Roopinder Oberoi - Böcker

This book offers an objective and dispassionate analysis of modern educational architecture allowing us to notice gaps. The fundamental question addressed is whether our education system will embrace knowledge-based society and have the foresight to better prepare future generations. If educators around the world step back for a moment, it is not difficult to notice that unanswered questions about education are looming everywhere. The existent academic literature on education is abundant and embracing. In consequence, one can ask why is this book necessary? Indeed, this book is the result of senior university professors sharing their learnings and anticipating the pivotal issues facing all education professionals. According to the United Nations, by 2050, 68% of the world’s population will be living in urban areas. This fact cannot be ignored as it is one of the drivers of the profile of the future students. The reasons to organize this publication are many, but among them three stand out which also function as the driving forces behind this project: (1) University professors teach future generations based on models grounded on knowledge advanced by past experiences; (2) The decisive requirement to understand the needs of the new generations of university millennial students; and (3) What are the critical challenges of global societies? "This book problematizes the issues concerning education, and its main contribution is to answer the need to rethink education, face contemporary challenges, and reorganize the way public policies address education. It critically analyses the challenges of global societies in a decentralized perspective, not only reflecting a western perspective of education and knowledge production. The project's originality comes from the contemporaneity of the topics covered, from the interdisciplinary perspective, and from the specific attention given to trends around education."—Cátia Miriam Costa, Researcher and Invited Assistant Professor, Centre for International Studies, Perfil Ciência

This book offers an overarching view of the underlying challenges that the energy transitions pose to interstate energy relations. Geopolitics of energy currently epitomizes one of the principal sources for geopolitical vicissitudes affecting global energy landscapes. The ever-changing global energy architecture, global decarbonization plans and low-carbon technology developments are having deep geopolitical consequences. The extensive and rapid adjustment towards low-carbon energy is unsettling the conventional transnational energy structures, affecting economies and altering energy interstate relations. The geopolitics of the energy transitions is a field in the making, hence the existent academic literature is scarce and limited in scope. Current debates on decarbonization tend to mimic the geopolitics of oil and gas when discussing the stakeholders involved in the energy transitions. Besides, energy transitions tend to be studied at the national level overlooking the interactions at regional and global scales. Most research on the geopolitics of the energy transitions to date has mainly focused on the path to achieve the transitions to low carbon energy systems, and less on the global dynamics and the impacts of those transitions to inter-state relations and energy security. The fundamental question that needs dwelling is: How, and to what extent, will the multiple dimensions of the ongoing energy transitions affect existing fundamental geopolitical issues, and what new dynamics may result from the decarbonization process of the planet? The reasons to organize this publication are many, but among them stand one, which is functioning as the driving force behind this project: to contribute to a broader discussion on the ways in which energy transitions and geopolitics intersect.

Corporate Social Responsibility and Sustainable Development in Emerging Economies is an anthology of seven case studies plus two theoretical chapters in a comparative context. It analyzes issues related to the rise of multinational corporations, their immense economic and political influence in a globalized world, and their social responsibility/corporate citizenship. Corporate social responsibility is closely examined in terms of meeting the challenges of the widening gap between rich and poor, relationships with sovereign states, environmental degradation, exploitation of natural resources, labor practices, and human rights issues in societies in which multinational corporations operate. Are these corporations exempt from social roles and accountable to only their shareholders (the minimalist position propounded by economists such as Milton Friedman ), or do they also have ethical and social responsibilities to participate in improving the quality of human lives in impoverished societies in Africa , Asia and Latin America?

Globalization Reappraised: A Talisman or a False Oracle analyzes the emergence of Washington Consensus inspired globalization model in the post cold war era. It presents a comprehensive scholarly survey of the literature, impact of the model on technology, ethno/religious revivalism, environment, human rights, rule of law, and income inequality, and the rise of unprincipled populist political demagogues in Asia, Africa, Europe, and the United States. The book also discusses the devastating impact of the 2008 global financial crisis due to unbridled, unregulated free market system. These developments have raised serious doubts about once considered inevitable, invincible globalization model. Serious soul searching to fix or even discard some of its negatives has become significant part of policy discussions from Delhi to Devos. The concluding chapter of the book analyzes several alternative models by raising the question about the direction and nature of the model itself.

The concept of Global Civil Society as an ‘imagined global community’ is raising questions that challenge perceptions of a border-free, footloose, global community. The era of ‘hyper-individualism’, accompanied by the virtualization of the public sphere, is offering support for collective action and processes in the face of rising economic and social anxieties, such as inequality, poverty, terrorism, xenophobia, nuclear weapons, and environmental destruction. Global Civil Society is now equipping itself to negotiate with resurrected boundaries, calls for decelerating the flow of people, identity clashes and throwbacks to tribal politics.Contestations in Global Civil Society examines the ways in which the global community is dealing with heightened destabilization, entering what has been dubbed an ‘Age of Fracture’, and takes a close look at contemporary shifts that accompany the resurrection of multiple normative civil society discourses such as political mobilization, polarization, responsibility, and participation.What are the contestations within global civil society? What is our current perception of global civil society? How is it coping with the huge changes that are happening all around us? What will global civil society look like in the future?

This provocative volume takes an international, multidisciplinary approach to understanding globalization and assessing its economic, social, and environmental effects. Representing the Global North and South, it addresses important debates stemming from recent political events in the U.S. and U.K., the continuing rise of information technology, and the constant struggle between corporate interests and the health of the planet.The human outcomes of world human rights challenges are considered in the ongoing global narratives of migrants, refugees, and disabled persons, as well as possibilities for greater social equity and integration.This expert synthesis takes critical steps to reshape the concept of globalization from an amorphous mass of objectives and initiatives to a forward-looking model of clarity and balance. Included in the coverage:Globalization and migration: is there a borderless worldA comparative assessment of climate policies of top emitters.Neo-protectionism in the age of Brexit and Trump.Working inclusively and redefining social valorization in the globalized world.Understanding the strategy of M&As in the globalized perspective.Reappraisal of social enterprise in a globalized world.  Revisiting Globalism will be of particular interest to those in the academic field and the statutory and nonprofit sectors whose work deals with teaching social sciences in higher education settings.

This provocative volume takes an international, multidisciplinary approach to understanding globalization and assessing its economic, social, and environmental effects. Representing the Global North and South, it addresses important debates stemming from recent political events in the U.S. and U.K., the continuing rise of information technology, and the constant struggle between corporate interests and the health of the planet.The human outcomes of world human rights challenges are considered in the ongoing global narratives of migrants, refugees, and disabled persons, as well as possibilities for greater social equity and integration.This expert synthesis takes critical steps to reshape the concept of globalization from an amorphous mass of objectives and initiatives to a forward-looking model of clarity and balance. Included in the coverage:Globalization and migration: is there a borderless worldA comparative assessment of climate policies of top emitters.Neo-protectionism in the age of Brexit and Trump.Working inclusively and redefining social valorization in the globalized world.Understanding the strategy of M&As in the globalized perspective.Reappraisal of social enterprise in a globalized world.  Revisiting Globalism will be of particular interest to those in the academic field and the statutory and nonprofit sectors whose work deals with teaching social sciences in higher education settings.