INTRODUCTION

Abstract

In the last issue of 1994 the Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars (BCAS) presented a special “Notes from the Field” section on the Bretton Woods institutions. The ten contributions to that section provided case studies of specific projects in Asia and overviews of International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank policies. In sum, they mounted a comprehensive critique of the historical and contemporary policies of these global financial institutions.     

Tristees tropes: post-modern anthropologists encounter the other and discover themselves

Modernists have represented the world and its history as divided into ‘medieval’ (or traditional) and ‘modern’, ‘developed’ and ‘developing’, and claimed that they will bring about humanity's ‘emancipation’ from the medieval. I argue that the world which modernists wish to bring into existence, far from entailing the erasure of the medieval, as claimed, involves the complex rearticulation of the medieval. Vital to the modern is not just the secularization of a previously sacred realm, upon which scholars have concentrated, but the sacralization of the mundane, pointed to by Foucault. The agent of modernist emancipation is a hypostatized sovereign Agent. The medievals engaged in certain practices which were supposed to embody a transcendent God in the human world and lead them to a celestial paradise. the moderns, silently transposing that god intoa foundational reason, assert that its manifesation in enlightened institutios will take them to a utopia which is none other than the surreptitious imporatation of the medieval paradise on earth. Imperial progresses and religious processions were, I argue, the foremost paractices by which medieval polities embodied the transcendent and attained to heaven. Modern polities, While treating them as mere ‘rituals’, have sublimated those very practices into an abstract material progress emanating from the economic practices of the entire nation represented as a vehicle on the move. Developed countries represented themselves, after recovering from World War II, as already moving at a fast clip and as living in a productionist and consumerist utopia. Underdeveloped countries like India, considered medieval, were represented as only beginning to move. They were to transfrom themselves into modern utopias through central planning andmassive projects such as dam building.     

New Malaise: Bioethics and Human Rights in the Global Era

Recent transnational HIV research projects have raised questions about the ethics of research in developing countries, and with good reason. Lower ethical standards are often applied in these settings, yet the field of bioethics has remained relatively quiet on the subject, concerning itself primarily with issues that only affect affluent countries. Here we call for a new focus on equity and human rights in bioethics.     

Causes and Prevention of Intellectual Property Crime

Intellectual property refers to the ownership and rights to use creative work that result from intellectual activity. Although there are four recognized categories of intellectual property (patents, trademarks, trade secrets, and copyright), copyright violations have garnered much attention of late because of the copying of software, movies, videogames, and music that deny publishers and authors' economic returns on their property. In order to understand this growing form of theft and the costs and consequences of such actions, the current research has three foci. First, the types of activities that fall under the rubric of intellectual property are identified and defined. Second, the causes or theoretical arguments developed to understand intellectual property theft are identified and discussed. Third, prevention techniques are examined in order to understand what is currently being done to control and prevent the misuse and theft of intellectual property. A research agenda outlining data collection efforts is also presented.     

Gender-Related Refugee Claims: Expanding the Scope of the Canadian Guidelines

In 1993 the Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada adoptedguidelines entitled ‘Women Refugee Claimants Fearing Gender-RelatedPersecution’. The Guidelines represent a cutting edgeapproach and have helped to guarantee a refugee determinationprocess for women refugees that is more sensitive to gender-relatedclaims of asylum. However, the author demonstrates that theconcept of gender-based persecution, as it is presently defined,makes it difficult for members of the Board to systematicallyevaluate all types of gender-related persecution, to which certainmen and women are subjected. The author examines asylum claimsbased on sexual orientation and identity, as well as those basedon persecution specifically inflicted upon men, and argues thatthe gender-specific analytical framework adopted by the Immigrationand Refugee Board is relevant to these cases. The author concludesthat change is needed in the form of a more clearly definedsocial constructionist interpretation of gender. Clearly, defining‘gender’ as a socially constructed concept wouldreveal the gender-specific factors that interfere with the rightsof certain men and would make more visible the links betweengender and other causes of persecution, like sexual orientation.     

Effectiveness of citizen police academies in changing the attitudes, beliefs, and behavior of citizen participants

The purpose of this study was to determine whether the citzen police academies (CPA) in two cities were effective in changing participants’ attitudes, beliefs, and behavior toward police. Pre-and post-test questionnaires were used to obtain participants’ ratings of their attitudes and beliefs concerning police officers and their willingness to cooperate with police. Participants were also asked to indicate what cooperative behaviors they had actually engaged in before and/or during the CPA. At the end of the CPA, participants in both cities rated themselves as having more positive attitudes toward police, and more willingness to engage in behaviors that would help police. There was also an increase in actual performance of some cooperative behaviors during the CPA. These changes did not seem to be overly dependent on the jurisdiction (large versus small city), the demographics of the CPA participants, or the specific characteristics of the CPA curriculum.