3,435 research outputs found

    Gateway Cities und ihr Hinterland: Wirtschaftliche Entwicklung peripherer, ressourcenreicher Standorte in AbhÀngigkeit von urbanen Knoten in globalen Netzwerken

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    In den acht BeitrĂ€gen der kumulativen Habilitation wird untersucht, wie WeltstĂ€dte als "Gateways" periphere Standorte in globale Wertschöpfungsketten des Öl- und Gassektors einbinden. Dabei unterscheidet der Verfasser fĂŒnf VerknĂŒpfungsformen. Gateway Cities sind Verkehrsknoten. Sie bĂŒndeln die industrielle Verarbeitung von Rohstoffen aus dem Hinterland. Unternehmerische Kontrolle und unternehmensbezogene Dienstleistungen ballen sich dort. Außerdem verbinden sie im Wissensbereich die lokale und globale Ebene. DarĂŒber hinaus wird analysiert, wie Gateway Cities die Entwicklung der Orte, die sie global verflechten, beeinflussen

    Multidisciplinary perspectives on Artificial Intelligence and the law

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    This open access book presents an interdisciplinary, multi-authored, edited collection of chapters on Artificial Intelligence (‘AI’) and the Law. AI technology has come to play a central role in the modern data economy. Through a combination of increased computing power, the growing availability of data and the advancement of algorithms, AI has now become an umbrella term for some of the most transformational technological breakthroughs of this age. The importance of AI stems from both the opportunities that it offers and the challenges that it entails. While AI applications hold the promise of economic growth and efficiency gains, they also create significant risks and uncertainty. The potential and perils of AI have thus come to dominate modern discussions of technology and ethics – and although AI was initially allowed to largely develop without guidelines or rules, few would deny that the law is set to play a fundamental role in shaping the future of AI. As the debate over AI is far from over, the need for rigorous analysis has never been greater. This book thus brings together contributors from different fields and backgrounds to explore how the law might provide answers to some of the most pressing questions raised by AI. An outcome of the Católica Research Centre for the Future of Law and its interdisciplinary working group on Law and Artificial Intelligence, it includes contributions by leading scholars in the fields of technology, ethics and the law.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

    A Critical Review Of Post-Secondary Education Writing During A 21st Century Education Revolution

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    Educational materials are effective instruments which provide information and report new discoveries uncovered by researchers in specific areas of academia. Higher education, like other education institutions, rely on instructional materials to inform its practice of educating adult learners. In post-secondary education, developmental English programs are tasked with meeting the needs of dynamic populations, thus there is a continuous need for research in this area to support its changing landscape. However, the majority of scholarly thought in this area centers on K-12 reading and writing. This paucity presents a phenomenon to the post-secondary community. This research study uses a qualitative content analysis to examine peer-reviewed journals from 2003-2017, developmental online websites, and a government issued document directed toward reforming post-secondary developmental education programs. These highly relevant sources aid educators in discovering informational support to apply best practices for student success. Developmental education serves the purpose of addressing literacy gaps for students transitioning to college-level work. The findings here illuminate the dearth of material offered to developmental educators. This study suggests the field of literacy research is fragmented and highlights an apparent blind spot in scholarly literature with regard to English writing instruction. This poses a quandary for post-secondary literacy researchers in the 21st century and establishes the necessity for the literacy research community to commit future scholarship toward equipping college educators teaching writing instruction to underprepared adult learners

    Digital Innovations for a Circular Plastic Economy in Africa

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    Plastic pollution is one of the biggest challenges of the twenty-first century that requires innovative and varied solutions. Focusing on sub-Saharan Africa, this book brings together interdisciplinary, multi-sectoral and multi-stakeholder perspectives exploring challenges and opportunities for utilising digital innovations to manage and accelerate the transition to a circular plastic economy (CPE). This book is organised into three sections bringing together discussion of environmental conditions, operational dimensions and country case studies of digital transformation towards the circular plastic economy. It explores the environment for digitisation in the circular economy, bringing together perspectives from practitioners in academia, innovation, policy, civil society and government agencies. The book also highlights specific country case studies in relation to the development and implementation of different innovative ideas to drive the circular plastic economy across the three sub-Saharan African regions. Finally, the book interrogates the policy dimensions and practitioner perspectives towards a digitally enabled circular plastic economy. Written for a wide range of readers across academia, policy and practice, including researchers, students, small and medium enterprises (SMEs), digital entrepreneurs, non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and multilateral agencies, policymakers and public officials, this book offers unique insights into complex, multilayered issues relating to the production and management of plastic waste and highlights how digital innovations can drive the transition to the circular plastic economy in Africa. The Open Access version of this book, available at https://www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license

    The Globalization of Artificial Intelligence: African Imaginaries of Technoscientific Futures

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    Imaginaries of artificial intelligence (AI) have transcended geographies of the Global North and become increasingly entangled with narratives of economic growth, progress, and modernity in Africa. This raises several issues such as the entanglement of AI with global technoscientific capitalism and its impact on the dissemination of AI in Africa. The lack of African perspectives on the development of AI exacerbates concerns of raciality and inclusion in the scientific research, circulation, and adoption of AI. My argument in this dissertation is that innovation in AI, in both its sociotechnical imaginaries and political economies, excludes marginalized countries, nations and communities in ways that not only bar their participation in the reception of AI, but also as being part and parcel of its creation. Underpinned by decolonial thinking, and perspectives from science and technology studies and African studies, this dissertation looks at how AI is reconfiguring the debate about development and modernization in Africa and the implications for local sociotechnical practices of AI innovation and governance. I examined AI in international development and industry across Kenya, Ghana, and Nigeria, by tracing Canada’s AI4D Africa program and following AI start-ups at AfriLabs. I used multi-sited case studies and discourse analysis to examine the data collected from interviews, participant observations, and documents. In the empirical chapters, I first examine how local actors understand the notion of decolonizing AI and show that it has become a sociotechnical imaginary. I then investigate the political economy of AI in Africa and argue that despite Western efforts to integrate the African AI ecosystem globally, the AI epistemic communities in the continent continue to be excluded from dominant AI innovation spaces. Finally, I examine the emergence of a Pan-African AI imaginary and argue that AI governance can be understood as a state-building experiment in post-colonial Africa. The main issue at stake is that the lack of African perspectives in AI leads to negative impacts on innovation and limits the fair distribution of the benefits of AI across nations, countries, and communities, while at the same time excludes globally marginalized epistemic communities from the imagination and creation of AI

    Resilience and food security in a food systems context

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    This open access book compiles a series of chapters written by internationally recognized experts known for their in-depth but critical views on questions of resilience and food security. The book assesses rigorously and critically the contribution of the concept of resilience in advancing our understanding and ability to design and implement development interventions in relation to food security and humanitarian crises. For this, the book departs from the narrow beaten tracks of agriculture and trade, which have influenced the mainstream debate on food security for nearly 60 years, and adopts instead a wider, more holistic perspective, framed around food systems. The foundation for this new approach is the recognition that in the current post-globalization era, the food and nutritional security of the world’s population no longer depends just on the performance of agriculture and policies on trade, but rather on the capacity of the entire (food) system to produce, process, transport and distribute safe, affordable and nutritious food for all, in ways that remain environmentally sustainable. In that context, adopting a food system perspective provides a more appropriate frame as it incites to broaden the conventional thinking and to acknowledge the systemic nature of the different processes and actors involved. This book is written for a large audience, from academics to policymakers, students to practitioners

    Power, Poverty, and Knowledge – Reflecting on 50 Years of Learning with Robert Chambers

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    Robert Chambers is one of the most influential and prolific scholars to write about participation, poverty, and knowledge in development studies. His writing and thinking have revolutionised the discipline, inspiring both participatory processes and more inclusive practice. His work continues to inspire and provoke debate and discussion among development practitioners, activists, and academics from around the world. Here we present an Archive Collection of the IDS Bulletin in a celebration of Robert’s contribution to the journal over the last five decades. The eight articles included in this IDS Bulletin Archive Collection clearly show change – change in Robert’s evolving interests, change in the strategic focus of IDS as a research institute, change in the wider development studies field, as well as change in the world at large over the last 50 years. Robert’s earlier IDS Bulletin articles show a strong focus on local knowledge and rural development. Over time, this shifts to a concern with professional development management, and a focus on power and participatory methods. While each article stands alone, these themes re-occur and re-emerge. Bias or unfairness in the development sphere is a major concern which Robert highlights in his IDS Bulletin articles, whilst his advocacy for bottom-up, diverse, and process-led approaches to participation clearly emerges. As the editorial introduction explains and explores, the premise of this IDS Bulletin Archive Collection is to delve into Robert’s contribution to the journal, to resurface buried gems of development studies scholarship, and to reinvigorate debates about how we can do better – a question described by Robert as the eternal challenge of development

    The Social Sustainability of Digital Information Services in Sub-Saharan Africa

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    Nowadays, mobile phone-enabled services are reaching the rural poor farmer in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) with digital information for agricultural development. These digital services consist of access to social networks and customised information that are expected to enhance farm management due to knowledge exchange and learning. This thesis aimed to analyse the farmers’ use of digital services and discuss its implications for social sustainability in agriculture by looking at how digital information merges, coexists or competes with other bodies of local knowledge. The analysis was based on participant observation with eleven farmers that use iShamba, a digital platform providing agricultural information services to smallholder farmers in rural Kenya. A social practice perspective implies that digital information must consider the contextual realities of farmers in terms of material, competence and meaning. Considering that access to inputs is constrained in the context of the study, this thesis suggests that digital services could contribute to social sustainability by promoting biological-based innovations that are locally applicable in terms of the materials available to farmers. Moreover, digital services could complement their service with field advisory visits or training courses, where the role of human intermediation appeared to be fundamental. Social sustainability in agriculture is that associated with the generation of knowledge and meaning that legitimises a particular model of agricultural development. This thesis found that digital services increase the diversity of knowledge by offering several options to farmers which contributes to social sustainability in agriculture. However, digital services do not encourage innovation, directing research toward attending to the demands of poor rural farmers but rather provide farmers with the available innovations. Additionally, a key point is the potential of digital services to co-construct the meaning associated with agricultural development. But since digital information integrates diverse trajectories of agricultural development, social sustainability requires that the institutional arrangement promote and support models of sustainable agriculture at the landscape leve
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