The idea life of money and poststructural realism
Comment on Dodd, Nigel. 2014. The social life of money. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Swimming in Debt: Student Loans and the Fight to Save a Generation
In 2010, student loan debt surpassed credit card debt for the first time in US history. Default rates have increased following the Great Recession. Yet student debt, unlike most debt, is not dischargeable in bankruptcy, leaving those burdened by loans unable to move on with their lives. Hundreds of alumni from the private, for-profit Corinthian Colleges Inc. have proclaimed a debt strike, refusing to pay off their student loans. They assert they were defrauded by aggressive recruitment and specious promises about jobs, while Corinthian profited from federal loan funds. The seeds of this debt resistance movement, sown in the wake of Occupy Wall Street, are growing. The activism described in this chapter raises questions about the provisioning and financing of higher education in the neoliberal era.
CULTURE, SUSTAINABLE URBAN DEVELOPMENT AND URBAN REGENERATION
Concerns about the conflict between economy, development on one hand and urban cultural heritage on the other hand, have made the urban development to be lately one of the most important themes at European level. Also, another issue of concern is social equity, aiming to strike a balance between economic development and equal access to culture for all generations of inhabitants of urban communities. Basically, ensuring these balances between urban cultural heritage, economy and social equity we express the essence of the concept of sustainable development from the perspective of culture. Urbanization is an ongoing process in all the cities of the world, but urban cultural heritage is a crucial element in the development of the cities and has an important impact over the quality of life of that community. Castles, churches, fortresses, squares and public buildings all contribute at the creating of the community history and of their characteristics.