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In this article, we give a general presentation of what we mean by social intervention from the political-ideological, theoretical-methodological and epistemological perspective that we have referred to in a recent work as 'emancipatory social work'. First, we briefly refer to the meaning of emancipation. Second, we discuss a way of thinking about and doing social work that we call 'emancipatory social work', an approach practised from Argentina through Latin America to the Caribbean as a response to the challenges involved in the changing times of 'Our America', as the Cuban poet Jose Martí called the great Latin American nation. In the third part, we analyse the main features of social intervention, conceived as a form of social work, and the implications that these have for training and the political-professional project.

In complex systems, disorder and order are interrelated, so that disorder can be an inevitable consequence of ordering. Often this disorder can be disruptive, but sometimes it can be beneficial. Different social groups will argue over what they consider to be disordered, so that naming of something as 'disorder' is often a political action. However, although people may not agree on what disorder is, almost everyone agrees that it is bad. This primarily theoretical sketch explores the inevitability of disorder arising from ordering systems and argues that a representative democracy has to tolerate disorder so as to function.

In this essay, I review developments in the ongoing debate about the causal connections between poverty, personal behaviour and social inequality. I also discuss the normative issues that arise in defining poverty and in deciding what role redistributive social policies ought to play in its prevention and relief.I go on to compare the behavioural explanations of the causes of poverty that are normatively associated with theories of economic market liberalism and the structural explanations that are grounded in theories of socialism and other more pluralist forms of social-democratic collectivism.I conclude that these two unitary ideologies of individualism and collectivism are reaching the end of their useful lives as exclusive guides in shaping the ends and means of social policies. In democratic societies, compromises have to be made between radically different views about what constitutes an equitable distribution of wealth and income, and what kind of balance should be struck between the claims of freedom and welfare. Viable compromises on these divisive issues can only be reached in the mixed economies of democratic pluralist societies.

This themed section discusses the conceptual development and related empirical applications of social innovation (SI), a concept acquiring a prominent position in both academia and the world of policy. When SI started being used in the early 1990s relatively few social scientists were familiar with it, mainly those interested in urban policy. Less than two decades later, not only is SI at the heart of the largest public research funding programme in Europe (Horizon 2020), it is also constantly referred to in the discourses of senior level policy makers on both sides of the Atlantic.

This long-awaited two-volume book examines how the interplay of ideas and actions applied to environmental problems has laid the foundations for global environmental management. It looks at how ideas, interests, and institutions affect management practice; how management capabilities in other areas affect the ability to deal with specific environmental issues; and how learning affects society's approach to the global environment.The book focuses on efforts to deal with climate change, ozone depletion, and acid rain from 1957 (The International Geophysical Year) through 1992 (the UN Conference on Environment and Development). The settings include Canada, Germany, Hungary, Japan, Mexico, the Netherlands, the former Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, the United States, and international environmental organizations. Topics include problem framing, agenda setting, issue attention, risk assessment, monitoring, option assessment, goal and strategy formulation, implementation, and evaluation. Volume 1 provides an overview of the project, of global environmental management in general, and of the three central environmental issues studied; it also contains the individual country studies. Volume 2 contains the management function studies and the book's conclusion.Authors in the set includeJeannine Cavender-Bares, William C. Clark, Ellis Cowling, Nancy M. Dickson, Gerda Dinkelman, Rodney Dobell, Renate Ell, Adam Fenech, Alexander Ginzburg, Elena Goncharova, Peter Haas, Eva Hizsnyik, Michael Huber, Peter Hughes, Jill Jager, Marc Levy, Angela Liberatore, Diana Liverman, Justin Longo, David McCabe, Donald Munton, Elena Nikitina, Karen O'Brien, Edward Parson, Vladimir Pisarev, Ruud Pleune, Miranda Schreurs, Simon Shackley, Peter Simmons, Heather Smith, Vassily Sokolov, Ferenc L. Toth, Jeroen van der Sluijs, Josee van Eijndhoven, Claire Waterton, Cor Worrell, and Brian Wynne.More information is available from the SLG web site.

A perennial quest for justice is the road toward progress. Continued inequality and injustice have demeaned the ethos of our civilization. A broken society manifestly reminds us about the perils of a vanishing social contract (SC). It appears to be a romantic fallacy to achieve global wellbeing in the context of contemporary social development (SD). It is argued that the fissures of "social contract" warrant the examination of society's evolutionary trajectories of development.