Driven by the need to identify, classify and assess western technology and culture together with a desire to advance a dialogue for reviewing the so-called 'unequal treaties' - the new Meiji government of 1868 despatched a top-level ministerial team to the west which, in 1872, arrived in the United States. In all, they spent 205 days in America, 122 days in Britain and two months in France, as well as visiting other countries including Belgium, Germany, Russia, Sweden and Italy.

Drawing on the papers given at the triennial conference of the European Association of Japanese Studies, held in Budapest in August 1997 (the year also marking the 125th anniversary of Iwakura's arrival), this volume presents a valuable new overview of the mission as a whole, with the significance and impact of the visit to each country being separately assessed. A supplement to the book looks at several 'post-Iwakura' topics, including a review of the mission's chief chronicler, Kume Kunitake.

This book examines the strategic interactions among China, the United States, Japan, and Southeast Asian States in the context of China s rise and globalization after the cold war. Engaging the mainstream theoretical debates in international relations, the author introduces a new theoretical framework institutional realism to explain the institutionalization of world politics in the Asia-Pacific after the cold war.

Institutional realism suggests that deepening economic interdependence creates a condition under which states are more likely to conduct a new balancing strategy institutional balancing, i.e., countering pressures or threats through initiating, utilizing, and dominating multilateral institutions to pursue security under anarchy. To test the validity of institutional realism, Kai He examines the foreign policies of the U.S., Japan, the ASEAN states, and China toward four major multilateral institutions, Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC), the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Regional Forum (ARF), ASEAN Plus Three (APT), and East Asian Summit (EAS). Challenging the popular pessimistic view regarding China s rise, the book concludes that economic interdependence and structural constraints may well soften the "dragon s teeth." China s rise does not mean a dark future for the region.

Institutional Balancing in the Asia Pacific will be of great interest to policy makers and scholars of Asian security, international relations, Chinese foreign policy, and U.S. foreign policy.

The history of Chinese medicine hinges on three major turning points: the formation of canonical theory in the Han dynasty; the transformation of medicine via the integration of earlier medical theories and practices in the Song dynasty; and the impact of Western medicine from the nineteenth century onwards. This book offers a comprehensive overview of the crucial second stage in the evolution of Chinese medicine by examining the changes in Chinese medicine during the pivotal era of the Northern Song dynasty (960-1127).

Scholars often characterize the Northern Song era as a time of change in every aspect of political, social, intellectual or economic life. More specifically it focuses on three narratives of change:

• the emperor's interest in medicine elevated the status of medicine in the eyes of the elite, leading to an increased involvement of intellectuals and the literary elite in medicine
• government officials systematically revised, printed, and promulgated earlier heterogeneous medical manuscripts belonging to various traditions
• the government established unique imperially sponsored medical institutions to handle public health and other aspects of medicine.

As the first book to study the transformation medicine underwent during the Northern Song period this volume will appeal to Sinologists and scholars of the history of medicine alike.

This is the first explanation and evaluation of Taiwan's defence forces and infrastructure. It examines not only Taiwan's armed forces, but also its Ministry of National Defence, personnel issues, and civil-military relations.

This book provides crucial base-line data and evaluation of one of the major participants in an ongoing crisis across the Taiwan Strait that has the potential of involving China and the United States in armed conflict. It examines the danger of a possibly nuclear conflict between China and the United States which would seriously disrupt all of East Asia. It also shows how Taiwan's defence policies and actions do not match the threat - Taipei needs to develop and pursue realistic policies.

This is essential reading for all students of East Asian security and Sino-American relations and of international and security studies in general.

China's stunning record of economic development since the 1970s has been marred by an increasingly obvious gap between the country's 'haves' and its 'have-nots'. While people living in some parts of the country have enjoyed dramatically improved conditions of life, those in other districts and regions have slipped ever further behind in terms of access to health, wealth, education, security and opportunity. Paying for Progress in China is a collection of essays which trace the causes of this growing inequality, using new data including surveys, interviews, newly available official statistics and in-depth fieldwork. Their findings expose the malfunctioning of China's 'broken' intergovernmental fiscal system, which has exacerbated the disequalizing effects of emerging market forces. Whilst the government's deliberately 'pro-poor' development policies have in recent years sought to reduce the gap between rich and poor, both markets, and also state institutions and policies, are continuing to create perverse equity outcomes across the country, confounding hopes for better-balanced and more inclusive growth in China. The interdisciplinary approach of this collection, incorporating work by economists, sociologists and political scientists, makes it a valuable resource for students of contemporary Chinese political economy and social development.

The articles in this collection indicate the still powerful role of queer theory in questioning the political, social, cultural, institutional hegemony of heterosexuality in culture and society at large as well as in academic research institutions. Written from the perspective of the northern European periphery, Queering Norway specifically reflects the challenges queer theory poses for ways of thinking about sexuality and identity in Norway. At the same time, the questions raised in the articles have wide relevance. From within their various fields (sociology, anthropology, ethnology, archeology, linguistics, psychology, media studies and religious studies) the writers attempt to develop a language enabling them to recognize the multiple social relations possible in contemporary societies, a language in which neither "queer" nor "homosexual" ousts the other, but in which the goal is to work, read, and write in the in-between spaces where no single difference is elevated above any other. This book was published as a special issue of the Journal of Homosexuality.

In May 1998 the fall of Suharto marked the beginning of a difficult and multi-layered transition process. It was accompanied by intensified conflict in the political arena, a dramatic increase of ethnic and religious violence and the danger of national disintegration. Ten years after the collapse of the New Order, Indonesia has made significant progress, however the quality of democracy is still low. Theoretically innovative and empirically sound, this book is an in-depth analysis of the Indonesian reform process since 1998. Marco Bunte and Andreas Ufen bring together a selection of noted Indonesia experts to provide new insights into the restructuring of core state institutions, the empowerment of Parliament, the slow and difficult evolution of the rule of law, and the transfer of power to locally elected regional governments (decentralization). Based on the results of extensive fieldwork, Democratization in Post-Suharto Indonesia will be an important read for scholars engaged in research on Indonesia and the politics of Southeast Asia.

The idea of 'national identity' is an ambiguous one for Hong Kong. Returned to the national embrace of China on 1 July 1997 after 150 years as a British colony, the concept of national identity and what it means to "belong to a nation" is a matter of great tension and contestation in Hong Kong. Written by three academic specialists on Hong Kong cultural identity, social history, and mass media, this book explores the processes through which the people of Hong Kong are "learning to belong to a nation" by examining their relationship with the Chinese nation and state in the recent past, present, and future. It considers the complex meanings of and debates over national identity in Hong Kong over the past fifty years and especially during the last decade following Hong Kong's return to China. It also places these arguments within a larger, global perspective, to ask what Hong Kong can teach us about national identity and its potential transformations. Multidisciplinary in its approach, Hong Kong and China explores national identity in terms of theory, mass media, survey date, ethnography and history, and will appeal to students and scholars of Chinese history, cultural studies, and nationalism.

Tavistock Press was established as a co-operative venture between the Tavistock Institute and Routledge & Kegan Paul (RKP) in the 1950s to produce a series of major contributions across the social sciences.
This volume is part of a 2001 reissue of a selection of those important works which have since gone out of print, or are difficult to locate. Published by Routledge, 112 volumes in total are being brought together under the name The International Behavioural and Social Sciences Library: Classics from the Tavistock Press.
Reproduced here in facsimile, this volume was originally published in 1965 and is available individually. The collection is also available in a number of themed mini-sets of between 5 and 13 volumes, or as a complete collection.

This new work surveys how rapid changes taking place at the start of the twenty-first century in social, cultural, political and economic domains impact on sexuality, health and human rights. The relationships between men, women and children are changing quickly, as are traditional family structures and gender norms. What were once viewed as private matters have become public, and an array of new social movements - transgender, intersex, sex worker, people living with HIV - have come into the open. The book is split into three sections: Global 'Sex' Wars - discusses the notion of sexualities, its political landscapes internationally, and the return of religious fervour and extremism Epistemological Challenges and Research Agendas - examines modern 'scientific' understandings of sexuality, its history and the way in which AIDS has drawn attention to sexuality The Promises and Limits of Sexual Rights - discusses human rights approaches to sexuality, their strengths and limitations and new ways of imagining erotic justice Offering a unique framework for understanding this new world, set in the context of the major theoretical debates of recent decades, this book will be of interest to professionals, advocates and policy researchers and is suitable for a wide range of courses covering areas such as gender studies, human sexuality, public health and social policy.

This new work surveys how rapid changes taking place at the start of the twenty-first century in social, cultural, political and economic domains impact on sexuality, health and human rights. The relationships between men, women and children are changing quickly, as are traditional family structures and gender norms. What were once viewed as private matters have become public, and an array of new social movements - transgender, intersex, sex worker, people living with HIV - have come into the open. The book is split into three sections: Global 'Sex' Wars - discusses the notion of sexualities, its political landscapes internationally, and the return of religious fervour and extremism Epistemological Challenges and Research Agendas - examines modern 'scientific' understandings of sexuality, its history and the way in which AIDS has drawn attention to sexuality The Promises and Limits of Sexual Rights - discusses human rights approaches to sexuality, their strengths and limitations and new ways of imagining erotic justice Offering a unique framework for understanding this new world, set in the context of the major theoretical debates of recent decades, this book will be of interest to professionals, advocates and policy researchers and is suitable for a wide range of courses covering areas such as gender studies, human sexuality, public health and social policy.

Around the time this book is being written the world is faced with threats of terrorism, random shootings in various public places on a global scale, increased school violence especially in the United States, increased racial, ethnic, and religious tension worldwide as well as global forced displacement of people due to violence and human rights violations. Given this context, this project turns attention to the problematic of the “uprootedness of the modern man� in our age of technological advancement, globalization, and distraction. It introduces an innovative perspective to the study of communication ethics and the larger field of communication studies through an aesthetic ecology framework. The concept of aesthetic ecology refers to an environment that involves material, conceptual, and contemplative elements that are part of the ongoing dialogue between our sensuous and interpretive engagements in/with the world. Each chapter of this book explores an aspect of this aesthetic ecology in facilitating existential rootedness in connection to communication ethics.

Like any goal-oriented procedure, experiment is subject to many kinds of failures. These failures have a variety of features, depending on the particulars of their sources. For the experimenter these pitfalls should be avoided and their effects minimized. For the historian-philosopher of science and the science educator, on the other hand, they are instructive starting points for reflecting on science in general and scientific method and practice in particular. Often more is learned from failure than from confirmation and successful application. The identification of error, its source, its context, and its treatment shed light on both practices and epistemic claims. This book shows that it is fruitful to bring to light forgotten and lost failures, subject them to analysis and learn from their moral. The study of failures, errors, pitfalls and mistakes helps us understand the way knowledge is pursued and indeed generated. The book presents both historical accounts and philosophical analyses of failures in experimental practice. It covers topics such as "error as an object of study," "learning from error," "concepts and dead ends," "instrumental artifacts," and "surprise and puzzlement."

This book will be of interest to historians, philosophers, and sociologists of science as well as to practicing scientists and science educators.

This book examines entrepreneurship and small business in Russia and key countries of Eastern Europe, showing how far small businesses have developed, and discusses how far 'market reforms' and a market mentality have been taken up by ordinary people in the real everyday economy. For each of the countries examined - Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Poland and Estonia - the book reviews the progress of market reforms within the wider context of social and economic transformation, surveys the development of entrepreneurship and small firms so far, and assesses the role of government in the process, and the strengths and weaknesses of the small business sector.

Globalization, European integration, and social change have devaluated traditional social democratic policy instruments. This book compares and explores how social democratic governments have had to adapt and whether they have successfully managed to uphold old social democratic goals and values in the light of these challenges. This volume examines the policy measures of social democratic parties in government in a comparative framework. The authors focus on traditional social democratic goals and tools, in particular, fiscal, employment, and social policy, in the United Kingdom, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden, and Denmark. They identify three policy patterns in social democratic governments: traditional, modernized, and liberalized social democracy and provide a comparative account of the explanatory power of the national context for policy adopted by social democratic parties. Finally, the extent to which social democratic parties have been able to use the European Union as a political space for social democratic governance and policy-making is examined. Social Democracy in Power will be of interest to students and scholars of politics, comparative politics, European studies and public policy.

This book offers an introduction to politics in three Southern European countries, providing a comparative case study analysis of why democratization outcomes vary across them.

One of the important questions that social scientists continue to struggle to answer is the question of why some countries manage to convert themselves from authoritarian rule to stable, fully functioning democracies and others do not. The three countries chosen for analysis represent a wide array of democratization experiences: Italy, with its slow, uncertain start at democratizing after the Second World War; Spain with its remarkably speedy conversion from a seemingly stable authoritarian to stable democratic regime; and Turkey with its extremely slow and - as of yet - still incomplete democratic transition. In contrast to the different types of outcomes these regimes have all experienced, they have shared many common features.

Democratization in Southern Europe examines potential variables, including: problems with stateness, previous experience with democracy, the process of creating constitutions and other important rules, and the structure and functioning of institutions within these countries - with a focus on explaining differences in democratic consolidation and providing an analysis of the likely impact of each.

This volume provides the theoretical, methodological, and praxis-driven issues in research on interpretive, critical, and cultural approaches to health communication. It includes an international collection of contributors, and highlights non-traditional (non-Western) perspectives on health communication.

The Munda group of languages of the Austroasiatic family are spoken by so-called 'tribals' in central and eastern India. They are the least well-known and most poorly documented languages of the Indian subcontinent. This work - unprecedented and original - draws together a distinguished group of international experts in the field of Munda language research, presents current assessments of a wide range of typological and comparative-historical issues, and offers agendas for future research. Never before has there been the real possibility of putting together a volume such as this one, for there is now greater interest in the Munda languages than ever before, and good descriptions of almost all of the languages in the family can now be offered, as well as broader studies on such topics as the typology or historical phonology of the Munda language family, and how Munda fits in the greater South Asian linguistic area.
The Munda language family is old in eastern and central India - older than the Dravidian and Indo-Aryan languages now found in their territory. The ancestor language of Proto-Munda and the cognate Mon-Khmer (Khmer-Nicobar) languages, viz. Proto-Austroasiatic, is at least as ancient as Proto-Indo-European, and is as important culturally and archaeologically for Southeast Asia, South China and eastern India, as Proto-Indo-European is for its part of the world.
The Munda Languages consists of 21 chapters, and Introductory Chapter and a Preface. The book is divided into three parts. Part I presents synchronic descriptions of the eleven main Munda languages. Part II offers a range of sociolinguistic and literary/philological studies of the Munda languages, while Part IIIdiscusses an array of typological, a real, and comparative-historical topics in current Munda linguistics, presenting an assessment of past successes (and failures) in these domains, the status of current work, and suggested paths for future research.

The end of communism and accession to the European Union have had a huge impact on Poland. This book provides an overall assessment of the post-1989 transformation in Poland. It focuses in particular on four key themes: economic transformation and its outcomes; the heritage of the past and national identity; regional development in Poland including the implications of EU accession for regional development; and political developments both before and after EU accession. In addition the book shows how changes in all these areas are related, and emphasises the overall common themes. The book is in memory of George Blazyca, of the University of Paisley, whose work on the political economy of transition in Poland is highly regarded, and who did a great deal to support the work of Polish academic colleagues and to promote the work of young scholars.

Religious procession is a significant dimension of religion in South Asia. Processions are central not only in Hinduism, but also Islam, Christianity, Jainism and Sikhism, which have large procession rituals. The last years have seen an increase in processions and ritualizations of space both in South Asia and in the South Asian Diaspora. Processions are religious display events and the increase in processions are functions of religious pluralism and competition about public space as well as economic prosperity and a revival of religious identities. Processions often bring together religion and politics since they are about public space, domination and contestation. Written by leading specialists on religious processions and ritualization of public space in South Asia and in the Diaspora, this volume presents current research on the interpretations of the role of processions, the recent increase in processions and changes in the procession traditions. South Asian Religions on Display will appeal to students and scholars of Asian studies, anthropology, religion and political science.

With the unleashing of the "War on Terror" in the aftermath of 9/11, Afghanistan has become prominent in the news. However, we need to appreciate that no substantive understanding of contemporary history, politics and society of this country can be achieved without a thorough analysis of the Afghan encounter with cultural and literary modernity and modernization. Modern Persian Literature in Afghanistan does just that. The book offers a balanced and interdisciplinary analysis of the rich and admirable contemporary poetry and fiction of a land long tormented by wars and invasions. It sets out to demonstrate that, within the trajectory of the union between modern aesthetic imagination and politics, creativity and production, and representation and history, the modernist intervention enabled many contemporary poets and writers of fiction to resist the overt politicization of the literary field, without evading politics or disavowing the modern state. The interpretative moves and nuanced readings of a series of literary texts make this book a major contribution to a rather neglected area of research and study. Winner of the Iranian World Prize for Book of the Year in Islamics Studies 2009

Despite its recent rapid economic growth, China's political system has remained resolutely authoritarian. However, an increasingly open economy is creating the infrastructure for an open society, with the rise of a non-state sector in which a private economy, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and different forms of social forces are playing an increasingly powerful role in facilitating political change and promoting good governance. This book examines the development of the non-state sector and NGOs in China since the onset of reform in the late 1970s. It explores the major issues facing the non-state sector in China today, assesses the institutional barriers that are faced by its developing civil society, and compares China's example with wider international experience. It shows how the 'get-rich-quick' ethos of the Deng Xiaoping and Jiang Zemin years, that prioritised rapid GDP growth above all else, has given way under the Jiantao Hu regime to a renewed concern with social reforms, in areas such as welfare, medical care, education, and public transportation. It demonstrates how this change has led to encouragement by the Hu government of the development of the non-state sector as a means to perform regulatory functions and to achieve effective provision of public and social services. It explores the tension between the government's desire to keep the NGOs as "helping hands' rather than as autonomous, independent organizations, and their ability to perform these roles successfully.

This book examines the relationship between the Russian Communist Party and the Russian working class between 1920-24, immediately after the civil war and during the first years of the New Economic Policy (NEP).

Based on extensive original research, which casts much new light on this period, both from the perspective of the rank and file as well as the leadership, the book discusses working-class collective action in 1920, workers' responses to the 1921 crisis, including the Kronstadt revolt, and the successes of the non-party workers' movement in the elections of 1921. It shows how during and after the 1921 crisis the working class was politically expropriated by the Bolshevik party, and how democratic forms such as soviets and factory committees were deprived of decision-making power. Simon Pirani examines how during this period the Soviet ruling class began to take shape, preferring in 1922-23 mass mobilization campaigns in which workers remained politically passive, rather than the participatory mass democracy which had flourished in 1917. The Russian Revolution in Retreat, 1920-24 shows how, whilst some people argued that the principles of 1917 had been betrayed, others accepted a social contract under which workers were assured of improvements in living standards in exchange for increased labour discipline and productivity, and a surrender of political power, with political power becoming concentrated in the party, and, increasingly, in the party elite.

Pulling Newspapers Apart: Analysing Print Journalism explores contemporary UK national and local newspapers at a significant and pivotal moment in their development when some pundits are busily, if mistakenly, announcing their demise. The book offers a detailed examination of features which previous studies have tended to neglect, such as editorial formats (News, Op Ed pages, readers' letters, cartoons, obituaries, advice columns, features and opinion columns), aspects of newspaper design (page layout, photographs, supplements, online editions, headlines, the emergence of the compact and Berliner editions), newspaper contents (sport, sex and Page 3, royalty, crime, moral panics and politics) as well as the content of newspapers which is not generated by in house journalists (advertising, TV listings, horoscopes, agency copy and public relations materials). This innovative and accessibly written collection provides journalism and media students with an invaluable study of newspapers in the digital age.

This volume provides a comprehensive overview of the contemporary Maghreb. Made up of contributions from leading academics in the field, it highlights specific issues of importance, including international and security affairs.

With profiles of individual countries and regional issues, such as migration, gender, integration, economics, and war in Western Sahara, as well as a section dealing with international relations and the Maghreb, including US and EU foreign policy and security issues, North Africa: Politics, Region, and the Limits of Transformation is a major resource for all students of Middle Eastern Studies and North African Politics.