No-Nonsense Books:

["Craven, Jim" <jcraven@xxxxxxxxx>]

I don't know how many have seen the series of "No-nonsense books" but in my
opinion they have some substance to them and some basic facts and issues
that allow them to be used as primary or supplementary texts. They cover the
following areas: International Migration; Indigenous Peoples; Climate
Change; International Development; Fair Trade; Globalization (These are the
books I am using--in order--for my economic geography course to create a
kind of allegory of processes of interactions between human beings and their
environments--local to global); also World History; Democracy; Sexual
Diversity; The Arms Trade; Class, Caste and Hierarchies; Terrorism;

They are published by Verso Press, in association with "New
Internationalist", about $10 each, smaller than a typical paperback,and
worth looking at.

I start with International Migration (Who are the migrants?; Where are they
coming from and why?; What types of systems are they coming from and what
roles/standings did they have where they came from? What types of
collectives and aggregates do they form and occupy? Where are they going and
why? Push and pull factors?; What types of features of various locations and
"places" draw the migrants and why? What types of belief systems are they
carrying or adopting? What are the essential elements of nations and
national minorities? What types of imperatives are driving the migrants
and/or do they encounter when the migrants settle?

Location (relative, absolute, socioeconomic etc) Who are the Peoples
Indigenous to a given location? Who are the non-Indigenous (previous
settlers)? How do the Indigenous versus non-Indigenous social systems and
cultures differ? Why? What are some generalizations that can be made about
Indigenous versus non-Indigenous interactions? What are some socioeconomic
indicators revealing relative standings of Indigenous versus non-Indigenous
peoples?
What are some of the features of the physical environment that pull in or
push out migrants and facilitate turning a given location into "Place"
(fresh water supply, climate, soils, topography, flora and
fauna,minerals,tectonics, etc)?(Use Indigenous Peoples and Climate Change)

Turning Location into "Place": What is the difference between Economic
Growth versus Development? How are the three "fundamental questions" of
economics--What, How and for Whom--posed and dealt with in different types
of systems (Communalism, slavery, Feudalism, Capitalism, Socialism)? What
are growth poles and how and why do they generate? What are forward,
backward and horizontal linkages and how/why do they generate? Why do
populations, investment flows, jobs, infrastructure, settlements etc tend to
agglomerate in space? How and why do various types of population structures
(class, strata, race, ethnicity, age, gender, ideological etc) change and
with what effects and implications? What are the fundamental processes
through which location is turned into "Place" (location; cohesion; intensity
of social interaction; uniqueness or identity; localized vibe or spirit;
emergence; meaning to human agents)? How and why are wealth/income
distributions/inequalities mutually causative and reinforcing and what are
their implications? What are primary versus secondary versus tertiary versus
quarternary economic activities, how are they linked and what types of
jobs/incomes/outputs/inputs do they generate? (Use Guide to International
Development) How, why and with what implications does de jure competition
produce de faacto anti-competition and de jure "democracy" produce de facto
anti-democracy?

How and why are diverse "places" progressively linked and interlinked to
form regions? Sources, forms, theories, costs and effects of trade (levels,
structures and terms)? What are the typical structures of trade associated
with different types of systems at different levels of "development"? What
are the implications of different types of trade structures? What are some
of the different types of trade regimes and institutions past and present?
What are the mechanisms and power structures associated with the different
types of trade regimes and institutions?
(Use Guide to Fair Trade)

Globalization: How, why and with what implications are various "Places" and
Regions interlinked on a global level? What are the core/defining features,
imperatives, dynamics and masks of imperialism past and present? What are
some indicators for qualifying and/or quantifying degrees, forms and
interrelationships of globalization? Who are the leading pro-globalization
and anti-globalization theorists and what are they saying? What are the
typical promises versus realities of globalization? Etc (use Guide to
Gobalization)

Back to International Migrations: Further analysis of causes, effects,
implications of migrations (Back to the "beginning" to form a non-linear or
overall "Hoop" structure for the entire course. The following six unifying
themes are employed to structure the overall course: Movement; Location;
Human-Environment Relations; Place; Regions; Globalization; Movement;

With some of these types of books, put together with the latest data, one
can put together an overall heuristic that also teaches, as well as
incorporates, integration of diverse disciplines, facts, issues etc to form
an overall dialectical heuristic expressed through an allegory of
human-environment interactions, interrelations, causes, effects,
implications and prognoses as human beings migrate, settle, create/re-create
"Place", interlink "Places" to form different types of regions, interlink
regions on a global level, and then are driven to further migrate in
response to core imperatives, dynamics, causes and effects of globalization.

Jim C


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