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In the context of divisive disagreements about how the British left should orient itself towards the current Labour Party, this intervention uses the Gorzian category of non-reformist reforms to critically evaluate the 2017–19 policy programme developed by the Corbyn-led Labour Party and draw out the implications for current strategic debates. It argues that the radical core of the Corbynite economic programme lay in its proposals for widening ownership and extending economic democracy, but that there was a tension between commodified and decommodifying visions of these proposals. Exploring the different conceptions of political transformation implicit within each vision, the paper argues that only the latter had the potential to be non-reformist in the Gorzian sense. However, Gorz was concerned not merely with a reform's content but also with how it was formulated and pursued. The paper ends by arguing that the transformative potential of the economic programme was not reflected in its political strategy and that this has important lessons for strategy today. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper questions the conventional scholarly view that early Chinese economic thought simply conceived of farming and commerce as mutually opposing forces. It argues that during Western Han times there existed a significant distance between court rhetoric and economic reality and suggests that, in reading official discourse, one should be cautious not to emphasize the economic over the political. The paper re-examines a series of well-known court memorials and concludes that few questioned the ethics of how wealth should be generated as long as political control could be maintained and the Han court was on the receiving end of it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mentioning the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, a seminary, and slavery in the same breath seems incongruous. Nonetheless, within the account of Codrington College, Barbados, the Anglican Communion's first theological college, we find these three inextricably linked. Using a historical-analytical approach, this paper reveals the troubling missionizing principles which advanced oppressive colonial structures, while failing to fully develop the personhood, agency, and full emancipation of the oppressed. We reassess the ways that particular top-down framings of Christianity and missions were used to enslave/oppress Afro-Barbadians, even under the guise of emancipation. Advocating instead for a framework centering emancipation from below, we outline the ways in which this historical account provides insight for contemporary missional hermeneutics/praxis that seeks to uproot racial and economic inequalities, thus pursuing liberation for all. Resumen: Parece incongruente nombrar al mismo tiempo la Sociedad para la propagación del evangelio, el seminario y la esclavitud; sin embargo, estos tres están estrechamente vinculados en la historia de Codrington College, Barbados, el primer colegio teológico de la Comunión anglicana. Este trabajo utiliza un enfoque histórico-analítico para poner de manifiesto los preocupantes principios misioneros que extendieron estructuras coloniales opresivas, y fallaron en desarrollar plenamente la personalidad, la organización y la plena emancipación de los oprimidos. Reevaluamos las maneras en que ciertos marcos verticalistas del cristianismo y las misiones, aún bajo el pretexto de emancipación, se utilizaron para esclavizar / oprimir a los afrobarbadenses. Se promueve, en lugar de ello, un modelo centrado en la emancipación desde abajo; se delinea cómo este relato histórico provee una mirada para la hermenéutica / praxis misional contemporánea que busca erradicar las desigualdades raciales y económicas para la liberación de todos. 摘要: 一口气同时提到福音传播的团体、神学院和奴隶制似乎很不协调。然而，在圣公会第一所神学院巴巴多斯的科德林顿学院，我们发现这三者有着千丝万缕的联系。本文运用历史分析方法，揭示了令人烦扰的宣教原则，这些原则推进了压迫性的殖民结构，而未能充分培养被压迫者的人格和媒介以致他们得到充分的解放。我们重新评估了基督教和宣教机构自上而下的框架，即使打着解放的幌子，是被用来奴役/压迫非洲巴巴迪亚人的方式。相反，我们主张建立一个以从下解放为中心的框架，概述了这一历史叙述如何为当代宣教诠释/实践提供见解，这些诠释/实践寻求根除种族和经济的不平等，追求人人解放。 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Customary tenure in Africa has tended to be marginalized in favour of statutory control and privatisation, including public areas protected for wildlife and forest conservation. Zambia has retained a significant proportion of customary land controlled by traditional authorities (chiefs), although access to wildlife and other natural resources is controlled by the state. Recent private sector investment in the agricultural and tourism sectors has potential to support local livelihoods but, equally, land could become alienated to the private sector at low value. The outcome hinges on the responses of individual chiefs, and on how far communities can hold them accountable. This paper, which is based on participant observation, interviews of community members and government officials in rural Zambia, contextualises the general problem of the privatisation of the African and Zambian 'commons'. It then uses two contrasting case studies of chiefdoms that have negotiated commercial investment by the private sector on their communal land. Additionally, the paper presents an experiment in establishing participatory common property regimes designed to manage private investment in communal lands and temper patriarchal rule with downward accountability. It argues that a reliable positive result depends on the extent to which local people can hold their chiefs accountable, as well as a new holistic policy and legislative environment, accompanied by sound extension services. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Calls for greater levels of protection for workers in the global economy have emerged as a repose to the growth of globally organised networks of production centred around the multinational corporation (MNC). The suggestion is made that, in this context, states, keen to attract foreign investment, are increasingly less able to enforce national labour standards. This paper considers the various debates and controversies that surround the issue of labour standards. I look at the way in which the debates have played out within the International Labour Organisation (ILO) and contrast this approach with the emergence of "self-regulatory" code of conduct based modes of MNC regulation. However, as a feminist researcher with interests in the subordination of female employment within the global economy, this paper also seeks to address the issue of how women's labour rights are being protected. A gender perspective on this issue is essential because of the massively important role of female employment in many of the globalized industries that have been at the heart of labour standards debate (in particular in clothing). It is noted that the emergence of an approach to international labour standards that embraces a human rights approach has, in practice, led to the emergence of very minimalistic definitions of labour standards that act to marginalise women's concerns as workers in global supply chains. Despite the limitations of codes of conduct as a mode of regulating labour standards, it is suggested that these codes do provide a space for the bringing in of gender concerns into the labour standards debate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on the productivity of ancient Egyptian agriculture, a discussion of economic theory, per capita GDP, economic growth, and agrarian economies through history, this paper tries to isolate the relative roles of land, labor, and grain in the economy of Ancient Egypt. There is little room for full employment in an agrarian economy; in Bronze Age Egypt the labor of a small fraction of the population would have sufficed to nourish all. Aside from services, an agrarian economy cannot expand employment much. Increasing productivity is counter-productive and none of the wealthy agrarian economies grew organically into an industrial economy. Govert van Driel pointed out that in agrarian ancient Mesopotamia there was no place for the market or silver, although both were present (as is claimed for Egypt). Overcapacity, trade, underemployment, and finance allow an understanding of the ancient economies, economics and economic growth; the impact of using modern economic thought based on production (and not economic behavior and activity) results in a flawed theory that must be revised. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Harms against nonhuman animals have become a significant concern in different disciplines (e.g., green criminology). This paper presents a multi-disciplinary discussion of one form of animal harm—wildlife harm—created by state agencies charged with protecting animals. Specifically, this issue is examined by reviewing the complex problems faced by the US Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS), which is charged with competing objectives: between protecting economic and public health interests, and protecting wildlife. In managing the human–wildlife conflicts brought to its attention, the USFWS must often make tradeoffs between protecting economic and public health interests, and protecting wildlife. As the data reviewed here indicate, this leads the USFWS to kill a large number of animals each year to protect economic and public health interests—more than 40 million animals since 1996. The political and economic factors that influence these killings, and how the state balances conflicting interests, are also examined. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents and critically analyses the case law of the Slovenian courts with regard to mass individual claims against the state due to nuisance from public roads and railroads. The courts have largely upheld these claims. In awarding monetary compensation for non-pecuniary loss, they have considered the fundamental right to a healthy environment to be a personality right. Moreover, they have held that the state is under a guarantee-like obligation towards the population in that noise arising from public roads and railways will not exceed the limit levels set by the Regulation on Limit Values of Environmental Noise Indicators. As a consequence, new mass claims are being filed, exposing the state to considerable liability. The author considers the approach taken by the civil courts in Slovenia to be misguided on several levels. A fair balance between should be sought public and individual interests. Upholding claims in full by individuals who did nothing to mitigate noise is inappropriate. The problem would be better dealt with by way of regulating noise protection; compensation by way of analogy to (partial) expropriation in the public interest should only be sought if noise protection measures are ineffective or disproportionate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines economic aspects of the Arab Revolt of 1936-39, which was, beyond doubt, a national Palestinian revolt. It is suggested that, while the rebels, most of whom were peasants, acted collectively for national causes, many of them also perceived personal economic and rural collective interests in participating and acted to pursue economic and national goals simultaneously. This analysis helps explain why peasants comprised the main rebel force, why many of them were "landless" and from the poorest stratum of Palestinian rural society, why militias tended to be small, why banditry became dominant in 1938, and how economic motivations fueled an internal Arab-Palestinian civil war. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper functions as a contribution to feminist analyses that are methodologically based on Rosa Luxemburg’s critique of political economy and her understanding of capital accumulation, but also as a contribution to contemporary social-reproduction theory which aims to integrate Luxemburg’s legacy alongside that of Marx. The essay offers a sketch for a ‘Luxemburgian feminism’ consisting of (1) an overview of Luxemburg’s critique of bourgeois feminism and (2) a preliminary application of Luxemburg’s ‘dialectics of spatiality’ to contemporary social-reproduction theory. With Luxemburg’s The Accumulation of Capital in mind and her several essays on the so-called ‘women’s question’, we shall attempt to relate Luxemburg’s explanation of the dynamic link between capitalist and non-capitalist spatialities with the commodification of women’s reproductive labour. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Amish community is a boon to social science analysis. They are so similar in many ways to the outside world; they live as part of it. And yet they are also quite different. These similari-ties and especially differences provide a contrast that can be studied. The present paper looks at this religious group of people through the eyeglasses of history, law, philosophy, culture and economics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on lessons learned from examining the relationship between several international organizations and African higher education, this paper unveils the subtleties and complexities of power dynamics in negotiations, provides illustrative cases to enhance such understanding, discusses the implications of power dynamics in negotiations over higher education policy, and provides a glimpse at the necessary ingredients to build sustainable and healthy international partnerships. Based in a conceptual framework of power dynamics, the paper hinges on international regimes for its theoretical foundation, and on the intersection of conflicting agendas for a transformative higher education in Africa, as advocated by the Association of African Universities (AAU) and the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS), for its historical framework. An understanding of the subtleties and complexities of power dynamics in international negotiations is critical for Africa at this crossroads of her relationship with BRIC countries, particularly amidst the competition between China and other superpowers and their respective organizations over Africa as a market arena. This understanding will also be important for examining newly claimed 'reformed' policies originating from the historically dominant Western countries because (a) the dimensions of this relationship are still being negotiated/established, thus a good time to address power dynamics; (b) Africa is engaged in a quest for development through partnerships; and, (c) African scholars are often confronted with the idea of a higher education system by African design. With a focus on Africa that simultaneously highlights the problem of developing nations more generally, this paper discusses four categories of power - hermeneutical, informational, manipulative, and monetary -- that must be taken seriously into account in international negotiations as they have dire consequences for the developing world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract In this paper, we utilize time series tests with structural breaks to test for evidence of an impact on economic growth rates in North African countries following the 2007-2009 U.S. and global financial crisis. One or two breaks in economic growth are identified in each country, except for Morocco where no break is found. However, breaks that coincide with the financial crisis are found in only two of the six countries (Libya and Mauritania), while other breaks coincide most often with earlier U.S. and EU recessions. To further examine the impact of shocks, impulse response functions are estimated from Vector Auto-Regression models with structural breaks. We again find no evidence that shocks from the financial crisis had a significant impact on economic growth in North Africa. We conclude that shocks from the 2007-2009 financial crisis had only a temporary and relatively small impact on economic growth rates in North Africa. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using multilevel models fitted to data from the World Values Survey and national statistics for 22 countries, this paper explores the relationship between both economic inequality and poverty - both across and within nations - and ethnic and religious tolerance. Consistent with previous research, the results demonstrate a positive relationship between individual-level incomes and tolerance. The results also provide contextual modifications to aspects of Inglehart's (1987) post-materialist thesis by showing that while tolerance is positively associated with national-level economic prosperity, the relationship is stronger for higher income earners than for those who earn less. Finally, the study also contributes an entirely new finding regarding the influence of poverty on tolerance. Specifically, tolerance tends to be highest in countries with low poverty levels. This finding holds for people throughout the income distribution. The paper concludes with a discussion of the policy implications of these findings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Famine is a social and economic crisis that is commonly accompanied by widespread of malnu-trition, starvation, epidemic disease, and increased mortality. This paper focuses on the period of the Great Leap Famine in China between 1958 and 1962. Based on newly-collected oral inter-views and archival evidence, it gives voices to ordinary villagers from different parts of China-- from various counties in one of China's biggest and most populated Sichuan province in the southwest to Shandong in the east and Hunan in central China and examines their experiences and their survival strategies in times of hunger, illness, and death. It shows that an integral part of everyday famine culture, particularly in rural China, which was worst hit, concerns the kitchen knowledge and practice of healing and nutrition. Many traditional recipes that were used in previous times were rediscovered and used as everyday hunger-coping techniques. Some are dated back to the Ming dynasty--a few were recorded in Materia Medica for Famine Relief (Qiuhtiang bencao ..., c. 1406). Using the methodology of oral history set against the historical background of traditional materia medica, this paper elicits how ordinary people in rural China devised complex and plural strategies to cope with fundamental biological crises. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on the Security Council's disparate responses to relatively similar acts of regime violence in Syria and Libya, it seems that the Responsibility to Protect doctrine is heavily influenced by factors other than the substantive act of violence. Accordingly, this paper discusses the legal, but also the strategic and pragmatic factors influencing the use, or abstention from the use, of armed humanitarian intervention. While some critics decry the influence of factors that are seemingly exogenous to Responsibility to Protect, this paper argues that the interplay of law and various matters of strategic concern such as politics, economics, and pragmatics is an unavoidable reality in a world where political actors (the states on the Security Council) decide the legitimacy of interventions. Therefore, this paper contends that the strategic and pragmatic concerns that prevent the use of force in Syria do not make the doctrine ipso facto illegitimate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Tunisians and Egyptians sought recently to transform their political culture. Their political economy has rendered it impossible to develop the scientific infrastructure needed to benefit from science. This paper shows that, by comparison with China and India, the Arabs in 1999 had a substantially higher level of university enrolment, per million inhabitants abroad and at home; and were ahead in per capita R&D output. Yet both China and India were able to take off with these resources while the Arab countries were left behind. The research output of the Arab countries increased about 50-fold over the period 1967-2010. Egypt, the GCC and the Maghreb are in the lead, and the leading countries are Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Tunisia. Yet Arab governments provide minimal support to R&D at 0.2% of GNP and few countries have recently increased support to R&D. The paper discusses their research output as well international collaboration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper has three objectives: i) to empirically examine labor market transitions in deindustrializing Asian economies; ii) to study the character of labor market risks and how these risks are shifting by gender, by education level, and by age in the transitional period; and iii) to rethink the commonly accepted assumptions that deindustrialization and globalization are the main causes of new labor market risks and, thus propose the possibility of institutional legacy as an important factor for such risk shifts. This study focuses on the labor market risks in the Republic of Korea, Japan, and Taiwan. Three steps are taken in this inquiry. First, this study commences by empirically examining the three labor market changes mentioned above. Second, it challenges the idea of the emergence of 'new risks,' arguing instead for the concept of 'risk shift': the feature of risk shifting to different demographic groups. Lastly, with the empirical evidence already used, this paper discusses whether deindustrialization or globalization is a sufficient cause for risk shifts in deindustrializing Asian economies, proposing that institutional legacy may be an important factor in risk shift. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Though the Christian observance of Sabbath-keeping has been inconsistent throughout history, the concept has become popular in devotional literature. This paper argues that because of three characteristics of Sabbath-keeping-an altered, theocentric perspective, a slower, simpler style of living, and an eschatological encounter-it may be a useful "tool" for more environmentally sensitive modes of living. Observing the Sabbath reminds Christians to view Creation as God did while resting on the seventh day in Genesis; it prompts a simplification that often has environmentally salutary effects in its lessened consumption; and it draws Christians into a shared vision of a redeemed, healed creation. The paper draws on insights from Jürgen Moltmann, Abraham Joshua Heschel, John Paul II, Seventh-day Adventists and Sabbath Economics thinkers (including Wendell Berry, Marva J. Dawn, Ched Myers, Norman Wirzba, and Richard Lowery). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract The main concern of this paper is the question of what sociological concepts are appropriate to describe resources derived from religious participation and belief. I test two possibilities: first, the capital paradigm and second, the gift theory. The former has the inconvenience that it contains instrumentalist connotations suggesting people invest in religion in order to reach particular ends. The latter focuses heavily on social bonds articulated on a three-dimensional gift system (vertical, horizontal and longitudinal), overshadowing benefits that reach beyond the ambit of religion. This paper discusses the possibility of combining the two approaches, maintaining the idea of religious and spiritual capital, not in terms of intentionally pursued advantages, but as by-products of religious and spiritual interest. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is based on the Isaac and Tamara Deutscher Memorial-Prize Lecture given at SOAS in London, on 27 November 2009. It claims that Marxism remains built around a critique of political economy ('economics') but lacks a parallel critique of international relations (IR). IR naturalises the organisation of inter-state relations along lines comparable to the naturalisation of the capitalist economy by economics. The paper argues that the disciplinary organisation of Western academia is part of the class-discipline in society at large. It was triggered by the abstraction of economics from the field of the broader social sciences. IR, in turn, was codified in the slipstream of Woodrow Wilson's response to the Russian Revolution that followed on from the US-intervention in World-War I. The discipline was built around a founding myth of global liberalism and national self-determination. It served, among other things, to disqualify the claims of the theory of imperialism on disciplinary grounds, and its initial connections with Western hegemony, capital, and the national-security state remain in place today. Distinguishing modes of foreign relations, and specifying the occupation of space, protection, and exchange for tribal and empire/nomad foreign relations, as well as sovereign equality and global governance, on the other hand make it possible to understand the rise and continuing hegemony of the West in its own right, rather than as a superstructure of the transnationalisation of capital. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the past two years, the issuance of corporate social responsibility (CSR) reports has become an important nonprofit practice of enterprises in China. As of April 2008, over eighty enterprises in China in industries such as biochemical and energy, food and beverage, computers, finance and insurance, and automotive had released CSR (or equivalent) reports. Using SustainAbility's indicator system, the paper evaluates CSR reports issued by enterprises in China between May 2007 and April 2008. The paper finds reports' descriptions of management and performance to be quite good, but that reports failed to give enough information about governance and strategy, data availability, audits, and other aspects. Furthermore, we discovered that the current indicator system, while able to evaluate the quality of reports in form, falls short of truly evaluating their contents. Thus, a new indicator system must be devised to allow an overall assessment of the content of reports. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper sketches out some preliminary thoughts on political economy that stem from problematics that emerge from TWAIL. The TWAIL story of international law is one of frustration and disappointment because of the constant exploitation of the Third World despite all the historic changes in international legal ideas and institutions, but it also a story of hope in the moments of resistance. In order to better debate how particular international institutions should be changed or whether particular international institutions should be renounced, I suggest that we need to explicate the theories of political economy embedded within these institutions. Drawing from Karl Polanyi's The Great Transformation, bringing alongside the work of Michel Foucault, I sketch out one way of conducting a study of international political economy by suggesting that we can think of law as the interplay of ideas, institutions, and interests. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper critically examines I.I. Rubin's Essays on Marx's Theory of Value and argues that two different approaches to value theory can be found in that book: a more 'production-centred' value-form theory uneasily co-exists with a 'circulationist' perspective. This unresolved tension, the authors claim, reflects a more general theoretical shortcoming in Rubin's work, namely, a problematic conceptualisation of the inner connection between materiality and social form that eventually leads to a formalist perspective on the value-form. Furthermore, the paper argues that all those antinomies are an expression of the historical and political context underlying Rubin's work, in which Marxism was being codified as state ideology. The political implications of Rubin's formalism are explored through the critical examination of its consequences for the comprehension of the social determinations of the revolutionary subjectivity of the working class. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper develops an original proposition for debate in the fields of African studies, transnationalism, environmental studies, and technology studies. Essentially, the paper posits that, for a few key reasons, Sub-Saharan Africa will not likely have an opportunity to experience industrialization with the reigning "destructo-industrial" technologies pioneered by Europeans and Americans. An industrial experience appears achievable for Sub-Saharan Africans only in the context of a new ecological economy. Not only are there no unassailable national frontrunners in this future area, but Sub-Saharan Africans have a credible opportunity of being among the leaders in the future. The process would commence with "brain circulation," the movement of Africans into rich, technologically advanced countries to have their human, economic, and social capital enhanced, some of which to be reinvested in their respective homelands, particularly in ecological industrial areas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the impact of the twin forces of neoliberalism and globalization on culture in Latin America. It argues that the application of a neo-liberal economic strategy over the past 25 years and the increased integration of the region's economy into the global economy have led to changes in cultural values and lifestyles. There is much evidence to support the idea that the changes denote the diffusion of a USstyle market culture, which values individualism, competition, and consumerism. Chile was taken as a case study, as it has the longest and most successful experience with the neo-liberal model and globalization in the region. In Chile, and elsewhere, there are notable changes in political culture, including a less partisan and ideological electorate, increased political apathy, especially among the youth, and campaign formats that emphasize style over substance. At the same time, more complex cultural mixtures are also emerging, in which, for example, new campaign techniques are used to reinforce traditional values. There is also increasing resistance to the application of neo-liberal economic policies and to globalization in the region, although it is unclear to what extent this opposition can stem the international tide. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper defines a set of activities that must be undertaken if water resources management is to be productive and sustainable — two of the basic indicators by which economists measure success. The roles that Non-State Actors may play in these activities are discussed, as well as the usefulness and relevance of economics in each case. Two brief case studies are presented as examples of over-dependence on simplistic approaches — whether dependence on an organisational model, or dependence on an analytical discipline. It is concluded that the essential elements of successful and productive water resources management are scale-independent, that water scarcity requires higher levels of control — which is at variance with current moves to decentralise management; and that the value of each actor's and discipline's contribution to success is interdependent on all other elements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the debate on future prospects in East Asia after the recent economic crisis, this paper focuses on trade-based explanations of growth to study whether exports may lead the recovery of the five crisis-hit countries. For each of them, it analyses, at different levels of disaggregation, the evolution of openness to trade, patterns and direction of exports, during and after the crisis. It finds higher openness to trade for all countries, both in aggregate and for major sectors. Moreover, during the crisis it reports only minor negative impacts on competitiveness and structure of exports, mainly for Indonesia and Korea. Regionalisation of export flows seems to have been partially reversed and exports towards non-Asian developed countries increased. These findings, together with evidence of an export revival, suggest that trade can still contribute to fuelling the Financial Crisis Countries' economic growth but also that their recovery is very fragile in the face of the economic cycle in the USA and to boom-bust cycles in the IT sector. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The social contract, as the basis of the relations between rulers and populations in the Maghreb region, is highly contested especially since 2011. However, the rural dimension of this phenomenon remains yet under researched. Building on related emerging critical studies, this paper coins the term of a 'rural social contract' and analyses what it embodies. It highlights how the unequal ownership and use of water and land resources contribute to the marginalization of the large majority of rural populations and to their growing discontent. The article argues that three trends currently contribute to the re-articulation of the social contract in rural areas. Firstly, overexploitation and climate change lead to a severe degradation of water and land resources which challenges the established patterns of use and redistribution of these resources. Secondly, agricultural policies focusing on export production and on large entrepreneurs lead to further marginalization of small farmers. Thirdly, the emergence of new rural actors challenge the established social relationships. On the basis of this analysis, the article frames the major challenges, dynamics and characteristic of a newly emerging rural social contract in the Maghreb. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that the Korean people did not support the U S -sponsored division of their country or the establishment of a capitalist political economy in the South Moreover, because of the nature of the South Korean model of development, the widely celebrated economic growth has not secured either economic stability or political legitimacy for the regime. The paper concludes that progressive forces, with roots in Korean history, are now providing leadership to new movements winch seek to create a radically new and progressive political economy in the South and to reunify the country. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The main theses of this paper are 1) that there are such things as "negotiating strategies," 2) that negotiating strategies are acquired from experience from a variety of often dissimilar events, and 3) that when those strategies are brought together at the bargaining table, they usually bring about agreements that are sub-optimal from an overall social welfare standpoint. This perspective is set up to contrast with a variety of models and views that tend to treat negotiations as self-contained events, as though they were individual "games" that could be analyzed solely with respect to their particular parameters - in isolation from other negotiations and experiences that may have shaped the behavior and expectations of the bargainers. A by-product of this approach is the proposition that there is no single answer to the question "how should one negotiate?" and that instead we should expect to find a variety of dissimilar strategies in use, and that the effectiveness of a strategy will depend upon which other strategies it encounters in practice. The paper is constructed around the concept of "learning," and builds its theses from explorations of the various definitions and interpretations of that word. The paper begins with a short explanatory background, proceeds to explorations of three different applications of the term "learning" in negotiation theory, and then goes on to develop a model of adaptive learning that is relevant to negotiating strategies. Following this is a discussion of the social "optimality" of the negotiating strategies that can be expected to evolve in a society. Then there are a few numerical examples that are intended to highlight the properties of the theory, and, finally, a few comments on insights that may be useful for negotiators themselves. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Globalization is one of the outcomes of extended economic development in recent decades, which inevitably has direct and indirect effects on different aspects of human life. This paper explains the effect of globalization on housing dilemmas in global cities or cities that want to be global. For this phenomenon, the effect of immigration—resulting from globalization and space polarization, the economic influence of globalization on housing as a global good, the effect of globalization on cultural characteristics, and finally changes in urban space structures emerging from globalization—on site selection of residential land use will be analyzed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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The proliferation of debt crises around the world since the 1980' s has generated debt-repayment negotiations prioritizing austerity in debtor countries. This forty-year history of debt crises in the Global South and North now allows comparison of these negotiations and their impacts. We examine the distinct and historically specific trajectories in Latin American and Greece, highlighting the foundations of each experience of debt crisis. We focus on the institutions responsible for managing crisis and their reliance on similar austerity strategies to compel debtor countries into a neoliberal restructuring of their economies. This paper examines the similarities and differences in austerity policy through a comparative-historical analysis of Latin American and Greek experiences of debt crisis. The results of such policies and the political actors involved in implementing austerity are also examined. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the political economy of French imperialism from a critical Marxist perspective. It demonstrates how France has maintained a major role on the international scene, especially militarily, despite experiencing a relative decline in world economic power since the 1990s. In this regard, three features have marked the French imperial project: (1) the core role of state institutions and corporate elites in making French capitalism, and the protracted closeness of the state-capital nexus; (2) the strength of militarism in economic, political, and social realms; and (3) the consolidation of rentier interests not only in the corporate power bloc, but also at a political level. Over the past century, these three dynamics have underpinned and reinforced a particular project of empire in France – one that bears relevance to current debates on globalisation and the ‘new imperialism'. By examining these issues, this paper seeks to further develop the Marxist theory of international political economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

China's natural resources are concentrated in areas inhabited by ethnic minorities which constitute over 60 per cent of China's territory. When world attention is drawn to China's rapid economic development and its global energy strategy, people tend to forget how natural resources in the minority regions were extracted to fuel China's development prior to its high growth era. In other words, who or what regions sustained China's economy by providing energy and resources after the 1950s? We may also ask what has happened to these minority regions in China's new energy strategy. Since these regions are frontier regions, what does China's energy globalisation look like there? This paper studies the historical process of resource extraction in areas inhabited by the Mongols, focusing on the Daqing Oil Field and North China Oil Field. Through discussing how the depletion of oil in these traditional energy bases has led to China's energy expansion into its northern neighbour of Mongolia, it aims to define the place and significance of Mongolia in China's global energy strategy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper looks at the roles and interests that motivate different kinds of 'trusting partnerships' in Mongolia. Such partnerships are not only in marketing slogans that herald new private investment agreements, they also underlie the relationship between the Mongolian government and other governments (in the form of 'strategic partnerships') and even between the Mongolian State and its people. The concept serves as a framework for partners to achieve mutual ambitions, but is ambiguous and its content evolves through negotiation and cumulative articulation. We offer certain observations about the form of relationship between the Mongolian State and its people, drawing from fieldwork in 2012 on how loans are used and perceived, and suggest that this relationship is a fruitful lens through which we can observe vernacular attitudes to the economy and the State, and to the different kinds of relationships the Mongolian State maintains with outsiders. We conclude with an observation on the inter-related and at times conflicting 'trusting partnerships' to which the Mongolia government is party. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses on the Muslim Brotherhood and political Salafism, two influential currents of political Islam that formed a two-pronged political movement prevailing in Saudi Arabia over the past two decades. It examines how they have both influenced, in separate and distinct ways, the development of political Islam in that country. What began initially as a religious movement, striving to assert a national character, has subsequently over time separated itself from the political regime and the official religious establishment in a process that witnesses profound social change in Saudi society. It suffers from an inherent paradox linked to the context in which it developed; an organic relationship with the state in the 1980s, on the one hand, and a struggle against it in the 1990s, on the other. It enshrines the contradictory constraints with which it grapples with respect to government reluctance to modernize the society, on the one level, and popular, progressive aspirations linked to individual civil rights, on the another. In the opinion of the author, this religious movement has failed to comprehend and cope with the social change that has been taking place in Saudi society since 1994. The movement has suffered from an inability to set political priorities, and its ageing leadership has prevented it from keeping abreast with change and developments occurring within the society at large. With its uncompromising stance against women's rights, and most particularly their right to work, as one example, it has got bogged down on many issues – in blatant opposition to popular demand – and failed to take into account the transformation under way in the society. This paper argues that the outlook for Saudi political Islam, within the two groups under study in this article – the Muslim Brotherhood and Salafist Islam – is bleak and does not augur well for its promising future. It is likely to be the same for other Arab countries. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper presents an outline of the development of photography in Burma from the early colonial period to the end of the 1980s. It explores the relationship between early studios and the training of Burma-born photographers, the expansion of the photographic economy in the 1950s, and the challenges created by nationalisation after 1963. Using extensive interviews with local photographers and archival materials, it explores innovations around photography in the longer term. In doing so, it argues that recent developments using digital media are part of a much longer tradition of local technical innovation than is usually considered the case. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article provides varied examples of Integrated Water Resource Management (IWRM) and public participation interaction in South Africa. It critically examines the inadequate application of IWRM, and shows how the unbalanced interpretations of IWRM as well as a lack of good development practice and participatory rights manifest in negative outcomes for the poorest and most vulnerable. This paper, first, highlights that if decision-makers are primarily fixed on economic concerns, they induce inefficient IWRM framework that fails to balance water as a social, economic and ecological concern. Second: when the state fails to consult people and violate human and environmental rights, court battles ensue between the state and the people. These court cases are generally expensive for both sides and marred with delay. Third: positive outcomes can be attained through multi-stakeholder dialogue platforms which can oper-ate as a sort of conflict resolution mechanism encompassing divergent views, but still offering beneficial outcomes. The frameworks and practical examples set by the Water Dialogues South Africa can facilitate public participation and capacity building if applied at local levels by decision-makers. IWRM with public participation at its heart engenders an ultimate objective for better water sustainability and water security in South Africa. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using multilevel models fitted to data from the World Values Survey and national statistics for 22 countries, this paper explores the relationship between both economic inequality and poverty - both across and within nations - and ethnic and religious tolerance. Consistent with previous research, the results demonstrate a positive relationship between individual-level incomes and tolerance. The results also provide contextual modifications to aspects of Inglehart's (1987) post-materialist thesis by showing that while tolerance is positively associated with national-level economic prosperity, the relationship is stronger for higher income earners than for those who earn less. Finally, the study also contributes an entirely new finding regarding the influence of poverty on tolerance. Specifically, tolerance tends to be highest in countries with low poverty levels. This finding holds for people throughout the income distribution. The paper concludes with a discussion of the policy implications of these findings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract In this paper we discuss the challenges that confront a national strategy that favors sovereign, progressive and counter-hegemonic development projects. The social appropriation of science plays a prime role in such a strategy and can be contrasted with its logical opposite, the capitalist appropriation of science. Never before has so much knowledge been accumulated with potential to transform the surrounding environment in favor of humanity. Nevertheless, the fact that this knowledge has been placed in the service of the interests of a minority who control political and economic power is far from creating the conditions for achieving a humane and just society, and instead is tending towards an abyss of terrifying proportions. The future of life itself on this planet is threatened by the ravages of hunger, poverty, unemployment, insecurity, and environmental degradation, which now touch millions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The relationship between economic concentration and governance remains controversial. While some studies find that high economic concentration strengthens collective action and reform cooperation, others stress dangers of rent-seeking and state capture. In this paper I argue that effects are neither strictly positive nor negative: they are best described as an inverted u-shaped relationship, where better governance performance emerges with moderate economic concentration. Decentralisation reforms in Indonesia and the Philippines -- unprecedented in scope and scale--provide a unique opportunity to explore this thesis. Subnational case studies and cross-sectional data analyses indicate that moderately concentrated polities in both countries are accompanied by more effective and less corrupt service provision. The presence of 'contested oligarchies'--a small but diverse pool of economic elites--paves the ground for more balanced policy arenas; they contribute to a scenario where private sector actors are strong enough to influence government decisions and, at the same time, diverse enough to keep themselves and public officials in check. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper introduces arguments from Slavery, Capitalism, and Politics in the Antebellum Republic¹ to suggest that the Civil War arose ultimately because of class-conflict between on the one hand, Southern slaves and their masters and, on the other, Northern workers and their employers. It does not, however, suggest that either in the North or the South these conflicts were on the point of erupting into revolution. On the contrary, they were relatively easily containable. However, harmony within each section (North and South) could be secured only at the cost of intersectional conflict, conflict which would finally erupt into civil war. The Civil War was a 'bourgeois revolution' not only because it destroyed slavery, an essentially precapitalist system of production, in the United States but also because it resulted in the enthronement of Northern values, with the normalisation of wage-labour at their core. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Prophetic complaints against landownership abuse that are attributed to eighth-century Judah pose an interpretive problem: their contextual ambiguity. Passages like as Isa. 5.8-10 decry land seizures but lack key socio-economic variables: motivations and the identities of perpetrators and victims. Faced with scarce archaeological and biblical evidence pertaining to landownership in the eighth century, several scholars have turned to the social sciences for clues. Marvin Chaney and D.N. Premnath have found interpretive value in cultural-evolutionary theory. Cultural-evolutionary theorists, like Gerhard Lenski and Timothy Earle, find that recurring patterns tend to emerge as agrarian societies experience rapid economic development and increased trade, including an abandonment of subsistence strategies, land consolidation, and a hoarding of the benefits amongst elites. While Chaney and Premnath have successfully used this model to explore economic abuses attributed to eighth-century Judah, when the region was absorbed into the Assyrian trade nexus, the effects of these recurring societal patterns on religious institutions have yet to be explored by biblical scholars. Religious practices and norms that support outmoded economic strategies tend to be overturned during these transitional periods to accommodate new economic goals. While some religious leaders are forced to choose between either honouring long-held traditions or capitulating to a new economic environment, others find that their place in society is rendered obsolete. Through considering these cultural-evolutionary patterns alongside Hezekiah's religious reforms, this paper explores the possibility that prophetic authors who condemned the displacement of farmers may have also been protesting their own displacement in an evolving Judean society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When the problems in the United States housing sector mushroomed into a global financial crisis by September 2008, it was assumed that Arab countries would remain immune: the oil-rich Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries because of their massive financial reserves, and the resource-poor countries because of their limited linkages to the global economic system - in particular, the global financial markets. However, this assumption has proven to be false. The US subprime mortgage collapse not only pushed the advanced economies into recession, but also it shattered global economic confidence, resulting in a massive financial contagion around the world. What explains the Arab World's vulnerability to the crisis? How has the crisis impacted both the resource rich and the resource poor? How have Arab countries responded to the crisis, and what must they do to insulate their economies better from the vagaries of global financial markets? This paper addresses these questions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a long-term transformation, that begins in Antiquity but takes a crucial turn in the Renaissance anatomies, the “fibre” becomes from around 1750 the operative building block and at the same time the first unifying principle of function-structure-complexes of organic bodies. It occupies the role that the cell takes up in the cell œconomies of the second third of the nineteenth century. In this paper, I will first discuss some key notions, technical analogies, and images that are related to “fibre”-concepts from Andreas Vesalius to Albrecht von Haller and then focus on Charles Bonnet's and Denis Diderot's fibre œconomies. In Bonnet's and Diderot's fibre œconomies, the self-active, regulating properties of fibre-agents and their material structures, that reach from fibre bundles, tissues and membranes to apparati of organs, are united within the concrete whole of individual organized “systems” or “networks.” [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the reception of Dutch commercial ideas and institutions in continental Europe during the first half of the seventeenth century. Using printed and archival sources from France, Sweden and Denmark, it argues that it is more useful to examine how statesmen and thinkers adapted Dutch material to different local circumstances and changing political conditions than to search for a mercantilist approach to political economy. Dutch arguments were particularly important, because they focused attentions upon the just and expedient relations between sovereignty and commerce. Replacing Hugo Grotius's Mare liberum in the contexts of the broader debate about the governance of commerce and of the politics of the Thirty Years War allows us to recover part of its further significance, for its polemical clarity allowed statesmen and scholars to refine more sharply their notion of commerce's relation to the state. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The power of the Al Bu Sa'id Sultans of Oman was widely known as based on delicate balances of forces (and ethnic-social groups), deeply different among them. In fact, the elements that composed the nineteenth century Omani leadership were, and had always been, generally 'divided' amongst three different ethnic groups: the Baluch, the Asian merchant communities and the African regional leaders (Mwiny Mkuu). Within this framework, the role played by European Powers, particularly by the Treaties signed between the Sultans of Oman and the East India Company for abolishing slavery, and by the arms trade was crucial for the development of the Gulf and the Western Indian Ocean international networks They highly contributed to the gradual 'shifting' of the Omanis from the slave trade to clove and spice cultivation – the major economic source of Zanzibar Island – along the coastal area of Sub-Saharan East Africa. The role played by the Omani Sultans – the myth – within the western traditional historiography, which often described them as firmly controlling both the Arabian and African littorals and the major trading ports of the Western Indian Ocean during the nineteenth century, will be reexamined in this paper, taking into account recent research studies and international debates in the topic. The new hypothesis consists of a different perception of the concepts of power and control (political and territorial) of the Western Indian Ocean littorals by the most famous of the Sultans of Oman during the nineteenth century: Saiyid Sa'id bin Sultan Al Bu Sa'id. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]