CAMEROON: A COUNTRY UNITED BY ETHNIC AMBITION AND DIFFERENCE

This paper attempts an answer to the question: What keeps Cameroontogether despite widespread instability in Africa, despite theturbulence of the subregional environment in which it findsitself, and despite its own internal contradictions? The mainargument is that the politics of regional and ethnic balance,the chronic lack of vision as a country, the lack of real commitmentto democracy, the propensity to vacillate on most issues ofcollective interest, together with an infinite ability to developsurvival strategies, have acted to counter all meaningful attemptsto pursue common interests and aspirations. All that appearsto unite Camerooni ans is a common ethnic or regional ambitionto preserve their differences under the delusion of maximizingopportunities. However, as the ‘national cake’ diminisheswith the worsening economic crisis, corruption, mass miseryand ethnicity, making it more illusive for the bulk of smallpeople to claim the same benefits from their connections withthe big—or the not so big—men and women of power,one can legitimately wonder just how much longer the systemcan continue to deflate the disaffected.     

INCREASING WOMEN's PARTICIPATION IN VILLAGE GOVERNMENT IN CHINA

In the last three decades in China, few and declining numbers of women have participated in the main grassroots institutions of rural government, the village committee and the village branch of the Chinese Communist Party. This article examines a project aimed at addressing this problem, initiated in 2003 in Heyang county, Shaanxi, by one of China's largest and most influential women's nongovernmental organizations, West Women, together with the state-affiliated Women's Federation. The article discusses the goals, strategies, and short-term results of the Heyang Project. It then discusses the longer-term potential of the Heyang model for achieving greater gender equity and women's empowerment in rural China. Previous studies have critiqued Chinese approaches to the goal of increasing women's participation in village government, but have not questioned the desirability or need for the goal itself. In this article, the author takes the critique one step further, to provoke questions about the very desirability of increasing women's participation in village government. She concludes that when viewed in light of other recent trends, notably large-scale rural out-migration and tax reforms, increasing women's participation in village government may not have as desirable or significant an impact on gender relations as has previously been assumed.     

泰国华人家庭和社会的缩影——读《碧城风云录》

泰国泰中学会副会长林光辉先生的著作《碧城风云录》一书 ,生动地展现了二战前后泰国华人家庭和社会的历史 ,是全面了解和认识二战前后泰国华人社会的必读书