Parliaments or legislatures are the keystone of democratic governance and they are critical in securing government accountability. This book presents a comparative analysis of the role of parliamentary committees in securing government accountability in the three largest and most important functioning democracies in South Asia: Bangladesh, India and Sri Lanka. The author compares the nascent democracy of Bangladesh with the stable and vibrant democratic system of India since its independence from the British in 1947 and Sri Lanka's longstanding and established democracy. He argues that in each country, parliament has been able to survive and perform the key parliamentary tasks of representation, legislation, oversight of the executive, conflict resolution and regime maintenance; concluding that parliamentary committees in Bangladesh, India and Sri Lanka do not perform as successfully as their counterparts in the Western world in controlling the government and holding it to account; however, their role in securing government accountability is not irrelevant. Parliamentary Control and Government Accountability in South Asia will be a useful reference for studying third world parliaments in particular.

Over the last fifteen years local citizens' movements have spread rapidly throughout Japan. Created with the aim of improving the quality of the local environment, and of environmental management processes, such activities are widely referred to as machizukuri, and represent an important development in local politics and urban management in Japan.

This volume examines the growth and nature of such civil society participation in local urban and environmental governance, raising important questions about the changing roles of and relations between central and local government, and between citizens and the state, in managing shared spaces. The machizukuri processes studied here can be seen as the focus of an important emerging trend toward increased civic participation in managing processes of urban change in Japan. The contributors provide a comprehensive overview of the machizukuri phenomenon through examination not only of theory and history, butalso of case studies illustrating real changes in the institutions of place making and neighbourhood governance.

Living Cities in Japan will be of particular value to readers interested in social, urban, geographical and environmental studies.

This book outlines a theory of communication and justice for the digital age, updating classic positions in political philosophy and ethics, and engaging thinkers from Aristotle through Immanuel Kant and the American pragmatists to John Rawls, Jürgen Habermas, and Amartya Sen. In communication seeking to define justice and call out injustice, there is such a thing as the last word. The chapters in this book trace the historical emergence of communication as a human right; specify the technological resources and institutional frameworks necessary for exercising that right; and address some of the challenges following from digitalization that currently confront citizens, national regulators, and international agencies. Among the issues covered are public access to information archives past and present; local and global networks of communication as sources of personal identities and imagined communities; the ongoing reconfiguration of the press as a fourth branch of governance; and privacy as a precondition for individuals and collectives to live their lives according to plans, and to make their own histories. The book will be of interest to students and researchers in media and communication studies, cultural studies, political philosophy and ethics, and interdisciplinary fields examining the ethical and political implications of new information and communication infrastructures.

Through careful historical and ethnographic research and extensive use of local scholarly works, this book provides a persuasive and careful analysis of the production of knowledge in Central Asia. The author demonstrates that classical theories of science and society are inadequate for understanding the science project in Central Asia. Instead, a critical understanding of local science is more appropriate.

In the region, the professional and political ethos of Marxism-Leninism was incorporated into the logic of science on the periphery of the Soviet empire. This book reveals that science, organizes and constructed by Soviet rule, was also defined by individual efforts of local scientists. Their work to establish themselves 'between Marx and the market' is therefore creating new political economies of knowledge at the edge of the scientific world system.

The Hemshin are without doubt one of the most enigmatic peoples of Turkey and the Caucasus. As former Christians who converted to Islam centuries ago yet did not assimilate into the culture of the surrounding Muslim populations, as Turks who speak Armenian yet are often not aware of it, as Muslims who continue to celebrate feasts that are part of the calendar of the Armenian Church, and as descendants of Armenians who, for the most part, have chosen to deny their Armenian origins in favour of recently invented myths of Turkic ancestry, the Hemshin and the seemingly irreconcilable differences within their group identity have generated curiosity and often controversy. The Hemshin is the first scholarly work to provide an in-depth study of these people living in the eastern Black Sea region of Turkey. This groundbreaking volume brings together chapters written by an international group of scholars that cover the history, language, economy, culture and identity of the Hemshin. It is further enriched with an unprecedented collection of maps, pictures and appendices of up-to-date statistics. The Hemshin forms part of the Peoples of the Caucasus series, an indispensable and yet accessible resource for all those with an interest in the Caucasus.

This handbook provides a ready introduction and practical guide to the Hemshin people and language.
"The Hemshin," investigates this community of Islamicized Armenians living in the eastern Black Sea region of Turkey and in the former Soviet Union. The Hemshin, who live around Rize and Artvin in northeastern Turkey, are the descendants of Armenians who converted to Islam beginning in the seventeenth century, in a process that took severalcenturies to complete. While maintaining Armenian elements in their culture and continuing to speak an Armenian dialect, the Hemshin have tended to dissociate themselves from their Armenian ancestry, with many actively seeking assimilation into the larger Islamic community.
This scholarly work includes chapters written by experts in the field, covering all aspects of the people, including their history, religion, economy and culture, as well as maps, pictures and appendices of up-to-date statistics. This volume forms part of the Peoples of the Caucasus series which is an indispensable - and accessible - resource for all those with an interest in the Caucasus: journalists, aid workers, regional specialists in government, law, banking, accounting, as well as tourists, business people, students and academics.

This book surveys a 'cluster' of works that seek to explore the cultures of cyberspace, the Internet and the information society. It introduces key ideas, and includes detailed discussion of the work of two key thinkers in this area, Manuel Castells and Donna Haraway, as well as outlining the development of cyberculture studies as a field. To do this, the book also explores selected 'moments' in this development, from the early 1990s, when cyberspace and cyberculture were only just beginning to come together as ideas, up to the present day, when the field of cyberculture studies has grown and bloomed, producing innovative theoretical and empirical work from a diversity of standpoints. Key topics include: life on the screen network society space of flows cyborg methods. Cyberculture Theorists is the ideal starting point for anyone wanting to understand how to theorise cyberculture in all its myriad forms.

The fight against terrorism is receiving increased awareness due to recent wor- wide large-scale terrorist acts, and only since then has some attention been directed specifically to victims of terrorism. Existing legal instruments of international b- ies like the European Union, the Council of Europe and the United Nations c- cerning victims of terrorism are relatively abstract or include victims of terrorism under the broader heading of victims of crime in general. In addition, policies and legislation relating to victims of crime or victims of terrorism vary widely on the domestic level. Against this background, the European Union commissioned a project that should aim to develop more extensive standards for the aid and ass- tance of victims of terrorism at the European level. This study provides the basis from which more extensive standards could be derived. The study focuses parti- larly on developing standards in the field of continuing assistance, access to justice, administration of justice and compensation to victims of terrorism. A novel feature of the approach is that also the possible utility of restorative justice approaches is examined. An important question to address was whether there is a real need to adopt s- cific standards for victims of terrorism, thereby implying that their needs might differ from victims of ordinary crime.

This book covers not only the political situation in Zimbabwe, but its international context and those areas of privation, exclusion and silence within the country that are beneath the everyday face of politics. Written by either a Zimbabwean or an internationally acknowledged expert on aspects of Zimbabwe, all the authors agree that the silences in and surrounding the African state cannot continue. This volume utilizes the perspectives of diplomacy, health, law and literature written in both English and Shona, and of those deeply concerned with democratization in Zimbabwe and its surrounding region. Zimbabwe and the Space of Silence will be of interest to students and scholars of African studies, African and Third World politics and international law. This book was previously published as a special issue of The Round Table.

This text critically examines the belief that the EU not only has an impact on the international system but also a 'normative', 'civilian' and 'civilizing' power. The contributors question whether this assertion fits with the empirical record or is merely based on anecdotal evidence and whether there is a theoretical basis for the expectation of a 'normative' or 'civilizing' power. Moving the research agenda forward, the book establishes criteria and assessment standards for examining the EU's international role and its putative normative dimension. Such an endeavour is particularly important against the backdrop of recent developments in European security and defence. The acquisition of military means, or the EU's ambition to acquire such means, might weaken at least the argument that the EU is a 'civilian' power and could provoke a shift towards a policy more akin to traditional 'great powers.' This book was previously published as a special issue of the Journal of European Public Policy.

Recently there has been rapid progress towards understanding the separate theories of the strong, weak and electromagnetic inter actions within the framework of the standard SU(3) x SU(2) x U(l) model. The purpose of the Second Workshop on Grand Unification was to discuss the physics beyond the standard model and the major topic was grand unified theories which unify the strong, weak and electromagnetic sectors. Grand unified theories are presently being used to calculate experimentally accessible quantities such as the proton lifetime and nucleon decay branching ratios. Meanwhile, experiments are currently being performed, and new, dedicated experiments mounted, to measure these quantities. Reports on these experimental and theoretical activities occupied much of the workshop. Furthermore, since grand unified theories allow one to extrapolate the behavior of the universe back to the first instants after the big bang, their cosmological implications and the constraints on these theories from cosmology were of great interest at the workshop. The conference opened with a keynote address by S. L. Glashow in which he discussed among other topics baryon minus lepton number conservation, neutrino masses and a neutrino-free universe. To maximize the interplay between theorists and experimentalists, theoretical and experimental talks were interleaved. An experimental highlight of the workshop was the presentation by S. Miyake of three candidate events for proton decay."

Focusing on the ground-breaking work of Laura Mulvey, Kaja Silverman, Teresa de Lauretis and Barbara Creed, this book explores how, since it began in the 1970s, feminist film theory has revolutionized the way that films and their spectators can be understood. Examining the new and distinctive approaches of each of these thinkers, this book provides the most detailed account so far of their ideas. It illuminates the six key concepts and demonstrates their value as tools for film analysis: the male gaze; the female voice; technologies of gender; queering desire; the monstrous-feminine; and masculinity in crisis. Testing their ideas with a number of other examples from contemporary cinema and TV, Shohini Chaudhuri shows how these four thinkers construct their theories through their reading of films. This is an excellent study companion for all students of film theory and women's studies.

Secession has become this decade's single most important issue - a worldwide phenomenon, threatening violence, instability and a radical redrawing of international boundaries. While the literature on secession has focused on issues of politics and ethnicity, there has been very little written on the economic issues involved: Dr Bookman's new work goes a long way to correcting this. The Economics of Secession studies some thirty contemporary secession movements and traces the changing role played by economics before, during, and after secession: in the evaluation of the costs and benefits associated with respective unions, in the disentanglement of mutual ties, and in the determination of a region's future viability as a separate state. It is additionally argued that economic factors will become ever more important in the future redrawing of frontiers. This is an extremely significant contribution to the understanding of an ever more unstable world.

The dilemma facing Cyprus--that of limited water supplies (both in terms of quantity and quality) in the face of steadily increasing water demand, coupled with a fragmented institutional structure of the water sector--is characteristic of most arid and semi-arid countries all over the world. Another common characteristic of Cyprus is that the water management administrative boundaries there do not coincide with the hydrological ones, while the ongoing political problem of the island creates significant administration problems.

This is the first anthology devoted exclusively to the subject of colour in film and its history, production and technology. Set out in thematic sections, the book addresses key issues in the field including: the development of colour technology how visual stule was affected by the shift from black and white to colour colour in film theory and the writings of authors such as Bresson, Eisenstein and Oshima colour in the films of Godard, Hitchcock, Almodovar and many more. Including case studies too, this is the perfect introductory guide to a key element in film form and theory. A must for any student starting a film studies course.

This book examines the rise of Chinese capitalism and discusses its effects on both itself and its neighbours. The collection is comprised of sixteen previously published or forthcoming articles that combined provide historical, comparative and theoretically informed perspectives on the spread of Chinese capitalism.

This book explores dilemmas that Buddhism faces in relation to the continuing ethnic conflict and violence in contemporary Sri Lanka. Using an interdisciplinary approach, prominent scholars in the fields of anthropology, history, Buddhist studies and Pali examine multiple dimensions of the problem. Buddhist responses to the crisis are discussed in detail, along with how Buddhism can help to create peace in Sri Lanka. Evaluating the role of Buddhists and their institutions in bringing about an end to war and violence as well as possibly heightening the problem, this collection puts forward a critical analysis of the religious conditions contributing to continuing hostilities.

From the verticals of New York, Hong Kong and Australia's Gold Coast to the sprawls of London, Paris and Jakarta, this cross-disciplinary volume of new writing examines constructions, representations, imaginations and theorizations of urban space and cityscapes in modern and contemporary culture. Linked by a shared concern for issues of spatiality, the essay topics are organized around three interrelated themes - image, text, and form - and range from the examination of cyberpunk skylines, postcolonial urbanism, and the cinema of urban disaster, to the analysis of iconic city landmarks such as the Twin Towers, the London Eye, and the Jewish Museum Berlin.
Working at the intersections of visual, material, and literary culture, "Urban Space and Cityscapes" seeks in particular:
- to provide new critical and theoretical perspectives on the city at a time when the condition and future of urbanism are major subjects of international and public concern.
- to examine the aesthetic, narrative, and representational strategies used to interpret the dynamic space of cities.
- to explore the relationship between urban space and a variety of pressing cultural concerns, including issues of identity, memory, technology, class, gender, nation, and ethnicity.
With original essays from the fields of architecture, cultural theory, film, geography, literature, and visual art, "Urban Space" "and Cityscapes" offers fresh insight into the increasingly complex relationship between urban space, cultural production, and everyday life.

From the verticals of New York, Hong Kong and Australia's Gold Coast to the sprawls of London, Paris and Jakarta, this cross-disciplinary volume of new writing examines constructions, representations, imaginations and theorizations of urban space and cityscapes in modern and contemporary culture. Linked by a shared concern for issues of spatiality, the essay topics are organized around three interrelated themes - image, text, and form - and range from the examination of cyberpunk skylines, postcolonial urbanism, and the cinema of urban disaster, to the analysis of iconic city landmarks such as the Twin Towers, the London Eye, and the Jewish Museum Berlin.
Working at the intersections of visual, material, and literary culture, "Urban Space and Cityscapes" seeks in particular:
- to provide new critical and theoretical perspectives on the city at a time when the condition and future of urbanism are major subjects of international and public concern.
- to examine the aesthetic, narrative, and representational strategies used to interpret the dynamic space of cities.
- to explore the relationship between urban space and a variety of pressing cultural concerns, including issues of identity, memory, technology, class, gender, nation, and ethnicity.
With original essays from the fields of architecture, cultural theory, film, geography, literature, and visual art, "Urban Space" "and Cityscapes" offers fresh insight into the increasingly complex relationship between urban space, cultural production, and everyday life.

Inter-disciplinary in approach, this collection of essays explores Chinas reform era development within the concept of trans-locality. A key element of spatial change in today's China has been the unprecedented geographic mobility of millions of labor migrants, tourists, brides, entrepreneurs, and many others. But trans-locality doesn't just mean people. It is crucially constituted by the circulation of capital, ideas, images, goods, styles, services, disease to name but a few.
With contribution from well-respected China specialists, the essays focus simultaneously on mobilites and localities, drawing our attention to the multiplying forms of mobility in China whilst retaining the importance of localities in peoples lives. The book provides a clear path to understanding the importance of trans-locality as a concept along with concrete examples of its operation in China. Unique in approach, it is at once a study of the connections between location and culture, politics, economics, bodies, gender and technology.

"Broadcasting the Blues: Black Blues in the Segregation Era "is based on Paul Oliver's award-winning radio broadcasts from the BBC that were created over several decades. It traces the social history of the blues in America, from its birth in the rural South through the heyday of sound recordings. Noted blues scholar Paul Oliver draws on decades of research and personal interviews with performers -- some of whom he "discovered" and recorded for the first time -- to draw a picture of how the blues aesthetic developed, giving new insights into the role blues played in American society before racial integration.
The book begins by outlining the history of the blues from African music through country stomps, ragtime songs, and field hollers. From the heroic figures of black folksong -- including the steel-driving railroad worker John Henry and the destructive Boll Weevil -- to the content of the emerging blues, the author discusses the "meaning" behind the often coded words of the blues, evoking topics such as playful sexuality, magic and medicine, the stresses of segregation, and commentary on national events. Finally, the author traces the history of blues documentation, showing how our views of the early blues have been shaped through a complex interplay of social forces, and indicating possible lines for future research.

This book assumes no prior knowledge of the language and begins with the teaching of the Persian alphabet. Grammar and vocabulary are each covered in full. The course has not adopted any method of transliteration and expects the student to read and write in Persian script from the start. It places equal emphasis on reading, writing and speaking. It aims to provide the student with the necessary skills for social interaction, as well as a basis for the study of modern literature.
The course consists of 48 units and favors teaching by communicative and contextual learning. Most units begin with a reading exercise used to introduce an item of grammar and new vocabulary, followed by explanations and drill exercises aimed at consolidating the student's understanding.
Each unit also contains a strong oral communication element which helps the student assimilate the theory through interaction with the teacher and other students, at first concentrating on transactional language, then moving increasingly towards more idiomatic Persian.
Complete with a Persian-English and English-Persian vocabulary list key to all the exercises and tape recordings, this is an up-to-date textbook which can be used both by teachers or individuals wishing to learn Persian independently.

In 1991 Taiwan held its first fully democratic election. This first single volume of party politics in Taiwan analyzes the evolution of party competition in the country, looking at how Taiwan's parties have adjusted to their new multi-party election environment. It features key chapters on:

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• the development of party politics in Taiwan
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• the impact of party change on social welfare, corruption and national identity
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• party politics in the DPP era.

Including interviews with high-ranking Taiwanese politicians and material on the 2004 Presidential election, this important work brings the literature up-to-date. It provides a valuable resource for scholars of Chinese and Taiwanese politics and a welcome addition to the field of regime transition and democratization.

This study explores the relationship between the nature and context of non-traditional occupations and the empowerment status of women in society. Specifically, it examines the extent to which women in non-traditional occupations have been empowered by their skills, knowledge, and position within the Togolese Government's existing training policies for the increased participation of women in non-traditional sectors of the labor force.
In Togo, like many other African countries, several evaluation exercises have been conducted regarding the number of women who have successfully completed their training in non-traditional occupations. However, none has focused on how those women cope with everyday cultural and social challenges or addressed the issues of movement for the development of women.
Nineteen (19) women who had received a qualification in a non-traditional occupation, were interviewed on their perceptions of empowerment, and on what gains, difficulties and challenges the faced in their lives. Theanalysis of their related experiences compared with other Togolese informants as well as the national and international literature on empowerment suggests that although there are some gains, the reality of empowerment is still an unfulfilled dream for those women.
The conditions affecting these women's empowerment in the Togolese society include expectations as related to the roles and duties of a woman and the country's socio-economic situation. Strategies to create sustainable employment are recommended to increase the potential of non-traditional occupations to foster empowerment.

First published in 1969. Contains some of Joseph Needham's most significant essays, lectures and broadcasts on the history of Chinese science, technology and culture. Also included are some more personal thoughts stimulated by his own travels and experiences in China, including a number of poems. The book discusses the valuable social and intellectual influences which have flowed to Europe from South as well as East Asia, and suggests that the events of the twentieth century were a natural development of Chinese history, not a deviation from it.