After the final collapse of the Soviet Union, the so-called 'last empire', in 1991, the countries of Central Asia - Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan - and of the Caucasus - Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia - became independent nations. These countries, previously production centres under the socialist planning system of the Soviet Union, have made enormous economic adjustments in order to develop - or attempt to develop - along capitalist lines. As this study will show, however, inequality in Central Asia and the Caucasus is widening, as the Soviet systems of healthcare and state provisions disappear. Rejecting the Cold War-era East/West paradigm often used to analyse the development of these nations, this study analyses development along the North-South lines which characterise the migration patterns and poverty levels of much of the rest of the developed world. This opens up new avenues of research, and helps us understand why it is, for instance, that this region is better characterised as a 'new South' - as skilled workers flood out of the territories and into Russia and Western Europe. Development in Central Asia and the Caucasus draws together detailed analyses of the development of migration economics as the region's oil wealth further enhances its strategic and economic importance to Russia, the US, the Middle East and to the EU.

Entrepreneurs engaging in international business face business environments that are fundamentally different from their home countries. Despite decades of entrepreneurship research, we know little about these entrepreneurs and their strategic behaviour in establishing and managing transnational operations. This book applies an institutional perspective on transnational entrepreneurship to empirical investigations of transnational corporations (TNCs) from Hong Kong and Singapore. Henry Wai-chung Yeung argues that significant variations in institutional structures of home countries explain variations in the entrepreneurial endowments of prospective transnational business networks. This is illustrated by empirical data from two in-depth studies of over 300 TNCs from Hong Kong and Singapore and over 120 of their foreign affiliates in Asia. Entrepreneurship and the Internationalisation of Asian Firms is a timely contribution to theoretical and empirical studies in international business and will be widely read by those interested in international business, industrial economics, organisation studies, political economy, regional studies and economic geography.

Japan has succeeded in many industries through its renowned production system. Competitive advantage, however, in the new economy is shifting from production to demand-based capabilities. One such new industry is pharmaceuticals, where Japan has been a resounding failure, both from public policy and corporate strategy perspectives. This book provides a detailed examination of how Japan has socially constructed its pharmaceutical industry, the economic and political bases of this construction and the consequences for corporate innovation and performance.Perhaps the starkest indication of this failure of Japanese public policy is the emergence of a new drug lag in that nation. Almost 90 percent of recent important new drugs are unavailable in Japan, despite their widespread diffusion throughout the rest of the world. Analysis of this drug lag confirms that it is not due to government discrimination against Western firms, but rather is only one of many consequences of failed Japanese industrial policies. The author presents an analysis of the nature, causes and consequences of the new drug lag in Japan. He contrasts the problem with the one experienced in the US and looks at the powerful role played by domestic politics in shaping the pharmaceutical industry. The last chapters look at the various remedies available. Academics, experts in government and industry, researchers and students of industrial policy, economics, public health and trade policy will find the examination of this important industry both informative and enlightening.

What are the origins and solutions of Africa's civil conflicts? Putting straight answers to this question, the origins of Africa's civil conflicts are the very corrupt politicians who think that members of the civil society are at their mercy and can do nothing to stop their lootings and unfairness. They buy houses overseas to send their children there to study, including transferring money into foreign bank accounts, leaving their people to perish, state schools and hospitals in their countries to impoverish. This happens in all African countries, including Sierra Leone, where politicians have refused to get it right. One government politician was to be appointed minister of Foreign Affairs and International Corporation in Sierra Leone, but he told the Parliamentary Committee that his credentials to substantiate his CV were to be faxed by his son from London in UK, indicating that although the politician attends Sierra Leone parliament, his family lives and supports their living expenses in UK, not in Sierra Leone. Is that fair on common Sierra Leoneans who pay the taxes he lavishes on his family abroad? The population statistics has since been falsified to create more voting constituencies in the Northern Province for political gains and vote riggings. To be honest, current politicians in my country are busy planting the second phase of civil unrest that may lead to another bloody civil war, and I will not keep my mouth shut but alert the world in this book. Mohamed Sannoh, Methodist Boys' High School, Freetown Mohamed Sannoh is also the author of Mastering Business Administration in Education and African Politics (the Sierra Leone Chapter).

The 1994 Zapatista uprising of Chiapas' Maya peoples against the Mexican government shattered the state myth that indigenous groups have been successfully assimilated into the nation. In this wide-ranging study of identity formation in Chiapas, Aida Hernandez delves into the experience of a Maya group, the Mam, to analyze how Chiapas' indigenous peoples have in fact rejected, accepted, or negotiated the official discourse on "being Mexican" and participating in the construction of a Mexican national identity.

Hernandez traces the complex relations between the Mam and the national government from 1934 to the Zapatista rebellion. She investigates the many policies and modernization projects through which the state has attempted to impose a Mexican identity on the Mam and shows how this Maya group has resisted or accommodated these efforts. In particular, she explores how changing religious affiliation, women's and ecological movements, economic globalization, state policies, and the Zapatista movement have all given rise to various ways of "being Mam" and considers what these indigenous identities may mean for the future of the Mexican nation. The Spanish version of this book won the 1997 Fray Bernardino de Sahagun national prize for the best social anthropology research in Mexico.

"The American Negro," Arthur Schomburg wrote in 1925, "must remake his past in order to make his future." Many Harlem Renaissance figures agreed that reframing the black folk inheritance could play a major role in imagining a new future of racial equality and artistic freedom. In "Deep River "Paul Allen Anderson focuses on the role of African American folk music in the Renaissance aesthetic and in political debates about racial performance, social memory, and national identity.
"Deep River" elucidates how spirituals, African American concert music, the blues, and jazz became symbolic sites of social memory and anticipation during the Harlem Renaissance. Anderson traces the roots of this period's debates about music to the American and European tours of the Fisk Jubilee Singers in the 1870s and to W. E. B. Du Bois's influential writings at the turn of the century about folk culture and its bearing on racial progress and national identity. He details how musical idioms spoke to contrasting visions of New Negro art, folk authenticity, and modernist cosmopolitanism in the works of Du Bois, Alain Locke, Zora Neale Hurston, Langston Hughes, Jean Toomer, Sterling Brown, Roland Hayes, Paul Robeson, Carl Van Vechten, and others. In addition to revisiting the place of music in the culture wars of the 1920s, "Deep River "provides fresh perspectives on the aesthetics of race and the politics of music in Popular Front and Swing Era music criticism, African American critical theory, and contemporary musicology.
"Deep River "offers a sophisticated historical account of American racial ideologies and their function in music criticism and modernist thought. It will interest general readers as well as students of African American studies, American studies, intellectual history, musicology, and literature.

The East Asian crisis has sparked debate regarding the future of emerging markets and the globalization of world capital markets. This book, with contributions by leading economists and political scientists, provides an up-to-date assessment of the causes and consequences of the crisis and the policy lessons drawn from it. In contrast to much of the existing literature, the volume presents the view that the crisis and its aftermath were not simply the result of purely economic and financial phenomena but also the reflection of some fundamental institutional, historical and political forces. The collection begins with a comparative and historical analysis of the crisis, placing it in the context of other financial and debt crises. This is followed by a discussion of the domestic, political and economic factors behind the events, delineating the differences and similarities among affected countries. The contributors also examine how global political forces influenced the unfolding crisis in various countries. Using the latest data, top experts present the current economic situation in East Asia, the contagion effects in the rest of the world, and the role played by international institutions such as the IMF. Finally, the volume provides a roundtable debate on the policy alternatives confronting emerging markets and the world monetary system in the aftermath of the crisis. Students, professional economists in academia and the private sector, scholars and students in finance, Asian studies specialists, and political scientists will all find this collection insightful and informative.

This volume presents state-of-the-art creative scholarship in political science and area studies with an emphasis on Russia. The contributors, all well-known in their specialties, share the conviction that advancement in the social sciences can only be achieved through plural methodological approaches and interaction with various disciplines. Their work in this collection provides critical analyses of key issues in Russian and post-Soviet studies. It explores the most fruitful ways of studying Russia with particular emphasis on the federal system, politics in the era of Putin, challenges of Russian foreign policy, and Russian attitudes toward democracy. The vagaries of democracy are also explored in articles on Georgia and Turkey. Additionally, this book examines the philosophy of technology with an emphasis on critical theory, eco-domination, and engineering ethics.

This book analyzes how the Second International reacted to international diplomatic crises and what was the attitude of French, German and Italian socialists between 1889 and 1915, the year in which Italy entered the World War. This book shows that the Second International became over the years more and more involved in the fight against war and learnt to respond to situations of diplomatic crisis. An example of this is the fact that its last congress before the outbreak of the First World War, the Basel Congress of 1912, was nothing less than a great international socialist demonstration of opposition to war. However, the fact that France, Germany or Italy were involved in a diplomatic crisis hindered the International's ability to respond effectively to it. For all these factors, the attitude of the International is very different from one crisis to another.

This book explores Native American literary responses to biomedical discourses and biomedicalization processes as they circulate in social and cultural contexts. Native American communities resist reductivism of biomedicine that excludes Indigenous (and non-Western) epistemologies and instead draw attention to how illness, healing, treatment, and genetic research are socially constructed and dependent on inherently racialist thinking. This volume highlights how interventions into the hegemony of biomedicine are vigorously addressed in Native American literature. The book covers tuberculosis and diabetes epidemics, the emergence of Native American DNA, discoveries in biotechnology, and the problematics of a biomedical model of psychiatry. The book analyzes work by Louise Erdrich, Sherman Alexie, LeAnne Howe, Linda Hogan, Heid E. Erdrich, Elissa Washuta and Frances Washburn. The book will appeal to scholars of Native American and Indigenous Studies, as well as to others with an interest in literature and medicine.

The transitional politics of Eurasian space is marked by a constant struggle among three sets of ideas and institutions: the first is the remarkable resilience of Soviet ideas and institutions; second, an attempt by the regimes of these states to reinvent the historical and cultural traditions of pre-Soviet periods; and third is an attempt by a section of the powerful elite to superimpose Western liberal ideas and institutions. There is a strange intertwining of these ideas and institutions. This book examines the extent to which the post-Soviet politics has departed from the Soviet one. What are the new ideational structures emerging in these states and how far have they crystallised into institutions? What are the external influences which are shaping the institutions in the Eurasian space? And finally, what are the various dynamics of geopolitics in this region? Experts from various countries will delve into the shifting dynamics of Eurasian politics.

What did it mean to be a Soviet citizen in the 1970s and 1980s? How can we explain the liberalization that preceded the collapse of the USSR? This period in Soviet history is often depicted as stagnant with stultified institutions and the oppression of socialist citizens. However, the socialist state was not simply an oppressive institution that dictated how to live and what to think-it also responded to and was shaped by individuals' needs. In Soviet Society in the Era of Late Socialism, 1964-85, Neringa Klumbyte and Gulnaz Sharafutdinova bring together scholarship examining the social and cultural life of the USSR and Eastern Europe from 1964 to 1985. This interdisciplinary and comparative study explores topics such as the Soviet middle class, individualism, sexuality, health, late-socialist ethics, and civic participation. Examining this often overlooked era provides the historical context for all post-socialist political, economic, and social developments.

This two-volume set investigates the concept, institutionalization, models and mechanism of mediation, an important form of alternative dispute resolution within China’s legal system. Grounded in traditional dispute resolution practices throughout Chinese history, mediation is born out of the Chinese legal tradition and considered to be “Eastern� in nature. Seeking to explore how mediation has developed in order to function in a modernized society, the first volume looks into the legal foundations of Chinese mediation as well as paths to the institutionalization and professionalization of mediation. The second volume examines the development of diversified dispute resolution via the elucidation of eight major types of mediation in China. By reviewing its history and enquiring into trends and prospects, the authors seek to establish a mediation system that incorporates diversified models, institutionalized and noninstitutionalized approaches, changing contexts, and a range of dimensions for society. This title will serve as a crucial reference for scholars, students and related professionals interested in alternative dispute resolution, civil litigation, and especially China’s dispute resolution policy, law, and practice.

How have employment relations evolved over the last decade? And how did workplaces and employees fare in the face of the longest recession in living memory? Employment Relations in the Shadow of Recession examines the state of British employment relations in 2011, how this has changed since 2004, and the role the recession played in shaping employees' experiences of work. It draws on findings from the 2011 Workplace Employment Relations Study, comparing these with the results of the previous study conducted in 2004. These surveys - each collecting responses from around 2,500 workplace managers, 1,000 employee representatives and over 20,000 employees - provide the most comprehensive portrait available of workplace employment relations in Britain. The book provides an in-depth analysis of the changes made to employment practices through the recession and of the impact that the economic downturn had on the shape and character of the employment relationship.

Considering the history of workers' and socialist movements in Europe, Frontier Socialism focuses on unconventional forms of anti-capitalist thought, particularly by examining several militant-intellectuals whose legacy is of particular interest for those aiming for a radical critique of capitalism. Following on the work of Michael Loewy, Quirico & Ragona identify relationships of "elective affinity" between figures who might appear different and dissimilar, at least at first glance: the German Anarchist Gustav Landauer, the Bolshevik Alexandra Kollontai, the German communist Paul Mattick, the Italian Socialist Raniero Panzieri, the Greek-born French euro-communist Nikos Poulantzas, the German-born Swedish Social Democrat Rudolf Meidner, and the French social scientist Alain Bihr as well as two historical struggle experiences, the Spanish Republic and the Italian revolutionary group "Lotta continua". Frontier Socialism then analyzes these thinkers' and experiences' respective paths to socialism based on and achieved through self-organization and self-government, not to build a new tradition but to suggest a path forward for both research and political activism.

"Adam Habib is the right person to have undertaken the task that has issued in this book, which he describes as 'a culmination of at least two decades of debates, reflections and thoughts about resistance in South Africa, its political and socio-economic evolution, and the conundrums and dilemmas relating to the making of this society.' (p. ix) He has managed 'to bridge academic and public discourse' (p. x) while speaking truth to power...Habib's book offers a clear narrative, accessible academic analysis and a fair report on the state of the nation." -African Studies Quarterly South Africa's Suspended Revolution tells the story of South Africa's democratic transition and the prospects for the country to develop a truly inclusive political system. Beginning with an account of the transition in the leadership of the African National Congress from Thabo Mbeki to Jacob Zuma, the book then broadens its lens to examine the relationship of South Africa's political elite to its citizens. It also examines the evolution of economic and social policies through the democratic transition, as well as the development of a postapartheid business community and a foreign policy designed to re-engage South Africa with the world community. Written by one of South Africa's leading scholars and political commentators, the book combines historical and contemporary analysis with strategies for an alternative political agenda. Adam Habib connects the lessons of the South African experience with theories of democratic transition, social change, and conflict resolution. Political leaders, scholars, students, and activists will all find material here to deepen their understanding of the challenges and opportunities of contemporary South Africa.