This book is about a case study of Firestone Natural Rubber Company in Liberia. In this book issues of bureaucratic corruption, ethics and social alienation are directly confronted from a case study approach. Positivist and post-positivist approaches in the framework of a mixed methodology are adopted. This approach is justified in an attempt to generate comprehensive understanding of the research problem and its likely solutions.
This publication deals with the topic of transitional justice. In six case studies, the authors link theoretical and practical implications in order to develop some innovative approaches. Their proposals might help to deal more effectively with the transition of societies, legal orders and political systems. Young academics from various backgrounds provide fresh insights and demonstrate the relevance of the topic. The chapters analyse transitions and conflicts in Sierra Leone, Argentina, Nicaragua, Nepal, and South Sudan as well as Germany’s colonial genocide in Namibia. Thus, the book provides the reader with new insights and contributes to the ongoing debate about transitional justice. Gegenstand dieser Publikation ist das Thema „Transitional Justice“. In sechs Fallstudien verknüpfen die Autoren theoretische und praktische Implikationen, um innovative Ansätze zu entwickeln. Ihre Vorschläge wollen dazu beitragen, den Übergangsprozess von Gesellschaften, Rechtsordnungen und politischen Systemen effektiver zu gestalten. Nachwuchswissenschaftler mit unterschiedlichem fachlichem Hintergrund geben hier neue Einblicke und zeigen die fortdauernde Relevanz des Themas. Die Kapitel analysieren Übergänge und Konflikte in Sierra Leone, Argentinien, Nicaragua, Nepal und Süd-Sudan sowie den kolonialen Völkermord in Namibia. So liefert das Buch dem Leser neue Erkenntnisse und trägt zur laufenden Debatte über das Thema „Transitional Justice“ bei.
How Wall Street, Chinese billionaires, oil sheiks, and agribusiness are buying up huge tracts of land in a hungry, crowded world. An unprecedented land grab is taking place around the world. Fearing future food shortages or eager to profit from them, the world’s wealthiest and most acquisitive countries, corporations, and individuals have been buying and leasing vast tracts of land around the world. The scale is astounding: parcels the size of small countries are being gobbled up across the plains of Africa, the paddy fields of Southeast Asia, the jungles of South America, and the prairies of Eastern Europe. Veteran science writer Fred Pearce spent a year circling the globe to find out who was doing the buying, whose land was being taken over, and what the effect of these massive land deals seems to be. The Land Grabbers is a first-of-its-kind exposé that reveals the scale and the human costs of the land grab, one of the most profound ethical, environmental, and economic issues facing the globalized world in the twenty-first century. The corporations, speculators, and governments scooping up land cheap in the developing world claim that industrial-scale farming will help local economies. But Pearce’s research reveals a far more troubling reality. While some mega-farms are ethically run, all too often poor farmers and cattle herders are evicted from ancestral lands or cut off from water sources. The good jobs promised by foreign capitalists and home governments alike fail to materialize. Hungry nations are being forced to export their food to the wealthy, and corporate potentates run fiefdoms oblivious to the country beyond their fences. Pearce’s story is populated with larger-than-life characters, from financier George Soros and industry tycoon Richard Branson, to Gulf state sheikhs, Russian oligarchs, British barons, and Burmese generals. We discover why Goldman Sachs is buying up the Chinese poultry industry, what Lord Rothschild and a legendary 1970s asset-stripper are doing in the backwoods of Brazil, and what plans a Saudi oil billionaire has for Ethiopia. Along the way, Pearce introduces us to the people who actually live on, and live off of, the supposedly “empty” land that is being grabbed, from Cambodian peasants, victimized first by the Khmer Rouge and now by crony capitalism, to African pastoralists confined to ever-smaller tracts. Over the next few decades, land grabbing may matter more, to more of the planet’s people, than even climate change. It will affect who eats and who does not, who gets richer and who gets poorer, and whether agrarian societies can exist outside corporate control. It is the new battle over who owns the planet.
This book is a critical examination of the place and role of land in Africa, the role of land in political formation and national identification, and the land as an economic resource within both national economic development and liberal globalization. Colonial and post-colonial conflicts have been rooted in four related claims: the struggle over scarce resources, especially access to land resources; abundance of natural resources mismanaged or appropriated by both the states, local power systems and multinationals; weak or absent articulated land tenure policies, leading to speculation or hybrid policy framework; and the imperatives of the global liberalization based on the free market principles to regulate the land question and mineral appropriation issue. The actualization of these combined claims have led to conflicts among ethnic groups or between them and governments. This book is not only about conflicts, but also about local policy achievements that have been produced on the land question. It provides a critical understanding of the forces and claims related to land tenure systems, as part of the state policy and its system of governance.
Large corporations operating on an international scale require honest business practices. It is imperative for corporations to conduct activities in an ethical manner, while also attaining effective economic growth. Globalization and the Ethical Responsibilities of Multinational Corporations: Emerging Research and Opportunities is a scholarly reference source including the latest findings on the connection between international influence and integrity among corporations. Featuring extensive coverage on a broad range of topics and perspectives such as corporate governance, stakeholder theory, and foreign direct investment (FDI), this publication is ideally designed for researchers, professionals, and academicians seeking current research on how global and transnational firms have affected economic progression all over the world.
A Finalist for the 2022 Edgar Award A Washington Post Best Nonfiction Book of the Year A vivid, deeply researched account of the tumultuous life of one of the twentieth century’s greatest novelists, the author of The End of the Affair. One of the most celebrated British writers of his generation, Graham Greene’s own story was as strange and compelling as those he told of Pinkie the Mobster, Harry Lime, or the Whisky Priest. A journalist and MI6 officer, Greene sought out the inner narratives of war and politics across the world; he witnessed the Second World War, the Vietnam War, the Mau Mau Rebellion, the rise of Fidel Castro, and the guerrilla wars of Central America. His classic novels, including The Heart of the Matter and The Quiet American, are only pieces of a career that reads like a primer on the twentieth century itself. The Unquiet Englishman braids the narratives of Greene’s extraordinary life. It portrays a man who was traumatized as an adolescent and later suffered a mental illness that brought him to the point of suicide on several occasions; it tells the story of a restless traveler and unfailing advocate for human rights exploring troubled places around the world, a man who struggled to believe in God and yet found himself described as a great Catholic writer; it reveals a private life in which love almost always ended in ruin, alongside a larger story of politicians, battlefields, and spies. Above all, The Unquiet Englishman shows us a brilliant novelist mastering his craft. A work of wit, insight, and compassion, this new biography of Graham Greene, the first undertaken in a generation, responds to the many thousands of pages of letters that have recently come to light and to new memoirs by those who knew him best. It deals sensitively with questions of private life, sex, and mental illness, and sheds new light on one of the foremost modern writers.
“A vivid, important, and inspiring book.”— Elizabeth Kolbert, Pulitzer Prize winning author of The Sixth Extinction and Under a White Sky “Eloquently mulls the ecological dynamics of forests as well as the social, economic, cultural, and political forces that determine their fate.”—LA REVIEW OF BOOKS A powerful book about the decline and recovery of the world’s forests––with a provocative argument for their survival. In A Trillion Trees, veteran environmental journalist Fred Pearce takes readers on a whirlwind journey through some of the most spectacular forests around the world. Along the way, he charts the extraordinary pace of forest destruction, and explores why some are beginning to recover. With vivid, observant reporting, Pearce transports readers to the remote cloud forests of Ecuador, the remains of a forest civilization in Nigeria, a mystifying mountain peak in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, and the boreal forests of western Canada and the United States, where devastating wildfires are linked to suppressing the natural fire cycles of forests and the maintenance practices of Indigenous peoples. Throughout the book, Pearce interviews the people who traditionally live in forests. He speaks to Indigenous peoples in western Canada and the United States who are fighting to control their traditional forested lands and manage them according to their traditional practices. He visits and speaks with Nepalese hill dwellers, Kenyan farmers, and West African sawyers who show him that forests are as much human landscapes as they are natural paradises. The lives of humans are now imprinted in forest ecology. At the heart of Pearce’s investigationis a provocative argument: planting more trees isn’t the answer to declining forests. If given room and left to their own devices, forests and the people who live in them will fight back to restore their own domain.
Like many developing countries, Liberia entered into several agreements with multinational companies that led to little if any sustainable economic development. Many such agreements benefited of government officials and the company and not the broader interests of the countries. Firestone's 1926 ninety-nine year, one million acre concession agreement is no exception. The agreement signed by Liberia has not led to finished products being made in Liberia. The raw materials still are being taken out of the country and it is caught in a plantation trap.
