Bøker av Chosein Yamahata

This book discusses the shifting regional geopolitical engagements and development of rearranged connections emerging among ASEAN and non-ASEAN actors.First, the book focuses on the crucial discourse surrounding the Indo-Pacific region, including its challenges, continuity, and relevance. The discussion highlights the growing influence of regional actors such as India, Thailand, Japan, and the US, particularly in the context of a pressing question of collaboration versus containment amidst Chinäs rise. The book delves into various topics, such as geopolitical anxieties, economic strength, foreign policy, international relations, development, and security promotion in South and Southeast Asia, through the lenses of ASEAN centrality and the Indo-Pacific strategy.Second, the volume emphasizes on the escalating tensions and the worsening crises in the region that cause major anxieties and the subsequent realignment and new alignment of countries¿ relationships.Among several chapters of the volume, a large Indo-China state, Myanmar, takes a special place in the book¿s discussions as it has grown as an important ground for a resource/energy race among geopolitically strategic partners. Additionally, Myanmar has the potential to become a balancer in ASEAN. Therefore, any positive development and change in course of relations to Myanmar, particularly with its neighbors, Japan, and Russia, in both historical and contemporary contexts, can have a significant impact not only on Myanmar¿s course towards peace, democracy, and security, but also regional stability. The editors and contributors examine the unique position of ASEAN, with a focus on ASEAN centrality as a platform for addressing anxieties and building relationships to bridge the gap between world and regional players, including both friends and foes.Overall, the volume provides valuable insights into the Indo-Pacific region¿s complex dynamics, including cooperation and collaboration among regional actors for long-term stability and prosperity. The interdisciplinary composition of the book invites readers from various backgrounds to engage with constructive debates on general perception, contextual discussion, and the highlights of engaged research from local and international perspectives.

This book explores the multifaceted obstacles to social change that India, Myanmar and Thailand face, and ways to overcome them. With a collection of essays that identify common challenges and salient features affecting diverse communities, this volume examines topics from subnational and local perspectives across the peripheries. The book argues that identity-based divisions have created a system of oppression and political contention that have led to conflicts of different kinds, and hence serving as the common cause of different social issues. At the same time, such issues have created space for marginalized groups around the world to call for change. The volume recognizes that social transformation comes into being through an active process of deconstructing and reconstructing shared norms and ideas. The contents in this book are thus centered around two focuses: the impacts of identities and grassroots. Both of these aspects are at the heart of each country's transformations towards democracy, peace, justice, and freedom. Under this framework, the chapters cover a diverse range of common issues, such as, minority grievances, gender inequality, ethnic identity, grassroots power in alliance-making towards community peace, recovery and resilience, digital freedom, democracy assistance and communication, and bridging multiple divides. As identity-based cleavages are daily lived experiences for individuals and communities, it requires grassroots initiatives and alliances as well as democratic communication to tackle obstacles at the root. Ultimately, the book convinces readers that social transformations must begin at the individual to communal level and local to national level.

Myanmar has faced numerous divisions that hinder its democratization and peacebuilding processes since emerging out of decades of military dictatorship. The coup d¿état in 2021 terminated Myanmar¿s limited and nascent democratization under the civilian leadership of the National League for Democracy (NLD); not only did the coup regime resurface old struggles, but also created new ones. Against the backdrop of Myanmar¿s changing political landscapes from military to quasi-civilian to civilian rule in 2016, and back to military rule in 2021, the book discusses the various forms of interconnected struggles, both old and new. In this process, the contributed chapters come together to highlight the changing dynamics of stakeholders, relations between agents and beneficiaries, and the generated evolutionary processes in Myanmar¿s democratization and its reversal. This book brings an even mix of researchers both within and outside of Myanmar to critically discuss how different agents and their interactions, in the form of center-periphery as well as state-non-state relations, continuously shape today¿s political landscape. Its interdisciplinary composition also invites readers from various backgrounds to grasp with engaged research that identifies the various challenges and addresses ways in which to facilitate change from local and international perspectives.