Publications

What can the municipal state do to radically transform urban economies? Local government in countries such as the UK has been historically tasked with delivering public services; rarely extending its remit to economic develop-ment, let alone community-led forms promoting economic democracy, at least not since 1980s municipal socialism. But times are changing, and the UK…

Forthcoming Research Topic edited by Igor Calzada, Francesco Mureddu, and Smita Gupta Building on the Millennium Development Goals, the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are the cornerstone of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, billed by the UN as “an agenda of unprecedented scope and significance.” The seventeen ambitious goals, which are intended to be…

Oswald Spengler’s Der Untergang des Abendlandes (The Decline of the West), despite much scholarly criticism, was popular in the two decades following publication in 1918. It is now a book that many people know about, but that few have read. Perhaps it was always so. This is not the place to reconsider in detail Spengler’s massive…

The paper considers the life and career of the prominent Welsh adult educator, civil servant, and cultural diplomat Sir Ben Bowen Thomas (1899-1977). He was born into a Christian Baptist family at Treorci, Ystrad Rhondda, Glamorgan, where his father Jonathan was a coal miner. His mother, Ann, was the sister of the poet Ben Bowen….

This report was produced in November 2022 as part of research undertaken by the Wales Institute of Social and Economic Research and Data (WISERD) as part of its ESRC Centre research programme. Fifteen remote interviews were conducted in English or Welsh (depending on the participant’s choice) by three researchers (Dr Beel, Prof IR Jones, Dr…

Introduction Events surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic drew attention to the importance of local neighbourhoods as people were encouraged wherever possible to work from home, the physical and mental health benefits of active means of travel were promoted, and communities became more reliant on services in their local areas. At the same time governments around the…

This chapter is based on qualitative research conducted in Aber Valley, South Wales, which explores the employment experiences and relationships of a group of working-class men who rejected formal education in their youth. Drawing on data from semi-structured interviews and visual methods, participants’ experiences and relationships with employment are, it is argued, influenced by community…

There is a longstanding policy interest in understanding the impacts of changes in access to public and private services in rural areas. To date much of the empirical analysis concerning changing patterns of accessibility has been predicated on assumptions regarding the mode of transport used to access such facilities. The availability of new and open…

Most Indigenous peoples’ languages are considered severely endangered, and Mapuzungun is no exception. Mapuche associations in Santiago de Chile have implemented a series of workshops to revitalise the language and revert this trend. This article uses ethnographic data to analyse two interconnected aspects that have motivated members of Mapuche associations to participate in community language…

This first pan-regional analysis of civil society organizations’ perspectives on the contemporary situation of human rights defenders (HRDs) in the Commonwealth of Independent States uses United Nations’ Universal Periodic Review (UPR) data and reveals a shrinking civil space as HRDs face a raft of rights pathologies, including threats, violence and murder. Their work is curtailed…