Suchergebnisse

"In the last few years, social policy has been rediscovered as an important tool when addressing poverty and social inequality in development contexts. After decades of structural adjustment policies and cutting back of national social programs, international organizations, such as the World Bank, the ILO and UNDP, increasingly recognize social protection as one of the main contributors to social cohesion and development. In this chapter the authors analyze the interplay between formal and informal social protection institutions. They look at the wide range of social protection mechanisms available in sub-Saharan African countries, namely formal social security arrangements, the provision of basic social goods and informal community-based and family-based mechanisms. In analyzing their strengths and weaknesses, the authors assess how these mechanisms complement each other to contribute to the overall social protection of the population." (author's abstract)

"This contribution argues that the growing movements for source-, data- and knowledge-sharing (Open Access, Open Source, Open Courseware, etc.) are of crucial importance for 'global civil society'. We claim that these movements are giving new content to the concepts of the public sphere, civil society and the digital divide. By enabling individuals and civil society organizations to become participants in global information-sharing communities, the Open Access and Open Source movements contribute to the emergence of a networked and knowledgebased global civil society. In a first step, the article argues that classical concept of civil society is less and less convincing and not adapted to the features of modern world society. In a second step the article proposes different ways to rethink the notions of 'civil society' and the 'public' to fit the reality of a world society where knowledge is increasingly a resource for creating self-governing associations and networks. We argue that the Open Access and Creative Commons movement have contributed to the proliferation of non-localised, global 'epistemic communities' and have created new definitions of information and ownership. By enabling small and resource-poor organizations and countries to tap into the global knowledge pool and to become part of global networks these movements have also provided a new context to rethink the 'digital divide'." (author's abstract)