"The Politics of Buddhist Organizations in Taiwan" looks at a relatively unexplored aspect of modern Taiwan: the influence of religion on politics. Although much has been written on the contribution of Christian churches to the debates on self-determination and democratic tradition on the island, we know less about the political influence on Buddhist organizations, which claim together to attract over four million adherents. These organizations exercise considerable influence in Taiwanese society and yet their stand on relations across the Taiwan Strait, communal harmony, economic and political liberalization, as well as the creation of a welfare State, remains largely unexplored.
Laliberte demonstrates that Taiwanese Buddhists are not a monolithic bloc, and that the organizations that represent them reflect in their diversity the complexity and pluralism of the society in which they have evolved. This book offers a detailed survey of three of the most important Buddhist organizations in Taiwan: the Buddhist Association of the Republic of China (BAROC), the Buddha Light Mountain (or Foguanshan) monastic order, and the Buddhist Compassion Relief Tzu Chi Association (or Ciji). It examines their contrasting approaches to three issues: state supervision of religion, the first presidential election of 1996, and the establishment of the National Health Insurance.
This study analyses the factors that explain the diverse paths the three organizations have taken in the politics of Taiwan. It reveals that despite a shared theological background, individual religious leaders interpret their tradition very differently when they believe it constrains the development of their organizationsand the fulfilling of its goals. Based on an in-depth examination of Buddhist leaders' behavior, "The Politics of Buddhist Organizations in Taiwan" compels us to question conventional views about the allegedly passive aspect of religious tradition, deference to authority in societies influencedby Confucian culture and the adverse legacy of authoritarian regimes.

This book examines the relationship between land tenure, conservation and rural development in the context of the Southeast Asian archipelago. In particular, it is concerned with people living in and around national parks and other protected areas. It discusses the value of reinforcing indigenous tenure and sustainable resource use practices and of including them in policies and projects that attempt to integrate conservation and development. Use is made of a wide range of case studies from Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines and Papua New Guinea.

Changes to corporate structure, including the role of the corporate headquarters, have been key factors in bringing about economic reform in China. In this penetrating and insightful book, Xiao questions the conventional theory of the firm, arguing that the ultimate goal of the headquarters of modern large corporations is to function as a substitute for the market, and introducing a new explanation for the nature of the firm - the 'substitution function model'. He provides an insider's account of the reforms in CITIC, and as such this is a rare narrative that should be essential reading for scholars and practitioners who care about the theory and practice of the firm, in particular in the context of Chinese enterprise reform.

This book examines a number of key questions about social change in contemporary Russia - issues such as how people survive when they are not paid for months on end, 'the New Poor', the falling birth rate, why so many Russian men die in middle age, whether regional identities are becoming stronger, and how people's sense of 'Russianness' has developed since the creation of the Russian Federation in 1992. It examines these issues by looking at actual experiences in three small Russian towns. It includes a great deal of original ethnographic research, and, by looking at real places overall, provides a good sense of how different aspects of social change are interlinked, and how they actually affect real people's lives.

Hong Kong has been undergoing considerable changes since its postcolonial independence. This book provides a detailed comparative account of the development of citizenship and civil society in Hong Kong from its time as a British colony to its current status as a special autonomous region of China. Subjects covered include immigration, race, gender, homosexuality, the law and resistance. The book also compares citizenship and civil society in Hong Kong with a number of other East Asian countries.

The authors are outstanding scholars engaged in the study of language varieties spoken in 'convergence areas' in which speakers are multilingual in languages of at least two but sometimes all three language families. Many of the contributions present new data collected in fieldwork. The geographic area covered is Western and Central Asia where varieties of Iranian, Semitic and Turkic languages have entered into many different types of contact. The intricate linguistic contact situations demonstrate highly interesting convergence phenomena.

Before Japan was 'opened up' in the 1850s, contact with Russia as well as other western maritime nations was extremely limited. Yet from the early eighteenth century onwards, as a result of their expanding commercial interests in East Asia and the North Pacific, Russians had begun to encounter Japanese and were increasingly eager to establish diplomatic and trading relations with Japan. This book presents rare narratives written by Russians - explorers, official envoys, scholars and, later, tourists - who visited Japan between 1792 and 1913. The introduction and notes set these narratives in the context of the history of Russo-Japanese relations and the genre of European travel writing, showing how the Russian writers combined ethnographic interests with the assertion of Russian and European values, simultaneously inscribing power relations and negotiating cultural difference. Students of Japanese history, nineteenth-century Russia, literature and cultural studies will find this book an invaluable insight into the contact between two civilisations at a time when they were particularly ignorant of each other.

This is a groundbreaking analysis of China's territorial disputes, exploring the successes and failures of negotiations that have taken place between its three neighbours, namely India, Japan and Russia. By using Roberts Putnam's two level game framework, Chung relates the outcome of these disputes to the actions of domestic nationalist groups who have exploited these territorial issues to further their own objectives. By using first-class empirical data and applying it to existing theoretical concepts, this book provides a detailed account of China's land and maritime border disputes that is both clear and accessible.

This book examines key questions and challenges the widely prevalent view that the Palestinian Authority collapsed because of its internal governance failures, its lack of commitment to democracy, and corruption. It argues that the analytical framework of 'good governance' is not appropriate for assessing state performance in developing countries, and that it is especially inappropriate in conflict and post-conflict situations. Instead, an alternative framework is proposed for assessing state performance in a context of economic and social transformation. This is then applied in detail to different aspects of state formation in Palestine, showing that the institutional architecture set up by the Oslo agreements was responsible for many of the serious failures.

The Kimberley, the far north-west of Australia, is one of the most linguistically diverse regions of the continent. Some fifty-five Aboriginal languages belonging to five different families are spoken within its borders. Few of these languages are currently being passed on to children, most of whom speak Kriol (a new language that arose about half a century ago from an earlier Pidgin English) or Aboriginal English (a dialect of English) as their mother tongue and usual language of communication. This book describes the Aboriginal languages spoken today and in the recent past in this region. The main features are of their grammars are outlined, including their sounds and word and sentence structures. In addition, there is discussion of how they are related to one another, how they were and are used in conversational interactions, and their roles and uses in traditional and modern speech communities.

Contents:
Part One: The Making of a Dissident
Introduction
1. Childhood & youth 2. Anti-cosmopolitanism, Moscow University, Lysenko 3. New circles 4. The initiative group and resignation 5. The Chronicle of Current Events 6. The trial 7. Camp Perm 36 & the ongoing struggle 8. Exile
Part Two: The Challenge of Change
9. Cooperation 10. Press klub glasnost & the international human rights seminar 11. The foundation for the survival and development of humanity 12. The human rights project group
Part Three: The Human Rights Committee
13. Election campaign 14. The supreme soviet human rights committee 15. States of emergency 16. The penal system: a. family and social ties b. correspondence. c. employment. d. exceptional cases e. prisoner redress. f. punishment g. freedom of conscience. h. the consequences 17. The banning of the Communist Party 18. Declaration of the Rights and Freedoms of Man and the Citizen 19. Human rights commissioner 20. Freedom of movement 21. October, 1993
Part Four: The Presidential Human Rights Commission
22. The aftermath of October 23. The new commission 24. Human rights commissioner case no.1 25. Decree on banditry & organised crime 26. Human rights report, 1993 27. The office of the human rights commissioner established
Part Five: The Chechen War 1994 - 1996
28. The origins of the Chechen war 29. The capture of Grozny 30. Samashki & Budyonnovsk 31. The constitutional court, V. Resignation - 1996

The phenomenon of filial piety is fundamental to our understanding of Chinese culture, and this excellent collection of essays explores its role in various areas of life throughout history. Often regarded as the key to preserving Chinese tradition and identity, its potentially vast impact on government and the development of Chinese culture makes it extremely relevant, and although invariably virtuous in its promotion of social cohesion, its ideas are often controversial. A broad range of topics are discussed chronologically including Confucianism, Buddhism and Daoism, making it essential reading for those studying Chinese culture, religion and philosophy. This is a multi-disciplinary survey that combines historical studies with philosophical analysis from an international team of respected contributors.

The problems of an ageing population are particularly acute in Japan. These problems include people living longer, with many needing more care, and the problems of supporting them by a diminishing working population and a diminishing tax base. This book, based on extensive fieldwork in a Japanese institution for the elderly, explores the problems associated with ageing and responses to it in Japan. By looking at the institution from the viewpoints of residents, staff and visitors, as well as from the policy point of view, the book carefully assesses how far the home succeeds in offering an acceptable quality of life to the home's residents. It gives insights into the life and work of long-term care institutions; discusses how people in Japan have changed their perceptions towards family responsibility, the institutionalization of the elderly, and rights of welfare; and examines how institutions for the elderly are run in Japan and how their management differs from that in the West.

The fragmentation of Bengal and Assam in 1947 was a crucial moment in India's socio-political history as a nation state. Both the British Indian provinces were divided as much through the actions of the Muslim League as by those of Congress and the British colonial power. Attributing partition largely to Hindu communalists is, therefore, historically inaccurate and factually misleading. The Partition of Bengal and Assam provides a review of constitutional and party politics as well as of popular attitudes and perceptions. The primary aim of this book is to unravel the intricate socio-economic and political processes that led up to partition, as Hindus and Muslims competed ferociously for the new power and privileges to be conferred on them with independence. As shown in the book, well before they divorced at a political level, Hindus and Muslims had been cleaved apart by their socio-economic differences. Partition was probably inevitable.

During the twentieth century Japan was transformed from a poor, primarily rural country into one of the world's largest industrial powers and most highly urbanized countries. Interestingly, while Japanese governments and planners borrowed carefully from the planning ideas and methods of many other countries, Japanese urban planning, urban governance and cities developed very differently from those of other developed countries. Japan's distinctive patterns of urbanization are partly a product of the highly developed urban system, urban traditions and material culture of the pre-modern period, which remained influential until well after the Pacific War. A second key influence has been the dominance of central government in urban affairs, and its consistent prioritization of economic growth over the public welfare or urban quality of life. Andre Sorensen examines Japan's urban trajectory from the mid-nineteenth century to the present, paying particular attention to the weak development of Japanese civil society, local governments, and land development and planning regulations.
This is the first book to comprehensively examine the phenomenon of Japanese urbanization and planning, revealing both the many real successes of Japanese urban management, and many of its resounding failures. Japan's distinctiveness makes it an important case study of urbanisation and its management, and helps to put into perspective the major urban and regional planning issues faced by the other developed countries, as well as sounding a timely warning to the rapidly urbanizing countries of Asia.

While humanitarian intervention was the major innovation in global governance in the 1990s, until the East Timor case it was always in the territory of a failing state. This book explains the exceptional nature of the East Timor intervention of 1999, and deals with the background to the trusteeship role of the UN in building the new polity. All of these developments had an important impact on regional order, not least testing the ASEAN norm of 'non-interference'.
Australian complicity in the Indonesian occupation of East Timor was a major factor in the persistence of Indonesian rule in the territory which was maintained for 25 years despite international censure and which required an unremitting campaign against the independence movement. This work reviews the reasons for that history of complicity, and explains the extraordinary change of policy that led ultimately to the occupation of the territory by the Australian-led INTERFET coalition.
This book will be essential reading for students of political science, Asian studies and international relations.

This book examines key questions and challenges the widely prevalent view that the Palestinian Authority collapsed because of its internal governance failures, its lack of commitment to democracy, and corruption. It argues that the analytical framework of 'good governance' is not appropriate for assessing state performance in developing countries, and that it is especially inappropriate in conflict and post-conflict situations. Instead, an alternative framework is proposed for assessing state performance in a context of economic and social transformation. This is then applied in detail to different aspects of state formation in Palestine, showing that the institutional architecture set up by the Oslo agreements was responsible for many of the serious failures.

The Iranian left is of great historical significance and a trend of direct relevance to the current situation in Iran and to the evolution of the struggle between 'reformers' and 'conservatives'. Even though the left has never held power in Iran, its impact on the political, intellectual and cultural development of modern Iran has been profound. This book's authors undertake a fundamental reexamination and reappraisal of the phenomenon of leftist activism in Iran, interpreted in the broadest sense, throughout the period of its existence up to and including the present. "Reformers and Revolutionaries in Modern Iran" brings together contrasting views about the balance sheet of a century of leftism in Iran.

Susan Miller, author of two foundational works on shame ("The Shame Experience" [TAP, 1985/1993pbk]; "Shame in Context" [TAP, 1996]), now turns to disgust, an intriguing emotion that has received little attention in the professional literature. For Miller, the psychological study of disgust revolves around boundary issues: We tend to feel disgusted about things (from bodily processes to decaying organic matter to ethnic attributes of "foreign" people) that lie on the border between our sense of self and nonself or between our sense of "good self" and "bad self." Miller's clinical and everyday examples of disgust lead her to explore the developmental grounding of the capacity to disgust, and this topic opens to consideration of the relation of the various sensory modalities to disgust reactions. Why, Miller asks, do we see disgusting images and smell disgusting smells but not hear disgusting sounds? And further, what makes sensory impressions or objects "disgusting" to certain people but not to others? Why do the images and smells of disease so frequently elicit disgust? And what is the relation of disgust to sex, procreation, and human intimacy?
Laced with developmental insights and vivid illustrations of disgust-related syndromes, "Disgust: The Gatekeeper Emotion" incorporates cultural analysis that links disgust to images of illness and health, to family life, to group identity, and to artistic and scientific creativity. For Miller, the central disgust dialectic - the self's need to safeguard itself against noxious intrusions from without and simultaneously to nourish itself through contact with "otherness" - obtains whether the discourse concerns nature, nations, or noses. Withher typically graceful and gracious prose, Miller puts disgust on the psychological map and thereby adds a chapter to our understanding of the role of emotion in therapy and in everyday life.

The first study of state feminism in a non-western nation state, this volume focuses on the activities and roles of the Women's Bureau of the Ministry of Labor in post-World War II Japan. While state feminism theory possesses a strong capability to examine state-society relationships in terms of feminist policymaking, it tends to neglect a state's activity in improving women's status and rights in non-western nations where the feminist movements are apathetic or antagonistic to the state and where the state also creates a vertical relationship with feminist groups.

Muslims have always used verses from the Qur'an to support opinions on law, theology, or life in general, but almost no attention has been paid to how the Qur'an presents its own precepts as conclusions proceeding from reasoned arguments. Whether it is a question of God's powers of creation, the rationale for his acts, or how people are to think clearly about their lives and fates, Muslims have so internalized Qur'anic patterns of reasoning that many will assert that the Qur'an appeals first of all to the human powers of intellect. This book provides a new key to both the Qur'an and Islamic intellectual history. Examining Qur'anic argument by form and not content helps readers to discover the significance of passages often ignored by the scholar who compares texts and the believer who focuses upon commandments, as it allows scholars of Qur'anic exegesis, Islamic theology, philosophy, and law to tie their findings in yet another way to the text that Muslims consider the speech of God.

Britain's relationship with the Gulf region remains one of the few unexplored episodes in the study of British decolonization. The decision, announced in 1968, to leave the Gulf within three years represented an explicit recognition by Britain that its 'East of Suez' role was at an end. This book examines the decision-making process which underpinned this reversal and considers the interaction between British decision-making, and local responses and initiatives, in shaping the modern Gulf. Using sources previously unavailable to scholars, Britain's Revival and Fall in the Gulf is a valuable addition to the studies on the modern Gulf.

This book provides an overview of the current state of Malaysia, looking at political and economic developments and at governance, and discussing the impact of ethnicity, patronage and the reform movement. Apart from discussing issues such as Islamisation and identity transformations within Malaysian society, it reviews policies like privatisation and provides an examination of business enterprise, exploring how control of 'corporate Malaysia' is interlinked with political developments. This study's primary focus is an analysis of why the reform movement failed to secure substantial support in the late 1990s even though many Malaysians then appeared ready to hold the government accountable for its poor record of a democratic and transparent form of governance. This volume also assesses the likelihood of change as a result of the retirement of Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad

Gerry Segal, a world expert on China, was a prolific writer. Before he died in 1999 the journal Foreign Affairs published his very provocative and significant article 'Does China Matter?'

Focusing on Segal's theme, this volume expands and takes forward his research by gathering together ten leading writers on China to reassess his argument. The book opens with a discussion of Dr Segal's contribution, and a reprint of the article. The authors then address the question of 'does China matter?' in the context of the world economy, Asian economy, as a global military power, as a regional military power, within world and Asian politics and within contemporary world and Asian culture.

They provide an extension and critique of Segal's work in the context of an authoritative up-to-date and forward-looking evaluation of China's prospects. The question 'does China matter?' remains central to world politics. This book sets out a detailed case for exactly how, why and to whom it matters.

The northern Tuareg (the Tuareg of Algeria) - the nomadic, blue-veiled warlords of the Central Sahara - were finally defeated militarily by the French at the battle of Tit in 1902. Some sixty years later, following Algerian independence in 1962, they were visited by a young English anthropologist, Jeremy Keenan. During the course of seven years, Keenan studied their way of life, the social, political and economic changes that had taken place in their society since traditional, pre-colonial times, and their resistance and adaptation to the modernising forces of the new Algerian state. In 1999, following eight years during which Algeria's Tuareg were effectively isolated from the outside world as a result of Algeria's political crisis, Keenan returned to visit them once again. Following a further four years of study, he has written a series of eight essays that capture the key changes that have occurred amongst Algeria's Tuareg in the forty years since independence.