Peking politics, 1918–1923

Abstract

Sometimes scholars fall into the gaps of their own arguments. A. J. Nathan, last seen asserting that European influence on China was benign, must now explain the failure of Western educated elites and their political techniques to achieve any semblance of order or development. Peking Politics, 1918–1923 attempts to plug the gap through examination of Western-influenced urban elites in the last period of Chinese history in which Western constitutional theory played any significant role. His historical outline achieves considerable success in elucidating the comings and goings of bureaucrats, bosses, and generals on the Peking stage, but is prey to serious methodological and ideological limitations. Where his data fits his hypothesis, it's usually for the wrong reasons, and all too often it doesn't fit at all.     

Book Review Essays

Books reviewed in this article: Milton Viorst, What Shall I Do With This People? Jews and the Fractious Politics of Judaism Daryl Champion, The Paradoxical Kingdom: Saudi Arabia and the Momentum of Reform Simon Henderson, The New Pillar: Conservative Arab Gulf States and U.S. Strategy Akbar S. Ahmed, Islam Under Siege: Living Dangerously in a Post‐honor World Nathan J. Brown, Palestinian Politics After the Oslo Accords     

Father,son, and holy ghost: Pye,Solomon, and the ‘spirit of Chinese politics’

Abstract

Mao's Revolution and the Chinese Political Culture structurally is two books. The first (parts I and II pp. 1-159) is a discussion of Chinese psychological characteristics based on the author's 1966 dissertation for MIT, The Chinese Revolution and the Politics of Dependency: The Struggle for Change in a Traditional Political Culture. The second (parts III and IV pp. 160-526) is a competent if somewhat narrow think-tank piece written in 1969 on the Hundred Flowers, the Great Leap, and the early phase of the Cultural Revolution.     

Annual general meeting, 1967

General

Imperial Sunset. Volume 1: Britain's Liberal Empire 1897–1921. By Max Beloff. London, Methuen, 1969. Pp. 387. Maps. Chronology. Index. £3.25.

United Nations Peacekeeping, 1946–1967. Documents and Commentary. Part 2: Asia. By Rosalyn Higgins. London, Oxford University Press for Chatham House, 1970. Pp. xviii+486. Maps. Bibliog. Index. £4.50.

Colonialism in East‐West Relations: A Study of Soviet Policy towards India and Anglo‐Soviet Relations 1:0.17–1047. By Zafar Imam. New Delhi, Eastman Publications, 1969. Pp. xii+531. Bibliog. Index. Rs. 40.

India and the Soviet Union: The Nehru Era. By Arthur Stein. Chicago and London, University of Chicago Press, 1969. Pp. xiv+320. Bibliog. Index. £4.30.

Studies in Asian History: Proceedings of the Asian History Congress, 1961. Edited by K. S. Lal. London, Asia Publishing House, 1969. Pp. 530. Appendices. £4.25.

That Untravelled World. An autobiography. By Eric Shipton. London, Hodder &; Stoughton, 1969. Pp. 286. Illus. Maps. Index. £2.25.

Religion

The Bhagavad‐Gita (first six chapters). Translated by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. London, Penguin Books, 1970.

Eastern Religion and Western Thought. By S. Radakrishnan. London, Oxford Paperback 1970 (first pubd. 1939).

Dimensions of Islam. By Frithjof Schuon, translated by P. N. Townsend. London, Allen and Unwin, 1970. Pp. 167. Index. £1.75.

Buddhism, a Non‐Theistic Religion. By Helmuth von Glasenapp, translated by Irmgard Schloegl. London, Allen &; Unwin, 1970. Pp. 208. Glossary. Index. £2.

Christian and Hindu Ethics. By Shivesh Chandra Thakur. London, Allen &; Unwin, 1969. Pp. 216. Bibliog. Index. £2.40.

The Indian Theogony. By Sukumari Bhattacharji. London, Cambridge University Press, 1970. Pp. 397. Bibliog. Index. £7.

The Buddhist Revival in China. By Holmes Welch; photographs by Henri Cartier‐Bresson. London, OUP for Harvard University Press. 1970. Pp. 385. Maps. Illus. Bibliog. Index. £5.75.

Creative Imagination in the Sufism of Ibn Arabi. By Henry Corbin, translated by Robert Manheim. London, Routledge, 1970. Pp. 406. Illus. Bibliog. Index. £4.75.

The Field of Zen. By Daisetz Teitaro Suzuki, edited by Christmas Humphreys. London, The Buddhist Society, 1969. Pp. xvii+105. Illus. Index. £1.05.

South Asian Politics and Religion. Edited by Donald Eugene Smith. London, OUP for Princeton University Press, 1970 (first issued 1966). Pp. 563. Index. £1.75.

The Politics of Untouchability: Social Mobility and Social Change in a City of India. By Owen M. Lynch. New York and London, Columbia University Press, 1970. Pp. 251. Maps. Illus. Glossary. Bibliog. Index.

Religion, Law, and the State in India. By J. Duncan M. Derrett. London, Faber and Faber, 1968. Pp. 615. Bibliog. Indexes. £4.50.

Middle East

The Middle East in Revolution. By Humphrey Trevelyan. London, Macmillan, 1970. Pp. 266. Index. £3.25.

The Game of Nations. The Amorality of Power Politics. By Miles Copeland. London, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1969. Pp. 272. Bibliog. Index. £2.50.

Army Officers in Arab Politics and Society. By Eliezer Be'eri. London, Praeger, Pall Mall Press. 1970. Pp. 514. Illus. Bibliog. Index. £4.

The Chatham House Version and other Middle Eastern Studies. By Elie Kedourie. London, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1970. Pp. 488. Bibliog. Index. £3.75.

The Struggle for the Middle East, 1958–68. By Walter Laqueur. London, Routledge &; Kegan Paul, 1969. Pp. 351. Index. £2.50.

East and West of Suez: the Suez Canal in History 1854–1956. By D. A. Farnie. Oxford, Clarendon Press 1969. Pp. 860. Maps. Bibliog. Index. £8.40.

An Arab Common Market. A Study in Inter‐Arab Trade Relations, 1920–67. By Alfred G. Musrey. New York, Frederick A. Praeger; London, Pall Mall Press, 1969. Pp. 274. Bibliog. £6.25.

The Life and Works of Jahiz. Edited by Charles Pellat; translated from French by D. M. Hawke. London, Routledge, 1969. Pp. xiv+286. Glossary. £3.15.

A Time in Arabia. By Doreen Ingrams. London, John Murray, 1970. Pp. 160. Map. Index. £2.25.

Middle Eastern Cities: a symposium on Ancient, Islamic, and Contemporary Urbanism. Edited by Ira M. Lapidus. Los Angeles &; London, University of California Press, 1969. Pp. 206. Index. £2.85.

The Islamic City: a colloquium. Edited by A. H. Hourani and S. M. Stern. London, Faber for Bruno Cassirer and University of Pennsylvania Press, 1970. Pp. 222. Maps. Illus. £2.10.

Palmyra: text by Kazimierz Michalowski, photographs by Andrzej Dziewanowski. London, Pall Mall Press, 1970. Pp. 129. Illus. £2.40.

Current British Research in Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies. Compiled by Dr. Peter Beaumont. University of Durham, Centre for Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies, 1969. Pp. 89. Indices. £0.40 or $1.

A History of Persia. By Sir Percy Sykes. London, Routledge &; Kegan Paul, 1969 (3rd edn.) 2 vols: Pp. xxxix+563; xvii+616. Maps. Illus. Index. £7.50.

Persia. Introduction by James Morris. Photographs by Roger Wood. Notes on the Plates by Denis Wright. London, Thames &; Hudson, 1969. Pp. 216. Illus. Map. Index. £3.15.

Indian Sub Continent

Curzon in India. Volume Two: Frustration. By David Dilks. London, Rupert Hart‐Davis, 1970. Pp. 307. Illus. Bibliog. Index. £3.

Sardar Patel. By D. V. Tahmankar. Foreword by Lord Mountbatten. London, Allen &; Unwin, 1970. Pp. 299. Index. £3.

A View from New Delhi. By Chester Bowles. New Haven &; London, Yale University Press, 1970. Pp. 268. £1.40 (paper 90 np.)

The Partition of India ‐ Policies and Perspectives, 1935–1947. Edited by C. H. Philips and Mary Doreen Wainwright. London, Allen &; Unwin, 1970. Pp. 607. Maps. Bibliog. Index. £5.50.

National Communication and Language Policy in India. By Baldev Raj Nayer. NY, Praeger; London, Pall Mall, 1969. Pp. 310. Index. Bibliog. £5.25.

Opposition in a Dominant Party System. A study of the JanaSangh, Praja Socialist, and Socialist Parties in Uttar Pradesh, India. By Angela S. Burger. Berkeley, University of California Press, 1969. Pp. 325. £4.05.

Jana Sangh. A Biography of an Indian Political Party. By Craig Baxter. London, OUP for University of Pennsylvania Press, 1970. Pp. 352. Maps. Bibliog. Index. £6.

Land Control and Social Structure in Indian History. Edited by Robert E. Frykenberg. Madison, Wis., University of Wisconsin Press, 1969. Pp. x+256. Index. $10; £4.75.

Trade and Empire in Western India 1784–1806. By Pamela Nightingale. London, CUP, 1970. Pp. 264. Bibliog. Index. Maps. £3.5.

The Nagas in the Nineteenth Century. By Verrier Elwin. London, Oxford University Press (printed in India), 1969. Pp. xii+650. Illus. Map. £4.80.

The Nadars of Tamilnad: The Political Culture of a Community in Change. By Robert L. Hardgrave Jr. Berkeley and Los Angeles, University of California Press, 1969. Pp. xiv+314. Illus. Bibliog. Index. £4.20.

A Garland for E. M. Forster. Edited by H. H. Anniah Gowda. Mysore, The Literary Half‐Yearly, 1969. Pp. 132 + viii.

Southeast Asia

Sukarno and the Struggle for Indonesian Independence. By Bernard Dahm. Translated from the German by Mary F. Somers Heidhues. Ithaca &; London, Cornell University Press, 1969. Pp. 374. Glossary. Bibliog. Index. £7.15.

The Broken Triangle: Peking, Djakarta and the PKI. By Sheldon W. Simon. Baltimore, The John Hopkins Press, 1969. Pp. 210. Glossary. Index. £3.30.

The United States and Malaysia. By James W. Gould. London, OUP for Harvard University Press, 1969. Pp. xi+267. Index. £3.30.

The French Presence in Cochin‐China and Cambodia ‐ Rule and Response (1895–1905). By Milton E. Osborne. Ithaca and London. Cornell University Press, 1969. Pp. 379. Illus. Bibliog. Index. £4.55.

Vietnam and China 1938–1954. By King C. Chen. London, OUP for Princeton University Press, 1969. Pp. 436. Maps. Bibliog. Index. £6.

Burma. By F. S. V. Donnison. Pp. 263. Illus. Bibliog. London, Ernest Benn, 1970. £2.50.

China

The Transformation of the Chinese Earth: Perspectives on Modern China. By Keith Buchanan. London, G. Bell &; Sons, 1970. Pp. xviii+321. Tables. Plates. Maps. Cartograms. Bibliog. Index. £3.25.

A Study of Chinese Communes 1965. By Shahid Javed Burki. Harvard East Asian Monographs no. 29. Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press, 1969. Pp. xvi+97. Tables. Index. $3.50.

Communist China's Agriculture. Its Development and Future Potential. By Owen L. Dawson. New York, Praeger; London, Pall Mall Press, 1970. Pp. xvii+317. £6.25.

Domestic Animals of China. By H. Epstein. Farnham Royal, Bucks., Commonwealth Agricultural Bureaux, 1969. Pp. 164. Bibliog. Plates. Index. £4.

Family and Kinship in Chinese Society. Edited by Maurice Freedman. London, OUP for Stanford University Press, 1970. Pp. 269. Index. £3.75.

Records of the Historian: Chapters from the Shih Chi of Ssu‐Ma Ch'ien, translated by Burton Watson. New York &; London, Columbia University Press, 1970. Pp. 356. £2.

Chinese Communist Politics in Action: edited by A. Doak Barnett. Seattle and London, University of Washington Press, 1969. Pp. 620. Illus. Index. £5.95 (cloth), £1.80 (paper).

Studies in the Social History of China and Southeast Asia. Essays in memory of Victor Purcell. Edited by Jerome Ch'en and Nicholas Tarling. Memoir by Sybille Van der Sprenkel. Cambridge University Press, 1970. Pp. 424. £4.50.

Sun Yat Sen and the Origins of the Chinese Revolution. By Harold Z. Schiffrin. Los Angeles, University of California Press, 1968. Pp. 412. Maps. Glossary. Bibliog. Index. £4.55.

The Cave Temples of Maichishan. By Michael Sullivan and Dominique Dubois. With an account of the 1958 expedition to Maichishan by Anil de Silva. London, Faber &; Faber, 1969. Pp. 77 + 104 of plates. £8.50.

Muscovite and Mandarin: Russia's Trade with China and its Setting, 1727–1805. By Clifford M. Foust. London, OUP for North Carolina Press, 1970. Pp. 424. Maps. Illus. Bibliog. Index. £4.75.

Far East

The Foreign Policy of North Korea. By Byung Chul Koh. NY, Praeger; London, Pall Mall Press 1969. Pp. xxi + 237. Charts. Bibliog. £5.20.

Book Pirating in Taiwan. By David Kasser. London. OUP for University of Philadelphia Press, 1969. Pp. 149. Index. £3.15.

Footprints in the Snow. By Kenjiro Tokutomi, translated and with biographical introduction by Kenneth Strong. London, Allen &; Unwin, 1970. Pp. xlvi+326. £3.25.

How the Conservatives Rule Japan. By Nathaniel B. Thayer. London, OUP for Princeton University Press, 1969. Pp. 349. Glossary. Bibliog. Index. £4.75.

The Izumi Shikibu Diary. Translated by Edwin A. Cranston. London, OUP for Harvard University Press 1970. Pp. 332. Bibliog. Indexes. £6.     

Proxy agents,auxiliary forces,and sovereign defection: assessing the outcomes of using non-state actors in civil conflicts

Abstract

This article interrogates the role of non-state armed actors in the Ukrainian civil conflict. The aim of this article is twofold. First, it seeks to identify the differences between the patterns of military intervention in Crimea (direct, covert intervention), and those in the South-East (mixed direct and indirect – proxy – intervention). It does so by assessing the extent of Russian troop involvement and that of external sponsorship to non-state actors. Second, it puts forward a tentative theoretical framework that allows distinguishing between the different outcomes the two patterns of intervention generate. Here, the focus is on the role of non-state actors in the two interventionist scenarios. The core argument is that the use of non-state actors is aimed at sovereign defection. The article introduces the concept of sovereign defection and defines it as a break-away from an existing state. To capture the differences between the outcomes of the interventions in Crimea and South-East, sovereign defection is classified into two categories: inward and outward. Outward sovereign defection is equated to the territorial seizure of the Crimean Peninsula by Russian Special Forces, aided by existing criminal gangs acting in an auxiliary capacity. Inward sovereign defection refers to the external sponsorship of the secessionist rebels in South-East Ukraine and their use as proxy forces with the purpose of creating a political buffer-zone in the shape of a frozen conflict. To demonstrate these claims, the article analyses the configuration of the dynamics of violence in both regions. It effectively argues that, in pursuing sovereign defection, the auxiliary and proxy forces operate under two competing dynamics of violence, delegative and non-delegative, with distinct implications to the course and future of the conflict.     

The revolutionary pacifism of A.J. Muste: On the backgrounds of the Pacific War

Abstract

In the summer of 1977, two journalists, John Barron and Anthony Paul, published a book which in the United States was entitled Murder of a Gentle Land and in Britain Peace with Horror. In both cases the subtitle was The Untold Story of Communist Genocide in Cambodia. The authors are both working at the institution, The Reader's Digest, which publishes a monthly appearing in 32 countries in 13 languages. In February 1977 The Reader's Digest published a summary of their book which thus became available to more than 30 million readers all over the world.     

Analyzing China's socialist revolution

Abstract

Recent trends in “China scholarship” include two dominant sets of goals and foci in examining China's socialist revolution. Exponents of the more traditional view, represented here by Lucian Pye's Mao Tse-tung, seek to explain it away as a pathological deviation from “normality” in social development. The extremism of Pye's book makes it almost a caricature of the worst in the first trend. By the same token this extremism makes the prejudices and assumptions on which this trend is based easier to perceive than would be the case with other more subtle works. The less traditional and less frequently published view, represented here by Nee and Peck's China's Uninterrupted Revolution attempts to comprehend the Chinese Revolution, historically and philosophically, as a meaningful process directed at increasing human liberation.     

Historia patria and the construction of the mestizo nation in Porfirian Mexico: the Fiestas del Centenario, 1910

Abstract

My contribution to the Special Edition seeks to examine two key aspects of the ideological underpinnings and cultural presumptions of the liberal project of state- and nation-building as interpreted by the elective dictatorship of Porfirio Díaz in Mexico (1876–80, 1884–1911), and its specific manifestation in the commemorative Fiestas del Centenario – the official celebration of the first centenary of Mexican independence from Spain – in September 1910. The article focuses, first, on the manifestation of a triumphalist liberal version of historia patria, and, second, on the projection of a distinct mestizo identity for Mexico’s ethnically diverse citizenship as key components in the construction of Mexican national identity.     

Salafi pluralism in national contexts: the secular state,nation and militant Islamism in Kosovo,Albania, and Macedonia

ABSTRACT

This article explores the question of how Albanian Salafi Muslims have engaged with and provided religious interpretations to issues peculiar to Albanians’ historical and sociopolitical context, as well as considering the ethnic group’s recent engagement in Middle Eastern conflicts. Utilizing Salafism’s doctrinal concepts of takfir (excommunication of another Muslim) and al-wala’ wa-l-bara’ (loyalty and disavowal) as guiding analytical tools, the article investigates Albanian Salafi Muslims’ position and discourse on the following three Albanian-specific issues: (i) engagement with the secular state by voting for their representatives (leaders); (ii) the question of nation and nationalism; and (iii) the question of militant Islamism related more recently to the Syrian conflict. Though there are different nuances among Albanian Salafi Muslims, the article shows the sharper distinctions and divergences that exist between the mainstream and rejectionist Salafis when considering the ways they have engaged with the three issues under analysis. Also, despite the general agreement in literature about Salafism’s globalized acculturalization impact on localized Islam(s), the analysis deduces Salafism’s ‘re-culturalized’ and ‘re-nationalized’ face in the Albanian-specific context, something prevalent among the mainstream Salafi Muslims of this ethnic group in the Balkans.     

Xenophobia,ethnicity and national identity in eastern Germany

This article offers an explanation of the latent xenophobia in post‐unification eastern Germany from the perspective of national identity. Easterners over‐emphasised ethnicity as the one remaining identity pillar that was still not threatened by the transition processes of unification. However, instead of focusing on the ‘self — on pride in tradition, history and culture, easterners concentrated on the ‘other’ — on ethnic exclusion and ethnic chauvinism. The united Germany therefore faces the challenge of filling the empty shell of German ethnicity with a positive meaning.     

Red Flag over Hong Kong,by Bruce Bueno de Mesquita,David Newman,and Alvin Rabushka

Abstract

The body of literature dealing with the retrocession of Hong Kong is growing rapidly as the changeover draws nearer. Red Flag over Hong Kong distinguishes itself by going beyond what is happening or what has happened to predict what will happen after I July 1997. To give their analysis of the future credence the authors rely on a scientific “model of decision making, not on access to insiders or the divination of tea leaves” (p. xii).     

China's industrial revolution: Politics,planning and management, 1949 to the present,by Stephen Andors

Abstract

The study of Chinese industrial development has come a long way since the 1969 publication of Barry Richman's Industrial Society in Communist China (New York: Random House, 1969). Richman recognized that China had begun to “organize conscientiously and vigorously for industrial progress since the beginning of the 1950's.” Unlike some of his predecessors, he did not explain China's industrial growth in terms of mass coercion or swarms of “blue ants” instead, he warned the reader that “in order to understand more fully how Chinese management and Chinese organization function, it is essential to have an understanding of Chinese ideology.” His examples of the use of ideology-e.g., the study of Mao's On Contradiction to help resolve a problem of cost vs. quality in bicycle production-were refreshingly concrete and useful.     

Civil and civic death in the new authoritarianisms: punishment of dissidents through juridical destruction,ethical ruin,and necropolitics in Turkey

ABSTRACT

Since the Turkish government’s recent turn to authoritarianism, tens of thousands of public dissidents and government critics have been subjected to dismissals and revocation of civic rights via emergency decrees. The victims call this process ‘civil death’. We aim to understand the logic behind this form of punishment in Turkey by examining the differential genealogy of civil death in the work of Hannah Arendt, Bertrand Ogilvie, Giorgio Agamben, and Achille Mbembe. We demonstrate that a later form of civil death was used by totalitarian regimes in a process leading to the reduction of targeted individuals as ‘superfluous’ and as ‘living corpses’ in concentration camps. In these contexts, death became an instrument of biopolitical and necropolitical powers. We propose that although contemporary punishment of public dissidents in Turkey shares some similarities with these forms of civil death, it may more fittingly be identified as civic death. We argue that while civil death is based on the classical political right of the sovereign to ‘make die’ after first reducing targeted individuals to little more than living corpses, civic death is linked to the power of the sovereign to ‘let die’ through the exclusion of public dissidents from economic, social, and political life.     

National news briefs

Abstract

Among the more puzzling hiatuses in the study of postwar Japan as well as postwar Pacific capitalism has been the relative paucity of scholarship on the occupation of 1945-1952. Puzzling because it can be argued that the contours of the contemporary Japanese state were significantly shaped (or not reshapen) in these years. Puzzling because the occupation and the two succeeding years which capped it with the Mutual Security Agreement offer an exceptional insight into an international neo-capitalist nexus in the making—with all its hesitancy, cul-de-sacs, tangled ganglions, and dynamics. And puzzling also because there is a wealth of discrete material on the subject available in English, much of which has been around for a long while, and virtually no one has yet tried to piece it together systematically.     

America,capitalism, and the interstate system

Peter Gowan responds to published criticisms of his article “Triumphing toward International Disaster: The Impasse in American Grand Strategy” (Critical Asian Studies 36, no. 1 [March 2004]: 3-36) by Kristen Nordhaug, Ravi Arvind Palat, Vijay Prashad, Marika Vicziany, Mark T. Berger, and Heloise Weber (see Critical Asian Studies 37, no. 1 [March 2005]: 75-140).     

The Super Confederacy: The Military in Fiji’s Politics

Abstract

The military has dominated Fijian politics for more than two and a half decades. After independence Fijian democracy was built on the façade of chiefly elite rule, the legacy of a colonial past. Since the passing of the Sukuna/Mara era, the patron–client relationship between the ruling elite and the military elite has been inverted. The military has since redefined national politics, with Maj. Gen. Rabuka then Rear Admiral Bainimarama becoming prime ministers, Fijian style, after leading successful coups. In the 2014 elections 10 military officers were elected to parliament under a newly decreed constitution. This paper analyses how the military elite once subservient to civilian rule has expanded its role as the major actor in Fiji’s politics.     

‘Among ministers,mavericks and mandarins’: Britain,covert action and the Yemen civil war

The Beginning and the End by Naguib Mahfouz, translated by Ramses Hanna Awad and edited by Mason Rossiter Smith. Cairo: American University in Cairo Press, 1985. Pp.379. $7.95.

The Search by Naguib Mahfouz, translated by Mohamed Islam and edited by Magdi Wahba. Cairo: American University in Cairo Press, 1987. Pp.126. $8.95.

The Beggar by Naguib Mahfouz, translated by Kristin Walker Henry and Nariman Khales Naili al‐Warraki. Cairo: American University in Cairo Press, 1986. Pp. 124. $7.95.

Banking and Oil: The History of the British Bank of the Middle East by Geoffrey Jones. Volume 2, Cambridge University Press, 1987. Pp.380. £40.

Syria and the French Mandate: The Politics of Arab Nationalism, 1920–1945 by Philip Khoury. London: I.B. Tauris and Co. 1987. Pp.698. £37.50.

Nomads and Settlers in Syria and Jordan 1800–1980 by Norman N. Lewis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987.

Futile Diplomacy, volume two: Arab‐Zionist negotiations and the End of the Mandate by Neil Caplan. London: Frank Cass, 1986. Pp.358, including documents, bibliography and index. £27.50.

The Dynamics of Inflation in Iran: 1960–1977 by Azizollah Ikani. The Netherlands: Tilburg University Press, 1987. DFL 42.40.     

Globalization,education, and the politics of identity in the Asia-Pacific

Abstract

This essay examines a resurgent interest in “regionness” as a response to globalization, and it looks at how governments and citizens have participated in the discourse on forging a new Asia-Pacific community that has developed over the past fifteen years. Part one distinguishes between “regionalization” and “regionalism” as competing visions for the construction of a future Asia-Pacific community. Regionalization, the dominant paradigm during the postcolonial period, centers on interstate forums dominated by officially recognized political and economic elites who seek interstate cooperation in order to protect state interests, state power, and national identity from foreign as well as domestic challenges. Regionalism, as an alternative paradigm, envisions the creation of transnational networks inclusive of nonofficial actors, whose identification with a particular state and set of national interests does not preclude the creation of a regional identity (or identities) and support for regional interests. Part two considers the challenges that regionalism poses for the nation-state and its leadership. It does so by highlighting the pressure for reform that globalization has brought to bear upon one particular institution that theorists of nationalism have long identified as central to the perpetuation of national identity, national unity, and state authority: schooling. Part three assesses the current prospects for such reforms by briefly examining recent educational developments in Japan, Australia, Malaysia, and Singapore.     

Bourgeoisie as internal orient in the Soviet Lithuanian literature: Roses Are Red by A. Bieliauskas, 1959

ABSTRACT

In this paper, the concept of internal colonization is applied to the Soviet initiatives of re-socializing the large parts of the population and creating a socialist working class from peasantry, artisans, and residues of the bourgeoisie. The internal colonization, or the power relations between native Communists and their subalterns in Lithuania, is analyzed on the basis of Roses Are Red, a novel by Bieliauskas. Here, class is invented as substitute of race. The Soviet socialists stand for hegemonic standards of “normalcy,” whereas bourgeoisie is portrayed as subject of difference, as internal Orient and as internal colony, and the relationship between the two can be legitimately defined as internal colonialism.     

Voices from Pattani: Fears,suspicion, and confusion

Abstract

By December 2005, violence in the South of Thailand had taken the lives of more than one thousand people. In this article, the voices of southerners are presented as they were recorded during the author's two-year stay in Pattani Province and various Malay-Muslim villages in southern Thailand. Verbatim excerpts from tok imams (religious teachers), overseas scholars, academics, fisherfolk, and locals of various ethnicity and religious groups illustrate perspectives and frustrations about the violence. Fears, suspicions, and confusion are the most prominent emotions embedded in these conversations. These excerpts illustrate the foremost concerns of the common people in the South, among them, impertinent threats to livelihood security and peaceful ethnic coexistence in the region.