Labor market integration of returned educational migrants in Turkmenistan

Turkmenistan has experienced increasing educational migration, and many of these students hope to return home after graduating. The ability of returned migrants to succeed in Turkmenistan’s labor market is complicated by a variety of factors, including variation in educational quality across countries, intrusive state regulation of foreign education, and Turkmenistan’s large informal sector. Based on a survey of 98 Turkmen citizens, this study compares the career trajectories and perceptions of the labor market of people educated in Turkmenistan to those educated elsewhere. Because men and women undertake different strategies of educational migration, it also compares patterns of labor market integration by gender. Country of education does appear to matter for employment in Turkmenistan, but the effect is most prominent immediately after graduation. Women were less likely to be employed in Turkmenistan, partly because they were more likely to have been educated abroad, and more likely to have a partner abroad.     

From sultanism to neopatrimonialism? Regionalism within Turkmenistan

This paper proposes that under President Berdimuhamedov, the government of Turkmenistan has begun to move away from the ‘sultanism’ of the Niyazov era. Instead, the new government exhibits characteristics and has pursued policy changes that prepare conditions for the further development and entrenchment of localized networks of elites based on kinship. Such changes suggest that the government of Turkmenistan may develop into a more classic neopatrimonial system of authoritarian governance similar to the other post-Soviet republics in Central Asia. This argument is advanced by examining changes between the governments of former President Niyazov and Berdimuhamedov with regard to three areas of the Turkmen state's relationship with its constituent regions: regional composition of the national cabinet; hakim (governor) policy; and regional development. This examination relies largely on a comprehensive survey of online Turkmen state-media sources, as well as numerous supportive secondary sources.     

高等教育的困境与出路——以日本专门学校制度为核心的考察

20世纪70年代,在广义高等教育的指导思想影响下,日本专门学校制度产生了,它旨在满足人们对高等教育需求量的增加及社会对多种实用型人才的需要,它的产生完善了日本高等教育体系。本文论述了日本专门学校制度产生的历史背景,分析了专门学校制度在培养适应经济社会发展的应用型人才方面的突出作用,提出了我国应借鉴日本专门学校制度的成功经验,大力发展我国的高等职业技术教育。     

Public and private higher education in South Africa in the context of the African renaissance

Abstract

This article examines the concept of higher education as a public good in relation to the currently evolving interface between public and private higher education in post‐apartheid South Africa. In order to illuminate the significance of the particular ways in which this public‐private divide is unfolding, the first part of the article sketches the history of the emergence of higher education from the South African public and private elementary and secondary education system, and reaches some conclusions about the social, political and economic considerations that drove the emergence of this dualism in the colonial era and during apartheid, and the emergent assumptions on education as a public good. Making use of Amartya Sen's thesis of development as the expansion of freedoms, the second part constitutes an examination of the manner in which the liberatory agenda of post‐apartheid education policy is shaping the current articulation between public and private higher education in South Africa. This is specifically with respect to issues of access, funding and knowledge acquisition and production. This article makes observations, not only about the consequences for development of the particular ways in which the public‐private divide is evolving and how the nature of the interface connects with issues of the public good in education, but also about the degree to which the drive for the marketisation of education is impacting on current understandings of education as a public good. In the very last section, a South African case study is used to provide broad commentary on the nature of the public‐private interface that may benefit development in the context of the African Renaissance.     

Turkmenistan and the virtual politics of Eurasian energy: the case of the TAPI pipeline project

In December 2015, leaders from Central and South Asia took part in the ground-breaking ceremony for the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India (TAPI) natural gas pipeline project. Sixteen months later, a confusing information flow continues to obfuscate external assessments of the project’s development: official rhetoric notwithstanding, there is no certainty on the details of project financing, while the pipeline route has yet to be determined. To illuminate this obscure implementation path, this article regards TAPI as a virtual pipeline, an infrastructure project that wields invaluable influence only when it is employed as a foreign policy tool or permeates domestic discourses of progress framed by the elites of the four consortium partners. The constituent elements of TAPI virtuality are discussed here through a dedicated focus on the process of energy policy-making of Turkmenistan – the sole supplier of gas for the pipeline project and the consortium’s key stakeholder.     

The Battle of Gökdepe in the Turkmen post-Soviet historical discourse

The Battle of Gökdepe (1881) is considered to be a turning point in Turkmenistan's contemporary historiography. It led to the then independent Turkmen (Akhal Tekke in this case) tribes coming under Russian control. Almost immediately after the event the battle became a controversial point of interpretation starting from Turkmen sources (rarely known to us), an immense number of Russian (mostly military) sources, up to the Soviet historians. The post-Soviet official Turkmen historiography of the event came from these foundations, but used its own mythological approach. As a result, the contemporary narrative of the Gökdepe defeat turned into a victory for the Akhal Tekke (and broadly Turkmen) nation. Additionally, this paper argues that the first and partly the second presidents of Turkmenistan incorporated the battle into their own personality cults, a fact which is still specific to the Central Asian context, albeit not unique in world history. In particular, the first president usurped the myth and connected it with his own historical narrative. The second president continues this in the frames of the already settled political culture in the country, adapting the Gökdepe myth to create his own ideological story. Therefore, the appropriation of the historical event in Turkmenistan represents a specific (albeit not unique) case of this kind and shows the way of thinking about the leader in current Turkmenistan.     

Education for whom? Engineering multiculturalism and liberal peace in post-conflict Kosovo

ABSTRACT

This paper traces the changing relationship between the state and its education system at the intersection of diverging visions and agendas of local and international actors in post-war Kosovo in the period 1999–2014. Specifically, it explores why and how externally driven reforms that carry the ideals of an inclusive multi-ethnic polity clashed with domestic actors’ visions of education as a locus of national resistance and independent statehood. To critically inquire into the direction of education reforms in the post-war context, the empirical part of the analysis identifies critical historical junctures through which these competing ideas and relevant actors changed and/or gained traction. Accordingly, the paper focuses mainly on the post-war period, but also considers the pre-war period in order to highlight the predominant vision of local actors on the roles of education, its intertwinement with unfolding conflicts, and its central role in processes of state formation and nation-building, in particular in a post-war context. The analysis is based on genealogical historical narrative, textual analysis of key official documents related to the education sector in Kosovo, and semi-structured interviews conducted in Pristina in November 2013 and October 2016. The analysis demonstrates that the role of education in post-war Kosovo reflects tension between multicultural ideals promoted by international actors, on the one hand, and nationalist, often exclusive concerns of local actors embedded in an unfinished and contested process of state- and nation-building, on the other hand. The paper finds that by over-emphasizing equal collective rights, extensive autonomy for the different communities and ethnic-based decentralized governance, international actors have unwillingly contributed to further education separation along ethnic lines.     

Living in the Marikana world: The state,capital and society

Abstract

The ‘Marikana massacre’ that happened on 16 August 2012 at Lonmin mine near Rustenburg in the North-West province of South Africa, in which the South African police shot dead 34 mineworkers for protesting against low wages and other unbearable employment and/or living conditions, cannot be understood as merely an accidental event. It may therefore be useful to view the massacre as one of those tragedies that dramatises, in visible ways, the generally hellish conditions which the peoples of the non-Western world have come to endure ever since the advent of Western modernity. The ‘voyages of discovery’ undertaken by figures such as Christopher Columbus after 1492 marked the commencement of a world system characterised by a Western-centred modernity whose ‘darker side’ inflicted hellish conditions on the non-Western subject, while its ‘brighter side’ in the West saw positive developments – from the 16^th-century ‘rights of people’ to the 18^th-century ‘rights of man’, up to the late-20^th-century ‘human rights’. This article is a decolonial critique on the Marikana massacre and seeks to explain how the modern world system has, since its advent in 1492 as global power structure, been producing a series of ‘Marikana-like’ conditions and events on the part of the non-Western subject that underlies its hierarchical arrangement. The article's point of departure is that rather than understand the Marikana massacre as a unique event or accident, it can better be characterised as a sign of the non-Western subject's subjection to Western-centred modernity. The article explicates how the modern South African state and capital are part of the same ‘colonial power matrix’ (Quijano 2000a), hence the two were bound to be on the same side against labour during the Marikana massacre.     

Paisaje antes de la batalla. Notas sobre el contexto de la guerra contra las drogas en México

Mexico’s security crisis and Felipe Calderón’s (2006-2012) security strategy had its roots in drug trafficking, the prohibition of drugs, contraband and the border shared with the United States. Standard accounts of the violence experienced in the country, which reduce it to confrontations between drug cartels, are of little use. This article presents part of the context in which the security crisis developed, putting it in a historical perspective, and attempting to take a step towards a more nuanced interpretation. It holds that drug trafficking between Mexico and the United States is a complex, many-sided reality which admits dense symbolic elaboration. Apart from the very concrete shipping of drugs, drug trafficking is part of Mexico’s relation with the United States, a register that imbues the asymmetry between both countries with meaning, a space of political negotiation and a resource of American global diplomacy which is crystallized in a clandestine foreign policy system. Furthermore, through the demystification of the imagery that envelopes organized crime, corruption and contraband are examined, conceiving these two as phenomena that are integrated organically into borderland society.     

终身学习视野下的日本学位授予新机制

日本在终身学习社会的构建中，将高等教育纳入终身学习体系。日本实施学位授予新机制，开辟第二条学位授予途径，致力于面向短期高等院校和省厅大学校学生的学位授予工作，对日本高等教育的发展与终身学习的构建具有积极意义，也对我国高等教育的发展与改革提供了有益借鉴。     

Political Control and Military Autonomy: Reexamining the Chinese People’s Liberation Army

The first part of this article discusses the most common theoretical and analytical approaches to the study of political control over the armed forces in China. It argues that the focus on professionalism and professionalization at the level of the military institution that is common in previous studies has certain limitations when analyzing Chinese civil–military relations. Against this background, the second part of the article suggests an alternative approach that places the Chinese officer corps and its professional autonomy at the center of analysis. Its benefit is demonstrated in a case study of quality control at China’s top three military education institutes. The study shows that autonomy and direct political control varies, which indicate a need for more nuanced discussions about military professionalization in China.     

“舌尖上的教育”是如何成为国策的——对日本政府在“食育”形成中角色的综论

日本是目前世界上食育体系最为完善的国家,研究这一体系,特别是关注其中的政府角色,对在中国推广该机制,具有重要意义。文章以日本为研究国别,在描述食育基本内容的基础上,论述了不同历史阶段食育的特征与消长,尤其是政府对推进食育计划的积极作用,最后重点关注了发挥管理保障功能的日本政府有关食育计划的组织架构。     

China’s Foreign Aid: Entering a New Stage

As part of the institutional reform plan of the State Council approved by the 13th National People’s Congress, a new aid agency, China International Development Cooperation Agency was inaugurated in April 2018. As the first such agency in the country's history, its establishment will bring about a major change in the implementation structure of China’s foreign aid. It is important to follow and understand how China will improve and increase its foreign aid. This article reviews the current status of China’s foreign aid: forms and implementation structure, aid policies, volume of aid, and future challenges.     

Understanding Russia’s energy turn to China: domestic narratives and national identity priorities

This study investigates whether, as part of a broader “Asian Energy Pivot,” Russia’s energy giant Gazprom refashioned its export strategy away from Europe, and what impact such a reorientation might have on the EU–Russia gas relationship. It uses four empirical cases to emphasize the domestic movers underlying Russia’s eastward shift in energy trade, developing a constructivist theory rooted in the dynamics of Russia’s dominant public narrative and the contours of domestic politics. It argues that Russia’s national interests changed as a result of how Russian policy-makers interpreted and reacted to the stand-off with Europe, in response to what they perceived as Europe’s attempt to isolate it economically and geopolitically. Russia’s Eurasianists, who had advocated the notion of a necessary turn to the East for a long time, positioned themselves as norm entrepreneurs and their new interpretation of the preexisting material incentives shaped the future course of action.     

Singapore General Election 2015 and the Role of Citizenship Education

Abstract

This article explores the role of education, in particular citizenship education, in shaping the Singapore electorate. An understanding of the history of citizenship education helps to shed light on the contemporary political culture in Singapore. The extent to which democratic citizenship education has been taught in schools since 1958 is explored. Singapore’s citizenship education has consistently stressed the duties and responsibilities of citizenship, patriotism, national identity and moral values—with the goal of nation-building and legitimising the People’s Action Party state. This reflective historical piece on Singapore’s educational history adds a relatively unexplored facet to the discussions on the general election 2015 results as well as Singapore’s subsequent political development. The results of the 2015 general election in Singapore, seen in this light, are not so surprising, as they reflect the success of the state’s citizenship education in shaping the current political culture.     

嬗变中的东南亚伊斯兰教育

伊斯兰教育是东南亚国家教育体制的一个重要组成部分.长期以来,伊斯兰学校在传承伊斯兰宗教文化、维系东南亚伊斯兰社会方面发挥着重要的作用.20世纪以来,随着东南亚国家向现代化与世俗化的转变,东南亚伊斯兰教育也从传统的宗教教育逐渐向以宗教教育与世俗教育并重的教育体制转变.近年来,随着伊斯兰极端主义势力在东南亚地区的复兴,以瓦哈比派教义为中心的原教旨主义思想也逐渐蔓延渗透到东南亚的伊斯兰学校,有的伊斯兰学校甚至成为传播伊斯兰原教旨主义意识形态的基地与中心,严重威胁该地区的稳定与安全.当代东南亚伊斯兰教育的发展及其政治走向,已经引起学术界与国际社会的普遍关注.     

Do Russian research universities have a secret mission? a response to Forrat

This paper challenges the central claim of Natalia Forrat’s article that university support programs under Putin targeted the suppression of anti-regime student mobilization. Empirical evidence, both on the national-policy level and on the level of higher education institutions, suggests that the government introduced support programs in order to establish a research capacity at Russian flagship universities and to develop a more competitive national science system. The low level of students’ political engagement can rather be attributed to the outdated structures of student representation, inherited from the Soviet period.     

Commonwealth Small States,Education and Environmental Uncertainty: Learning from the Sharp End

ABSTRACT

This paper examines the Commonwealth’s inclusive role in engaging with the distinctive challenges of education provision in small states, an agenda that is often neglected elsewhere. We examine the origins of Commonwealth work on education in small states, the nature of its comparative advantage, its role in facilitating small states’ engagement with international education dialogue and regional co-operation, and the demand and potential for ongoing Commonwealth support for education. Particular attention is given to experience within the Caribbean region and to the potential for the Commonwealth and the wider international community to learn from small states in the light of their distinctive educational challenges, achievements and priorities – and, most notably, their experience at the ‘sharp end’ of environmental uncertainty and climate change.     

Presupuesto público sin participación ciudadana. La necesidad de un cambio institucional en México para la consolidación democrática

Over the last thirty years, Mexico has undergone an important consolidation of its institutional framework, focused primarily on the electoral and political system. This process of political change was accompanied by a significant transformation and liberalization of the financial and economic system. Mexico’s current situation proves that both processes do not yield satisfactory results when social problems are left unattended. In fact, the transition from a noncompetitive political system to a more democratic one, has not guaranteed better living conditions for most of the population, in part because there is practically no participation in public life on behalf of most of the citizenry. This article reflects on the fundamental importance of citizens’ participation in democracy. Particular attention is paid to public participative budgets as factors which may contribute to democracy’s consolidation and quality, but which have had negligible impacts thus far as is illustrated by public participative budgets initiatives that have been held in Mexico City.     

Chinese eyes on Africa: Authoritarian flexibility versus democratic governance

This article seeks to shed more light on the consequences of China's aid to and trade with African states. It attempts to answer two questions: First, does China's ‘no-strings-attached’ policy in Africa constitute a challenge to Western aid paradigms? Second, is there as an emerging state-sponsored Chinese model of ‘effective governance’, guided by a south-south vision of mutuality, equality and reciprocity at work? It is argued that China's Africa watchers are cautious, not wanting to project any false hopes into bilateral relationships with African countries. In the light of China's reform experience, these analysts propose that indigenous contexts should determine what developmental model to choose. China is unwilling to force its experiences of ‘a market economy with Chinese characteristics’ upon other nations. The article concludes by arguing that, although not unproblematic, there is reason to be positive about China's higher profile in Africa.