Suchergebnisse

Despite the key role the World Bank plays in funding and promoting development projects that not only harm developing nations but also maintain their dependence on core nations, core nation corporations, and international development institutions, many people still regard the World Bank as the world's most important and successful development institution, raising the question of how it is able to legitimate itself so successfully. Researchers have long been interested in explaining how powerful actors legitimize their activities, with one important strand of research highlighting the ways in which powerful organizations use impression management to keep the general public ignorant of actions these organizations undertake that would be deemed inappropriate, immoral, or illegitimate if widely known. We extend the literature on impression management, which tends to highlight powerful organizations' defensive image maintenance practices and the strategies they use for communicating positive images to key stakeholders, by asking whether significant external parties, such as the news media, play an important role in affirming these organizational images and communicating them to external audiences. In particular, we examine three years' worth of New York Times articles that highlight or in some way reference the World Bank, and ask whether the images of the World Bank presented by the Times are consistent with either the images of itself that the World Bank presents or the images set forth by the Bank's critics. We find that the Times highlights images of the World Bank that are highly consistent with the images set forth by the World Bank, while downplaying and ignoring images highlighted by the Bank's critics. This suggests that, intentionally or not, the New York Times plays an important role in helping the World Bank legitimize itself, in large part by helping the World Bank keep US citizens ignorant of the many negative effects of its development projects.

In this paper, we argue that a crossover class of climate change solutions (which we term 'technological solutions') may disproportionately and adversely impact some populations over others. We begin by situating our discussion in the wider climate discourse, particularly with regard to the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and the Basel Convention. We then suggest that many of the most attractive technological solutions to climate change, such as solar energy and electric car batteries, will likely add to the rapidly growing stream of electronic waste ('e-waste'). This e-waste may have negative downstream effects on otherwise disenfranchised populations. We argue that e-waste burdens women unfairly and disproportionately, affecting their mortality/morbidity and fertility, as well as the development of their children. Building on this, we claim that these injustices are more accurately captured as problems of recognition rather than distribution, since women are often institutionally under-acknowledged both in the workplace and in the home. Without institutional support and representation, women and children are deprived of adequate safety equipment, health precautions, and health insurance. Finally, we return to the question of climate justice in the context of the human right to health and argue for greater inclusion and recognition of women waste workers and other disenfranchised groups in forging future climate agreements. Adapted from the source document.