Digital Lives: Meaningful Connections for the Next 3 Billion
This report is guided by two central truths. One: digital technologies are rapidly revolutionising many aspects of life as we know it. Two: not everyone benefits from access and effective … Continue reading
Cities Alive: Water for People
Cities Alive: Water for People presents an economic pathway of addressing the challenges of population growth and climate change in our cities. To move towards a more sustainable future, it is … Continue reading
Mapping Society (UCL free book)
From a rare map of yellow fever in eighteenth-century New York, to Charles Booth’s famous maps of poverty in nineteenth-century London, an Italian racial zoning map of early twentieth century … Continue reading
Innovation, Intellectual Property, and Development
This paper aims to provide an intellectual basis to think about the relationship between development, intellectual property and innovation; where we currently are and what alternatives are available. For the … Continue reading
Human Rights as an Ideology? Obstacles and Benefits
[Behind paywall] Sociology has an important part to play in understanding human rights. In this article, I trace obstacles within sociology to theoretically conceptualize human rights as an ideology. These … Continue reading
Technology, migration and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development
“In this briefing, we discuss the technology–migration nexus and show its significance to a range of SDGs and achieving the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. We demonstrate that migrants are … Continue reading
Central Banks, Technocratic Power, and the Fear of Democracy — Economic Sociology and Political Economy
Jacqueline Best has an interesting new article that starts with catchy and provocative analogy and then presents thought-provoking discussion and arguments: “What do border guards and central bankers have in … Continue reading
Induced Demand – Linking roads and increased traffic
As the urbanist aphorism goes: Widening roads to reduce congestion is like loosening your belt to cure obesity. Yet nearly all freeway expansions and new highways are sold to the … Continue reading
On the Ways of Knowing and Understanding Informality
In the mainstream international development discourse, one often finds a general dualistic outlook in classifying the concept of (urban) informality, seen to be strikingly different from the formal, regulated economic … Continue reading
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