The Shanghai Cooperation Organization,trade, and the roles of Iran,India and Pakistan

This article seeks to explore the implications of Shanghai Cooperation Organization's (SCO) engagement with India, Pakistan and Iran. Not in terms of power-politics or as a counterbalance to the USA as this has been explored elsewhere, but what practical problems such an expanded organization could help solve, what opportunities it could realize, and how SCO's engagement in trade is a function of favourable political and bilateral developments in the region. It is argued here that the trade, infrastructure and energy sectors are of particular importance and that substantial potential gains could be realized if coordination is improved. Nevertheless, it is also recognized that China, Russia, Pakistan, India and Iran may have lower standards of democratic development and economic transparency than the West. What is the motivation behind the SCO's engagement with India, Pakistan and Iran? Should this engagement be conceived only in terms of balancing US unipolarity or are there legitimate concerns of increasing regional cooperation in Eurasia?     

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.     

Germany,Russia, and the Rise of Geo-Economics

This article argues that the merger of the PDS with the WASG offers the new ‘Left Party’ an opportunity to realise a long-held goal of the PDS – a firm place in Germany's party system as a nationwide party of the radical left. Much, however, will depend upon the successful resolution, or at least successful management, of some key points of conflict. To understand the challenges involved here, the article compares and contrasts the merger of the German Greens and Alliance '90 with that of the PDS and WASG. Although there are some striking similarities between the two merger processes, there are also some significant differences, differences that suggest that the long-term marriage of the PDS and WASG may be a rocky one.     

Transnational Migrants,Globalization Processes,and Regimes of Power and Knowledge

This article situates the Bush administration's new strategy in the historical context of the international capitalist order established by the United States at the end of the 1940s and argues that this order, though extraordinarily successful for some decades, is now in crisis. The unique capitalist international community that the United States established under its primacy revived international capitalism while preventing geopolitical rivalries between the main capitalist centers. The leading sectors of U.S. business have become dependent on the preservation of the unipolar primacy order for its own economic security and expansion while the American domestic political economy has failed to revive as an industrial economy meeting the rules of international economics, exhibiting growing problems with current account deficits and rising levels of debt. To manage the resulting tensions between the orientation of American transnational sectors and problems in the domestic American political economy, the United States has developed an international monetary and financial regime that is destabilizing and dependent upon the preservation of American political primacy over the capitalist world. But the Soviet collapse has destabilized the primacy system, while the dominant sections of American capitalism are committed to rebuilding it. The Bush administration is seeking to rebuild U.S. primacy, using U.S. military dominance. But this carries very high risks.     

Crime,punishment, family violence,and the cloak of legal invisibility

Abstract

In this article, the authors trace how the Anglo-Australian system of criminal law constructs crime within the family differently from other forms of crime. The zone of legal impunity for intrafamilial crime was carved out by special defences and immunities, such as provocation and marital rape, as well as policing policies and practices that effectively decriminalised “domestic” forms of physical and sexual abuse. Legal impunity was never absolute, and there were notable exceptions where the familial and gendered aspects of the crime in fact aggravated the offence, such as the law's treatment of spousal murder by females as a form of “petty treason”, warranting the most severe punishment of burning at the stake. Reforms in the late twentieth century removed overt forms of gender discrimination from the criminal law, exposing a new legal visibility of crime within “the family”, though as the authors conclude, there are still remnants of differential treatment in fields of sentencing law and practice.     

Commissioning,Community, and Conscience

In all societies, collective memory practices are integral parts of local tradition and culture. While the recent “memory boom” has resulted in a massive international proliferation of commemorative monuments and memorials, not enough attention has been paid to cultural differences in the ways societies remember. By comparing processes of commemoration and memorialization in postapartheid South Africa with selected case studies in the USA, this article highlights the definitive role that material culture and tangible objects as containers of memory play in American society, while among black South Africans, oral and performative modes of remembering have traditionally been more important. In both societies, museums and commemorative monuments are promoted as officially sanctioned sites of collective memory, but their public reception differs significantly. It is argued that official forms of commemoration are most successful when they are connected to; flow naturally out of; or stand in a meaningful, symbiotic relationship with, vernacular forms of commemoration. While the tangible aspects of specific commemorative cultures can easily be imitated internationally or cross-culturally, its intangible aspects can never be assumed to transfer automatically.     

中日韩卫生合作的现状、挑战与启示

卫生外交虽然起步较晚,但在周边外交中的作用不断加大。中日韩三方卫生合作始于卫生安全领域,在对非典危机和禽流感疫情的协调处理中逐渐得以改善,主要表现为在亚太经济合作组织、10+3框架,以及中日韩卫生部长会议机制下开展的多边及双边卫生合作,合作领域从传染病逐渐延伸至非传染性疾病、食品安全、全民健康覆盖等广泛领域。然而,中日韩卫生合作面临内生动力不足、主导权不明确、合作层次单一、缺乏有效融资平台等一系列挑战。中国应充分认识卫生外交在中日韩三方合作中的独特作用,在中国全球卫生战略的指导下,更加积极主动地引领和推动新型的中日韩卫生合作的转型和创新。     

Circles of esteem,standard works,and Euphoric couplets

Abstract

Indonesian Studies as a field is strongly influenced by its own social character as a community of competing and cooperating scholars. Outside individual universities, the dominant social form is not the powerful professor, but rather the “circle of esteem,” a cluster of scholars who respect each other, cite each other's work, push each other's ideas into the academic marketplace, and, occasionally, rise to each other's defense. Circles of esteem arise because academic work has less to do with the industrial production of knowledge than with a constant search for novelty, which may arise from new sources or new uses of sources. Although novelty is prized, the value of new work is hard to judge, and it will be more easily accepted when backed by a circle of esteem. There are two effective ways to gain academic prestige outside a circle of esteem. The first is to write a standard work, a conservative strategy to create a work that will become citation fodder for others. The second way is to coin a “euphoric couplet,” which is an unexpected adjective-noun combination encapsulating a previously elusive analytical truth. Euphoric couplets are easy to remember, dissociated from theory, and intriguingly ambiguous.     

The economic development of Vietnam,Laos, and Cambodia

The three states of Indochina are engaged in the most radical economic transformation of any of the nations in Southeast Asia. Of the three countries, the Socialist Republic of Vietnam, with a population of 70 million, is the most important to the market economies of Asia and the West. Although their individual situations vary greatly, the systemic reforms of all three countries emphasize decentralization and privatization, and permit market forces considerable scope in determining economic activity. They remain several decades behind most of their counterparts in the rest of Southeast Asia with respect to the standards of living of their populations and the overall development of their economies. With the end of the Cold War, they have had to redirect their external political relationships and must contemplate internal political reforms occasioned by influences accompanying a new economic orientation. In Vietnam and Laos, the Communist party is in command of the society’s fundamental decisions; it is determined to retain political control. In Cambodia, pluralism and a form of democracy are mandated by the United Nations and by the new Cambodian constitution. Over the near term, full membership in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) will be important to all three countries once their economies become compatible with the other ASEANs.