Asia in Focus: The Koreas is the most complete, accessible, and up-to-date resource available on both North Korea and South Korea. Asia in Focus: The Koreas presents an authoritative and unprecedented look at the contrasts and similarities between the history, geography, politics, economy, culture, and society of North Korea and South Korea. It offers a wealth of new insights into North Korean life, as well as extensive explorations of Korean music, arts, language, cuisine, and popular culture, including the "Korean wave," which began with the export of Korean television dramas to other parts of Asia and has spread South Korean culture around the world. Also included are sections on women's history and roles, class and ethnicity, and a wide range of contemporary issues. For a deeper understanding of one of the most closely watched regions of the globe, this volume is a must. Six contributing scholars with considerable experience and expertise conveying a deep understanding and appreciation for Korean culture 100 photographs, including many from author Mary Connor's travels to North and South Korea, as well as a complete compilation of maps

Few would dispute that the United States had been the world's most influential nation since Henry Luce first popularized the notion of an American Century in 1941. The significance of the influence, however, remains a subject of hot debate. This collection brings together international scholars who offer differing views on American international dominance in the past century and the prospects for its continuation into this one. These range from positive assessments of the role of the United States in forging a global community and in operating as a relatively benign global hegemon to a scathing critique of Washington policy makers for failing to reverse the ethically corrosive impact of the Cold War on American diplomatic practice.

American global influence has not been synonymous with omnipotence. The United States is not impervious to external influences and has itself been transformed by the forces of globalization--a phenomenon viewed by some as synonymous with Americanization. These essays highlight the notion that the phrase American Century implies the diffusion internationally of liberal capitalist principles. This book suggests that the role of the United States in diffusing those principles is at the heart of the debate about the significance of American global influence, whether in retrospect or in prospect. Includes the views of Asian, Antipodean, and American Scholars.

The hero's journey is a process of (re)discovery of the principles that make up the national identity of a country. These principles must then be applied in the formulation and implementation of foreign policy. For the seventh time in its history, America has discovered a grand synthesis of power and morality in projecting its resources and principles into the global arena. This makes possible a more assertive, moral foreign policy course in responding to a range of foreign policy challenges. Of these challenges, Salla asserts, the most profound in terms of the scale of human suffering around the planet is that concerning violations of the rights of ethnic minorities.

Ethnic conflicts and the humanitarian crises and massive human rights violations they generate form a foreign policy challenge that will preoccupy the minds of policy makers for much of the 21st century. NATO's intervention in the Kosovo crisis is the high water mark for America's seventh hero's journey. The intervention sends a decisive signal to all governments that the U.S. and its allies will no longer remain inactive in the face of states attempting to militarily repress the aspirations of their ethnic minorities. This moral interventionism can safely be extended well into the 21st century if policy makers wisely combine the moral principles and foreign policy challenges that make up both the Second American Century and America's (Seventh) Hero's journey. This provocative analysis will be of interest to all scholars, students, and researchers involved with the development of American foreign policy.

Books and reading have contributed to the success of generations of Americans, many of whom have had distinguished careers and have left their mark on history. While the accomplishments of these notable Americans are well known, their adventures with books and reading are less familiar. Some have struggled to gain access to books, while others were fortunate enough to be exposed to literature at an early age. This reference surveys the role books and reading have played in the lives of notable Americans from colonial times to the present.

Included are alphabetically arranged entries for 50 notable Americans from a range of historical periods, professions, and racial and ethnic backgrounds. Many are featured prominently in school and college texts, while others are a significant part of popular culture. Such diverse figures as Benjamin Franklin, Helen Keller, Willa Cather, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Mark Twain, Oprah Winfrey, and Ronald Reagan are covered. Each entry includes a discussion of books and reading in the person's life, a chronology, and a brief bibliography.

Diasporic Africa presents the most recent research on the history and experiences of people of African descent outside of the African continent. By incorporating Europe and North Africa as well as North America, Latin America, and the Caribbean, this reader shifts the discourse on the African diaspora away from its focus solely on the Americas, underscoring the fact that much of the movement of people of African descent took place in Old World contexts. This broader view allows for a more comprehensive approach to the study of the African diaspora.

The volume provides an overview of African diaspora studies and features as a major concern a rigorous interrogation of "identity." Other primary themes include contributions to western civilization, from religion, music, and sports to agricultural production and medicine, as well as the way in which our understanding of the African diaspora fits into larger studies of transnational phenomena.

This book is the outcome of a study conducted in the eastern city of Kolkata in India in the mid-2000s. It is an ethnographic study that looks closely at women from the upper and middle classes who work with non-governmental organizations (NGOs) that help empower women from all classes of society. Unlike many studies that focus on grassroots women who are the beneficiaries of NGO and developmental projects, this book looks at those women who, as volunteers and activists, help carry out these projects to the best of their abilities. These women are often overlooked from mainstream studies on women in developing nations. But their role is invaluable and crucial in defining the agendas and strategies used to enhance feminist consciousness and developing organizational structures. This book is significant because it offers awareness and alternative views to the challenges (and motivations) faced by middle and upper-class women volunteers and activists in building a career in the non-profit sector of NGOs in Kolkata. Through the testimonies of these women, it examines alternative processes of agency and change in order to define these challenges and motivations. Also revealed by the analysis, is useful information about the oppression and subordination of these women in contemporary gender-stratified civil society in India. But more importantly, this book examines the various ways urban, educated Indian women construct a feminist praxis in terms of their everyday lived experiences as volunteers and activists. In terms of their lived experiences, the women in this study reflect on the social challenges they encounter and motivations they experience as volunteers and activists, while also discussing their understanding of feminism and views on the image of a "feminist" in the postcolonial context. The results demonstrate the power of feminist standpoint theorizing and how it raises consciousness, empowers women and stimulates resistance to patriarchal oppression and injustices. Finally, this book produces new knowledge and research on the conception of feminism among women volunteers and activists in a non-western setting and how they construct the image of a feminist. It offers directions for research in transnational feminism, International Women's Movement, Womanism, and Social Inequality Studies.

It is widely held that private ownership is the preferred end state for all scarce resources. Those who hold this view have not looked closely enough at water in the American West, Barbanell contends. Because of water's special attributes, private ownership is an ineffective means for protecting individuals interests. Splitting the various rights of ownership between individual resources users and the community to which they belong can better protect those interests. Barbanell develops a conception of this form of common ownership, a common-property arrangement, and shows that it can function effectively for water in the West. More generally, he offers an expanded framework for analyzing right relationships and examining problems related to resource scarcity.

Some economists argue that John Locke's account of property justifies the private ownership of water in the West. Barbanell argues, however, that because Locke did not think carefully enough about the variable nature of resources, his account does not support that conclusion. Although economists recognize that private ownership may not be perfectly suited to all resources, they are nonetheless skeptical about common ownership alternatives. Barbanell shows that this skepticism is unwarranted. When the rights relationship among members of a resource community is based on mutual expectations of reciprocal behavior, then a common-property arrangement can function effectively to control the degradation and depletion of a scarce resource. Barbanell's argument that common ownership is a conceptually sound and politically viable alternative for water will be of particular interest to public policy makers, environmentalists, resource economists, and political philosophers.

Colonial Capital Theory at Work: The Case of Jamaica contributes to our understanding of the emerging Caribbean and explains how some have intentionally used "sociological imagination," or the links between history and biography, to achieve prosperity. O. Alexander Miller examines how potential immigrants from the Caribbean employ sociological imagination and, by so doing, achieve sustained intergenerational financial prosperity even while living in relatively poor home societies. The book focuses on Jamaicans because they are one of the largest groups of black Caribbean immigrants in the United States and England. Furthermore, their home society illustrates how well sociological imagination works for those who employ it, even in a post-colonial society where there are historical disparities between the socially approved goals of society and the structural means for reaching those goals. Colonial Capital Theory at Work is written not only for scholars in sociology, migration studies and Caribbean studies, but also for members of immigrant communities, especially of African ancestry.

In southern graveyards through the first decades of the twentieth century, the Confederate South was commemorated by tombstones and memorials, in Confederate flags, and in Memorial Day speeches and burial rituals. Cemeteries spoke the language of southern memory, and identity was displayed in ritualistic form--inscribed on tombs, in texts, and in bodily memories and messages. Katharine DuPre Lumpkin, Lillian Smith, and Pauli Murray wove sites of regional memory, particularly Confederate burial sites, into their autobiographies as a way of emphasizing how segregation divided more than just southern landscapes and people.

Darlene O'Dell here considers the southern graveyard as one of three sites of memory--the other two being the southern body and southern memoir--upon which the region's catastrophic race relations are inscribed. O'Dell shows how Lumpkin, Smith, and Murray, all witnesses to commemorations of the Confederacy and efforts to maintain the social order of the New South, contended through their autobiographies against Lost Cause versions of southern identity. Sites of Southern Memory elucidates the ways in which these three writers joined in the dialogue on regional memory by placing the dead southern body as a site of memory within their texts.

In this unique study of three women whose literary and personal lives were vitally concerned with southern race relations and the struggle for social justice, O'Dell provides a telling portrait of the troubled intellectual, literary, cultural, and social history of the American South.

For over half a century, European Union has been a promising endeavor of cooperative institutionalism. It has shown that even nation states with a long history of conflict are capable of collaborating with one another to serve their own interests. However, the EU project has also made visible that there is no one-size-fits-all policy in economics that can be applied to all countries with success. Economics starts and ends with the society. Common culture determines the outcomes of economic policies, and ordinary people pick up the bill when policies turn out to be failures. This book presents two different tales of the European Union to provide an empirical challenge to oversimplified assumptions behind the neoliberal orthodoxy in policymaking: Favorable experience of the EU-candidate Turkey, and the regrettable venture of the EU-member Greece. The fact that these two neighboring countries with similar cultures have had vastly different experiences with the European Union suggests that the EU functions as a catalyst of change in the countries that associate with it, but this impact could be negative as well as positive depending on the role the EU plays. Political economist Bulent Temel presents a lucid analysis of the Turkish and Greek encounters with the EU based on contributions from a diverse range of social sciences; economics, game theory, finance, political science and sociology.

Combining impartial analysis with reliable facts and figures, this fully revised and updated 24th edition provides up-to-date commentary on these vast North American nations. General Survey Essays by leading experts analyse topics of regional importance, including: - US-Canadian integration, US foreign policy in the Arctic region, and the COVID-19 pandemic in North America. Country Surveys Each country is dealt with in greater detail within its own section. Country chapters include: - a chronology of political events - essays covering key socio-political and economic themes, including: recent political developments; foreign policy; constitution; the economy; energy policy; agriculture; trade; health and social policy - additional essays examining timely subjects such as religion in US politics and the US Judicial system - historical, political and economic surveys of each of the US states and Canadian provinces and territories - statistical surveys of economic and demographic indicators - comprehensive directory sections covering public affairs, the economy and society, which provide contact details and other useful information for the most significant institutions in the region.

The economic growth in East Asia has been believed to be the model case of the triumph of capitalism. Some progressive economists, for example, the developmental state theorists, also praised the East Asian model as the progressive alternative to neoliberal market fundamentalism, arguing that they are the outcomes of state-led development. However, with the sudden advent of the 'Lost Decade of Japan' in the 1990s, and the ensuing 'IMF Crisis' of South Korea in 1997, and now the imminent 'hard landing' of the Chinese economy, the East Asian miracle story is quickly becoming a thing of the past. East Asia has now become an epicentre of the contradictions and crisis of global capitalism. Today, deepening economic crises, exacerbation of social polarization, rising popular discontents, and escalating geopolitical tensions are common to China, Japan and Korea. Moreover, East Asia has been at the centre of global ecological contradictions. Indeed, East Asia has now become the typical place of Marxian macro-dynamics. ; This important and timely volume brings together experts in political economy from across the globe, to comment on the return of Marxian macro-dynamics in East Asia. The contributions explore macro-dynamics, the role of the state and hegemony in the context of transnational capitalism, and Marxian alternatives for East Asia.

Born in a small river town in the largely Muslim province of Sandzak, Munevera Hadzisehovic grew up in an area sandwiched between the Orthdox Christian regions of Montenegro and Serbia, cut off from other Muslims in Bosnia and Harzegovina. Her story takes her reader from the rural culture of the early 1930s through the massacres of World War II and the repression of the early Communist regime to the dissolution of Yugoslavia in the early 1990s. It sheds light on the history of Yugoslavia from the interwar Kingdom to the breakup of the socialist state. In poignant detail, Hadzisehovic paints a picture not only of her own life but of the lives of other Muslims, especially women, in an era and an area of great change. Readers are given a loving yet accurate portrait of Muslim customs pertaining to the household, gardens, food and dating--in short, of everyday life. Hadzisehovic writes from the inside out, starting with her emotions and experiences, then moving outward to the facts that concern those interested in this region: the role of the Ustashe, Chetniks, and Germans in World War II, the attitude of Serbdominated Yugoslavia toward Muslims, and the tragic state of ethnic relations that led to war again in the 1990s. Some of Hadzisehovic's experiences and many of her views will be controversial. She speaks of Muslim women's reluctance to give up the veil, the disapproval of mixed marriages, and the problems between Serb and Croat nationalists. Her benign view of Italian occupation is in stark contrast to her depiction of bloodthirsty Chetnik irregulars. Her analysis of Belgrade's Muslims suggests that class differences were just as important as religious affiliation. In this personal,yet universal story, Hazisehovic mourns the loss of two worlds--the orderly Muslim world of her childhood and the secular, multi-ethnic world of communist Yugoslavia.

A valuable addition to ABC-CLIO's Global Studies series, this resource covers Japan in two main sections-a narrative history and an extensive general reference section. Japan: A Global Studies Handbook offers a friendly introduction to this vital, ancient country. In a series of practical, readable essays, this title explores Japan's island geography and its influence on the nation's history. Japan traces the "economic miracle" that was born in the ashes of World War II and grew into an economy seven times the size of China's-but at considerable social cost. It examines Japan's vibrant cultural traditions-from the 11th century's The Tale of Genji to karaoke, sushi, and the "salary man." Japan entices readers to continue their exploration by offering an inviting collection of jumping-off points: a timeline of Japanese history; a mini-encyclopedia of significant people, places, and events; and an annotated bibliography covering all aspects of Japanese society. A detailed timeline charts landmarks in Japanese history, from the rise of the Jomon culture in 11,000 B.C.E. to the bursting of the economic bubble in the 1990s A compendium of practical information describes Japanese customs, from gift-giving to bathing etiquette

Routledge Library Editions: Germans in Australia comprises three previously out-of-print books by Jurgen Tampke and examines the experiences of Germans in Australia, as explorers, migrants and enemies. Germans made up the second-largest immigrant group in Australia, and these books look at their roles in exploring the country, helping develop the economy and society, and as the enemy in the First World War.

Early in the twentieth century, American socialists dared to dream of a future based on cooperation rather than competition. Socialism was a movement broad enough to encompass many points of view regarding the Red millennium. Socialist women, novelists, newspaper editors, and civil rights advocates, Christian socialists and Wobblies strained their eyes to see a future cooperative Commonwealth.

Edward Bellamy portrayed socialism in the year 2000 for millions of readers in his novels as applied Christianity. Bellamy and other utopian novelists, including Jack London and Charlotte Perkins Gilman, tried to imagine the role of women in the expected new order. Christian socialists put their faith in a future Kingdom of God on earth that honored the ideas of Karl Marx. Radical newspaper editors in Kansas, Missouri, and Texas attempted to lay out the imagined transition to socialism to their readers in simple, straightforward language that made the goal seem readily obtainable. Mormons, disappointed in the changing nature of their faith, pondered a possible socialist future. Others, such as William English Walling, worked for a time ahead that was both socialist and colorblind. Challenging the notion that they had no concrete vision, this book of essays examines the many ways in which early 20th century American socialists imagined their future.

In this comparative study of contemporary Black Atlantic women writers, Samantha Pinto demonstrates the crucial role of aesthetics in defining the relationship between race, gender, and location. Thinking beyond national identity to include African, African American, Afro-Caribbean, and Black British literature, Difficult Diasporasbrings together an innovative archive of twentieth-century texts marked by their break with conventional literary structures. These understudied resources mix genres, as in the memoir/ethnography/travel narrativeTell My Horseby Zora Neale Hurston, and eschew linear narratives, as illustrated in the book-length, non-narrative poem by M. Nourbese Philip, She Tries Her Tongue, Her Silence Softly Breaks. Such an aesthetics, which protests against stable categories and fixed divisions, both reveals and obscures that which it seeks to represent: the experiences of Black women writers in the African Diaspora.Drawing on postcolonial and feminist scholarship in her study of authors such as Jackie Kay, Elizabeth Alexander, Erna Brodber, Ama Ata Aidoo, among others, Pinto argues for the critical importance of cultural form and demands that we resist the impulse to prioritize traditional notions of geographic boundaries. Locating correspondences between seemingly disparate times and places, and across genres, Pinto fully engages the unique possibilities of literature and culture to redefine race and gender studies.Samantha Pintois Assistant Professor of Feminist Literary and Cultural Studies in the English Department at Georgetown University.In theAmerican Literatures Initiative

Heated debates about and insurgencies against female circumcision are symptoms of a disease emanating from a mindset that produced hierarchies of humans, conquered colonies, and built empires. The loss of colonies and empires does not in any way mitigate the ideological underpinnings of empire-building and the knowledge construction that subtends it. The mindset finds its articulation at points of coalescence. Female circumcision provided a point of coalescence and impetus for the articulation. Insisting that the hierarchy on which the imperialist project rests is not bipolar but multi-layered and more complex, the contributions in this volume demonstrate how imperialist discourses complicate issues of gender, race, and history. Nnaemeka gives voice to the silenced and marginalized, and creates space for them to participate in knowledge construction and theory making. The authors in this volume trace the "travels" of imperial and colonial discourses from antecedents in anthropology, travel writings, and missionary discourse, to modern configurations in films, literature, and popular culture. The contributors interrogate foreign, or Western, modus operandi and interventions in the so-called Third World and show how the resistance they generate can impede development work and undermine the true collaboration and partnership necessary to promote a transnational feminist agenda. With great clarity and in simple, accessible language, the contributors present complex ideas and arguments which hold significant implications for transnational feminism and development.

In this book, Parent puts together a history of representations of the 1944 mutiny in Senegal. Combining firsthand analysis of the works and their intertextual interactions as well an external perspective, Parent engages with history, literature, film, poetics, and politics and highlights the importance of remembering the past.

This two-volume set examines the process of integration of rural society and the establishment of the modern state in China. It attempts to transcend general policy claims by analysing China's rural governance within the state's integration of rural society over the course of the twentieth century. Drawing on contemporary examples of state integration while observing the particular background of the Chinese context, this set systematically examines the entire process of the rural reconstruction of China over the course of the 100 years since the period of the late Qing Dynasty, while analysing the special characteristics of each period as well as current societal trends in the Chinese countryside. The first volume explores state penetration of the countryside and the transformation of the rural population from the point of view of politics, labour and resources, administration, and institutional integration. The second volume examines contemporary state integration via the economic activities of traditional rural societies, alongside fiscal, cultural, social, and technological integration. The conclusion summarizes three characteristics that are evident in the process of rural integration and the establishment of the modern state in China. The two volume set will be essential reading for scholars and students in Chinese Studies, Political Science, Rural Studies, and those who are interested in the rural reconstruction of China in general.

A provocative, and timely, solution for ridding America of the traces of Jim Crow policies to create a truly post-racial landscape When America inaugurated its first African American president, in 2009, many wondered if the country had finally become a "post-racial" society. Was this the dawning of a new era, in which America, a nation nearly severed in half by slavery, and whose racial fault lines are arguably among its most enduring traits, would at last move beyond race with the election of Barack Hussein Obama? In Ghosts of Jim Crow, F. Michael Higginbotham convincingly argues that America remains far away from that imagined utopia. Indeed, the shadows of Jim Crow era laws and attitudes continue to perpetuate insidious, systemic prejudice and racism in the 21st century. Higginbotham's extensive research demonstrates how laws and actions have been used to maintain a racial paradigm of hierarchy and separation-both historically, in the era of lynch mobs and segregation, and today-legally, economically, educationally and socially. Using history as a roadmap, Higginbotham arrives at a provocative solution for ridding the nation of Jim Crow's ghost, suggesting that legal and political reform can successfully create a post-racial America, but only if it inspires whites and blacks to significantly alter behaviors and attitudes of race-based superiority and victimization. He argues that America will never achieve its full potential unless it truly enters a post-racial era, and believes that time is of the essence as competition increases globally.

The May Fourth Movement of 1919 is generally seen as the central event in China s transformation from the traditional to the modern. It signalled the arrival of effective student activism on the political scene; it heralded the success of outspoken anti-imperialist ideologies; its slogans and pamphlets demonstrated the rhetorical qualities of the new vernacular writing; some of its participants went on to become leading cultural and political figures; it is said to have given birth to the Communist Party. The latter aspect has ensured that a particular narrative of the movement remained enshrined in official Chinese state ideology for many decades, a narrative often opposed by those outside China for similarly ideological reasons. No movement in modern Chinese history and culture has been more researched, yet none has been less understood. This award-winning book, by one of Peking University s most famous professors, represents a groundbreaking attempt to return to a study of May Fourth that is solidly grounded in historical fact. Favouring smaller stories over grand narratives, concentrating on unknown, marginal materials rather than familiar key documents, and highlighting May Fourth s indebtedness to the cultural debates of the preceding late Qing period, Chen Pingyuan reconstructs part of the actual historical scenery, demonstrating the great variety of ideas expressed during those tumultuous decades.