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This remarkable anthology features 101 modern Japanese poems by 55 poets, including Shuntaro Tanikawa, Minoru Yoshioka and Taeko Tomioka, carefully selected from the postwar period by the renowned poet and literary critic Makoto Ooka.
In today's liberal democracies, does the political process focus on the people, or on the political leaders representing them? In 'Toward Leader Democracy', Jan Pakulski and Andras Korosenyi argue that there is a trend toward an increasingly pronounced focus on political leaders, or 'leader democracy', which is reinforced by the prominence of electronic media, the decline of major parties, the centrality of electoral competitions, and the frequently aggressive actions taken by our political elites. This trend is compatible with predictions made by elite theorists such as Max Weber and Joseph Schumpeter, and contradicts the notion of a change towards a democracy that is more 'direct', 'participatory' and 'deliberative'. In spite of the concerns voiced by some critics, the model of 'leader democracy' is fulfilling the key normative criteria and expectations of democratic rule.'Toward Leader Democracy' explains the shape and the workings of this new form of political action - that is, how it is motivated by the political will, determination and commitment of top politicians, and how it is exercised through mass elite persuasion that actively shapes the preferences of voters so as to give meaning to political processes. Competitive mass-mediated elections are the key elements of this process, providing voters with a sense of dignity by giving them the status of 'final arbiter' in leadership contests. As the text reveals, this marks a definite evolution within the world's 'advanced democracies': democratic representation is today realized increasingly through active political leadership, as opposed to the former practices of statistically 'mirroring' constituencies, or the deliberative self-adjustment of the executive in accordance with citizen preferences.
Inspired by Max Weber's thesis on the Protestant ethic, 'Overseas Chinese Christian Entrepreneurs in Modern China' sets out to understand the role and influence of Christianity on Overseas Chinese businesspeople working in contemporary China. Through its in-depth interviews and participant observations (involving 60 Overseas Chinese entrepreneurs from Hong Kong, Taiwan, Southeast Asia and the United States), the text discusses how Christianity has come to fulfill an increasingly visible and dynamic function in the country, most notably as a new source of business morality.Recognizing that China's economic transition toward a market-oriented economy was not initiated by Christians (or indeed any other religious group), this volume demonstrates the importance of exploring the impact of religious ethics on economics at micro and organizational levels, via the subjective understandings of individuals and small businesses. Significant but often neglected facets of Weber's thesis arise as a result. Of key importance is the issue of gender differences within the Christian ethos - a crucial aspect of the Protestant ethic that has yet to be systematically studied, but which offers great potential to enhance our understanding of Weber's work. As a result, the text's novel application of Weberian sociology to the context of contemporary China can be seen to offer a double return, elucidating both the theory and its subject.
This volume critically unpacks the concept of 'political society', formulated as a response to the idea of civil society in a postcolonial context.
This volume offers a collection of lucid, theoretically stimulating articles that explore and analyse the institutions and values which are salient in understanding political practices in South Asia. Combining a wide range of theoretical and empirical approaches, and blending the work of experts long established in their respective fields with refreshing and innovative approaches by younger scholars, this collaborative and cross-disciplinary endeavour facilitates a deeper understanding of the subcontinent's diverse and complex political and democratic practices in the 21st century.
Democratization is a field where unexpected and sudden events have repeatedly challenged conventional wisdom. For example, who in the mid-1970s would have foreseen the democratization of Cambodia, Albania, South Africa or East Timor? Our current ''wave'' of democratization is complex and diverse and understanding it requires a variety of theoretical approaches. Most of the literature on democracy assumes that it is the best form of government. Theoretical works on democratic transition and democratization have also emphasized the internal conflict resolution capacity of democracy. It has been reasoned that democracy reduces the likelihood of discrimination, especially of ethno-political minorities, and thus the possibility of political repression. However, the democratic peace theory has not been explicitly tested with reference to third world post-colonial states, where most internal violent conflicts take place. Certainly, there is a dearth of practical advice for policy makers on how to design and implement democratic levers that can make internal peace and stability endure in the South. This volume, drawing on the work of a variety of scholars, will contribute to identifying and understanding the challenges and opportunities of this ''democratization project'' to the peace and development of the world both at the domestic level in selected countries, trends in regions of the world, and in the global system of the post-Cold War Era.
Commercial cinema has always been one of the biggest indigenous industries in India, and remains so in the post-globalization era, when Indian economy has entered a new phase of global participation, liberalization and expansion. Issues of community, gender, society, social and economic justice, bourgeois-liberal individualism, secular nationhood and ethnic identity are nowhere more explored in the Indian cultural mainstream than in commercial cinema. As Indian economy and policy have gone through a sea-change after the end of the Cold War and the commencement of the Global Capital, the largest cultural industry has followed suit. For example, the global Indian community (known in Indian official terms as the Non-Resident Indian or the NRI) has become an integral part of the cultural representation of India.The politics and ideology of Indian commercial cinema have become extremely complex, offering a fascinating case-study to scholars of Global Culture. Of particular interest is the re-positioning of individual identity vis-à-vis nation, religion, class, and gender. On one hand, the definition of ''nationhood'' and/or community has become much more fluid, keeping in tune with the sweeping universal claims of globalization; the films have consequently revised the scope of their narratives to match India''s emerging global business ambitions. On the other hand, the political realities of India''s long-standig enmity with Pakistan and the international rise of ''Hindutva'' has also contributed to a new strain of jingoism in Indian cinema. ''Bollywood and Globalization'' is a significant scholarly contribution to the current debate on Indian cinema, nationhood and Global Culture. The articles represent a variety of theoretical and pedagogical approaches, and the collection will be appreciated by students and scholars alike.
Ragnar Nurkse (1907-1959) was one of the most important pioneers of development economics, and although his writings have been neglected in recent decades, leading development economists and international organizations such as the United Nations are now turning to Nurkse in search for new inspiration, due to the failure of neoclassical economics to adequately explain the experience of poor and developing countries. Yet Nurkse''s contribution to the field has never before been analysed before at book length.The present volume, ''Ragnar Nurkse (1907-2007): Classical Development Economics and its Relevance for Today'', contains a selection of papers that cast new insight on Nurkse''s thought, and discuss his relevance for today. The volume also celebrates the 100th anniversary of this profoundly important thinker''s birth.
''Ragnar Nurkse, Trade and Development'' is a timely reprint of Nurkse''s most important works, given the renewed interest in his writings amongst development economists, who are turning to this pioneering thinker in search for new inspiration. This volume aims to make his rarely published works available for an audience of economists, policy makers, researchers and students.
Festivals, Affect and Identity offers an outline of areas of continental philosophy and critical theory, which involve high levels of abstractions, yet become more accessible when related to specific events and their detailed analysis. The case study material enables theories to become more understandable in relation to application, triangulation and comparison with different theoretical frameworks. It puts flesh on the hard to get hold of nature of continental philosophy.Maintaining continuity in the face of problems and ruptures and the interplay of fluidity and structure are central aspects explored and illustrated by ethnography focused on the affective dynamics of four festivals: the Palio in Siena and the Bravio in Montepulciano, both based on competitive territorial divisions; the Bruscello in Montepulciano and the Teatro Povero in Monticchiello, both theatres with links to sharecropping, a long established agrarian practice vanquished by modernity. The detailed analysis applied to this selection of case studies offers a grounding of theoretical concepts and an example of how these may be applied to analyse different phenomena. This approach sees the imprint of environmental and historical conditions as generative of a dynamic process of ever evolving community identities for which festivals provide expression, while also providing a way of living with them.
There is growing interest in urbanization as currently a third of the worlds urban population live in slums, and by 2030 there may be two billion slum dwellers across the globe (Davies 2004, 17). During economic crises, slum dwellers are involved in increasing feats of self-exploitation. The literature on slums and informal settlements tends to focus on economic survival strategies, particularly those of men. But how do women, as the most marginalized and excluded slum-dwellers, survive in the face of poverty and gender oppression? What are the emotional rather than material costs of poverty? This book conveys the rich fabric of life in the slum.Body Parts on Planet Slum discusses the importance of Christianity and telenovelas, and explores what it is about womens lives in particular that makes these stories so central. Yet it is also increasingly clear that for the poorest women, church attendance has become a rare luxury whereas telenovelas are piped into their homes on a daily basis. The unemployed women watch up to six hours of telenovelas a day in the midst of arduous physical labour in the home. The women suffer in relation to their bodies, but invest in a masochistic glorification of suffering. It is this glorification of suffering that links the womens lives to the telenovelas in crucial ways. It reveals disturbing valuations of womens bodies that traverse reality and fiction, and connect to a central feminist question, What is a woman?
The Doomsday Clock was created in 1947 by a group of atomic scientists to symbolise the perils facing humanity from nuclear weapons. In 2007 it was set at five minutes before the final bell, including for the first time the threat of climate change as well as new developments in the life sciences and nanotechnology. This book aims at an analysis of the evolution of our present predicament throughout the Anthropocene Era beginning in 1763, making special reference to the history of the period, the study of the subject and major advances in the natural sciences.Adam Smith and Adam Ferguson set out the basis for a scientific approach to the pre-industrial stages of historical development in the Enlightenment of the late eighteenth century, when the American and French Revolutions created a vocabulary of modernity. Throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, as the industrial revolution unfolded in several stages, nationalism, imperialism and totalitarianism were among the phenomena impeding the update of the Enlightenment programme as well as the fulfilment of the aspirations of 1776 and 1789. Our present predicament demands a rigorous examination of its origins and an assertion of a scientific pandisciplinary approach involving history and other academic specialisations.
This collection of eleven essays deals with Lenins life in western European emigration in the years before the First World War. The first five essays explore Lenins efforts to build a purely Bolshevik Party through the creation of a unique school for underground workers outside of Paris, his schismatic machinations in calling the 1912 Prague Conference, his problematic relations with the new Bolshevik daily Pravda, his unsuccessful attempt to call a party congress in 1914, and his defeat at the Brussels Unity Conference summoned by the International Socialist Bureau on the eve of the war. These essays are based on a detailed reading of Western and Soviet sources, and they question the common assumption that Lenin was unquestioned inside his own faction and that pre-war Bolshevism was a monolithic entity well-prepared to seize power.The latter essays discuss Lenins curious friendship during the pre-war period with Roman Malinovsky, who turned out to be a police spy, and Inessa Armand, a Bolshevik feminist with whom he had a romantic relationship. They also investigate such mundane but little-studied topics as what he liked to eat in emigration, his annual habit of taking bourgeois vacations and his obsession with athletic pursuits. The picture which emerges from these studies is not of a single-minded, perfect leader solely devoted to carrying out revolution, but rather of a non-geometric Lenin with very human foibles and weaknesses.
This book is a collection of articles focusing on comparative analysis of the development trajectories in the semi-periphery countries of South America and Central and Eastern Europe.
'Diagnosing the Indonesian Economy: Toward Inclusive and Green Growth' analyzes the critical development constraints facing the country, and proposes policy options to help overcome these constraints and set the country on a path of high and sustained inclusive economic growth in the medium term.
This anthology is the first collection of primary science articles written by scientists working in America during the nineteenth century.
'World Cinema and the Visual Arts' combines new analyses of two subjects of ongoing research in the field of humanities: cinema and the visual arts. The films analysed encompass a wide geographical base, and have been drawn from a diverse array of cultural traditions.
Globalization, the Human Condition and Sustainable Development in the Twenty-first Century: Cross-national Perspectives and European Implications is a cross-national, 175 nation based exploration of the deep crisis in which Europe currently finds itself. Investigating the effects of dependency theory and world systems theory upon the global success of eight dimensions of development including democracy, environmental sustainability, employment, social cohesion, high quality tertiary education and gender justice this study argues that the current European crisis has been precipitated by the pro-globalist policies of the European Commission.The comprehensive analysis of this study reveals the magnitude of Europes errors. Lowering comparative price levels and increasing dependency on large, transnational corporations, as correctly predicted by Latin American social science of the 1960s and 1970s, emerges as one of the most serious developmental blockades confronting Europe in global society, whilst increases in military expenditure, as proposed by Article 42.3 of the European Unions Lisbon Treaty, are another large stumbling block against development. The harmful potential of these blockades is severe.The books 175-nation investigation shows that Europes failure to develop its own MNC headquarter status in the global economy is a key factor that has hindered its developmental performance. This examination, which duly takes into account the control variables proposed by neoclassical economics and contemporary sociology/political science, also demonstrates the potential outcomes of several alternative scenarios, mainly those proposed by the political Left in Europe, and summarizes the effects of globalization on the environment and ecological vulnerability. What this analysis makes most clear is Europes need for change: without amending its pro-globalist policies, the continent will learn nothing from its current crisis and is destined to compete in a destructive race to the bottom.
This volume examines different facets of international capital movements - the role of openness, the implications of large inflows of foreign capital and the impact of regulatory frameworks - from the point of view of the global South.
An Introduction to Changing India: Culture, Politics and Development provides a comprehensive view of todays rapidly changing India in a way that is both reader-friendly and scholarly, without requiring prior knowledge on the subject from its readers. It investigates Indian culture, politics, economics and technology, as well as population and environmental issues. Gender issues are also discussed throughout the book. The authors provide a balanced picture of the emerging Indias many triumphs, as well as its lingering problems and the ongoing battle for more inclusive growth. By drawing on anthropological fieldwork in rural and urban India, the authors give ordinary Indians a voice by exploring their aspirations for change, while also describing macro-level changes.The study draws from extensive reading of research reports and fieldwork by the authors, who have carried out anthropological research on kinship, gender issues, politics, class and caste, population issues and the appropriation of information technology in India since the 1990s.
With a clear statement of the theoretical issues in the debates about secularization and post-secularism, 'Religion and the State: A Comparative Sociology' considers a number of major case studies - from China, Europe, Singapore and South Asia - in order to understand the rise of public religions in the modern state. By distinguishing between political secularization - the separation of state and religion - and social secularization - the transformation of the everyday practice of religion - this volume offers an integrating framework within which to analyze these different societies.
Pierre Bourdieu is widely regarded as one of the most influential sociologists of his generation, and yet the reception of his work in different cultural contexts and academic disciplines has been varied and uneven. This volume maps out the legacy of Pierre Bourdieu in contemporary social and political thought from the standpoint of classical European sociology and from the broader perspective of transatlantic social science. It brings together contributions from prominent scholars in the field, providing a range of perspectives on the continuing relevance of Bourdieu's oeuvre to substantive problems in social and political analysis. The first set of essays traces the roots of Bourdieu's thought in classical sociology by closely examining his intellectual connections with the writings of Karl Marx, Max Weber, and Émile Durkheim. The second set of essays is concerned with Bourdieu's relation to modern social philosophy, in particular with regard to the works of Friedrich Nietzsche, Norbert Elias, Theodor W. Adorno, and Axel Honneth. The third set of essays explores the relevance of Bourdieu's writings to key issues in the contemporary social sciences, such as the continuous presence of religion, the transformative power of social movements, the emancipatory potential of language, the political legacy of 1968, the socio-historical significance of the rise of the public sphere, and the social consequences of the recent and ongoing global economic crisis. The volume also contains a major interview with Bourdieu that has not been previously translated into, let alone published in, English. By bringing together contributions from international scholars, the volume aims to initiate a fruitful dialogue across different sociological traditions and thereby stimulate further debate on the legacy of Pierre Bourdieu in social and political thought.
This book is an overview and analysis of the global tradition of the outlaw hero. The mythology and history of the outlaw hero is traced from the Roman Empire to the present, showing how both real and mythic figures have influenced social, political, economic and cultural outcomes in many times and places. The book also looks at the contemporary continuations of the outlaw hero mythology, not only in popular culture and everyday life, but also in the current outbreak of global terrorism.
'Jane Austen and her Readers, 1786-1945' is a study of readers' interactions with the works of one of England's most enduringly popular novelists. Employing an innovative approach made possible by new research in the field of the history of reading, the volume discusses Austen's own ideas about books and readers, the uses she makes of her reading, and the relationship of her style to her readers' responses. It considers the role of editions and criticism in directing readers' responses, and presents and analyses a variety of source material related to readers who read Austen's works between 1786 and 1945.Previous studies of Austen's influence on her readers and literary successors have either presupposed a hypothetical reader, or focused on the texts of the critical tradition, ignoring the views, reactions and thoughts of the common reader. This volume discusses the responses of ordinary readers to Austen's novels, responses that offer insights into both Jane Austen's particular appeal, and the nature of the act of reading itself.
This collection is an important contribution to the literature on global public health and international development, featuring the most comprehensive evidence-based analysis of tobacco policy in the African region.
'Bulgaria and Europe: Shifting Identities' offers a comprehensive analysis of Bulgaria's relationship with the European continent, focusing particularly on its accession to the EU and the aftermath.
By the end of the nineteenth century, Western-style playhouses were found in every Indian city. Professional drama troupes held crowds spellbound with their spectacular productions. From this colorful world of entertainment come the autobiographies in this book. The life-stories of a quartet of early Indian actors and poet-playwrights are here translated into English for the first time.The most famous, Jayshankar Sundari, was a female impersonator of the highest order. Fida Husain Narsi also played womens parts, until gaining great fame for his role as a Hindu saint. Two others, Narayan Prasad Betab and Radheshyam Kathavachak, wrote landmark dramas that ushered in the mythological genre, intertwining politics and religion with popular performance.These men were schooled not in the classroom but in large theatrical companies run by Parsi entrepreneurs. Their memoirs, replete with anecdote and humor, offer an unparalleled window onto a vanished world, where Indias late-colonial vernacular culture and early cinema history come alive. From another perspective, these narratives are as significant to the understanding of the nationalist era as the lives of political leaders or social reformers.This book includes four substantive chapters on the history of the Parsi theatre, debates over autobiography in the Indian context, strategies for reading autobiography in general, and responses to these specific texts. The apparatus, based on the translators extensive research, includes notes on personages, performances, texts, vernacular usage, and cultural institutions.
'The Museum of Bioprospecting, Intellectual Property, and the Public Domain' discusses the issue of intellectual property rights versus the public domain in facilitating access to genetic resources for biotechnology development, through a dialogue between seven fictional scholars and a hilarious octogenarian.
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