Md Saidul Islam and Md Ismail Hossain investigate how neoliberal globalization generates unique conditions, contradictions, and confrontations in labor, gender and environmental relations; and how a broader global social justice can mitigate the tensions and improve the conditions.

Unusual coming from a leftist perspective, this book argues that those who care for social justice should seek more globalization and not try to prevent its development or roll it back.

This landmark book brings together the reality of globalization and the imperative for social justice for helping professionals and students. Helping professions such as social work, counseling, and community building in non-profit agencies, NGOs, and government and the people and needs they serve can no longer be understood outside a global framework. While the very notion of helping professions is entails a social justice perspective, the relationship between the effects of globalization and the requirements of social justice have been missing from the literature, education, and practice of these fields. This book provides an understanding of the economic and social dimensions of globalization, how globalization increases the interdependence of nations, the particular risks and opportunities it presents, and how some aspects of globalization can exacerbate oppression and marginalization. There are particular explorations of the challenges globalization presents in Africa and South America and a consideration of the special needs of children and families in the global context. This is a necessary volume. Its distinguished contributors have various perspectives on globalization, but all write to inform and assist the work of those whose vocation is to help others.

The book discusses the implications of globalization on education from the perspective of social justice. It looks at two countries — India and the UK — to look at how global economic and cultural processes are mediated through nation states, institutional structures and the aspirations of different social groups. It seeks to resituate the debates around education and social justice in policy, research and public discourse by highlighting the need for a more nuanced understanding of globalization and education. It also demonstrates the effects of economic dimensions — the politics of neoliberalism, and how this has shifted the understanding of state responsibilities and marginalized issues pertaining to the agenda of social justice.

This volume provides a comprehensive account of the connections between globalisation, environment and social justice. It examines varied dimensions of environmental sustainability; the adverse impact of globalisation on environment and its consequences for poverty, unemployment and displacement; the impacts on marginalised sections such as scheduled castes and tribes and women; and policy frameworks for ensuring environmental sustainability and social justice. The chapters build on detailed case studies from different parts of the world and deal with critical environmental issues such as global emissions, climate change, sustainable development, green politics, species protection, water governance, waste management, food production and governance besides education, inclusivity and human rights. Presenting a range of topics alongside new perspectives and discourses, this interdisciplinary book will be useful to students and researchers of political studies, sociology and environmental studies as well as policymakers and those working in the government and civil society organisations.

By 2008, total Fair Trade purchases in the developed world reached nearly $3 billion, a five-fold increase in four years. Consumers pay a “fair price” for Fair Trade items, which are meant to generate greater earnings for family farmers, cover the costs of production, and support socially just and environmentally sound practices. Yet constrained by existing markets and the entities that dominate them, Fair Trade often delivers material improvements for producers that are much more modest than the profound social transformations the movement claims to support. There has been scant real-world assessment of Fair Trade’s effectiveness. Drawing upon fine-grained anthropological studies of a variety of regions and commodity systems including Darjeeling tea, coffee, crafts, and cut flowers, the chapters in Fair Trade and Social Justice represent the first works to use ethnographic case studies to assess whether the Fair Trade Movement is actually achieving its goals. Contributors: Julia Smith, Mark Moberg, Catherine Ziegler , Sarah Besky, Sarah M. Lyon, Catherine S. Dolan, Patrick C. Wilson, Faidra Papavasiliou, Molly Doane, Kathy M’Closkey, Jane Henrici

Globalization, Education and Social Justice, which is the tenth volume in the 12-volume book series Globalisation, Comparative Education and Policy Research, presents up-to-date scholarly research on major discourses concerning global trends in education, social justice and policy research. It provides an easily accessible, practical yet scholarly source of information about the international concern in the field of social justice, globalisation, and policy research. Above all, the book offers the latest findings to the critical issues in education and social justice globally. It is a sourcebook of ideas for researchers, practitioners and policy makers in education, globalisation and social justice education reforms around the world. It offers a timely overview of current issues in social justice affecting education policy research in the global culture. It provides directions in education, and policy research, relevant to transformational educational reforms in the 21st century. The book critically examines the overall interplay between globalisation, education reforms, and social justice. It draws upon recent studies in the areas of globalisation, social justice education reforms and the role of the State. It explores conceptual frameworks and methodological approaches applicable in the research covering the State, globalisation, equity, education, and social justice. It demonstrates the neo-liberal ideological imperatives of education and policy reforms, and illustrates the way the relationship between the State and education policy affects current models and trends in education reforms for social justice and schooling globally. Various book chapters critique the dominant discourses and debates pertaining to the politics of social justice and education globally and the newly constructed and re-invented models of neo-liberal ideology in education and policy reforms. Using a number of diverse paradigms in comparative education research, ranging from critical theory to post-structuralist discourses, the authors, by focusing on globalisation, social justice and democracy, attempt to examine critically both the reasons and outcomes of education reforms and policy change for social justice. The volume offers a more informed critique on the Western-driven models of education reforms and implications for social justice. The book also draws upon recent studies in the areas of equity, cultural capital and dominant ideologies in education. The general intention is to make Globalization, Education and Social Justice available to a broad spectrum of users among policy-makers, academics, graduate students, education policy researchers, administrators, and practitioners in the education and related professions.

Globalization has become a seemingly unstoppable force over recent decades and, in its wake, global notions of social justice have developed in response to its negative aspects. Neo-liberal economic policies have been a key element in the wider process of globalization, and these policies have had a profound impact on welfare provision and the shape of social work practice. Arising dissatisfaction among users of welfare and social work services is fuelling the search for a new, more radical social work that is firmly rooted in principles of social justice. Globalisation, Global Justice and Social Work explores the global effects of neo-liberal policies on welfare services in different countries, with contributions from social work academics, practitioners and welfare activists around the world. The first section of the book presents case studies of impact of neo-liberalism on welfare systems, social service provision and the practice of social work. In the second section the chapters explore the relationship between social work practice and the struggle for social justice. Authors discuss the personal and political dilemmas they have had to address in seeking to link a personal commitment to social justice with their daily practice as workers and educators in social work. The final section assesses the prospects for social work practice based on notions of social justice, by looking at what can be learned from the experience of previous radical movements as well as from emergent global and local movements.

In 1996, the Los Angeles Bus Riders Union, a grassroots advocacy organization, won a historic legal victory against the city’s Metropolitan Transit Authority. The resulting consent decree forced the MTA for a period of ten years to essentially reorient the mass transit system to better serve the city’s poorest residents. A stunning reversal of conventional governance and planning in urban America, which almost always favors wealthier residents, this decision is also, for renowned urban theorist Edward W. Soja, a concrete example of spatial justice in action. In Seeking Spatial Justice, Soja argues that justice has a geography and that the equitable distribution of resources, services, and access is a basic human right. Building on current concerns in critical geography and the new spatial consciousness, Soja interweaves theory and practice, offering new ways of understanding and changing the unjust geographies in which we live. After tracing the evolution of spatial justice and the closely related notion of the right to the city in the influential work of Henri Lefebvre, David Harvey, and others, he demonstrates how these ideas are now being applied through a series of case studies in Los Angeles, the city at the forefront of this movement. Soja focuses on such innovative labor–community coalitions as Justice for Janitors, the Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy, and the Right to the City Alliance; on struggles for rent control and environmental justice; and on the role that faculty and students in the UCLA Department of Urban Planning have played in both developing the theory of spatial justice and putting it into practice. Effectively locating spatial justice as a theoretical concept, a mode of empirical analysis, and a strategy for social and political action, this book makes a significant contribution to the contemporary debates about justice, space, and the city.

The dominant approach to economic policy has so far failed to adequately address the pressing challenges the world faces today: extreme poverty, widespread joblessness and precarious employment, burgeoning inequality, and large-scale environmental threats. This message was brought home forcibly by the 2008 global economic crisis. Rethinking Economic Policy for Social Justice shows how human rights have the potential to transform economic thinking and policy-making with far-reaching consequences for social justice. The authors make the case for a new normative and analytical framework, based on a broader range of objectives which have the potential to increase the substantive freedoms and choices people enjoy in the course of their lives and not on not upon narrow goals such as the growth of gross domestic product. The book covers a range of issues including inequality, fiscal and monetary policy, international development assistance, financial markets, globalization, and economic instability. This new approach allows for a complex interaction between individual rights, collective rights and collective action, as well as encompassing a legal framework which offers formal mechanisms through which unjust policy can be protested. This highly original and accessible book will be essential reading for human rights advocates, economists, policy-makers and those working on questions of social justice.