‘Two bodhisattvas from the East’: Minhe Monguor funeral orations

This paper presents and analyzes the texts and performance context of funeral orations for Monguor living in Minhe Hui and Monguor Autonomous County, Qinghai Province, China. The orations provide an important insight into the Minhe Monguor religious worldview. It is further noted that the longer, more traditional orations are now rarely given and that the Minhe Monguor funeral orations differ considerably from those heard in Huzhu Monguor Autonomous County, also located in Qinghai.     

Asian multilateral institutions and their response to the Asian economic crisis: the regional and global implications

Asian multilateralism has been a relatively recent development. It differs from that elsewhere and reflects the history and characteristics of the region. It has been important in the growth of regional cooperation, in developing common regional interests and in the development and adherence to norms. These characteristics contributed in responding in a constructive, if limited, way to the Asian economic crisis. Nevertheless, the crisis has revealed the weaknesses of existing regional multilateral institutions and those weaknesses are often seen as raising doubts about whether those institutions can be effective in the future without major reform. Yet, although the response of the regional institutions was clearly inadequate, the region's response overall was far from negligible. Efforts to ensure regional coherence in the future by way of ASEAN, APEC and ASEAN+3 in particular are already being made to ensure greater stability in the financial sector. The region also wants to overcome its under representation in the global arena, but increased global participation, while positive, will remain supplementary to the global institutions, notably the IMF. Greater global involvement would provide, however, a more appropriate balance between regional and global contributions to future crises, since they will need to be better tailored to regional conditions and therefore depend on greater regional involvement from the start.     

Super-optimizing china: reunification as an example

Whereas political issues and problems in China are complicated, efforts to “super-optimize” are essential and can be fruitful. The reunification issue is discussed to illustrate even highly politicized problems in China are amenable to super-optimum solutions. At the moment, some reunification options have been proposed: KMT-CCP negotiation on equal footing; KMT's military takeover; CCP's military takeover; the “one country, two systems” formula, convergence by democratization, and incremental convergence through trading and communication. Yet, neither parties find the alternatives desirable in terms of optimal satisfaction. By applying SOS rule # 2 (finding items that will provide large benefits to one side but only small costs to the other side), # 5 (combining the conservative and liberal alternatives where they are not mutually exclusive), and # 6 (removing the source of the conflict), reunification and democratization are made feasible and all parties concerned are better off. The specific proposals are that Taiwan should introduce a wholesale buy-out scheme that costs US$30 billion, that a new republic be established, and that legislative powers should be shared among the majoritarian and non-majoritarian institutions. Together, these arrangements could ensure stability and result in democratization.     

Anarchs and Social Guys

This contribution addresses the question raised by Robin Fox concerning our tribal ancestry and its relevance to modernity and civilization. The discussion centers first on the concept of communitas with the suggestion that it be defined as referring to two different states, the psychological communitas and the sociological communitas. Groups or communities organized along the lines of a sociological communitas are then examined cursorily and their properties are outlined. Numerous tribal groups of that sort have been documented and have been shown to lack the traits of what is called a social organization. The observation of their non-social organization is arguably a fact of major significance in the social sciences, one that has not been clearly highlighted so far. The hypothesis presented in this paper is that such organizations that are anarchic and complex have to be epistemologically dissociated from organizations that are social. Anarchs and social guys thus point to two different ancestries in the genealogy of humankind.     

Book reviews

Bryan S. Turner, Orientalism, Postmodernism and Globalising (Routledge, London 1994). 208pp. ISBN 0–415–10861–6, 0–415–10862–4 (pb).

Mir Zohair Husain, Global Islamic Politics, (Harper Collins, London 1995). 282pp. ISBN 0–06501484–7 (pb).

Sondra Farganis, Situating Feminism: From Thought to Action, (Sage, London 1994). 195pp. ISBN 0–8039–4650–3

Tom Mayer, Analytical Marxism, (Sage, California 1994). 371pp. ISBN 0–8039–4681–3 (pb).

Ian Adams, Political Ideology Today, (Manchester University Press, Manchester 1995). 369pp. ISBN 0–7190–3347–0.

Geoffrey Pridham and Tatu Vanhanen, Democratization in Eastern Europe: Domestic and international perspectives, (Routledge, London 1994). 274pp. ISBN 0–415–11063–7(hb), 0–415–11064–5(pb).

Ash Amin (ed), Post‐Fordism: A Reader, (Basil Blackwell, Oxford 1994). 435pp. ISBN 0–631–18857–6 (pb).     

Lobbying in the 21st century

This paper suggests that the nature of activism is changing to take account of the shifts in political and economic conditions. It further goes on to consider that as a result of these emerging trends we have witnessed a generational shift in how governments, businesses, interest groups and citizens will interact. It is possible to place the issues and questions that this new environment raises under a number of broad headings—Democracy and Dissent, Government and Parliament, Media, and Lobbying –each of which the paper deals with in turn. Copyright © 2003 Henry Stewart Publications.     

Book reviews

Ennio Di Nolfo (ed.), Power in Europe?II. Great Britain, France, Germany and Italy and the Origins of the EEC, 1952-1957. (Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter, 1992), DM238.

Simon J. Nuttall, European Political Cooperation (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992), 343pp. £30, ISBN 0 19 827318 5.

Michael Smith and Stephen Woolcock, The United States and the European Community in a Transformed World (London: Pinter publishers for Royal Institute for International Affairs, 1993), 120 pp., £22.50 hb, £9.95 pb. ISBN 086187 0972/086187 0980.

Richard H. Ullman, Securing Europe (London: Adamantine Press, 1991), 175pp., £12.95. ISBN 0 7449 0036 0.

Cornelia Navari (ed.), The Condition of States: A Study in International Political Theory (Milton Keynes: Open University Press, 1991), 238pp.

Francine Friedman, (comp. and ed.) Yugoslavia: A Comprehensive English-Language Bibliography (Wilmington, Delaware: Scholarly Resources, 1993), xv + 547 pp., indices, US$ 120.

Richard Dean Burns (ed.), Encyclopedia of Arms Control and Disarmament (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1993), three vols., 1692 pp. inch index, US$280, ISBN 0 684 19281 0.