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Work participation and work facilitation represent basic human rights for everyone. Work represents an important platform for welfare and well-being, but compared to the general workforce in Norway, persons with cognitive disabilities are severely under-represented. When workplaces locked down under the first COVID-19 outbreak spring 2020, some people were made redundant whilst many continued their work from home. The lockdown affected persons with cognitive disabilities through lockdown of workplaces, vocational training centres and even day activity centres. The scheme of working from home was not as obvious or facilitated for this group, as for other employees. When also visits were banned and common areas for socialisation were locked down, the consequences of these lockdowns were exacerbated. In this chapter we have examined and discussed the COVID-19 restrictions in Norway and how they affected the basic human rights of persons with cognitive disabilities, and also how such rights can be promoted through legislation, governance and service provision.

This chapter interrogates notions of the child and her brain as configured in the laboratory of pediatric neuroscientists, and by parents (overwhelmingly: mothers) of children classified for special education services on the basis of their varied learning capacities and incapacities. Data are drawn from my current New York-based study in a laboratory conducting fMRI research on resting-state differences amongst controls and children variously diagnosed with attention deficit hyper-activity disorder (ADHD), learning disabilities, autism and Tourette syndrome. Parents of children with those same diagnoses struggle with the strengths as well as the school-based weaknesses of their children, and in interviews they picture their children's brains quite differently than do the scientists. Young adult activists who grew up with the diagnoses of ADHD and learning disabilities appropriate lab-based descriptions of neurological difference to their own purposes, claiming a positive identity for themselves. At stake in the space between these diverse perspectives on childhood difference is the future of human developmental variability as it comes under biomedical research and regulation.

My framework is based upon a grounded analysis (Glaser & Strauss, 1967) of a review of the existing social science and education literature regarding globalization and peace from approximately 1960 to the present. My review consisted of identifying emergent themes in the literature and from these identifying conceptual categories and the relationships among them that could explain some of the ways in which globalization, peace, and educational processes are linked. I approached the literature as a “cache of documents” (Glaser & Strauss, 1967), that is, as bodies of literature reflecting certain sensibilities regarding globalization and peace. My framework is based upon an analysis of how these sensibilities have influenced the reproduction of inequalities through the education sector as a socialization and policy context.

The question discussed in this paper is whether foreign aid can help accelerate growth in African countries. The paper reviews growth determinants and growth constraints in Africa and discusses how aid can help relieve the constraints. Issues covered are the choice of aid modalities, donor coordination, conditionality, and international integration. A key question addressed is how aid should be organized not to overburden the recipient system and to provide incentives for policy makers to perform. The paper also touches upon the need for international trade reforms and public goods investments.

In this study, workplace spirituality is discussed in the context of remote work and the COVID-19 pandemic. First, the focus is on the changes in the meaning and function of employees in the organization during the evolutionary process of industrialization and management paradigms. Afterward, conceptual frameworks for spirituality and workplace spirituality are presented, and in the last section, academic studies that deal with workplace spirituality with distance or hybrid work arrangements are included. Early studies offer insights and recommendations on conceptualizing, developing, and managing workplace spirituality. They all emphasize that spirituality is necessary for remote work as a tool to overcome stress and mental health problems and increase employee well-being. Unfortunately, the remote work and workplace spirituality literature is relatively narrow and needs to be expanded.