An internal history of the communist party of Thailand

This is a translation of a history of the Communist Party of Thailand, written by a leading party member in 1978. The Thai original was published for the first time in early 2003. The document begins with a background analysis of Thai society, then traces the party's history from the 1920s, and ends with the “lessons” learnt. The document is especially detailed on the party's adoption and adaptation of the Maoist strategy of rural armed struggle.     

New town,new capital,new workplace? The employment relations of a Japnese inward investors in West Midlands new town

In this paper we examine the chracter of employment and industrial relatins withing new manufacturing industry in a new-town setting. We show how a combination ofnational and local state initiatives generated a new patterno of manuafacturin, dominated by foreign-owned companies. Drawing from extensive fieldwork in Japanese firms, we demonstrate,contra the ‘japanization’ thesis, that greenfield sites do not proved employers with unconstained opportunities to control labour. Rather, we highlight how capoital-labour relations development through interaction between large firms, state agencies and workers, producing an evoling and contested new employment settlement. Our analysis also undelines the limits confronting local state development strategies under a neo-liberal state regime.     

From volunteers to voluntours: shifting priorities in post-disaster Japan

This paper analyses the emergence of post-disaster ‘voluntours’ following Japan's 2011 disasters. An overwhelming, yet haphazard volunteer response to previous disasters spurred extensive collaboration between the state, relief organizations, and would-be volunteers in the wake of 3.11. However, when mapped onto to the massive devastation of the 3.11 disasters, this collaboration almost immediately turned many post-disaster volunteers into ‘voluntourists’, a problematic category commonly associated with visitors from the Global North volunteering for social and environmental causes while on holiday in the Global South. Japan's post-disaster voluntours demonstrate how uncoordinated and potentially risky volunteers have been channelled into a carefully-controlled and long-term response that satisfies people's desire to help disaster victims, while ultimately encouraging tourism (sans volunteering) as the most desirable form of disaster recovery assistance. This shift toward voluntourism potentially undermines post-disaster volunteering and threatens to trap parts of Tōhoku, like other disaster sites, in a position of permanently ‘post-disaster’.     

From the ashes of the Great Kantō Earthquake: the Tokyo imperial university settlement

Abstract:

In 1884, an Anglican clergyman and staff and students from Oxford University set up a ‘settlement house’ in the East End of London. Conceiving poverty in moral and aspirational terms, their goal was to live with the poor to raise their cultural standards, and thus pull them out of the cycle of destitution. The idea soon spread to the United States. That the Settlement movement would travel across the Atlantic is no surprise: there was rich exchange between the UK and US in the late nineteenth century, and the values underpinning the movement were shared. But what is perhaps less expected is that the Settlement movement also travelled to Japan where it was put into practice by a range of governmental and non-government actors including students at Tokyo Imperial University in the wake of the 1923 Great Kantō Earthquake. The movement then flourished for almost a decade, before coming to an end in 1938. How was it adapted to the Japanese context? What were its goals, methods, successes and failures? And what can this example tell us about the global circulation of ideas regarding social responsibility, the state and welfare in the inter-war period?     

Non-custodial Dispositions and the Politicsof Sentencing

In 2012, the Government of Victoria, Australia, introduced a new form of non-custodial disposition known as the “community correction order” (“CCO”). In 2014, the Victorian Court of Appeal was asked to provide guidance to sentencing courts so that CCOs could fulfil their potential as an alternative to imprisonment. The Court’s guideline judgment concluded that the advent of the CCO had the potential to transform sentencing in Victoria but that this would depend upon the community being properly informed about the capacity of a CCO to operate punitively, as well as to promote rehabilitation. This did not occur, however, and there was strident criticism of the judgment as authorising inadequate punishment of serious offences. Although sentencing courts have utilised the CCO appropriately in the light of the judgment, the Government recently legislated to restrict its availability.     

Shifting Tides of Informal Worker Resistance in Mexico: A Domestic Work-Construction Contrast

Informal workers in Mexico, the majority of the country's workforce, have organised to demand rights, but with varying results. In this article, we contrast recent organising by Mexico's domestic workers and informal construction workers. Household worker movements have succeeded in institutionalising significant new organisations and raising public awareness. Construction workers, despite earlier militant counterexamples, have remained trapped by corporatist structures, and their organising capacity has atrophied. We place these outcomes in the context of the overall decline of labour, suggesting conclusions for the limits and possibilities of contemporary Mexican labour mobilisation.     

Limits to growth: The case of Dutch prison capacity

This article deals with the question of why the dentention capacity in the Netherlands has been increasing since 1975, and what the consequences are for the future. Analysis is based on literature. Dutch policy is reactive: capacity depends on the sum of detention sentences. The interaction between the judicial system and its political imbedding leads to a continuous growth in detention capacity. This spin-off process is also active when crime is not increasing. As a consequence, continuation of this growth is to be expected. It is not clear whether judges allow capacity to affect the length of the prison sentences they pass. If so, a spiral process is going on, where the increase in capacity fuels the need for a greater capacity in the future. In theory, this spiral could also go downwards. Therefore, when the spiral is stronger than the spin-off, a pro-active government policy could lead to a reduction in capacity. However, as it is not clear that this is the case, it is concluded that the detention capacity could best be reduced by ad hoc measures like legalising drugs.