Focusing on world regions where human rights abuses are the most serious, extensive and sustained; this book fills a crucial gap in our knowledge of the difficulties and promise of promoting human rights in our global age.

This collection of essays, with special reference to Asia, analyzes religion through lived experience and reveals how religious phenomena are inextricably linked to globalizing processes.

Focusing on world regions where human rights abuses are the most serious, extensive and sustained; this book fills a crucial gap in our knowledge of the difficulties and promise of promoting human rights in our global age.

Africa throughout its postcolonial history has been plagued by human rights abuses ranging from intolerance of political dissent to heinous crimes such as genocide. Some observers consequently have gone so far as to suggest that human rights are a concept alien to African cultures. The International Criminal Court (ICC)'s focus on Africa in recent years has reinforced the region's reputation as a hotspot for human rights violations. But despite Africa's notoriety concerning human rights, Africa and the Shaping of International Human Rights argues that the continent has been pivotal in helping to shape contemporary human rights norms and practices. Challenging prevailing Eurocentric interpretations of human rights' origins and evolution, it demonstrates that from the colonial era to the present Africa's peoples have drawn attention to and prompted novel ways of thinking about human rights through their encounters with the world at large. Beginning with the depredations of King Leopold II in the Congo Free State in the 1880s and ending with the ICC's current activities in Africa, it reveals how African events, personalities, groups, and nations have influenced the trajectory of human rights history in intriguing and critical ways, in the end enlarging and universalizing a major discourse of our time.

Published twice yearly, the Asia Journal of Global Studies (AJGS) is the official journal of the Asia Association for Global Studies (AAGS). The journal features research articles on Asia and other world regions from an Asian perspective. AJGS' other regular offerings include guest columns by global studies experts in Asia, reader commentaries, and book reviews. Multidisciplinary in scope, AJGS accepts contributions from authors with backgrounds in the humanities and social sciences. The journal encourages historians, political scientists, sociologists, anthropologists, linguists, philosophers and others to submit their work for consideration. It particularly welcomes research that dissolves academic boundaries, looks beyond traditional notions of the nation state, and aims for a holistic view of the past, present and future. All submissions to AJGS are peer reviewed and judged for their originality, quality of writing and relevance for AJGS' overall objectives.

The Asia Journal of Global Studies (AJGS) is the official journal of the Japan-based Asia Association for Global Studies (AAGS). The journal features research articles on Asia and other world regions from an Asian regional perspective. AJGS' other regular offerings include guest columns by global studies experts in Asia, reader commentaries, and book reviews.Multidisciplinary in scope, AJGS accepts contributions from authors with backgrounds in the humanities and social sciences. The journal encourages historians, political scientists, sociologists, anthropologists, linguists, philosophers and others to submit their work for consideration. It particularly welcomes research that dissolves academic boundaries, looks beyond traditional notions of the nation state, and aims for a holistic view of the past, present and future.

"Development" is one of the most ubiquitous yet least understood concepts of our age. It is something all governments claim to be engaged in and is considered desirable by scholars, activists, policymakers, and laypeople alike. Yet it is also a highly contested term. For some, development is simply a matter of economic growth. Others maintain that it must entail improving life expectancy, literacy, education levels, and access to resources. Others yet, disillusioned by the results of development initiatives, have rejected development altogether, equating it with a self-serving aid industry that entraps the poor in a vicious cycle of dependency. Still, critics argue these "post-development" theorists merely replicate earlier doctrines of development and have themselves become part of the problem they wish to transcend. This book, a collection of works by scholars of development, examines the theory and practice of development and its implications and varied meanings in Asian contexts. It attempts to understand development both in its objective and constructivist senses. That is, it examines how societies and nations have developed over time and how leaders, experts and governments have attempted to shape these same societies and nations. It also analyzes development in civil society and how non-state actors have conceived, participated in and been affected by the process. Has true development been occurring in Asia? Is it possible to direct development? How are real people affected by development? Should the concept of development be retained or discarded? These are a few key questions covered in this book.