Download or read book A History of Land Use in Mongolia written by Elizabeth Endicott and published by Springer. This book was released on 2012-11-12 with total page 318 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An illustrated history of the pastoral nomadic way of life in Mongolia, this book examines the many challenges that Mongolian herders continue to face in the struggle over natural resources in the post-socialist free market era.

Download or read book Y ko Tawada written by Douglas Slaymaker and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2007 with total page 190 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Yoko Tawada: Voices from Everywhere is the first English-language volume of criticism dedicated to the work of Yoko Tawada, one of the most highly acclaimed writers of her generation. Tawada has garnered numerous accolades and prizes-such as the Akutagawa Prize for literature (Japan) and the Goethe medal (Germany)-and was featured in a presidential panel at the 2006 Modern Language Association (MLA Conference, organized by MLA president Marjorie Perloff, who has contributed a foreword to this volume: The chapters explore the plurality of voices and cultures in Tawada's work and push on to explicate the poetics and intellectual underpinnings of her writing. Analyses of her fiction are paired with examinations of their philosophic and aesthetic foundations. The contributors represent a wide range of scholars and translators who are intimate with Tawada's work in German, in Japanese, and/or in English. Many of the essays begin as close readings of the German and Japanese texts. Yoko Tawada: Voices from Everywhere is an essential collection for anyone with an interest in this important young writer. Book jacket.

Download or read book Mongolia Culture Smart written by Alan Sanders and published by Kuperard. This book was released on 2016-02-01 with total page 169 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Mongolia is landlocked between its neighbors China and Russia in the heart of Asia. For centuries after the disintegration of Genghis Khan's empire it was ruled by one or the other, but in 1990 the Mongols embraced democracy. Now, after two centuries of Manchu stagnation and seventy years of Soviet communism, they are rebuilding their national heritage. Rarely in the news but making progress toward a market economy, this resource-rich but infrastructure-poor country is a land of pioneers, and its greatest asset is the Mongol people, who are friendly, cooperative, ambitious, and well educated. English is now the first foreign language and the country's leaders are forging new partnerships with international investors. Travelers from across the world are drawn to the "land of blue sky" by its picturesque mountains and lakes, flower-carpeted steppes and stony deserts, home to the snow leopard, the wild horse and camel, and the Gobi bear. The broad pasturelands, with herds of grazing livestock, and the traditional lifestyle of the nomads contrast with the busy streets of the capital Ulan Bator, a bustling metropolis of over one million people, modern hotels, apartments, and shops, interspersed with Buddhist monasteries and temples, surrounded by crowded suburbs of traditional felt tents. Mongolia's many attractions range from dinosaur skeletons and the remains of ancient civilizations to relics and reenactments of the Genghis Khan era, and the traditional sports of wrestling, archery, and horse-racing. Culture Smart! Mongolia provides rare insights into contemporary Mongolian society, and offers practical tips on what to expect and how to conduct yourself in order to get the most out of your visit. Despite the undeniable challenges posed by modernity, these warm, tough, adaptable, and hospitable people welcome visitors and are open to the world.

Download or read book Dynamics of Social Class written by Craig B Howley and published by IAP. This book was released on 2014-03-01 with total page 363 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Half the world’s population lives in rural places, but education scholars and policy makers worldwide give little attention to rural of education. Indeed, most national systems, including in the developed world, treat their educational systems as institutions to “modernize” the global economy. The authors in this volume have different concerns. They are rural education scholars from Australia, Canada, the United States, and Kyrgyzstan, and here their focus is the dynamics of social class: in particular rural schools but also in rural schooling as a local manifestation of a national (and the global) system. For the most part, the volume comprises relevant empirical reports, but none neglects theory, and some privilege theory and interpretation. First and last chapters introduce the texts and synthesize their joint and separate meanings. What are the implications of place for social class? How do class dynamics manifest differently in more and less racially homogeneous rural communities? How does place affect class and how might class affect place? How does schooling in rural communities reproduce or interrupt social-class mobility across generations? The chapters engage such questions more completely than other volumes in rural education, not as a final word or interm summary, but as an opening to an important line of inquiry thus far largely neglected in rural education scholarship.

Download or read book Nomadic Peoples and Human Rights written by Jérémie Gilbert and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-03-26 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Although nomadic peoples are scattered worldwide and have highly heterogeneous lifestyles, they face similar threats to their mobile livelihood and survival. Commonly, nomadic peoples are facing pressure from the predominant sedentary world over mobility, land rights, water resources, access to natural resources, and migration routes. Adding to these traditional problems, rapid growth in the extractive industry and the need for the exploitation of the natural resources are putting new strains on nomadic lifestyles. This book provides an innovative rights-based approach to the issue of nomadism looking at issues including discrimination, persecution, freedom of movement, land rights, cultural and political rights, and effective management of natural resources. Jeremie Gilbert analyses the extent to which human rights law is able to provide protection for nomadic peoples to perpetuate their own way of life and culture. The book questions whether the current human rights regime is able to protect nomadic peoples, and highlights the lacuna that currently exists in international human rights law in relation to nomadic peoples. It goes on to propose avenues for the development of specific rights for nomadic peoples, offering a new reading on freedom of movement, land rights and development in the context of nomadism.

Download or read book Radicalism Revolution and Reform in Modern China written by Catherine Lynch and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2011-03-31 with total page 235 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume illuminates the relationship of China's radical past to its reformist present as China makes a way forward through very differently conceived and contested visions of the future. In the context of early twenty-first century problems and the failures of global capitalism, is China's history of revolutionary socialism an aberration that is soon to be forgotten, or can it serve as a resource for creating a more fully human and radically democratic China with implications for all of us? Ranging from the early years of China's revolutionary twentieth-century to the present, the essays collected here look at the past and present of China with a view toward better understanding the ideas, ideals, and people who have dared to imagine radical transformation of their worlds and to assess the conceptual, political, and social limitations of these visions and their implementations. The volume's chapters focus on these issues from a range of vantage points, representing a spectrum of current scholarship. The first half of the book brings new insights to understanding how early-twentieth century intellectuals interpreted ideas that allowed them to break with China's past and to envision new paths to a modern future. It treats of Chen Duxiu, a founder of the Communist party, Mao Zedong, and Mao in relation to the non-Communist Liang Shuming and with the Dalai Lama. With continuing threads of nation and nationalities, of peasants, utopias and dystopias linking the chapters, the book's second half looks broadly at the consequences of the implementations of radical ideas, at the same time critiquing our accepted frameworks of analysis. Moving up to the present, the book investigates the effects of the reforms since the 1980s on long-term environmental degradation and on the emergence of a capitalist rural economy. It gives an unsparing view into contemporary rural China through independent films. The book concludes with an analysis of the unshakable persistence of the shibboleth, 'the rise of China,' in popular and academic imagination and argues for the importance instead of taking seriously the twentieth-century history of radicalism in China and its significance for understanding China's present and its future potentials.

Download or read book Japan in the World written by Klaus Schlichtmann and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2009 with total page 370 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The twentieth century is as remarkable for its world wars as it is for its efforts to outlaw war in international and constitutional law and politics. Japan in the World examines some of these efforts through the life and work of Shidehara Kijuro, who was active as diplomat and statesman between 1896 until his death in 1951. Shidehara is seen as a guiding thread running through the first five decades of the twentieth century. Through the 1920s until the beginning of the 1930s, his foreign policy shaped Japan's place within the community of nations. The positive role Japan played in internation.

Download or read book Tommy s Sunset written by Hisako Tsurushima and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2008 with total page 131 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Tommy's Sunset is a translation of the acclaimed Japanese novel about the journey of a mother and her autistic child. Drawing from her own personal life story, Hisako Tsurushima has provided a definitive work about the problems and surprising joys for the autistic and those who love them. Readers experience the range of emotions as Tommy and his mother are routinely embarrassed in social situations and share delight in private moments. As she lovingly describes these characters, Tsurushima ultimately investigates the source of our social responses to people who are in any way different than ourselves. Tommy's Sunset was the basis for the Japanese Film Gakko III, which was shown in the United States under the title The New Voyage. Tommy's Sunset is a deceptively simple novel that will leave readers with a lasting impression and a new outlook on what it means to be different.

Download or read book Does Everyone Want Democracy written by Paula L. W. Sabloff and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-06-16 with total page 281 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Do all people desire democracy? For at least a century, the idea that democracy is a universal good has been an article of faith for American policy makers. Paula Sabloff challenges this conventional wisdom about who wants democracy and why. Arguing that certain universal human aspirations exist, she shows how local realities are highly particularistic and explains that culture, history, and values are critical to the study of political systems. Her fascinating study of Mongolia—feudal until it became the first country to follow Russia into communism and now struggling with post-socialist democratization—is a model for investigating how everyday people around the world actually think about and implement democracy on their own terms.

Download or read book Qazaq Pastoralists in Western Mongolia written by Peter Finke and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2023-08-31 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Taking the case of Qazaq Pastoralists in Western Mongolia, this book looks at the universal human requirement to balance individual flexibility and strategies designed to make a living with the social expectations that impose particular rules of conduct but also enable mutual trust and cooperation to emerge. Pastoralists in Western Mongolia have experienced dramatic changes in recent decades, including the dismantling of the socialist economy, a series of natural disasters, and an emigration of roughly half of the local Qazaq minority to the newly independent state of Qazaqstan. Four aspects illustrate the chances and challenges that people face. First is the emergence of the market as the dominant mode of production and exchange, a thorny way full of uncertainties. Second is the individual household and its adaptation to the new economic system, creating new opportunities as well as precarities, and resulting in rapid social stratification. Thirdly, patterns of pastoral land allocation highlight problems of collective action and institutional fragmentation in the wake of a retreating state apparatus. Finally, social networks of mutual support and cooperation constitute a key component of pastoral livelihood but are under great pressure due to short time horizons and a lack of trust. The first longitudinal analysis of the Qazaqs in Mongolia in English and a contribution to anthropological theories on human adaptability and decision-making, economic and social inequalities, institutional change and the difficulty of deriving at cooperative solutions, this book will be a standard work and of interest to academics in the field of Central Asian Studies, Anthropology, Human Geography and Development Studies.

Download or read book The Political Ecology of Climate Change Adaptation written by Marcus Taylor and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-11-17 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book provides the first systematic critique of the concept of climate change adaptation within the field of international development. Drawing on a reworked political ecology framework, it argues that climate is not something ‘out there’ that we adapt to. Instead, it is part of the social and biophysical forces through which our lived environments are actively yet unevenly produced. From this original foundation, the book challenges us to rethink the concepts of climate change, vulnerability, resilience and adaptive capacity in transformed ways. With case studies drawn from Pakistan, India and Mongolia, it demonstrates concretely how climatic change emerges as a dynamic force in the ongoing transformation of contested rural landscapes. In crafting this synthesis, the book recalibrates the frameworks we use to envisage climatic change in the context of contemporary debates over development, livelihoods and poverty. With its unique theoretical contribution and case study material, this book will appeal to researchers and students in environmental studies, sociology, geography, politics and development studies.

Download or read book The other Karen in Myanmar written by Ardeth Maung Thawnghmung and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2012 with total page 233 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is the first study to an offer insight into non-armed, non-insurgent members of ethnic groups that are associated with well-known armed organizations. It analyzes the nature of the relationships between the "quiet" minorities and their "rebel" counterparts and assesses how these intra-ethnic differences and divisions affect the armed resistance movement, negotiation with state authorities, conflict resolution, and political reform. This field-based study of the Karen in Burma also provides theoretical and policy implications for other ethnically polarized countries.

Download or read book Malay Kingship in Kedah written by Maziar Mozaffari Falarti and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2013 with total page 253 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The book probes and examines traditional sources of royal power and control, as well as indigenous socio-political systems in the Malay world. It is focused on the north-western Malaysian Sultanate of Kedah which is acknowledged as the oldest unbroken independent kingship line in the 'Malay and Islamic world' with 1,000 years of history. Little scholarly attention has been paid to its pre-modern history, society, religion, system of government and unique geographic situation, potentially controlling both land and sea lines of communication into the remainder of Southeast Asia. It will thus provide the first comprehensive treatment in English, or other languages, on Kedah's pre-modern and nineteenth century historiography and can provide a foundation for comparative studies of the various Malay states which is presently lacking. The proposed book also sheds much needed light on a range of important topics in Malay history including: Kedah and the northern Melaka Straits history, colonial expansion and rivalry, Southeast Asian history and politics, interregional migration and the influence of the sea peoples or orang laut, traditional Malay socio-political and economic life, Islamic influences and the course of Thai-Malay relations. The book attempts to offer a new understanding, not only of Kedah, but of the political and cultural development of the entire Malay world and of its relationships with the broader forces in both its continental and maritime settings. It argues that Kedah does not seem to follow, and in fact, often seems to contradict what has been commonly been accepted as the "typical model" of the traditional Malay state. Thus it concludes that the ruling dynasty has historically exploited a wide range of unique environmental conditions, local traditions, global spiritual trends and economic forces to preserve and strengthen its political position.

Download or read book The Global Encyclopaedia of Informality Volume 2 written by Alena Ledeneva and published by UCL Press. This book was released on 2018-01-17 with total page 571 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Alena Ledeneva invites you on a voyage of discovery to explore society’s open secrets, unwritten rules and know-how practices. Broadly defined as ‘ways of getting things done’, these invisible yet powerful informal practices tend to escape articulation in official discourse. They include emotion-driven exchanges of gifts or favours and tributes for services, interest-driven know-how (from informal welfare to informal employment and entrepreneurship), identity-driven practices of solidarity, and power-driven forms of co-optation and control. The paradox, or not, of the invisibility of these informal practices is their ubiquity. Expertly practised by insiders but often hidden from outsiders, informal practices are, as this book shows, deeply rooted all over the world, yet underestimated in policy. Entries from the five continents presented in this volume are samples of the truly global and ever-growing collection, made possible by a remarkable collaboration of over 200 scholars across disciplines and area studies. By mapping the grey zones, blurred boundaries, types of ambivalence and contexts of complexity, this book creates the first Global Map of Informality. The accompanying database (www.in-formality.com) is searchable by region, keyword or type of practice, so do explore what works, how, where and why! Praise for Global Encyclopaedia of Informality ‘The Global Informality Project unveils new ways of understanding how the state functions and ways in which civil servants and citizens adapt themselves to different local contexts by highlighting the diversity of the relationships between state and society. The project is of great interest to policymakers who want to imagine solutions that are benefi cial for all, but sufficiently pragmatic to ensure a seamless implementation, particularly in the field of cross-border trade in developing countries.’ - Kunio Mikuriya, Secretary General of the World Customs Organisation, Brussels ‘An extremely interesting and stimulating collection of papers. Ledeneva’s challenging ideas, first applied in the context of Russia’s economy of shortage, came to full blossom and are here contextualized by practices from other countries and contemporary systems. Many original and relevant practices were recognized empirically in socialist countries, but this book shows their generality.’ - János Kornai, Allie S. Freed Professor of Economics Emeritus at Harvard and Professor Emeritus at Corvinus University of Budapest ‘Alena Ledeneva’s Global Encyclopedia of Informality is a unique contribution, providing a global atlas of informal practices through the contributions of over 200 scholars across the world. It is far more rewarding for the reader to discover how commonalities of informal behavior become apparent through this rich texture like a complex and hidden pattern behind local colors than to presume top down universal benchmarks of good versus bad behavior. This book is a plea against reductionist approaches of mathematics in social science in general, and corruption studies in particular and makes a great read, as well as an indispensable guide to understand the cultural richness of the world.’ - Alina Mungiu-Pippidi, Professor of Democracy Studies, Hertie School of Governance, Berlin ‘Transformative scholarship in method, object, and consequence. Ledeneva and her networked expertise not only enable us to view the informal comparatively, but challenge conventionally legible accounts of membership, markets, domination and resistance with these rich accounts from five continents. This project offers nothing less than a social scientific revolution… if the broader scholarly community has the imagination to follow through. And by globalizing these informal knowledges typically hidden from view, the volumes’ contributors will extend the imaginations of those business consultants, movement mobilizers, and peace makers who can appreciate the value of translation from other world regions in their own work.’ Michael D. Kennedy, Professor of Sociology and International and Public Aff irs, Brown University and author of Globalizing Knowledge ‘Don’t mistake these weighty volumes for anything directory-like or anonymous. This wonderful collection of short essays, penned by many of the single best experts in their fields, puts the reader squarely in the kinds of conversations culled only after years of friendship, trust, and with the keen eye of the practiced observer. Perhaps most importantly, the remarkably wide range of offerings lets us “de-parochialise” corruption, and detach it from the usual hyper-local and cultural explanations. The reader, in the end, is the one invited to consider the many and striking commonalities.’ Bruce Grant, Professor at New York University and Chair of the US National Council for East European and Eurasian Research

Download or read book Isotopic Investigations of Pastoralism in Prehistory written by Alicia R. Ventresca Miller and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-09-18 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Pastoralists were a vital economic and social force in ancient societies around the globe, transforming landscapes poorly suited for agriculture into spaces of vast productive potential while simultaneously connecting mobile and sedentary communities alike across considerable distances. Drawing from the rich archaeological records of Asia, Africa, and Europe, Isotopic Investigations of Pastoralism in Prehistory brings together the latest studies employing heavy and light stable isotopic analyses of humans and animals to investigate pastoralist diets, movement, and animal management strategies. The contributions presented in this volume highlight new methodological developments while simultaneously drawing attention to the diverse environmental factors that contribute to isotopic variation in human, plant, and animal tissues. Particular attention is paid to how pastoralist decisions regarding animal pasturing and mobility can be teased out of complex isotopic datasets, and also to the challenges in extracting information on the scales of human mobility in pastoralist landscapes. This volume will appeal to scholars in archaeology, anthropology, and ecology, as well as those with interests in animal management.

Download or read book A Localized Culture of Welfare written by Kwok-shing Chan and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2012 with total page 237 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Hong Kong has undergone rapid and substantial social, economic, political and demographic changes since the 1970s. This book examines critically the real impact of these changes on a single surname village in rural Hong Kong. It draws on anthropological fieldwork conducted during the late 1990s and the early 2000s. This ethnographic study demonstrates that kinship, particularly agnatic kinship, has remained a valuable resource for Pang villagers, enabling them to acquire key welfare entitlements, and to secure a good measure of economic and social well-being. Kinship affiliation has provided and still provides (admittedly differential) access to political patronage and legal entitlements, financial assistance and the substantial benefits of corporate property-holding, physical protection and political leadership, employment, care-giving and support networks, housing needs, old age security, a ritually-imagined community, with a sense of spiritual well-being. Agnatic kinship has been organized as a corporate institution and as a quasi-religious community through which substantial support, protection, and privileged access is provided for villagers. At the same time, reliance on this elaborate "localized culture of welfare" has maintained or reinforced the contours of stratification and inequality among Pang villagers, even as lineage identity has remained largely intact in the face of changing external circumstances.

Download or read book Urban Hunters written by Lars Hojer and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2019-11-26 with total page 285 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An ethnography of the Mongolian capital city of Ulaanbaatar during the nation’s transition from socialism to a market-based economic system Urban Hunters is an ethnography of the Mongolian capital city, Ulaanbaatar, during the nation’s transition from socialism to a market-based economic system. Following the Soviet Union’s collapse in 1991, Mongolia entered a period of economic chaos characterized by wild inflation, disappearing banks, and closing farms, factories, and schools. During this time of widespread poverty, a generation of young adults came of age. In exploring the social, cultural, and existential ramifications of a transition that has become permanent and acquired a logic of its own, Lars Højer and Morten Axel Pedersen present a new theorization of social agency in postsocialist as well as postcolonial contexts.