Challenging the view of Islamic extremists and critics of Islam, this book explores the very topical issue of Islam s compatibility with democracy. It examines:

• principles of Islam's political theory and the notion of democracy therein
• the notion of democracy in medieval and modern Muslim thought
• Islam and human rights
• the contribution of Islamic legal ideas to European legal philosophy and law.

The book addresses the pressing need for a systematic show of an Islamic politics of human rights and democracy grounded in the Qur an. The West wonders about Islam and human rights, and its own ability to incorporate Muslim minority communities. Many Muslims also seek to find within Islam support source for democratic governance and human rights.

In the early 1990s, financial liberalization started in India, and it was thought that such reforms would increase economic growth. This argument formed part of the finance led industrialization hypothesis and although higher growth resulted, higher industrialization did not immediately. This book is the first study to comprehensively apply the flow of funds model for India. Using detailed data of the Indian economy, the whole financial sector is presented with associated policy simulation for India. The demand function is theoretically grounded in the Almost Ideal Demand System and cointegration techniques are adapted into the econometric methodology. The policy simulation experiments are conducted with a view to analyzing the delivery of loanable funds to sectors which are the most in need of poverty-reducing economic growth. The system-wide simulation as a result of interactions with disaggregated economic sectors will allow the analysis of a wide spectrum of policy effects on issues such as the determinant of interest rates, financial capital formulation, and the role of financial institutions, government debt and allocation of credit. India's Emerging Financial Market provides a thorough and rigorous analysis of policy responses in India and will be of interest to academics working on development economics in general and South Asia in particular.

The Parsis are India's smallest minority community, yet they have exercised a huge influence on the country. As pioneers in education in nineteenth century India, and as leading figures in banking and commerce, medicine, law and journalism, they were at the forefront of India's industrial revolution. Parsis were also at the heart of the creation of the Indian National Congress in the nineteenth century and contributed some of the great leaders through into the twentieth century. This book, written by notable experts in the field, explores various key aspects of the Parsis. It spans the time from their arrival in India to the twenty-first century. All contributions are based on original research and most of them use hitherto unexplored primary sources. The first part of the book analyzes the topic of Parsi migration from very different points of view; the second part presents leading Parsi personalities of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The final part is a set of studies of the Parsi traditional community in Bombay and an examination of three different diasporas. The concluding chapter, by John R. Hinnells, shows the range of contributions of Parsis to modern India and also in the diasporas, where the Zoroastrian religion is practiced in more countries around the globe than at any time in its history of more than 3,000 years.

New Qing Imperial History uses the Manchu summer capital of Chengde and associated architecture, art and ritual activity as the focus for an exploration of the importance of Inner Asia and Tibet to the Qing Empire (1636-1911). Well-known contributors argue that the Qing was not simply another Chinese dynasty, but was deeply engaged in Inner Asia not only militarily, but culturally, politically and ideologically. Emphasizing the diverse range of peoples in the Qing empire, this book analyzes the importance to Chinese history of Manchu relations with Tibetan prelates, Mongolian chieftains, and the Turkic elites of Xinjiang. In offering a new appreciation of a culturally and politically complex period, the authors discuss the nature and representation of emperorship, especially under Qianlong (r. 1736-1795), and examine the role of ritual in relations with Inner Asia, including the vaunted (but overrated) tribute system. By using a specific artifact or text as a starting point for analysis in each chapter, the contributors not only include material previously unavailable in English but allow the reader an intimate knowledge of life at Chengde and its significance to the Qing period as a whole.

Managing rapid urban growth presents a significant challenge in the small independent countries of the Pacific Islands. Although they originated in colonial times, the towns and cities are now distinctively post-colonial, with economies, environments and social structures that reflect unique island characteristics. This transformation has stimulated new concerns, such as the causes and effects of pollution, the need for employment for landless migrants, the need for adequate and affordable housing and the financing of expanding urban services. This book explores the diversity of the urban experience in the ten independent island states, focusing on strategies to secure long term sustainable development.

A focus on memory has come to prominence across a wide range of disciplines. History, literature, philosophy, anthropology, and cultural studies have placed memory at the heart of their interrogations of subjectivity, narrative, time and imagination. At the same time, memory has emerged as a central theme and preoccupation in popular literature, film and television, and the emergence of memory as an academic theme cannot be separated from its prominence in the wider culture. This volume represents, explores and interrogates the current developments, engaging directly with the place of memory in culture, and with memory's meaning's and history.

First published in 1932. As well as an extensive introduction, this edition contains notes to all four books, a bibliographical index, a general index and an index of Tibetan words. The introduction is particularly valuable in that it sets the importance of Desideri's mission in the general context of the Jesuit Missions to Tibet. In Desideri's account we receive the first accurate general description of Tibet: from the natural world to the sociological and anthropological aspects of the people and a complete exposition of Lamaism. His is the only complete reconstruction that we possess of the Tibetan religion, founded entirely on canonical texts. And all of this more than a century before Europeans had any knowledge of the Tibetan language.

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.

Comparative in structure and covering an extensive number of transition countries in its survey, this comprehensive book overviews the development of the banking systems in Central and Eastern European since the communist era until the present time. Taking in a range of countries including Hungary, Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Bulgaria, Romania, Croatia, Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Barisitz - an economist with the Central Bank of Austra - analyzes the evolution of legal foundations, banking supervision, banks' major sources of assets, liabilities, earnings and related changes, banking crises, restructuring, rehabilitation programs, the role of foreign-owned banks and FDI. A significant publication, it is fascinating reading for all those studying and working in the areas of transition economy, macro and monetary economy and economic history

Experiences of captivity in Japanese-occupied Asia varied enormously. Some prisoners of war (POWs) were sent to work in Japan, others to toil on the 'Death Railway' between Burma and Thailand. Some camps had death rates below 1 per cent, others of over 20 per cent. While POWs were deployed far and wide as a captive labour force, civilian internees were generally detained locally. This book explores differences in how captivity was experienced between 1941 and 1945, and has been remembered since: differences due to geography and logistics, to policies and personalities, and marked by nationality, age, class, gender and combatant status. Part One has at least one chapter for each 'National Memory', Australian, British, Canadian, Dutch, Indian and American. Part Two moves on to forgotten captivities. It covers women, children, camp guards, internee experiences upon the end of the war, and local heroines who fought back. By juxtaposing such a wide variety of captivity experiences - differentiated both by category of captive and by approach - this book transcends place, to become a collection about captivity as a category. It will interest scholars working on the Asia-Pacific War, on captivities in general, and on the individual histories of the countries and groups covered.

Although it is generally believed in China that socialism raised women's status and paid work liberated them from the shackles of patriarchy, the economic reforms of the last two decades of the twentieth century meant women workers were more vulnerable to losing their jobs than men. Unlike previous studies, which have focused on the macro-structural features of this process, this book makes the voices of ordinary women workers heard and applies feminist perspectives on women and work to the Chinese situation.

Drawing upon extensive life history interviews, this book contests the view that mobilizing women into the workplace brought about their liberation. Instead, the gendered redundancy they experienced was the culmination of a lifetime's experiences of gender inequalities. Setting their life stories against a backdrop of great social-political upheaval in China, the book suggests that the women of this 'unlucky generation' have borne the brunt of sufferings caused by sacrifices they made for the development of socialist China.

Multinational Corporations and the Emerging Network Economy in Asia and the Pacific delves into the ongoing rise of a global economy anchored in a web of inter-firm production networks and the role played by multinational corporations in the process. It considers the strategies and business models corporations have adopted lately to face today's highly competitive global markets, especially outsourcing and offshoring, focusing on the modalities observed in Asia Pacific and the Pacific Rim at large.

Since their inception, corporations have undergone a series of fundamental changes; each has corresponded to a given era of industrial development and has given rise to a particular type of government policy response. The book addresses these timely issues and other such as the transformation of global production networks into global innovation networks, the link between corporate and national innovation strategies and movement up the global production value chain, and the fragmentation of production and the resulting increase in component and sub-assembly trade in the region. It also takes up the emergence of multinational corporations from developing countries and the efforts aimed at forging basic rules of corporate social responsibility and developing sound institutions for building a working framework of corporate governance in the Pacific.

Written by some of the region's most eminent and influential economists and political scientists, this volume will appeal to students and scholars working in the field of Asia Pacific studies as well as to businesspersons and policymakers taking decisions in the region.

In this book Judith Cherry analyses the impact of economic and cultural globalization on efforts to promote inward foreign direct investment (IFDI) in South Korea over the past four decades. The book traces the development of Korean IFDI policy from one of restriction and control to one of encouragement and promotion. Specifically, it focuses on the challenges inherent in reforming the 'software' of IFDI promotion (socio-cultural issues, mindsets and perceptions) as opposed to changing its 'hardware' (systems, laws and regulations). Although the Korean government has made sustained efforts over the past decade to enhance Korea's attractions as a host for inward investment, it has faced significant challenges in improving Korea's IFDI performance. The discussion in this book of the wide range of transparent and non-transparent barriers that continue to hamper efforts to promote inward investment draws not only on the Korean debate concerning strategies for maximizing the benefits of IFDI, but also on the assessment of the Korean business and investment environment revealed in interviews conducted with European investors and officials in Seoul. Foreign Direct Investment in Post-Crisis Korea will appeal to students and scholars of international business, economics and globalization, as well as those with a more general interest in Korean society.

The unresolved territorial dispute between Japan and Russia over the South Kuril Islands/Northern Territories remains the largest obstacle to concluding a peace treaty and fully normalising bilateral relations between the two nations. This book traces the evolution of transnational relations between subnational public authorities in Hokkaido and Sakhalin, examining the interrelationship between these ties and the Russo-Japanese territorial dispute. The book investigates why the development of Hokkaido-Sakhalin relations has failed to create, at the subnational level, an environment conducive to resolving (kankyo seibi) the South Kuril Islands/Northern Territories dispute. Brad Williams suggests that kankyo seibi has not worked primarily because Russia's troubled transition to a liberal democratic market economy has manifested itself in ways that have ultimately increased the South Kuril Islands' intrinsic and instrumental value for the Sakhalin public and regional elite. This in turn has limited the impact from the twin transnational processes of cultural and economic exchange in alleviating opposition to the transferral of these disputed islands to Japan. Drawing upon a wealth of primary and secondary sources from both countries, this book utilises levels of analysis and an analytical framework that incorporates national and subnational, as well as governmental and non-governmental forces to discuss a relatively unexplored aspect of Russo-Japanese relations. As such, Resolving the Russo-Japanese Territorial Dispute will appeal to students and scholars of Asian politics, international relations and post-communist states.

This book explores the essential nature of regionalism by conducting a comprehensive analysis of more than 30 regionalist proposals made by Japan and other Asian countries throughout the post-war period. Shintaro Hamanaka examines the whole post war period and covers all regionalist proposals since then, while most existing studies cover only the development of Asian regionalism in the recent decade. A significant number of cases in the proposed book enable the readers to go beyond an understanding of each regionalist project, to a deeper understanding of theoretically generalizeable behavior pattern of Japan and other countries. The book also comparatively analyzes political, financial and trade regionalisms. The central aim of the book is to reveal the fact that policies with regard to regionalism have a pattern, in this case with a principal, though not an exclusive focus, on Japan. The author demonstrates that the behavior pattern of external policy is extremely consistent in terms of the membership of regionalist organizations and discusses whether this new approach to regionalism holds explanatory power vis-a-vis regionalism outside Asia. This book will be of interest to scholars, postgraduate students and policy makers in the fields of international relations, Asian studies, international trade and regionalism.

This book shows how East Asian masculinities are being formed and transformed as Asia is increasingly globalized. The gender roles performed by Chinese and Japanese men are examined not just as they are lived in Asia, but also in the West. The essays collected here enhance current understandings of East Asian identities and cultures as well as Western conceptions of gender and sexuality. While basic issues such as masculine ideals in China and Japan are examined, the book also addresses issues including homosexuality, women's perceptions of men, the role of sport and food and Asian men in the Chinese diaspora.

The striking parallels between Derrida's deconstruction and certain strategies eschewing oppositional hierarchies in Asian thought, especially in Buddhism and Daoism, have attracted much attention from scholars of both Western and Asian philosophy. This book contributes to this discussion by focusing on the ethical dimension and function of deconstruction in Asian thought. Examining different traditions and schools of Asian thought, including Indian Buddhism, Zen, other schools of East Asian Buddhism, the Kyoto School, and Daoism, the contributors explore the central theme from different contexts and different angles. Insights and notions from the contemporary discussion of Derridean deconstruction and its ethic or Derridean-Levinasian ethic as a paradigm for comparison or interpretation are used as a framework. Furthering our understanding of the relationship between deconstruction and the ethical in Asian traditions, this book also enriches the contemporary ethical discourse from a global perspective by bridging Asia and the West.

This is the first work available in English which addresses Zhuangzi's thought as a whole. It presents an interpretation of the Zhuangzi, a book in thirty-three chapters that is the most important collection of Daoist texts in early China. The author introduces a complex reading that shows the unity of Zhuangzi's thought, in particular in his views of action, language, and ethics. By addressing methodological questions that arise in reading Zhuangzi, a hermeneutics is developed which makes understanding Zhuangzi's religious thought possible. A theoretical contribution to comparative philosophy and the cross-cultural study of religious traditions, the book serves as an introduction to Daoism for graduate students in religion, philosophy, and East Asian Studies.

Environmental Ethics in Buddhism presents a logical and thorough examination of the metaphysical and ethical dimensions of early Buddhist literature. The author determines the meaning of nature in the early Buddhist context from general Buddhist teachings on dhamma, paticcasamuppada, samsara and the cosmogony of the Agganna Sutta. Consequently, the author shows that early Buddhism can be understood as an environmental virtue ethics. To illustrate this dimension, the Jatakas are used as a source. These are a collection of over five hundred folk tales, which also belong to early Buddhist literature. This work gives an innovative approach to the subject, which puts forward a distinctly Buddhist environmental ethics that is in harmony with traditional teachings as well as adaptable and flexible in addressing environmental problems.

This book addresses the growing academic concerns of the market-religion convergences in Asia.

Bringing together a group of leading scholars from Asia, Europe, Australia and North America, it discusses multiple issues regarding religious commodifications and their consequences across Asia's diverse religious traditions. Covering key issues in the anthropology and sociology of contemporary Asian religion, it draws theoretical implications for the study of religions in the light of the shift of religious institutions from traditional religious beliefs to material prosperity. The fact that religions compete with each other in a 'market of faiths' is also at the core of the analysis. The contributions show how ordinary people and religious institutions in Asia adjusted to, and negotiated with, the penetrative forces of a global market economy into the region's changing religio-cultural landscapes.

An excellent contribution to the growing demands of ethnographically and theoretically updated interpretations of Asian religions, Religious Commodifications in Asia will be of interest to scholars of Asian religion and new religious movements.

Political Reform in Japan argues that the quality of political leadership is the crucial determinant of whether parties in positions of dominance, like the Liberal Democratic Party in Japan, pass or reject policies such as electoral system and campaign finance reforms that could harm the party's future electoral chances.

By comparing successful reform drives led by Miki Takeo, Ozawa Ichiro and Koizumi Junichiro with unsuccessful reform efforts pursued by Kaifu Toshiki, Miyazawa Kiichi and Kono Yonhei, Alisia Gaunder forces a reconsideration of the structure versus agency debate in political science, and of the conventional wisdom on Japanese politics that consensus decision-making norms and factional power balancing produce little in the way of political leadership.

The main focus of this volume is on urbanity as a discursive way of human life in the city. Discourse is specified here in terms of semiotic codes and processes that link city dwellers as communicating selves into interpersonal and intersubjective collectivities when they create and interpret similar meanings embodied in material bearers. Accordingly, the unfolding of the semiotic web is understood, firstly, as detecting and evaluating the growth and manifestation of the sphere of meaning-bearers or a sequence of meaning-bearing events, and secondly, as identifying and explaining the constituents and aspects of discourse in the light of signs and/or sign-processes that aggregate individual participants of communication into discursive linkages on a lower level and discursive communities – on a higher level of social grouping. Some contributions deal with the discursive properties of human individuals in urban environments, and some others are devoted either to the meta-discourses on the city or discourses in the city.

The Sanskrit Mahabharata is one of the greatest works of world literature and pivotal for the understanding of both Hindu traditions and wider society in ancient, medieval and modern South Asia. This book presents a new synthesis of philological, anthropological and cognitive-linguistic method and theory in relation to the study of narrative text by focusing on the form and function of the Mahabharata in the context of early South Asia.

Arguing that the combination of structural and thematic features that have helped to establish the enduring cultural centrality of religious narrative in South Asia was first outlined in the text, the book highlights the Mahabharata's complex orientation to the cosmic, social and textual past. The book shows the extent to which narrative is integral to human social life, and more generally the creation and maintenance of religious ideologies. It highlights the contexts of origin and transmission and the cultural function of the Mahabharata in first millennium South Asia and, by extension, in medieval and modern South Asiaby drawing on both textual and epigraphic sources. The book draws attention to what is culturally specific about the origination and transmission of early South Asian narrative and what can be used to enrich our orientation to narrative in human social life more globally.

Eight years after the second Palestinian uprising, the Oslo accords signed in 1993 seem to have failed. The reasons for the failure continue to fascinate students, politicians, researchers and policymakers alike. This book explores one of the major aspects of the bilateral peace process the composition and behaviour of the Palestinian negotiating team, which deeply impacted the outcome of the negotiations between 1991 and 1997. It focuses on the dynamics between the PLO leadership outside the occupied Palestinian territories and the grassroots leadership within the areas under Israeli control that led to conflicts of interest at the time of the final agreement. As the author was a part of the Palestinian leadership in the occupied territories, and was present during the negotiations process in Madrid and Washington DC, the book contains original, unpublished accounts, including those of the Washington bilateral negotiations and crucial internal Palestinian meetings. It is an excellent resource to gain an understanding of Palestinian behavior during peace talks, deterioration in peace-making efforts, the resulting radicalization, and the growing tendency towards violence.

Drawing on first-hand materials collected from the Chinese and Japanese literature as well as interviews with more than twenty filmmakers and scholars Kinnia Shuk-ting Yau provides a solid historical account of the complex interactions between Japanese and Hong Kong film industries from the 1930s to 1970s.

The author describes in detail how Japan s efforts during the 1930s and 1940s to produce a "Greater East Asian cinema" led to many different kinds of collaborations between the filmmakers from China, Hong Kong and Japan, and how such development had laid the foundation for more exchanges between the cinemas in the post-war period. The period covered by the book is the least understood period of the East Asian film history. Filling the gaps surrounding one of the most important but least understood periods of Asian film history this books discusses facts and resources once obscured by controversial issues related to wartime affairs with new insights and perspectives.

This book is an invaluable source of information for understanding how the current East Asian film networks came into existence by looking beyond conventional single-case studies and adopting a transnational perspective in tracing the connections between different film industries.