional and mental unrest. It provides a global perspective on the role of the media, including social media, during the pandemic. The authors discuss the unprecedented rise in suicides and the impact of the pandemic on vulnerable groups, such as asylum seekers and adolescents. In addition, contributing authors cover country experiences with COVID-19 in the UK, Taiwan, Ethiopia, Iran, India, and Brazil. The book's multidisciplinary approach makes it an interesting read for academics, policymakers, program implementers, and researchers in sociology, media studies, and medical experts.
A Corpus-assisted Multimodal Analysis to Policy Addresses of Macao SAR Government: Two Decades of Change in Macao (Corpora and Intercultural Studies #11)
by Michelle Lam Sut IThis book introduces an integrated framework with corpus-assisted approach to deal with large set of data of discourse with multimodal factors to investigate how policy addresses (the government reports of Macao SAR) as a discourse type function in the social changes of Macao SAR through discussing the social factors to the production and consumption of policy addresses. The book explores research models or methodology in dealing with the contemporary topics in translation studies with a detailed presentation of the application of an analytical framework which marries corpus-assisted analysis, discourse analysis from socio-cultural perspective and multimodality with translation studies. Withal, the book is with the chapters to review the development of the social approach to discourse analysis and to introduce the stories of Macao with the summary of the development of this special region, in academic field, political and cultural fields.
China’s Opportunities for Development in an Era of Great Global Change (Understanding China)
by Fang Li Li JunkaiThis book interprets China's development and the opportunities it can leverage in the context of unprecedented change and the COVID-19 pandemic. It aims to provide case studies and insights for researchers and offer authoritative information for those interested in China’s development. In this book, 20 distinguished experts and researchers contribute their wisdom around five topics: science and technology innovation, ecological environment, the global and Chinese economies, high-tech industry development, and international and Chinese media research.
Skateboarding, Power and Change
by Indigo Willing Anthony PappalardoThis book explores how cultural, social and political change happens through a unique analysis of the ‘ethical turn’ in skateboarding today. Insights shared by key change-makers and industry insiders cover themes including First Nations, Black and People of Color, skater-run creative innovations, anti-colonialism, anti-racism initiatives, and a growing focus on equity and empowering skaters historically discriminated against due to gender and/or sexuality. These dynamic changes are also connected to conceptual and theoretical frameworks from skate research, journalism, and sociology. This is a must-read for anyone interested in subcultures and social change.
Recent Advances in Modeling and Forecasting Kaiyu: Tools for Predicting and Verifying the Effects of Urban Revitalization Policy (New Frontiers in Regional Science: Asian Perspectives #36)
by Saburo Saito Kenichi Ishibashi Kosuke YamashiroThis book is the first comprehensive presentation of a Kaiyu Markov model with covariates and a multivariate Poisson model with competitive destinations. These two models are core techniques when the authors and colleagues conduct their Kaiyu studies. The two models are usually used to forecast the effects of specific urban redevelopment on both the number of visitors and consumer shop-around or Kaiyu movements. Their Kaiyu studies originated from the constructions of a Kaiyu Markov model and the disaggregated hierarchical decision Huff model almost simultaneously around the early 1980s. This book retrospectively reviews how these models have evolved from the start to the present state, and previews the ongoing efforts to make further extensions of these models. The extension of the Huff model started from the disaggregated hierarchical decision Huff model with shop-arounds. In retrospect, the model formulated the consumer’s simultaneous choice of destinations as a joint probability. The mechanism to determine this joint probability was a recursive conditional probability system. Now the Huff model has shifted from joint probability to multivariate frequency Poisson with competitive destinations. On the other hand, the Kaiyu Markov model started from a descriptive model. Because it cannot forecast changes in shop-arounds or consumer Kaiyu behaviors, the Kaiyu Markov model with covariates was developed in which entrance and shop-around choice probabilities are explained by the respective two logit models with covariates such as distances and shop-floor areas. The noticeable point is that it can explain consumers’ probability of quitting their shop-arounds. Thus, the model enables one to evaluate the effects of urban revitalization policy that promotes consumers’ shop-arounds or Kaiyu behaviors. Furthermore, if the Kaiyu Markov model can estimate the actual numbers of flows of consumers’ shop-arounds among shopping sites, the corresponding money flows also can be estimated as economic effects. This book discusses from scratch the evolution of all these topics. Thus this book provides the basics of the Kaiyu Markov model, a tutorial for the theory and estimation of the conditional logit model, and a chapter serving as a practical research manual for forecasting changes caused by urban development based on consumers’ Kaiyu behaviors.
Rights and Urban Controversies in Hong Kong: From the Eastern and Western Perspectives (Governance and Citizenship in Asia)
by Betty Yung Francis K. T. Mok Baldwin WongThis book examines the “ethics in relation to city and urbanism” by evaluating the strengths and limitations of rights as a conceptual tool from the comparative East–West perspective in resolving urban controversies (involving conflicts of rights between different classes, different groups within the present generation, present vs future generations, human vs animals, human vs plants and nature), thereby facilitating urban policy-making and good urban governance.This book adopts an interdisciplinary approach integrating political theory, ethics, urban studies, public policy, making applications of ethics and political philosophy to social sciences to examine controversial urban issues in the Hong Kong context. It challenges the general conception that philosophy and ethics are detached from everyday life, with the philosophers engaging mainly in abstract intellectual pursuit and some of them even disdaining “pedestrian” applications of abstract thinking. This book makes applications of ethics and political philosophy to real-life urban contexts in Hong Kong, thereby trying to highlight the normative in order to throw new light to the general approach and strategy to deal with practical urban issues, facilitating “out-of-the-box” thinking in the field of housing and urban studies, stimulating scholars, researchers, and students in the fields, urban planners, urban managers, and other professionals as well as urban policy-makers.
Indigenous Technology Knowledge Systems: Decolonizing the Technology Education Curriculum (Contemporary Issues in Technology Education)
by Mishack T. Gumbo P. John WilliamsThere has been a growing interest in indigenous knowledge systems and research. This interest has been mainly triggered by the need to decolonize education as a response to the colonial onslaught on indigenous knowledge and people. Research has, however, concentrated on the generality of the indigenous knowledge system rather than on its related dimensions. One area that has suffered a lack of attention is indigenous conceptions of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) despite the unquestionable evidence of STEM in indigenous contexts. Most STEM is presented by colonial establishments and representations, especially in developed/modern/urban contexts, which portray STEM as a colonial construct. This book focuses on indigenous technological knowledge systems education (ITKSE). Indigenous people have been at the front of technological developments from pre-colonial times. The list of precolonial industries, science, and technology is extensive, including blacksmithing, wood-carving, textile-weaving and dyeing, leather works, beadworks, pottery making, architecture, agricultural breeding, metal-working, salt production, gold-smithing, copper-smithing, leather-crafting, soap-making, bronze-casting, canoe-building, brewing, glass-making, and agriculture, for example. In some parts of the world such as Africa and Australia, these technologies still exist. ITKSE should not be left to exist outside of the technology education curriculum and classroom as it can benefit both indigenous students, who have been denied learning about what is relevant to them, and non-indigenous students. These cultural groups can expand their knowledge of technology by learning both ITKSE and Western technological knowledge systems education (WTKSE). ITKSE also presents opportunities for technology teachers to reflect on and revisit their depth of technological knowledge, pedagogies, and assessment. The intent of this book is transformational in the sense that it brings decolonial and indigenous perspectives into the technology education context. It extends technology education in the sense that it will not only influence Western-minded architects, artisans, designers, etc. but encourage indigenous-mindedness as well.
Agency Construction and Navigation in English Learning Stories
by Qiuming LinThis book presents a longitudinal research which covers a linguistic approach to understand and observe language learner agency. It makes connections between agency in discourse analyses and agency in applied linguistics by examining how learner agency is manifested in autobiographic oral narratives and influenced by contextual factors. This book also demonstrates that agency is not a fixed entity that English learners possess, but a dynamic construct constantly negotiated by the learners with the social world. It is the result of their identity positioning and repositioning within a complex and ever-changing context. Learner identities, either actual or imagined, are significantly correlated with their investment in English and their English learning process.This book sheds new light on teaching English as a foreign language and gives inspirations for enhancing English learners’ agency in contemporary context of China. As learner agency should be treated in a dynamic and process view, a low level of agency manifested in a particular period or in a certain context may not necessarily persist in later periods or extend to other contexts. Provided with supportive contextual conditions and taking on positive and powerful identities, language learners are well on the course for higher levels of agency.
Transnational Private Regulations for Sustainable Urban Development (New Frontiers in Regional Science: Asian Perspectives #69)
by Masanori KobayashiThis book analyzes the mechanism of transnational private regulations (TPRs) in the global property investment market and the conditions of their effectiveness for sustainable urban development. In the present economy, with control over national legislation alone, state policymakers have been challenged to regulate transnational investors, markets, and issues such as global warming, financial crises, food safety risks, deforestation, and cross-border business transactions. Transgovernmental networks of regulators have assembled representatives and technical experts from national regulatory agencies, nongovernmental organizations, private firms, and business organizations. As private corporations become increasingly globalized, many forms of TPRs have emerged since the 1990s for legislation, standard-setting, monitoring of compliance, and implementation of transnational rules, to respond to challenges posed by the transformation of domestic and international regulatory environments. TPRs are self-regulated, non-state, market-driven regulations. Since the emergence of TPRs, the global rule-making landscape has become dynamic. Urban development and property investment have been viewed historically as local phenomena: The regulations and standards in this field have been established and enforced by governments, local associations, and national professional bodies. However, as urban development and property investment increasingly have been globalized, the services, transactions, and investments by private firms have transcended national boundaries. For this reason, it has become difficult for states to regulate global activities through existing national legislation or international regulatory systems. As the management of new transnational issues through collaborations between various actors is unpredictable, it is necessary to examine the mechanism of TPRs in global property investment and their effectiveness for sustainable urban development.
Professional Empowerment in the Software Industry through Experience-Driven Shared Tacit Knowledge: A Case Study from China
by Hui Chen Miguel Baptista NunesThis book addresses the identification and classification of knowledge acquired through experience that results from engaging in professional activities within the software industry. As a result of this study, the book presents an ontology of such professional activities that require and enable the acquisition of experience and that, in turn, are the basis for tacit knowledge creation. The rationale behind the creation of such an ontology was based on the need to externalize this tacit knowledge and then record such externalizations so that these can be shared and disseminated within and across organizations. The book discusses the very concise manner in which experienced software development practitioners in China understand the nature and value of experience in the SW industry, effectively communicate with other stakeholders in the software development process, are able and motivated to actively engage with continuous professional development, are able to share knowledge with peers and the profession at large, and effectively work on projects and exhibit a sound professional attitude both internally to their own company and externally to customers, partners, and even competitors. The book also discusses the ontology and the qualitative process that are generated by bridging two extremely topical aspects of practice in the software industry, namely, employability skills and competencies. The book is of interest to academics in the areas of knowledge management and information systems, as well as human resources practitioners concerned with selection and development and knowledge and information professionals in software organizations.
Interculturality as an Object of Research and Education: Observing, Reflecting and Critiquing (SpringerBriefs in Education)
by Fred Dervin Ning ChenThis book proposes a new method for working on the complex and polysemic notion of interculturality, aimed at scholars, students and educators who have an interest in enriching and challenging their own take on this somewhat controversial scientific notion. Multiple examples of observability made by the authors are provided to illustrate the method. The book helps readers to look at themselves as ‘producers’, ‘consumers’ and ‘promoters’ of selected knowledge of interculturality. This book represents an original contribution to the field, by introducing the importance of observation and reflexivity in building up varied epistemic engagements with the notion of interculturality.
Disaster, Governance and Development: Perspectives from Bangladesh (Disaster Studies and Management)
by Mohammad Tarikul IslamThis book unveils the nexus between disaster, governance and development with a particular focus on Bangladesh and examines the legislative and institutional aspects in mainstreaming disaster risk reduction into development planning. With the help of rich content analysis interpreting disaster management history of the country, it looks at the challenges associated with disaster management in the context of Bangladesh. The book highlights the most reasonable strategy on how to accelerate a paradigm shift from relief culture to DRR culture. It also assesses the viewpoint of how political economy influences governance and institutional strengthening, thus identifying obstructions and opportunities for mainstreaming disaster management into development. The book also lays emphasis on collaboration between public sector and private sector for the expansion of disaster risk reduction programme. It shows how multilevel governance works for professionalizing disaster management and throws light on policy frameworks developed. This book is a tremendous resource for scholars, practitioners and researchers of disaster management, environmental studies, development agencies, political science, public policy, development studies, governance, regional development, South Asian studies and local government, particularly those interested in disaster, governance and sustainable development.