Critical Systemic Praxis for Social and Environmental Justice: Participatory Policy Design and Governance for a Global Age.(Book Review)

Critical Systemic Praxis for Social and Environmental Justice: Participatory Policy Design and Governance for a Global Age. By Janet McIntyre-Mills. Published by Kluwer Academic/Plenum Publishers, New York and London, 2003. 460pp. ISBN: 0-306-48074-3. US $45.

Ms McIntyre lives in Adelaide, Australia, and is based at the Hinders Institute of Public Policy and Management. She uses the local social environment to study the way people perceive governance and their community. She makes an assessment of both the users and providers of social services. Her current collaboration is with Neporendi Forum Inc., in order to work with local Aboriginal residents in order to enhance well-being through governance and community development initiatives, including small business creation based on a range of skills and artistic talents. One of the projects is to package and market biscuits flavoured with bush herbs and to develop stationery decorated with children's art, so that a local school can use the proceeds to purchase technical equipment for the school.

Her governance interest was applied in Alice Springs, Australia, which is 'a borderland of cultures, isolated but linked with the outside world historically by camels, later by the telegraph and currently by the Internet'. Even a slick new railroad line rides in town as of 2014.

The author is a prolific writer who places her generous pen to the service of transcultural practice and participatory …