New Perspectives on Russian-American Relations includes eighteen articles on Russian-American relations from an international roster of leading historians. Covering topics such as trade, diplomacy, art, war, public opinion, race, culture, and more, the essays show how the two nations related to one another across time from their first interactions as nations in the eighteenth century to now. Instead of being dominated by the narrative of the Cold War, New Perspectives on Russian-American Relations models the exciting new scholarship that covers more than the political and diplomatic worlds of the later twentieth century and provides scholars with a wide array of the newest research in the field.

This Handbook showcases the rich varieties of legislatures that exist in Asia and explains how political power is constituted in seventeen jurisdictions in East, Southeast and South Asia. Legislatures in Asia come in all stripes. Liberal democracies co-exist cheek by jowl with autocracies; semi-democratic and competitive authoritarian systems abound. While all legislatures exist to make law and confer legitimacy on the political leadership, how representative they are of the people they govern differs dramatically across the continent, such that it is impossible to identify a common Asian prototype. Divided into thematic and country-by-country sections, this handbook is a one-stop reference that surveys the range of political systems operating in Asia. Each jurisdiction chapter examines the structure and composition of its legislature, the powers of the legislature, the legislative process, thereby providing a clear picture of how each legislature operates both in theory and in practice. The book also thematically analyses the following political systems operating in Asia: communist regimes, liberal democracies, dominant party democracies, turbulent democracies, presidential democracies, military regimes, and protean authoritarian rule. This handbook is a vital and comprehensive resource for scholars of constitutional law and politics in Asia.

This book studies N�tha samprad�ya through archaeological evidence for the first time. Drawing on a pioneering approach to the study of ascetic traditions, it investigates not only the nature of the N�tha samprad�ya’s religious architecture but also examines the extent to which they shared space with other religious groups such as the devotees of Siva and Sakti, Buddhism, and Islam, especially with the Sufi tradition. Focusing on western India, the book sifts through a variety of archaeological evidence and documentation of their temples, caves, and maṭhas. It critically analyses iconographic representations of ascetics on temple walls and sculptural representations of yogic postures or �sanas. Further, these representations are discussed within a pan-South Asian framework to highlight both the commonalities of the tradition across the subcontinent and the regional specificities, along with their chronological spread. Breaking new ground, this volume will be of great interest to scholars and researchers of religion, especially Hinduism, history, archaeology, and South Asian studies.

This book critically discusses the vulnerabilities and local adaptation actions of the traditional marine fishers of the tsunami-hit coastal regions of South India to climate change and risks, with an emphasis on their local institutions. Thereby, it offers a comprehensive account of the ways in which marine fishers live and respond to climate change. The Coromandel coastal regions of South India are known for their rich sociocultural history and enormous marine resources, as well as their long history of vulnerability to climate change and disasters, including the 2004 tsunami. By drawing cases from the tsunami-hit fishing villages of this coast, this book demonstrates that indigenous knowledge systems, climate change perceptions, sociocultural norms, and governance systems of the fishers influence and contest the local adaptation responses to climate change. By foregrounding the real picture of vulnerability and adaptation actions of marine fishers in the face of climate change and disasters, this book also challenges the conventional understanding of local institutions and fishers' knowledge systems. Underlining that adaptation to climate change is a sociopolitical process, this book explores the potentials, limits, and complexities of local adaptation actions of marine fishers of this coast and offers novel insights and climate change lessons gleaned from the field to other coasts of India and around the world. This book will be of great interest to students, scholars, and policymakers in climate change, fisheries, environmental sociology, environmental anthropology, sustainable livelihoods, and natural resource management.

At Home With Ivan Vladislavic is the first comprehensive analysis of the works of Ivan Vladislavic. Bringing a flaneur's "internal GPS" to postcolonial Johannesburg, Vladislavic established a critical sense of home via an intimate knowledge of geography and history. This sense of belonging can have positive ecological effects as we tend to protect what we know. The flaneur's deep word hoard also helped him to develop a minimalist style, which was not only a means of living sustainably in the city, but in its humour and close attention to detail a way to make greening the city more of a joy than a duty. In this way, Vladislavic created a culture of sustainability.

This volume explores the inherent pluralism of Hinduism through ethnographic and philosophical evidence as presented in the Journal of Anthropological Society of Bombay. The essays dated 1886–1936 represent a period that marked the emergence of a European-educated native intelligentsia with a rationalist outlook. The chapters cover a wide range of topics from Tree Worship in Mohenjo Daro, the origin of the Hindu Trimurti, interpretation of Avestic and Vedic Texts, to the second set of more localized chapters that cover the Muhammadan Castes of Bengal, the Tenets and Practices of a Certain Class of Faqirs in Bengal, the Theoretical History of the Goddess Yellamma, and much more. Written during a particular historical as well as intellectual period that reflected certain key patterns – a period just following the Bengal Renaissance of the nineteenth century that ushered in the ideologies of a reformative Hinduism – this volume highlights how religions of all denominations have influenced each other and appear to have mingled beliefs and practices from multiple sources. It shows how tolerance and inclusiveness along with syncretism have been part of India’s religious and social history. This book will be of interest to students and researchers of religions, history, anthropology, sociology, political science, and sociology of religion. It will also be useful to those interested in inter-religious dialogues and civil society.

This book looks at India of the 1950s and 60s while it was still emerging from two centuries of colonial rule and striving to come together as a nation. It critically explores the history of nationalism and identity in Northeastern India, a region with diverse ethnolinguistic communities and people, through the personal history of the first Manipuri (Meitei) direct recruit in the Indian Administrative Services. The book weaves in autobiographical stories with the story of Northeast India, capturing its politics, socio-cultural distinctiveness and milieus that set the region apart from the rest of the country. It covers the career of the author in the IAS, serving in Manipur and Karnataka, with the Union Government, and finally as Secretary for the northeastern region. Through these, the book tells the story of a changing society, of a developing nation and a people on the move. It shows how borders and barriers were collapsing and being formed at the same time and how the country was dealing with it. The book is a unique and significant addition to the literature on Manipur; it deepens our understanding of the northeastern states and the complex interactions of the people of the region with the rest of India. Part of the Transitions in Northeastern India series, this book will be of great interest to researchers and scholars of modern history, sociology, social anthropology and postcolonial studies, particularly those concerned with India and Northeast India.

The book presents a critical and comparative analysis of the hydropolitical landscape of African transboundary river basins which, for much of the past century, have been affected by water scarcity. River and lake basins can become a source of tension and conflict due to a complicated mix of environmental, demographic, diplomatic, historical and geopolitical factors. This book, however, specifically focuses on the important, and often under looked, role played by scarcity in generating or exacerbating conflicts in shared river basins. Asserting that transboundary river basins tie states into a web of interdependence, this book raises awareness of how water scarcity, or the depletion of water resources, complicates this relationship as nations are forced to look beyond their own borders to meet the demand for water to satisfy multiple needs. Taking a comparative approach, it examines three shared basins: the Orange-Senqu, the Nile and the Niger River basins. While situated in different regions, all three basins are marked by serious environmental challenges that are detrimental to combustible hydropolitics over such shared water resources and they provide fascinating insights into the links between climate variability and change, water resources, human security, conflict, adaptation and regime capacity. Overall, this book argues that conflict over transboundary resources can be prevented given the establishment of norms, rules, and the role of external actors that help regulate state behaviour and control their impacts. This book will be of great interest to students and scholars of water resource management, hydropolitics, environmental conflict, resource scarcity and international relations. It will also be of interest to policymakers involved in transboundary water resource governance.

A prominent mystic and renowned anti-colonial warrior from Indonesia, Shaykh Yusuf of Macassar (1626-1699), was exiled to South Africa where he played a pioneering role in laying the foundations of Islam. Offering a rich translation of Shaykh Yusuf's Arabic writings, Spiritual Path, Spiritual Reality fills an important gap on the works devoted to the spiritual dimension in the Muslim intellectual archive. The introduction gives insight into his life and an understanding of how his mysticism was connected to his political engagement. Focusing on Islamic mysticism - known as Sufism - the volume covers areas of spiritual discipline of the self, metaphysics and gnostic knowledge. The style is pedagogical with an instructive tone in keeping with the Sufi path.

This book presents the socio-cultural and historical trajectories of the Deccan plateau as well as the coastal areas of the current states of Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra, Karnataka and Goa. It studies the art of diplomacy by discussing the diplomatic relations between the Marathas and various European companies, as well as the indigenous regional states. The author also probes into the Maratha naval policy, the evolution of a composite Deccani culture and the cultural flux that was taking place within the Maratha country. Through an interdisciplinary lens, the volume examines how caste and gender relations operated, how the idea of dissent was generated as well as the socio-political impact of various linguistic, ethnic and religious groups. Through a study of monuments, sculpture and paintings prevalent in the region, the book also discusses the developments in art and architecture in the Deccan. Rich in archival sources, this book is a must read for scholars and researchers of Indian history, colonial history, South Asian history, Maratha history and history in general.

This book makes a systematic attempt to explore the environmental history of Darjeeling during the British colonial period (1835-1947), which profoundly transformed the environment of Darjeeling by intro­ducing commercial control over the natural resources. After the foundation of Darjeeling as the hill station for the low-income groups of British administration living in Bengal and Burma, the place was transformed into a social, recreational and commercial centre for the British authorities. The railway construction boom, introduction of tea plantation, the growth of a commercial market for timber and increasing demands for fuel and building materials depleted the forest cover. The less explored regions of Darjeeling attracted the adventure-thirsty Britons. A series of investigations were made on the marketable prod­ucts, the condition of roads, and quality of soil of these regions. The ethnographic, geological, botanical and zoological study of the Darjeeling was started by the colonial officials in the nineteenth century. In the early stage of expansion of colonialism in Asia, Africa, Australia and South America, the European colonizers faced numerous problems in dealing with the untouched nature. The accumulation of the knowledge of surrounding regions and proper management of the labour became essential for the colonial authority for transformation of the existing environment of the densely forested tropical colonies. Taylor and Francis does not sell or distribute the print editions of this book in India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka.

This book sketches the history of political forces in modern India. It begins defining these political categories of left, right and far-right with the usual reference to French Revolution (for want of an indigenous equivalent), and discusses movement of forces towards left, or towards the right from the balance of socio-political forces or status quo at a point of time in India. It recalls historical facts, uses chronological order for clarity and leaders’ names and political parties, their world view and ideas of nation, social groups they represented, and their movements. It progresses by reopening only a few windows to modern Indian history and looks at periods like, the 1920-30s, and 1970-80s, when there were significant movements and consolidation of socio-political forces to the right and far right. At the late 1960s and early 1970s, there were a series of policy proposals, legislations to nationalize assets and launch direct attacks on poverty that marked a sharp turn to the leftist ideology in Delhi (the central government of the time). Following these, a coalition of mostly right-wing forces rose to challenge the government at the centre and succeeded. This occurred in the context of heated Cold War geopolitics. Taylor and Francis does not sell or distribute the print editions of this book in India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka.

This book expands the scope of understanding of the vast, albeit uneven, experience of the 1947 Partition of India by including localities and life stories from and beyond the regions of Punjab and Bengal. Building on existing research on Partition, the chapters present and analyse the consequences of Partition displacement and the resilience of communities in different parts of the nation. Regions discussed include the Chitmahals, Assam, Tripura, Mizoram, Hyderabad, Andaman Islands, and Jammu and Kashmir. The contributors show that the heterogeneity of people’s experiences reside in spaces of the family, home, neighbourhoods, villages, towns and cities refugee settlements, letters, memoirs, biographies, films, fiction, oral histories, and testimonies. The book examines the Partition’s complex effects in regions, localities and contexts and its material and psychological ramifications. This book is a unique and comprehensive contribution in enabling a more complex understanding of how Partition played out and continues to do so for groups and generations across India. It will be of interest to a multidisciplinary audience, including history, literature, comparative literature, colonial and postcolonial studies, modern Asian studies, studies of South Asia, and studies of memory and trauma.

This book is an accessible, comprehensive, and nuanced history of Pakistan. It reflects upon state and society in Pakistan and shows they have been shaped by historical forces and personae. Hoodbhoy expertly maps the journey of the region from many millennia ago to the circumstances and impulses that gave birth to the very first state in history founded upon religious identity. He documents colonial rule, the trauma of Partition, the nation's wars with India, the formation of Bangladesh, and the emergence of Baloch nationalism. The book also examines longstanding complex themes and issues - such as religious fundamentalism, identity formation, democracy, and military rule -as well as their impact on the future of the state of Pakistan. Drawing on a range of sources and written by one of the foremost intellectuals of the region, this book will be indispensable for scholars, researchers, students of history, politics and South Asian studies. It will be of great interest to the general reader interested in understanding Pakistan.

The book is a comprehensive study of border-related issues arising from the 1947 Partition of India. It looks at various cases of border disputes and affrays such as disputes related to the incorporation of princely states like Kashmir and Jaunpur, the agitation for the creation of new political entities, post-partition reconstruction of Punjab and old pre-partition Punjabi leaders losing their relevance, the Kamtapuri movement, Khasi and Mizo and Chin dissatisfactions, as well as the secession of East Pakistan in 1971. An important contribution to the study of borders, the volume will be useful for students and researchers of modern Indian history, colonial India, Partition studies, borderland studies, refugee studies, minority studies, political science, film studies, postcolonial studies, and South Asian studies.

This book imagines the ocean as central to understanding the world and its connections in history, literature and the social sciences. Introducing the central conceptual category of ocean as method, it analyzes the histories of movement and traversing across connected spaces of water and land sedimented in literary texts, folklore, local histories, autobiographies, music and performance. It explores the constant flow of people, material and ideologies across the waters and how they make their presence felt in a cosmopolitan thinking of the connections of the world. Going beyond violent histories of slavery and indenture that generate global connections, it tracks the movements of sailors, boatmen, religious teachers, merchants, and adventurers. The essays in this volume summon up this miscegenated history in which land and water are ever linked. A significant rethinking of world history, this volume will be of great interest to scholars and researchers of history, especially connected history and maritime history, literature, and Global South studies.

This book is a fierce argument against social and caste discrimination in India, especially untouchability and emphatic call for social justice. Written by a first-generation Kannada Dalit writer, the book provides an insider's view of caste discrimination as the author has lived through and experienced it. It traces the roots of present-day activism against caste discrimination, the influence of Ambedkar, the rise of Hindutva, and the role of Dalit literatures in shaping discourses around caste in India. An invigorating collection of essays and speeches by Mudnakudu Chinnaswamy, this volume will be of great interest to scholars and researchers of discrimination, literature, politics and political philosophy, exclusion studies, race, social justice, cultural studies, and South Asian studies.

This book examines the role of new media and digital technologies in public diplomacy and political communication. Exploring political communication in India, as well as in the US and China, it highlights the fundamental changes that new technology has brought about in public diplomacy. While facilitating direct engagement with constituents, and tapping into territories and audiences which were harder to reach before, the new media's power to influence perceptions has revolutionised public diplomacy and engagement like never before. The book analyses the role of social media in not only defining and shaping political attitudes of citizens but their ability to empower citizens as well. The author, through examples from India, the US and China, also examines the challenges of using digital tools in diplomacy and its effects on democracies across the world. Lucid and engaging, this book will be an essential read for students and scholars of communication studies, political studies, diplomacy and foreign policy, defence and strategic analysis, media and culture studies and international relations.

This volume examines the relationship between hope, mobility, and immobility in African migration. Through case studies set within and beyond the continent, it demonstrates that hope offers a unique prism for analyzing the social imaginaries and aspirations which underpin migration in situations of uncertainty, deepening inequality, and delimited access to global circuits of legal mobility. The volume takes departure in a mobility paradox that characterizes contemporary migration. Whereas people all over the world are exposed to widening sets of meaning of the good life elsewhere, an increasing number of people in the Global South have little or no access to authorized modes of international migration. This book examines how African migrants respond to this situation. Focusing on hope, it explores migrants' temporal and spatial horizons of expectation and possibility and how these horizons link to mobility practices. Such analysis is pertinent as precarious life conditions and increasingly restrictive regimes of mobility characterize the lives of many Africans, while migration continues to constitute important livelihood strategies and to be seen as pathways of improvement. Whereas involuntary immobility is one consequence, another is the emergence and consolidation of new destinations emerging in the Global South. The volume examines this development through empirically grounded and theoretically rich case studies in migrants' countries of origin, zones of transit, and in new and established destinations in Europe, North America, the Middle East, Latin America and China. It thereby offers an original perspective on linkages between migration, hope, and immobility, ranging from migration aspirations to return.

This book critically examines different aspects of scientific and technological development in Ancient India. It studies the special contribution of the history of science in our scientific understanding and its relationship with the philosophy and sociology of science. The volume: Discusses diverse and wide-ranging themes including Tibetan Buddhist tradition of neuro-biology; Sheds light on the unique developments within iron technology and urbanization in ancient Odisha; Studies the trajectory of proto-historic astronomy in India and the science of monsoon in early India; Evaluates the legacy of Aryabhata based on his major works related to astronomy and mathematics through a multidimensional perspective; Analyses the traditional knowledge of medicine in early India, the golden age of surgery with reference to the ancient Greek and Arabic systems of medicine, and the Buddhist influence on the science of medicine in Tibet. This book will be an essential read for scholars and researchers of ancient history, Indian history, history of science, history of technology, science and technology studies, and South Asian studies.

Chambers, Nuangjamnong, and their contributors look at how the development of the beer industry in East Asia presents a unique opportunity for understanding the region's political economy. Asia is both the world's largest beer-consuming and beer-producing region, and the fastest growing beer market. Per-capita consumption is lower than Europe, but catching up fast. Beer consumption is also widely understood to correlate closely with economic growth and urbanization, much more so than other alcoholic beverages like spirits. With ten country case studies from both Northeast and Southeast Asia, the contributors to this volume look at the history of beer production and consumption across East Asia through a lens of historical institutionalism and political economy. In doing so they not only examine the development of the beer industry in the region but also what it tells us about the countries themselves. They ask questions such as: To what extent have state versus societal actors influenced the path of beer production? How has beer production changed? Was there a critical juncture at which beer production abruptly changed course? A valuable resource for students and scholars of modern East Asian History, and particularly those with a focus on colonial history, industrial history, and state-society relations.

This book considers the evolution and characteristics of Nigeria's third-generation literature, which emerged between the late 1980s and the early 1990s and is marked by expressive modes and concerns distinctly different from those of the preceding era. The creative writing of this period reflects new sensibilities and anxieties about Nigeria's changing fortunes in the post-colonial era. The literature of the third generation is startling in its candidness, irreverence as well as the brutal self-disclosure of its characters, and it is governed by an unusually wide-ranging sweep in narrative techniques. This book examines six key texts of the oeuvre: Maria Ajima's The Web, Okey Ndibe's Foreign Gods, Inc., Teju Cole's Open City, Chika Unigwe's On Black Sisters Street, Lola Shoneyin's The Secret Lives of Baba Segi's Wives, and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's The Thing Around Your Neck. The texts interpret contemporary corruption and other unspeakable social malaise; together, they point to the exciting future of Nigerian literature, which has always been defined by its daring creativity and inventive expressive modes. Even conventional storytelling strategies receive revitalizing energies in these angst-driven narratives. This book will be of interest to students and researchers of contemporary African literature, Sociology, Gender and women's studies, and post-colonial cultural expression more broadly.

This book analyses the paradoxes of Pakistan's economy, meritocratic domestic policy and the role of the state and civil society. It argues that the transition in the county's foreign policy from geo-politics to geo-economic depends on a fundamental domestic policy transition from kleptocracy to meritocracy. Civil Society and Pakistan's Economy discusses how the prevalence of rent seeking practices has undermined merit-based practices by increasing the cost of doing business and converting public loss into private profit by awarding inappropriate subsidies and imposing regressive taxes. The analyses are supported by describing the instruments and mechanisms used for rent seeking practices and the creation of public awareness of options available to change these practices through citizen's action and civil society engagement. The book also shows the path of transformation and the role of participation and argues that aspiring for and capturing power is not the only way to transform Pakistan. A novel analysis depicting macro-micro linkages of encroachment of socio-economic space by the power elites and effective strategies used for its reappropriation by the people, the book will be of interest to academics researching South Asian Studies, in particular South Asian economics and politics.

This book, first published in 1992, examines the attitudes of local elites - the hinge between Indian state and rural society - towards protest and participation in development, illuminating arguments about the nature of the state as well as the development process. It looks at the role of local elites in India both as the representatives of the state and of the rest of rural society, and explains their importance in the country's development. The book deals with the elites' contribution to the credibility of the state and examines the strategies through which they manipulate the allocation of resources and influence the pace and direction of social change. It contrasts the rural elites in two areas, one more economically advanced than the other. The elites in the first area were shown to be capable of combining institutional participation with radical protest, whilst in the other they tended to rely on state channels to achieve reform. The author concludes that despite the different settings, both groups were informed, active and responsive to political conditions. This contrasts with the conventional view that local elites of the dominant castes oppress the lower ones by obstructing reforms, for reasons of self-interest.

The communists of East Central Europe came to power promising to bring about genuine equality, paying special attention to achieving gender equality, to build up industry and create prosperous societies, and to use music, art, and literature to promote socialist ideals. Instead, they never succeeded in filling more than a third of their legislatures with women and were unable to make significant headway against entrenched patriarchal views; they considered it necessary (with the sole exception of Albania) to rely heavily on credits to build up their economies, eventually driving them into bankruptcy; and the effort to instrumentalize the arts ran aground in most of the region already by 1956, and, in Yugoslavia, by 1949. Communism was all about planning, control, and politicization. Except for Yugoslavia after 1949, the communists sought to plan and control not only politics and the economy, but also the media and information, religious organizations, culture, and the promotion of women, which they understood in the first place as involving putting women to work. Inspired by the groundbreaking work of Robert K. Merton on functionalist theory, this book shows how communist policies were repeatedly undermined by unintended consequences and outright dysfunctions.