Description
Globally, poverty affects millions of people’s lives each day. Children are hungry, many lack the means to receive an education, and many are needlessly ill. It is a common scene to see an impoverished town surrounded by trash and polluted air. There is a need to debunk the myths surrounding the impoverished and for strategies to be crafted to aid their situations.
Sociological Perspectives on Sustainable Development and Poverty Reduction in Rural Populations is an authored book that seeks to clarify the understanding of poverty reduction in a substantive way and demonstrate the ways that poverty is multifaceted and why studying poverty reduction matters. The 12 chapters in this volume contribute to existing and new areas of knowledge production in the field of development studies, poverty knowledge production, and gender issues in the contemporary African experience. The book utilizes unique examples drawn purposely from select African countries to define, highlight, raise awareness, and clarify the complexity of rural poverty. Covering topics such as indigenous knowledge, sustainable development, and child poverty, this book provides an indispensable resource for sociology students and professors, policymakers, social development officers, advocates for the impoverished, government officials, researchers, and academicians.
Author's/Editor's Biography
Ladislaus Semali
Ladislaus M. Semali is a comparative and international education professor at the Pennsylvania State University, Learning Performance and Systems specializing in Comparative Ways of Knowing and Learning. In past several years, he has held positions in the Curriculum and Instruction Department, specializing in curriculum theory, media literacy education, comparativ and international education and non-Western educational epistemologies. Dr. Semali served as chair of Comparative and International Education, www.ed.psu./cied/ at Penn State and Co-director of the Inter-institutional Consortium for Indigenous Knowledge (ICIK) (www.ed.psu.edu/icik), which is part of a global network comprised of thirty indigenous knowledge resource centers in North America, Latin America, Europe, Asia, Africa and the Middle East. ICIK’s signature program that Dr. Semali directs is an international conference that convenes every three years to involve people in deliberations on indigenous ways of knowing and learning activities from around the world. This conference is informed by courses taught every semester and retreats held in the off years when the annual conference is not convened. Semali has extensive experience in organizing internships and workshops for students in Africa, and is currently directing research in East Africa on the UN Millennium Development Goals (a set of targets for cutting poverty, disease, and hunger by the year 2015), social networks, digital media, and the use of mobile devices for education development.