By Oosterom, M.; Huq, L.; Namuggala, V.; Nazneen, S.; Nankindu, P.; Sultan, M.; Sultana, A. and Azim, F.

There is a strong belief that employment is a crucial avenue for the empowerment of young women, through income, greater autonomy, and bargaining power within the family. However, experiences of workplace sexual harassment undermine these potential gains. This qualitative study among agro-processing factory workers and domestic workers in Uganda and Bangladesh demonstrates that sexual harassment is widespread in both formal and informal workplaces, while domestic workers are particularly vulnerable to its most severe forms. Women’s agency to challenge harassment is severely constrained by social and gender norms. Most find that the best possible strategy is to avoid and prevent physical forms of sexual harassment from happening. Language is essential for voicing and challenging sexual harassment, but the study shows that social and gender norms constrain young women in articulating transgressive and inappropriate behaviour by men. Many women hide detail, deliberately use euphemisms, and even lack a vocabulary to explain what happened to them, ultimately limiting opportunities for redressal. At the same time, formal institutions are failing young female workers. Local authorities in both countries reproduced prejudice about women ‘inviting’ sexual attention, whereas the police are generally distrusted because of corruption and the need for bribes. To tackle sexual harassment in the workplace, multipronged strategies are needed that target employers and government actors. The right policies and adequate safeguarding and reporting mechanisms need to be implemented, whereas programmes need to support women to help them gain the confidence to speak about sexual harassment and support (collective) action. Longer-term strategies need to address gender norms that condone sexual harassment.

Brighton, UK: Institute of Development Studies, 2022. 84p.

By Schultze-Kraft, Markus.

Following on from the World Bank’s World Development Report 2011 on conflict, security and development, a debate has emerged about the role of so-called ‘external stresses’ in generating ‘new’ forms of violence and insecurity in poor and fragile countries.

The Bank posits that the combination of internal stresses (e.g. low income levels, high youth unemployment) and external stresses (e.g. cross-border conflict spillovers, illicit drug trafficking) heightens the risk of different forms of violence, which are not confined to inter-state and civil war but range from communal conflicts to criminal violence and terrorism.

Brighton, UK: Institute of Development Studies, 2013. 15p.

Edited by Sundari Anitha and Ruth Lewis.

Policy, prevention and educational initiatives. “This collection comes in the midst of some promising and challenging times for activists, students and academics in the UK and beyond who have been researching and campaigning on the issue of gender based violence (GBV) in university communities. In the context of emerging research evidence and in the face of increasing public awareness of and media attention on this problem, these are indeed the first steps towards acknowledging and addressing it in countries including the UK and Australia.”

Policy Press (2018) 282p.

By Ben L. Reitman.

The Second Oldest Profession delves into the clandestine world of undercover operatives, where the line between friend and foe is blurred beyond recognition. In this gripping tale of deception and intrigue, author James Thornton weaves a narrative that challenges readers to question their assumptions about loyalty and betrayal. As the story unfolds, readers will find themselves immersed in a high-stakes game where alliances are fragile and trust is a luxury few can afford. A riveting blend of suspense and action, The Second Oldest Profession is a must-read for fans of espionage thrillers.

London Constable & Co. (1931) 293 pages.

Edited by Johan Temmerman.

Religious Radicalism scrutinizes the religious motives and mechanisms of radicalism. The contributors observe a growing lack of understanding of religion in secular policy-bodies, as well as in the academic world in Europea and beyond. They put forward an approach 'from within' and aim to provide policy-makers with workable tools and a user-friendly method for constructively tackling religious radicalism. The underlying issue is the question of the role of the rule of law in relation to human rights in relation to religious minorities. This edited volume brings forward an interdisciplinary approach to religious radicalism blending religious studies, theology, and cultural criticism. Above all Religious Radicalism is an invitation for dialogue and a plea for understanding. In the current polarized cultural climate it is delicate to ask for prejudices to be avoided. We can tend to think that the 'other' has to trust us, and that change applies to those who think and feel differently than we do. Increasing illiteracy is both a cause and effect of religious radicalism. Those who do not feel understood and recognized and whose identity is systematically discredited turn against the institutional powers that leave the offence untouched. In short, radicalism is threatening. But for those who are completely alien to customs and backgrounds, symbols and behavior, the unprecedented and unfamiliar are just as much of a threat. This form of radicalism, which is rapidly rising on wings of ignorance, also calls for self-criticism.

Brussels: Uitgeverij ASP (Academic and Scientific Publishers nv) , 2021. 212p.

By Karl Mannheim.

An Introduction to the Sociology of Knowledge. Preface by Louis Wirth, Translated from the German by Louis Wirth and Edward Ships.

NY. Harcourt Brace, Routledge (1954). CONTAINS MARK-UP

By Arnold J. Toynbee.

“Civilization ... is a movement and not a condition, a voyage and not a harbour." That idea runs throughout the book. In a very interesting essay, Toynbee asked: "Does History Repeat Itself?" One answer is this: "There is nothing to prevent our Western civilization from following historical precedent, if it chooses, by committing social suicide." What will it take to avoid our demise? Toynbee believed that "world government," the mixed economy, and a revival of religion were the keys to the salvation of Western civilization. Religion is prominent in Toynbee's perspective of history. He recommended that "If our first precept should be to study our own history, ... our second precept should be to relegate economic and political history to a subordinate place and give religious history the primacy. For religion, after all, is the serious business of the human race." Toynbee was prescient about the importance of Islam. "Thus the contemporary encounter between Islam and the West," he observed, "is not only more active and intimate than any phase of their contact in the past; it is also distinctive in being an incident in an attempt by Western man to `Westernize' the world---an enterprise which will possibly rank as the most momentous, and as certainly the most interesting, feature in the history even of a generation that has lived through two world wars."

NY. Oxford University Press (1948) 255p.

By Leo Lowenthal and Norbert Guterman.

A Study of the Techniques of the American Agitator. “At this moment in world history anti-Semitism is not manifesting itself with the full and violent destructiveness of which we know it to be capable. Even a social disease has its periods of quiescence during which the social scientist, like the biologist or the physician, can study it in the search for more effective ways to prevent or reduce the virulence of the next outbreak. Today the world scarcely remembers the mechanized persecution and extermination of millions of human beings only a short span of years away in what was once regarded as the citadel of Western civilization.”

NY. Harper. (1949) 182p.

By Alexis De Tocqueville.

“Amongst the novel objects that attracted my attention during my stay in the United States, nothing struck me more forcibly than the general equality of conditions. I readily discovered the prodigious influence which this primary fact exercises on the whole course of society, by giving a certain direction to public opinion, and a certain tenor to the laws; by imparting new maxims to the governing powers, and peculiar habits to the governed.”

London. Saunders and Otley (1835) 487p.

Edited by Friedrich Engels.

“A spectre is haunting Europe—the spectre of Communism. All the Powers of old Europe have entered into a holy alliance to exorcise this spectre: Pope and Czar, Metternich and Guizot, French Radicals and German police-spies.” From the English edition.

A Read-Me.Org Classic Reprint. 1888. 43p.

By John Stuart Mill.

“It was in the year 1869 that, impressed with the degree in which, even during the last twenty years, when the world seemed so wholly occupied with other matters, the socialist ideas of speculative thinkers had spread among the workers in every civilized country, Mr. Mill formed the design of writing a book on Socialism.” Reprinted from the Fortnightly Review.

Chicago. Belfords Clarke. 1879. 65P.

By John Stuart Mill.

“There are few circumstances among those which make up the present condition of human knowledge, more unlike what might have been expected, or more significant of the backward state in which speculation on the most important subjects still lingers, than the little progress which has been made in the decision of the controversy respecting the criterion of right and wrong.” Reprinted From 'Fraser's Magazine' Seventh Edition.

London. Longmans, Green, And Co. 1879. 71p.

By Francis Bacon.

From the Introduction: “None of Bacon's writings gives in short apace so vivid a picture of his tastes and aspirations as this fragment of the plan of an ideal commonwealth. The generosity and enlightenment, the dignity and splendor, the piety and public spirit, of the inhabitants of Bensalem represent the ideal qualities which Bacon the statesman desired rather than hoped to see characteristic of his own country; and in Solomon's House we have Bacon the scientist indulging without restriction his prophetic vision of the future of human knowledge. No reader acquainted in any degree with the processes and results of modern scientific inquiry can fail to be struck by the numerous approximations made by Bacon's imagination to the actual achievements of modern times.”

London Rowley (1627) 37p.

By Francis Bacon.

“But it is not only the difficulty and labor, which men take in finding out of truth, nor again, that when it is found, it imposeth upon men's thoughts, that doth bring lies in favor; but a natural, though corrupt love, of the lie itself.”

A Read-Me.Org Classic Reprint. London (1696) 169p.

By Francis Bacon.

With a biographical notice by A. Spiers. Preface by B. Montagu, and notes by different writers.” “Wisdom for a man’s self is, in many branches thereof, a depraved thing. It is the wisdom of rats, that will be sure to leave a house somewhat before it fall, It is the wisdom of the fox, that thrusts out the badger, who digged and made room for him. It is the wisdom of crocodiles, that shed tears when they would devour. But that which is specially to be noted is, that those which (as Cicero says of Pompey) are Sui Amantes sine Rivali are many times unfortunate. And whereas they have all their time sacrificed to themselves, they become in the end themselves sacrifices to the inconstancy of Fortune, whose wings they thought, by their self wisdom, to have pinioned.”

Little Brown (1884) 291 pages.

By Anton Makarenko.

As one of the founders of Soviet pedagogy, Anton Makarenko elaborated the theory and methodology of upbringing in self-governing child collectives and introduced the concept of productive labor into the educational system. Encouraged by Gorky, Makarenko wrote The Pedagogical Poem (in the West The Road to Life) based on the true stories of his pupils from the orphanage for street children, which he started in 1925.

Read-Me.Org Classic Reprint. (1933) 441 pages.

By Charles Darwin.

"On The Origin of Species" is a groundbreaking work by Charles Darwin that revolutionized the way we understand the natural world. Published in 1859, this seminal book introduces the concept of natural selection as the mechanism driving the evolution of species. Darwin's meticulous observations across various ecosystems provide compelling evidence for the interconnectedness of all living organisms and the process of adaptation over time. Through clear and logical arguments, Darwin challenges prevailing beliefs and lays the foundation for modern evolutionary biology. A timeless classic that continues to influence scientific thought, "On The Origin of Species" remains essential reading for anyone curious about the origins of life on Earth.

Harrow and Heston Classic Reprint. 1859.

By Jean-Jacques Rousseau.

Banned for some time prior to the French Revolution, worshipped by Robespierre, Rousseau’s Emile advanced revolutionary ideas about how to educate a young boy. “Man was born free but everywhere was in chains” complained Rousseau. Emile’s eduction was supposed to fix all that.

Harrow and Heston Classic Reprint. 1762.

By Adam Smith.

Adam Smith didn’t just think about money and markets. He was also much taken with the moral sentiments of humans, what drove them to be human. This books shows that he saw much more to humans than simply “self interest” the one instinct that dominates his Wealth of Nations. This book in contrast is a pioneering essay on human psychology, good and bad.

Harrow and Heston Classic Reprint. 1759.

By Adam Smith. .

An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. This great classic published in 1776, is widely considered to have established the basis of modern capitalism . Smith argues that individuals are driven by self interest which, surprisingly almost, or even unintentionally, serves to benefit the welfare of all humankind.

Harrow and Heston Classic Reprint. 1776.