4,364 research outputs found
Africa’s urban transition: challenges, misconceptions and opportunities
No full textLSE’s Sean Fox argues that some basic misunderstandings about the nature and causes of Africa’s urban transition have resulted in decades of misguided development policies in the region
The political economy of slums in Africa
No full textIn a recently published working paper, LSE’s Sean Fox examines the wide variation in slum incidence across several countries in Africa
Food Irradiation and Public Health
No full textBoland, Michael; Fox, Sean. (2012). Food Irradiation and Public Health. Retrieved from the University Digital Conservancy, https://hdl.handle.net/11299/157629
Population pressure, political institutions, and protests:A multilevel analysis of protest events in African cities
No full textWhy do some of Africa’s urban areas experience higher rates of protest incidence than others? Numerous authors have highlighted the role of urbanisation and democratisation in determining cross-national variation in the rates of urban protest. Yet understanding has been hindered by failures to measure mechanisms at the appropriate spatial scale, analyse a sufficiently representative sample of urban centres, de-confound local and country-level factors, and consider what it is about specific urban centres that shapes variation in protest incidence. This paper presents new evidence on the determinants of protests in African urban centres by linking georeferenced data on urban settlements from the Urban Centres Database to the location of protest events taken from the Armed Conflict Location and Event Dataset. Fitting a series of multilevel regression models with cross-level effects, we simultaneously estimate variation in protest incidence as a function of local- and country-level factors and the interactions between them. Our results indicate that variation in protest incidence between urban centres can be explained by a combination of local-specific and country-level contextual factors including population size and growth, regime type, civil society capacity, and whether an urban centre is politically significant. These findings advance our understanding of how political and demographic factors interact and influence protest incidence in urban Africa
Neglected drivers of urbanisation in Africa
No full textThe common assumption that rural-to-urban migration is the primary source of rapid urban population growth in Africa is flawed. Natural population increase within urban areas and rural transformation are also important forces. Policies aimed at easing population pressure in urban areas by discouraging migration are therefore unlikely to succeed, argues Sean Fox
Sean Rubin: Cook Prize 2025, Silver Medal Acceptance Speech
No full textAuthor and illustrator Sean Rubin gives an acceptance speech for The Iguanodon’s Horn (Clarion/HarperCollins)https://educate.bankstreet.edu/cook/1015/thumbnail.jp
Appropriations of Irish drama by modern Korean nationalist theatre : a focus on the influence of Sean O’Casey in a colonial context
No full textMy thesis explores how a translated author on the periphery of the host culture’s
translated repertoire can be at once subversive and innovative on the colonial scene,
using as an example the case of Sean O’Casey in colonial Korea. It explores the
importation of Irish drama in modern Korean theatre during the colonial period and
examines the appropriations of O’Casey’s plays by a central Korean playwright, Yu
Chi-jin, in creating his own plays. Under Japanese colonial rule in the early twentieth
century, intellectuals perceived the supreme task for the Korean people to be the
recovery of national sovereignty and independence. The modern Korean theatre
movement which rose among Korean intellectuals and dramatists during the colonial
period was to play a major part in this task. The ultimate goal of this movement was
to establish a modern national theatre promoting Korean culture and educating the
people, thereby recovering national independence. As their modernised dramatic
polysystem was still "young", Korean intellectuals and dramatists who were
involved in the theatre movement had to borrow dramatic models from other
countries. One of the models they chose was Irish playwrights, especially those who
were involved in the Irish dramatic movement. They published or staged the works
of W.B. Yeats, Lord Dunsany [Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett], Augusta
Gregory, J.M. Synge, St. J. Ervine, T.C. Murray and Sean O'Casey. Although
O'Casey was considered an important dramatist in the Irish dramatic movement, he
was a playwright on the periphery in the list of translated Irish dramatists in Korea
due to the colonisers’ censorship. However, he remained as a subversive and
innovative playwright on the colonial scene by virtue of being appropriated by Yu
Chi-jin who used O’Casey’s plays as models when creating his own works. In
discussing the subject matter of my thesis, I use Even Zohar’s polysystems theory as
a starting point in looking at ideological issues surrounding translation and extend
the discussion to offer a postcolonial perspective. While most translation in a
colonial context was considered as "an expression of the cultural power of the
colonisers," my thesis shifts the focus to translation as an expression of the cultural
power of the colonised. I explore how the colonised uses another colonised culture to
subvert the colonisers’ power
Urbanisation, democracy, and political regime transformations
No full textCities, and the process of urbanisation more broadly, have long been associated with political change – and democratisation in particular. However, there is little cross-country empirical research on the relationship between urbanisation and political change, and a tendency to conflate urbanisation with industrialisation and economic development. This gap is significant for two reasons. First, many of the hypothesised mechanisms linking urbanisation to political change are associated with socioeconomic changes driven by industrialisation and economic development. Second, many low- and middle-income countries have undergone rapid “urbanisation without industrialisation”. What then are the political consequences of urbanisation without industrialisation?To answer this, we draw a key conceptual distinction between urbanisation – the increase in the relative share of a country's population living in urban areas – and urban population scale – the absolute size of urban populations. While much of the literature focuses upon the political implications of urbanisation, we argue that the sheer scale of urban populations may be more consequential for political change. Specifically, we suggest that although the hypothesised associations between urban living and democratic preferences among citizens are weak, urban living facilitates political engagement, and hence large urban populations may stimulate political change.We test this hypothesis with cross-national regressions analysing the determinants of levels of democracy and episodes of political regime transformation since 1960 in 161 countries. We find no association between levels of urbanisation or urban population size and levels of democracy. By contrast, we find a positive and significant association between urban population size and political regime transformations, with a bias towards democratic change. Our study offers important insights into the relationship between urbanisation and political change and the political implications of rapid urbanisation without industrialisation unfolding in many parts of the world today
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