Mobilising Voluntary Action in the UK

EPDF and EPUB available Open Access under CC-BY licence. The COVID-19 pandemic transformed the landscape of voluntary action. Some volunteering projects had to be paused, while others were delivered in different ways, but across all four UK nations large numbers of people began volunteering for the first time. This book provides an overview of the constraints and opportunities of mobilising voluntary action across the four UK nations during the pandemic. Sector experts and academics examine the divergent voluntary action policy frameworks adopted, the state and non-state supported volunteer responses, the changes in the profile of volunteers and the plans to sustain their involvement. This book addresses the urgent policy and practice need for evidence-based considerations to support recovery from the pandemic and to prepare for future emergencies

Mobilising Voluntary Action in the UK

EPDF and EPUB available Open Access under CC-BY licence. The COVID-19 pandemic transformed the landscape of voluntary action. Some volunteering projects had to be paused, while others were delivered in different ways, but across all four UK nations large numbers of people began volunteering for the first time. This book provides an overview of the constraints and opportunities of mobilising voluntary action across the four UK nations during the pandemic. Sector experts and academics examine the divergent voluntary action policy frameworks adopted, the state and non-state supported volunteer responses, the changes in the profile of volunteers and the plans to sustain their involvement. This book addresses the urgent policy and practice need for evidence-based considerations to support recovery from the pandemic and to prepare for future emergencies

Mapping Crisis: Participation, Datafication, and Humanitarianism in the Age of Digital Mapping

This book brings together critical perspectives on the role that mapping people, knowledges and data now plays in humanitarian work, both in cartographic terms and through data visualisations. Since the rise of Google Earth in 2005, there has been an explosion in the use of mapping tools to quantify and assess the needs of the poor, including those affected by climate change and the wider neo-liberal agenda. Yet, while there has been a huge upsurge in the data produced around these issues, the representation of people remains questionable. Some have argued that representation has diminished in humanitarian crises as people are increasingly reduced to data points. In turn, this data becomes ever more difficult to analyse without vast computing power, leading to a dependency on the old colonial powers to refine the data of the poor, before selling it back to them. These issues are not entirely new, and questions around representation, participation and humanitarianism can be traced back beyond the speeches of Truman, but the digital age throws these issues back to the fore, as machine learning, algorithms and big data centres take over the process of mapping the subjugated and subaltern. This book questions whether, as we map crises, it is the map itself that is in crisis

Mapping Crisis

The digital age has thrown questions of representation, participation and humanitarianism back to the fore, as machine learning, algorithms and big data centres take over the process of mapping the subjugated and subaltern. Since the rise of Google Earth in 2005, there has been an explosion in the use of mapping tools to quantify and assess the needs of those in crisis, including those affected by climate change and the wider neo-liberal agenda. Yet, while there has been a huge upsurge in the data produced around these issues, the representation of people remains questionable. Some have argued that representation has diminished in humanitarian crises as people are increasingly reduced to data points. In turn, this data has become ever more difficult to analyse without vast computing power, leading to a dependency on the old colonial powers to refine the data collected from people in crisis, before selling it back to them. This book brings together critical perspectives on the role that mapping people, knowledges and data now plays in humanitarian work, both in cartographic terms and through data visualisations, and questions whether, as we map crises, it is the map itself that is in crisis

Tracking the Temporal-Evolution of Supernova Bubbles in Numerical Simulations

The study of low-dimensional, noisy manifolds embedded in a higher dimensional space has been extremely useful in many applications, from the chemical analysis of multi-phase flows to simulations of galactic mergers. Building a probabilistic model of the manifolds has helped in describing their essential properties and how they vary in space. However, when the manifold is evolving through time, a joint spatio-temporal modelling is needed, in order to fully comprehend its nature. We propose a first-order Markovian process that propagates the spatial probabilistic model of a manifold at fixed time, to its adjacent temporal stages. The proposed methodology is demonstrated using a particle simulation of an interacting dwarf galaxy to describe the evolution of a cavity generated by a Supernov

Re-politicising South-South development cooperation: negotiating accountability at home and abroad

Accountability is a ubiquitous issue in international development cooperation. Development accountability means different things to different actors in the field and has been framed and negotiated in different ways. Governments and civil society groups in the South have historically played an important role in problematising development cooperation accountability, challenging ‘traditional’ donor priorities, ways of working and outcomes. In the 2010s—as Southern development providers grew in material, symbolic and political importance—accountability also emerged as a disputed issue within South-South development cooperation (SSC). This thesis follows a multi-sited and multi-scalar approach to understanding how accountability is being conceived and disputed in the field of SSC, in global and domestic arenas, using Brazil, China and India as paradigmatic sites for inquiry. The study examines how different forms of discursive problematisations of accountability in SSC—coming from different transnational and domestic stakeholders—interact with the politicisation of SSC at different scales, and generates new forms of accountability politics and new instances of negotiation of SSC by different actors. Assessing a kaleidoscopic and rapidly shifting landscape, this thesis shows instances where particular SSC accountability narratives and policy instruments are being generated and travelling across boundaries. It explores the kinds of sociopolitical disputes (development knowledges, geopolitical, bureaucratic and state-society relations) they create. Mapping, tracing and analysing contemporary forms of disputes over SSC accountability across scales and geographies, this study emphasises prevalent global development ‘measurementalities’ pushing Southern providers to craft alternative ways to measure (quantify and evaluate) their ‘development effort’; and the paradoxes counting and showing SSC create domestically. It also emphasises the materiality and thus political salience of certain SSC modalities, notably agricultural development and infrastructure building, as important drivers for other ongoing sociopolitical intermestic SSC accountability disputes in the three countries. Unpacking multiple global and domestic negotiations over responsibilities for doing development at home and abroad, this study offers a contribution to understanding the politicised consolidation of SSC in some of its emblematic protagonists. By doing so, it illuminates the shifting expectations of appropriate, good and just foreign policy and development cooperation in rising powers, like Brazil, China and India, in times of change

Prosperity in the Twenty-First Century

Prosperity in the Twenty-First Century sets out a new vision for prosperity in the twenty-first century and how it can be achieved for all. The volume challenges orthodox understandings of economic models, but goes beyond contemporary debates to show how social innovation drives economic value. Drawing on substantive research in the UK, Lebanon and Kenya, it develops new concepts, frameworks, models and metrics for prosperity across a wide range of contexts, emphasising commonalities and differences. Its distinctive approach goes beyond defining and measuring prosperity – addressing the debate about the failures of GDP – to formulating and describing what is needed to make prosperity a realisable proposition for specific people living in specific locales. Departing from general propositions about post-growth to delineate pathways to prosperity, the volume emphasises that visions of the good life are diverse and require empirical work co-designed with local communities and stakeholders to drive change. It is essential reading for policymakers who are stuck, local government officers who need new tools, activists who wonder what is next, academics in need of refreshment, and students and people of all ages who want a way forward

Practicing Sovereignty

Digital sovereignty has become a hotly debated concept. The current convergence of multiple crises adds fuel to this debate, as it contextualizes the concept in a foundational discussion of democratic principles, civil rights, and national identities: is (technological) self-determination an option for every individual to cope with the digital sphere effectively? Can disruptive events provide chances to rethink our ideas of society - including the design of the objects and processes which constitute our techno-social realities? The positions assembled in this volume analyze opportunities for participation and policy-making, and describe alternative technological practices before and after the pandemic