A number of large-scale transformations have shaped the economy, polity and society of India over the past quarter century. This book provides a detailed account of three that are of particular ...importance: the advent of liberal economic reform, the ascendance of Hindu cultural nationalism, and the empowerment of historically subordinate classes through popular democratic mobilizations.
Filling a gap in existing literature, the book goes beyond looking at the transformations in isolation, managing to:
Explain the empirical linkages between these three phenomena
Provide an account that integrates the insights of separate disciplinary perspectives
Explain their distinct but possibly related causes and the likely consequences of these central transformations taken together
By seeking to explain the causal relationships between these central transformations through a coordinated conversation across different disciplines, the dynamics of India's new political economy are captured. Chapters focus on the political, economic and social aspects of India in their current and historical context. The contributors use new empirical research to discuss how India's multidimensional story of economic growth, social welfare and democratic deepening is likely to develop. This is an essential text for students and researchers of India's political economy and the growth economies of Asia.
In order to understand today's Russia and former Soviet republics, it is vital to consider their socialist past. Caroline Humphrey, one of anthropology's most highly regarded thinkers on a number of ...topics including consumption, identity, and ritual, is the ideal guide to the intricacies of post-Soviet culture. The Unmaking of Soviet Life brings together ten of Humphrey's best essays, which cover, geographically, Central Russia, Siberia, and Mongolia; and thematically, the politics of locality, property, and persons. Bridging the strongest of Humphrey's work from 1991 to 2001, the essays do a great deal to demystify the sensational topics of mafia, barter, bribery, and the new shamanism by locating them in the lived experiences of a wide range of subjects. The Unmaking of Soviet Life includes a foreword and introductory paragraphs by Bruce Grant and Nancy Ries that precede each essay.
What has happened to Russia since the collapse of communism in 1991 and where is the country going in the new century? Russia has escaped widespread social disorder or political collapse, but few ...observers would argue that the situation has stabilized. Seventeen distinguished scholars from the United States, Russia, and Europe analyze the institutions, social forces, and ideas that are transforming Russia and are, in turn, being transformed in Russia today. The first multidisciplinary assessment of the Yeltsin era, Russia in the New Century: Stability or Disorder? focuses on superpresidentialism, the Constitutional Court, the military, the virtual economy, the network society, organized crime, the new entrepreneurs, workers, survival networks, Russian political parties and nationalism, and the crisis in Dagestan. Fourteen essays and the editors' introduction offer new perspectives on Russia's prospects for stability and disorder in the twenty-first century.
Russia today represents one of the major examples of the phenomenon of "electoral authoritarianism" which is characterized by adopting the trappings of democratic institutions (such as elections, ...political parties, and a legislature) and enlisting the service of the country's essentially authoritarian rulers. Why and how has the electoral authoritarian regime been consolidated in Russia? What are the mechanisms of its maintenance, and what is its likely future course? This book attempts to answer these basic questions.Vladimir Gel'man examines regime change in Russia from the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 to the present day, systematically presenting theoretical and comparative perspectives of the factors that affected regime changes and the authoritarian drift of the country. After the fall of the Soviet Union, Russia's national political elites aimed to achieve their goals by creating and enforcing of favorable "rules of the game" for themselves and maintaining informal winning coalitions of cliques around individual rulers. In the 1990s, these moves were only partially successful given the weakness of the Russian state and troubled post-socialist economy. In the 2000s, however, Vladimir Putin rescued the system thanks to the combination of economic growth and the revival of the state capacity he was able to implement by imposing a series of non-democratic reforms. In the 2010s, changing conditions in the country have presented new risks and challenges for the Putin regime that will play themselves out in the years to come.
A fascinating, bottom-up exploration of contemporary Russian politics that sheds new light on why Putin's grip on power is more fragile then we think
What do ordinary Russians think of Putin? Who are ...his supporters? And why might their support now be faltering? Alive with the voices and experiences of ordinary Russians and elites alike, Sam Greene and Graeme Robertson craft a compellingly original account of contemporary Russian politics.
Telling the story of Putin's rule through pivotal episodes such as the aftermath of the "For Fair Elections" protests, the annexation of Crimea, and the War in Eastern Ukraine, Greene and Robertson draw on interviews, surveys, social media data, and leaked documents to reveal how hard Putin has to work to maintain broad popular support, while exposing the changing tactics that the Kremlin has used to bolster his popularity. Unearthing the ambitions, emotions, and divisions that fuel Russian politics, this book illuminates the crossroads to which Putin has led his country and shows why his rule is more fragile than it appears.
India's New Economic Policy Ahmed, Waquar; Kundu, Amitabh; Peet, Richard
2011, 20101004, 2010, 2010-09-13, 2010-10-04, Letnik:
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Conventional interpretations of the New Economic Policy introduced in India in 1991 see this program of economic liberalization as transforming the Indian economy and leading to a substantial ...increase in the rate of India’s economic growth. But in a country like India, growth is not enough. Who benefits from the new growth regime, and can it significantly improve the conditions of livelihood for India’s 800 million people with incomes below $2.00 a day? This edited volume looks at international policy regimes and their national adoption under strategic conditions of economic crisis and coercion, and within longer-term structural changes in the power calculus of global capitalism. The contributors examine long-term growth tendencies, poverty and employment rates at the national level, regional level and local levels in India; the main growth centers; the areas and people left out; the advantages and deficiencies of the existing policy regime, and alternative economic policies for India. Bringing together the leading figures in the discussion on India’s economic policy, this volume is the authoritative critical study of India’s New Economic Policy.
Waquar Ahmed is a visiting assistant professor at the Department of Geography, Mount Holyoke College.
Amitabh Kundu is Professor of Economics at the Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India..
Richard Peet is Professor of Geography at the Graduate School of Geography, Clark University, Worcester, Massachusetts, US.
Introduction Waquar Ahmed, Amitabh Kundu and Richard Peet 1. Neoliberalism, Inequality and Development Richard Peet 2. From Mixed Economy to Neo-liberalism: Class and Caste in India’s Policy Transition Waquar Ahmed 3. Urban System in India: Trends, Economic Base, Governance and a Perspective of Growth under Globalization Amitabh Kundu 4. New Urbanism, Neoliberalism and Urban Restructuring in Mumbai Swapna Banerjee-Guha 5. Economic Liberalization and Urban Governance: Impact on Inclusive Growth Shipra Maitra 6. The Right to Waste: Informal Sector Recyclers and Struggles for Social Justice in Post-Reform Urban India Bharti Chaturvadi and Vinay Gidwani 7. From Red Tape to Red Carpet? Violent Narratives of Neoliberalizing Ahmedabad Ipsita Chatterjee 8. Neoliberalism, Environmentalism and Urban Politics in Delhi Rohit Negi 9. Coping with Challenges to Food Security: Climate Change, Biofuels and GMOs Suman Sahai 10. Imperialism, Resources and Food Security, with Reference to the Indian Experience Utsa Patnaik 11. Special Economic Zones: Space, Law and Dispossession Rupal Oza 12. Thinking Militant Particularisms Politically: Resistances to Neo-liberalism in India Dave Featherstone 13. Radical Peasant Movements and Rural Distress in India: A Study of the Naxalite Movement Raju Das
"...A good read for anyone whose intellectual curiosity is piqued by neo-liberalism and its discontents."
- Sirisha C. Naidu, Economic and Political Weekly
The making of a generation Andres, Lesley; Wyn, Johanna
The making of a generation,
c2010, 20101030, 2010, 2014, 2010-01-01, 2010-10-16, 20100101
eBook
"Secondary school graduates of the late 1980s and early 1990s have found themselves coping with economic insecurity, social change, and workplace restructuring. Drawing on studies that have recorded ...the lives of young people in two countries for over fifteen years, The Making of a Generation offers unique insight into the hopes, dreams, and trajectories of a generation."
"Although children born in the 1970s were more educated than ever before, as adults they entered new labour markets that were de-regulated and precarious. Lesley Andres and Johanna Wyn discuss the consequences of education and labour policies in Canada and Australia, emphasizing their long-term impacts on health, well-being, and family formation. They conclude that these young adults bore the brunt of policies designed to bring about rapid changes in the nature of work. Despite their modest hopes and aspirations for security, those born in the 1970s became a vanguard generation as they negotiated the significant social and economic transformations of the 1990s."--pub. desc.
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This book applies postcolonial theory to Russia by looking at it as a subaltern empire. It pushes postcolonial studies and constructivist International Relations towards an uneasy dialogue, ...which produces tensions and reveals multiple blind spots in both approaches. A critical re-evaluation of the existing literature enables the author to produce a comprehensive account of how Russia's position in the international system has conditioned its domestic development, and how this in turn generated specific foreign policy outcomes. Having internalised the Eurocentric worldview, Russia is nevertheless different from the core European countries. This difference is not determined by 'culture', but rather by uneven and combined development of global capitalism, in which Russia is integrated as a semi-peripheral nation. The Russian state has colonised its own periphery on behalf of the Western core, but has never been able to overcome economic and normative dependency on the West. The peculiar dialectic of the subaltern and the imperial during the post-Soviet period has given rise to a regime which claims to defend 'genuine Russian values', while in fact there is nothing behind this new traditionalism but the negation of Western hegemony. Trying to 'defend' the nation from the postulated threat of Western interventionism, the regime engages in a disavowal of politics and thus suppresses popular subjectivity. The only political subject that remains on the horizon of Russian politics is the West, while the Russian people, as any other subaltern, are being spoken for, and thus silenced, by the country's Eurocentric elites and the Western intellectuals.
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Pushing postcolonial studies and constructivist International Relations towards an uneasy dialogue, this book looks at Russia as a subaltern empire. It demonstrates how the dialectic of the subaltern and the imperial has produced a radically anti-Western regime, which nevertheless remains locked in a Eurocentric outlook.
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1. The Postcolonial and the Imperial in the Space and Time of World Politics
2. Russia in/and Europe: Sources of Ambiguity
3. Material Dependency: Postcolonialism, Development and Russia's 'Backwardness'
4. Normative Dependency: Putinite Paleoconservatism and the Missing Peasant
5 The People are Speechless: Russia, the West and the Voice of the Subaltern
6. Conclusion
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Viatcheslav Morozov is Professor of EU-Russia Studies at the University of Tartu. Before moving to Estonia in 2010, he taught for thirteen years at the St Petersburg State University, Russia. He is the author of Russia and the Others: Identity and Boundaries of a Political Communit y and the editor of Decentring the West: The Idea of Democracy and the Struggle for Hegemony .
This book presents the changing roles of urban governments and how local governments struggle to gain administrative, fiscal, and political power to combat current urban challenges in Kazakhstan. ...Focusing on the cities and regions selected by the national government of Kazakhstan to be the drivers of national economic development, the author analyses the impact of decentralization on the role of local governments. The book examines the practical experiences of city and regional governments with an emphasis on urban planning, public investment in national projects, and management of urban transport. Due to the complexity and irregular distribution of political reforms at different levels of local government in Kazakhstan, three separate studies are presented, each looking at a specific aspect of decentralization reform and local government function related to physical urban development and distribution of public investment. The author argues that, if the national government of Kazakhstan wants to concentrate economic resources in urban agglomerations, it is not enough to assume that local governments are ready to play the role of efficient planners and managers of urban development. A useful analysis illustrating cities and urban conglomerations as engines of growth in economic development, this book will be of interest to academics studying Central Asian Studies, in particular political and economic development, Development Studies, and Urban Studies.
