OPUS International Listening Posts global report: The world at the dawn of 2025

The information age of the 21st century has transformed the economic, social, and political landscape in a profound and indelible manner. It also has changed the role and functions of government and redefined the scope and substance of good governance. Never before in human history has the pace of structural change been more pervasive, rapid, and global in its context. The information age has precipitated profound structural changes in the economic landscape and has given birth to the new economy. The new global economy is composed of a trilogy of interactive forces that include globalization, trade liberalization, and the information technology and communications revolution. Globalization has melted national borders, free trade has enhanced economic integration, and the information and communications revolution has made geography and time irrelevant (Passaris, 2001). Immigration has taken on a new perspective in the context of globalization. There is no denying that the spread of Internet-based technologies throughout society has become the dominant economic reality of the 21st century. E-economy—the use of information and communication technologies for product and process innovation across all sectors of the economy—has emerged as the primary engine of productivity and growth for the global economy. In large part due to advances in information and communications technologies, the role of international borders in this globalized economy has been transformed from the traditional geographical frontiers to virtual economic communities. Innovations in transportation and information and communications technology also has impacted immigration flows and made the world, in the phrase coined by Marshall McLuhan (1988), truly a “global village”. Borders have become less relevant for digital content communications and transactions. Cyberspace has no natural demarcations or border patrols. Indeed, knowledge-based products, such as software, games, and music, cross borders without impediment and with relative ease (Passaris, 2003). The advent of the information age has had a profound impact on the nature and scope of e-government and has given birth to the digital government of the 21st century. In particular, the interface between government and immigration management has been redesigned and restructured in terms of access to immigration information and application forms, the processing of immigration applicants for admission, enforcement of security measures and the prevention of terrorist infiltration, and the time line for adjudicating immigration applications, to name just a few of the significant changes to the contemporary process by which the governments of immigrant-receiving countries enforce their immigration policies.

The information age of the 21st century has transformed the economic, social, and political landscape in a profound and indelible manner. It also has changed the role and functions of government and redefined the scope and substance of good governance. Never before in human history has the pace of structural change been more pervasive, rapid, and global in its context. The information age has precipitated profound structural changes in the economic landscape and has given birth to the new economy. The new global economy is composed of a trilogy of interactive forces that include globalization, trade liberalization, and the information technology and communications revolution. Globalization has melted national borders, free trade has enhanced economic integration, and the information and communications revolution has made geography and time irrelevant (Passaris, 2001). Immigration has taken on a new perspective in the context of globalization. There is no denying that the spread of Internet-based technologies throughout society has become the dominant economic reality of the 21st century. E-economy—the use of information and communication technologies for product and process innovation across all sectors of the economy—has emerged as the primary engine of productivity and growth for the global economy. In large part due to advances in information and communications technologies, the role of international borders in this globalized economy has been transformed from the traditional geographical frontiers to virtual economic communities. Innovations in transportation and information and communications technology also has impacted immigration flows and made the world, in the phrase coined by Marshall McLuhan (1988), truly a “global village”. Borders have become less relevant for digital content communications and transactions. Cyberspace has no natural demarcations or border patrols. Indeed, knowledge-based products, such as software, games, and music, cross borders without impediment and with relative ease (Passaris, 2003). The advent of the information age has had a profound impact on the nature and scope of e-government and has given birth to the digital government of the 21st century. In particular, the interface between government and immigration management has been redesigned and restructured in terms of access to immigration information and application forms, the processing of immigration applicants for admission, enforcement of security measures and the prevention of terrorist infiltration, and the time line for adjudicating immigration applications, to name just a few of the significant changes to the contemporary process by which the governments of immigrant-receiving countries enforce their immigration policies.

It is now widely recognized that climate change will reconfigure our physical and social landscapes in ways that we are just beginning to understand, and that it will directly and indirectly influence human migration patterns across geographic regions and the socio-economic spectrum. Exactly how climate change will affect migration, what climate-related migration will look like, and how scholars might go about studying it, however, remain points of contention. In this chapter, we identify some key threads in the burgeoning literature on climate change and human migration, including the influence of climate change on migration decisions and patterns, the challenges of empirically measuring and predicting the scale of climate migration, the likely patterns climate migration will take, and some of the looming governance and human rights questions posed by climate migration. Additionally, because both climate change and migration occur within a dynamic and highly unequal social, political, and economic landscape, we highlight some of the ways in which some communities are rendered more vulnerable than others in the face of both climate change and climate migration, as well as the ways in which such vulnerability is produced and perpetuated.

The purpose of this paper is to understand how land tenure policies influenced the political economy of Ethiopia in the transition from a feudal society to a socialist state. Political economy refers to the interplay between economics, law, politics, and the role of institutions in the development of social and economic systems. This paper will analyze the feudal land tenure policies of the Ethiopian monarchy as well as the socialist-Marxist military government that overthrew it. While the Ethiopian monarchy is thousands of years old, this paper is concerned with the time of Menelik II (1889-1913) to the reign of Haile Selassie I (1930-1974), the last emperor of Ethiopia. There are two main objectives of this paper. The first objective is to understand how access to land in feudal Ethiopian society shaped the economic, social, and political landscape. The second objective seeks to understand how the economic, social, and political landscape created by the land policies of the feudal society influenced the radical transition into a socialist-Marxist state. This paper is divided into three sections. The first section deals with the various forms of land ownership; the social, political, and economic structures under the reign of both Menelik and Haile Selassie. The second section is dedicated to the decline of Haile Selassie and the Ethiopian monarchy. The last section deals with the socialist revolution of 1974 and the reforms under a socialist state.

: This project aimed at modeling future trajectories of irregular warfare (IW) through multiagent social simulation. The project objectives were to use social science to understand the social and political landscapes of IW; create a high-fidelity multiagent social simulation model (LRG-AFG) of the co-evolution of insurgency and counterinsurgency (COIN), embedded in a realistic and theoretically informed model of the local social, political, and economic landscapes; build an understanding of forces in the local population that support or oppose the existence of covert networks; describe the evolution of friend-or-foe attitudes among the population, and develop a model of the political economy of insurgency. To the best of our knowledge, LRG-AFG is at the time of submission of this report the most sophisticated, open source simulation of a political economy affected by armed conflict. LRG-AFG is a simulation of rural Afghanistan with 1.5M household agents that lends itself to rigorous analytical work and robust support for decision making.

A sense of increased security in the aftermath of the War of 1812, a wave of economic expansion and opportunity, and a firmer sense of nation in the second generation of the United States combined to create a surge in democratic spirit. These trends keenly affected the state of Virginia, with its geographic position between the northern and southern regions and as a stepping-off point for westward expansion. The history of Virginia farmer and entrepreneur Thomas Goodwin and his family traces the ways in which an ordinary family navigated the changing political, social, and economic landscape with new opportunities for inclusion as well as obstacles to full participation in the evolving nation. For Goodwin, inclusion came with marriage into a rooted family with its ethnic connections to community, his military service, land ownership and the associated status as a freeholder, and the industriousness of him and his family. Yet, the Goodwins faced problems because of both old rules and institutions and new expectations in a society where expanded political participation meant increased responsibilities. These problems included ethnic prejudice, conflicts over slavery, and the disadvantages of illiteracy.

Latin America’s Inter-Oceanic Road runs some 5800 kilometers from Peru’s Pacific coast to Brazil’s Atlantic coast. It is Latin America’s newest and longest East-West thoroughfare, a transnational development project involving Brazil, Peru, Bolivia, and international sponsors. The road changes the social, political, and economic landscape – cutting through indigenous land in the Peruvian Andes as well as the Peruvian, Brazilian, and Bolivian Amazon. It traverses the analytical and linguistic terrain upon which international governing bodies construct and maintain human rights laws. Among the many people and things traveling along the road are men searching for menial jobs and women destined for the sex-trade. The wording of evolving human rights discourse concerning trafficked persons includes as it excludes, leaving many women who cross borders living in the interstices of society. In these “zones of abandonment” (Biehl 2005) or zones of “non-being” (Fanon 1967) women have no documentation of their existence, may not speak (any of) the (new) country’s language(s), and more often than not, do not know how to read and write. Often, but not always, these men and women are left without a voice, that is to say, without the right words with which to articulate and protect themselves.

The world’s economic and political landscape is changing fast, and the world’s developing economies have become sizeable contributors to both global economic growth and also to political instability. The 2008 Global Economic and Financial Crisis is identified as an inflection point marking the decisive shift towards increasing domestic and worldwide economic imbalances and inequalities. The changing economic and political scenery has contributed to strengthening the ongoing criticisms of the effects of globalization which is associated with rising inequalities particularly at the country level and also in the Western economies. Furthermore, the emergence of new geo-economic and geopolitical dynamics derived from the polarization of wealth within countries has intensified as states have increased their competition for economic and political power. Moreover, the coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak and diffusion in 2020 has further disrupted global economic dynamics due to the economic standstill imposed across most countries. The economic and political landscape has subsequently been under more stress by the compounded effects of the energy shock resulting from the Russia-Saudi Arabia price war leading to significant global GDP rate adjustments. The 2022 Russia/Ukraine military crisis has further contributed to enhancing global uncertainty levels, bringing substantial concerns regarding the international community’s ability to address the challenges associated with the evolving current geo-economic and geopolitical dynamics revealing the complexities existing in the international political and economic framework. This chapter aims at shedding some light on these complexities.

The Buddhist Changpas-pastoral nomads of Changthang, Ladakh form an ethnic entity. Like other nomads in the world, the pastoral nomads of Changthang are a minority, suffering problems of under representation, social, economic and geographic marginalisation. The region is extremely poor in conventional energy sources (fossils, fuel and wood) and has almost no industrially exploitable resources. Natural environmental limitations dictate many aspects of traditional life, especially settlement pattern and economic system. Among the Changpas, the pastoral mode of livelihood is an evident attempt to adapt to a natural environment, which provides no plants as food that can support humans and has no potential for growing food crops. Under such conditions, the only solution is to domesticate large herds of various animals, which can feed off the plants and in return, the animals can sustain humans. Since, the ecological conditions of Changthang are not favourable for crop growing, the Changpas raise large herds of sheep and goats as well as transport animals like yaks and horses. These animals provide the Changpas with meat, milk, varieties of wool, which they use themselves and barter for grains and other utilities. This economic interdependence of nomadic pastoral and settled population has been an important characteristic of the society in this area. The Changpas social behaviour is, in part, a response to constraints and opportunities of the natural environment. Both stability and change are outcomes of response to the immediateneeds of daily life. The basic form of social organisation in the area was rural, and social relations among the agriculturalists, nomadic and semi-nomadic groups were based on trade and exchange of essential commodities. The Changpas’ subsistence level pastoral economy, traditional social and religio-cultural systems are composite part of cold desert’s ecological system. Their way of life shows a capacity to adapt themselves to the rugged cold desert environment. The Changpas possess a high degree of specialised knowledge and a flexible social organisation to make viable the mobile mode of production. Despite the ecological constraints, the Changpas were managing their environment for making a living without outside intervention. Their own societal controls like polyandry and cutting of excess animals, helped in turn by their customary rights and equity in resource allocation has helped them. The Changpas are organised using a patrilineal idiom, all members being patrilineal descendants of the founding ancestor. Rangeland, livestock, manpower and the considerable knowledge of the skills necessary to exploit them effectively are the principle economic resources of the Changpas of Changthang. Resource management in a risky environment illustrates the skills of the Changpas for survival. Traditional practices of Changpas, such as the rotation of grazing areas and use of reserve pastures in case of natural calamities help manage the variability of ecosystem and bail out pastures from a state of permanent degradation. Each animal has its own specific characteristics and adaptation to the environment. Rearing together different animals maximised the use of vegetation in the pasture. Different animals graze on different plants. In recent decades, the Changpas of Changthang have been experiencing changes due to external pressures that have altered political, economic and social landscapes. Traditionally, the Changpas were self-sufficient and livestock were providing them with their food and lodging. In recent decades, continuous massive defense investments and improvement in communications; proliferation of government departments; introduction of development plans; provision for basic amenities, alterations in traditional subsistence economy, its commercialisation and extension of know-how through government departments and non-government organisations and tourism has led to a higher motivation among local people for better standards of living. Increasing administrative and market integration and population growth over the years have weakened socio-homeostasis with no functional substitutes for restoring positive social system. For centuries, pastoralists in Changthang have lived in the context of environmental uncertainty and have developed a diverse range of strategies, institutions and network to minimise this unpredict-ability and risk. Pastoral management strategies, which may have worked previously, may or may not be sufficient now. The three communities of Samad, Korzok and Kharnak responded differently to these changes. Various pressures with an ever-increasing rate of change necessitated the adoption of new strategies for survival.

As American unions have come under unrelenting assault, the left is “enjoying” a historic victory, but one most labor partisans would rather do without. If one considers the political landscape in the United States over the last half century, then American unions have moved—or been moved—to the left margin of mainstream thinking and action. They have gotten there primarily because of the shifting political and economic landscape on which they stand; for the most part, their leftism represents no conscious insurgency. Organized labor has become, instead, the domain of reluctant radicals.

We have just finished a marathon election season, almost two years in the making, and by all accounts billions of dollars spent (almost $3b by the candidates, altogether about $6b by all the various campaigns and PACs formed to promote one candidate or another), to arrive at the same place. We might be excused if we glance at a British system that holds its elections in 3 weeks and bans television advertising – after all, we are hard pressed to see how that results in very different outcomes in governing styles and political philosophies. Little has changed in the US political landscape: stubborn right-wing Republicans, wary of Tea Party primary challenges, retain control over the US House of Representatives, while Democrats and their uneasy neoliberalism remain entrenched in the US Senate. President Obama was re-elected and, depending on whose tea leaves one consults (certainly not the Tea Party’s), it was a resounding victory for a continuation of his policies, or a narrow victory by a President with a less than stellar record in office over an elitist and even more unappealing opponent. After all, fewer than half the eligible voters chimed in by voting, so a case can be made that the electorate was not enthusiastic about its choices. There are noises about cabinet position changes, but this happens routinely as either government service burns out office holders, or those politically aspiring to higher office feel it is time to pull back from public service and begin to build their own infrastructure to run for local, State or Federal office. Some even speculate that now, with no more elections to run, President Obama can become the progressive champion everyone expected with his victory in 2008 (Newby, 2010 and Gimenez, 2010 debate the nature and reasonableness of those expectations). True, there are fewer if any political costs in taking a harder position and not accommodating in order to appear reasonable. But to see a change, we would have to assume that in this administration new ideas and better principled positions are going to emerge. Sadly, there are reasons to be cautious – cautiously pessimistic because we should not expect anything new as the past can reveal core principles, and perhaps cautiously optimistic because this time, unlike 2009, campaign rhetoric might really take shape as a political reality. Let us consider the political and economic landscape. The US Chamber of Commerce, which worked hard to elect business friendly Republicans, continues its efforts to promote a business friendly environment and the Wall Street Journal has already issued warnings that President Obama should not consider this re-election a mandate to reject Republican values – values that failed to carry the day. What is strange about this is that at every turn in his first term Obama seemed to accommodate business and Wall Street – after campaigning on change and making the argument that you cannot expect those who created the problem to correct the system, his main financial appointments came out of that same system being hired from Goldman Sachs and promoted from within a Federal Reserve in New York City that was at best asleep while Wall Street piled up historic profits and almost wrecked the economy (to sack: pillage and destroy, as in Goldman Sachs). 471264 CRS39110.1177/0896920512471264Critical SociologyEditorial 2012

The paradigm shift in education aligns with achieving the 21st-century teaching and learning goals and enables educational institutions to respond to the call of the challenge. Ensuring every key aspect and element of successful curriculum implementation lies in the significant impact on which the curriculum should serve its purpose. This paper presents a critical review focused on the highlights in which social, technology, economic, environmental, and political (STEEP) landscapes impact Philippine K to 12 Science Education. It follows issues and approaches concerning science education in the country vis-à-vis theoretical and philosophical perspectives. This paper provides scenarios highlighting the possible contributions of the different landscapes that could serve as areas to maintain good practices and potential areas for improvement to achieve the mission and vision of the Department of Education. There are challenges that the whole educational system has faced since enacting the Basic Education Curriculum (BEC) in the country. The Department of Education (DepEd) continuously gives strategic directions to lead the education institutions to achieve 21st-century skills teaching and learning outcomes along with the other countries in the Southeast Asian region and the rest of Asia. All educational institutions and educational advocates should continuously work together to enable the educational system in the country to achieve inclusive growth and global competitiveness considering various landscapes that shape the educational landscape in the country.

Reviewed by: Recovering the Hispanic History of Texas Cordelia E. Barrera Recovering the Hispanic History of Texas. Edited by Monica Perales and Raúl A. Ramos. Houston, TX: Arte Público Press, 2010. 175 pages, $22.95. Recovering the Hispanic History of Texas, one of the first scholarly collections produced under the auspices of the Hispanic History of Texas Project, is comprised of eight essays that engage alternative conceptions of Texas history with the goal of creating a space for dialogue across and within the field of Chicana/o studies. In the spirit of interdisciplinarity, and in seeking to broaden the ways in which knowledge is produced, disseminated, and ultimately archived, the collection works to transform the archival enterprise to include folklore, multilanguage writings, photography, and oral histories, among other personal and communal materials. The result is an engagement of alternate voices and wider debates about power and knowledge that not only revisits historical events from multiple contexts but also broadens the evidentiary base to reimagine and reshape the dominant narrative of Texas history. The essays were originally presented as part of the first Hispanic History of Texas Project’s conference held in conjunction with the Texas State [End Page 209] Historical Association’s annual conference in 2008. The book’s three sections establish a record of Mexicans and Chicana/os who, although often absent from the archive, have served as the makers and keepers of history. The first section, “Creating Social Landscapes,” moves from the Texas-Louisiana borderland of the late eighteenth and the early nineteenth century, where Native Americans, tejanos, and Euro-Americans shaped peaceful relationships based on complex networks of trade and cultural brokerage, to the intersections between Mexican and Native healing cultures along military frontiers to Mexico’s centennial celebration of 1921. The essays reveal how personal correspondence, census lists, medical topographies, and the pages of the San Antonio daily La Prensa expose lines of authority and shape conflict and consensus among the diverse peoples of the Texas borderlands during periods of changing social, economic, and political landscapes. Section 2, “Racialized Identities,” engages a compendium of oral histories, letters, legal cases, and the documentary film The Schools of Crystal City (1975) to expand ideas of race, civil rights mobilization, and racial justice in the state’s public schools. Personal narratives and struggles emerge from these essays to reveal collective efforts and legitimize the contributions of individual players. The result is a historical trajectory that emphasizes authenticity, subaltern agency, and lived experience in the context of identity politics. “Unearthing Voices,” the collection’s final section, considers the key question of recovery and the need to explore new methodologies to expose archival strategies of silencing by providing new knowledge of hidden feminine spaces in borderlands literature and shedding fresh insight into the cultural and religious diversity of Mexicans in Texas. The authors of Recovering the Hispanic History of Texas approach the field of Chicana/o studies from related perspectives on the history of the American West and borderlands history and offer compelling narratives from a myriad of voices and multiple landscapes by established and emerging scholars. As such, the collection will be useful to students and scholars of Texas history, Chicana/o studies, and borderlands studies. [End Page 210] Cordelia E. Barrera Texas Tech University, Lubbock Copyright © 2011 Western Literature Association

The changing role of women in East Africa has been a significant and ongoing process shaped by shifts in the social and political landscapes over the past few decades.This transformation has both challenged and opened up new vistas for women.From a historical perspective, women in the East African region, and, indeed most parts of the African continent, have encountered various forms of marginalisation and discrimination, being confined to predefined roles and norms; however, as the region experiences social and political changes, women have found opportunities to break away from traditional roles and embrace new perspectives and world-views.Readers, historians and literary scholars have much to learn from the deeply complex works of these women.In truth, women writers are just as concerned about the entire social, political landscape as are their male counterparts.This paper examines two works, Koinange's The Havoc of Choice and Mengitse's Beneath the Lion's Gaze to illustrate how women writers paint a picture of the changing political and social landscape in East Africa.The study is grounded on the postulations of postcolonial literary theory, particularly Spivak's (2008) subalternity, and Ogundipe-Leslie's (1994) Stawinism as a brand of African feminist literary theory.This seeks to demonstrate that are used to depict changing socio-political landscapes.This paper analyses the emerging sociopolitical landscapes as depicted in the lived experiences of African women as represented in the two literary works, a significant departure from the early postcolonial and colonial periods in Sub-Saharan Africa.We argue that literary writers, women authors to be specific, have subverted notions of male-dominated politics by depicting the frailties of their leadership styles.By placing the novels within their historical context, we demonstrate the writers' calls for feminisation of African leadership.This paper has analysed emerging socio-political landscapes that subvert traditional notions of male-dominated politics in African societies.We conclude that the two literary writers, Mengitse and Koinange, have constructed societies that amplify and dignify the voices and lives of ordinary African women.The two literary artists invoke the sympathetic imagination within women.These womenas represented by Sara, Wanja, Cheptoo and their ilkare symbols of trailblazers in the political history of Eastern Africa; their steadfast positions serve to restore the dignity of women and the ultimate triumph of the human spirit.

Between 750 and 1550, the Chinese demographic, political, and social landscape was dramatically altered. The objective of this essay is to test a few of the many propositions that can be deduced from this general hypothesis to provide a possible framework for further investigation. This effort focuses on an examination of the relationships between (1) intraregional development, (2) differential patterns of interregional settlement, (3) the formal organization of the government, and (4) the social and political behavior of elites during this extended period of transformations. The interrelationships between these variables can only be understood within a conceptual framework that accounts for the internal dynamics of the various regions of China during different periods. The dynamic processes of intraregional development were integral parts of significant alterations in interregional patterns of settlement, the organization of governmental control, and the behavior of political elites in China between the mid-T'ang and late Ming. Keywords: intraregional development; intraregional settlement; mid-T'ang; political landscape; social landscape; social transformation