In this innovative study, which won the Elliott P. Skinner Book Award from the American Anthropological Association, Ben Jones argues that scholars too often assume that the state is the most ...important force behind change in local political communities in Africa. Studies look to the state, and to the impact of government reforms, as ways of understanding processes of development and change. Using the example of Uganda, regarded as one of Africa's few "success stories," Jones chronicles the insignificance of the state and the marginal impact of Western development agencies. Extensive ethnographic fieldwork in a Ugandan village reveals that it is churches, the village court, and organizations based on family and kinships obligations that represent the most significant sites of innovation and social transformation. This book offers a new approach to studying development and change and gives a fresh perspective on Christianity in Africa. Jones looks at problems of international development assistance and provides a rich ethnographic rural study from east Africa.
Revolution, civil wars, and guerilla warfare wracked Ethiopia during three turbulent decades at the end of the twentieth century. This book is a pioneering study of the military history and political ...significance of this crucial Horn of Africa region during that period. Drawing on new archival materials and interviews, Gebru Tareke illuminates the conflicts, comparing them to the Russian and Iranian revolutions in terms of regional impact.
Writing in vigorous and accessible prose, Tareke brings to life the leading personalities in the domestic political struggles, strategies of the warring parties, international actors, and key battles. He demonstrates how the brutal dictatorship of Mengistu Haile Mariam lacked imagination in responding to crises and alienated the peasantry by destroying human and material resources. And he describes the delicate balance of persuasion and force with which northern insurgents mobilized the peasantry and triumphed. The book sheds invaluable light not only on modern Ethiopia but also on post-colonial state formation and insurrectionary politics worldwide.
This book analyzes the origins and consequences of civil war in Central America. Fabrice Lehoucq argues that the inability of autocracies to reform themselves led to protest and rebellion throughout ...the twentieth century and that civil war triggered unexpected transitions to non-military rule by the 1990s. He explains how armed conflict led to economic stagnation and why weak states limit democratization - outcomes that unaccountable party systems have done little to change. This book also uses comparisons among Central American cases - both between them and other parts of the developing world - to shed light on core debates in comparative politics and comparative political economy. This book suggests that the most progress has been made in understanding the persistence of inequality and the nature of political market failures, while drawing lessons from the Central American cases to improve explanations of regime change and the outbreak of civil war.
The surprise Chinese invasion of Vietnam in 1979 shocked the international community. The two communist nations had seemed firm political and cultural allies, but the twenty-nine-day border war ...imposed heavy casualties, ruined urban and agricultural infrastructure, leveled three Vietnamese cities, and catalyzed a decadelong conflict. In this groundbreaking book, Xiaoming Zhang traces the roots of the conflict to the historic relationship between the peoples of China and Vietnam, the ongoing Sino-Soviet dispute, and Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping's desire to modernize his country. Deng's perceptions of the Soviet Union, combined with his plans for economic and military reform, shaped China's strategic vision. Drawing on newly declassified Chinese documents and memoirs by senior military and civilian figures, Zhang takes readers into the heart of Beijing's decision-making process and illustrates the war's importance for understanding the modern Chinese military, as well as China's role in the Asian-Pacific world today.
Away from Chaos Kepel, Gilles; Randolph, Henry
05/2020
eBook
The Middle East is one of the world's most volatile regions. In recent years, from the optimism and then crushing disappointment of the Arab uprisings through the rise and fall of the Islamic State, ...it has presented key international security challenges. With the resilient jihadi terror threat, large-scale migration due to warfare and climate change, and fierce competition for control over oil, it promises to continue to be a powder keg. What ignited this instability? Away from Chaos is a sweeping political history of four decades of Middle East conflict and its worldwide ramifications. Gilles Kepel, called "France's most famous scholar of Islam" by the New York Times, offers a clear and persuasive narrative of the long-term causes of tension while seamlessly incorporating on-the-ground observations and personal experiences from the people who lived through them. From the Yom Kippur/Ramadan war of 1973 to the aftermath of the Arab Spring, Away from Chaos weaves together the various threads that run through Middle East politics and ties them to their implications on the global stage. With keen insight stemming from decades of experience in the region, Kepel puts these chaotic decades in perspective and illuminates their underlying dynamics. He also considers the prospects of emerging from this long-lasting turmoil and for the people of the Middle East and the world to achieve a more stable future.
A.Kadir Yildirim and other scholars have used the term "Muslim Democrat" to describe moderate Islamist political parties, suggesting a parallel with Christian Democratic parties in Europe. These ...parties (MDPs) are marked by their adherence to a secular political regime, normative commitment to the rules of a democratic political system, and the democratic political representation of a religious identity. In this book, Yildirim draws on extensive field research in Turkey, Egypt, and Morocco to examine this phenomenon and assess the interaction of economic and political factors in the development of MDPs. Distinguishing between "competitive economic liberalization" and "crony liberalization," he argues that MDPs are more likely to emerge and succeed in the context of the former. He summarizes that the broader implication is that the economic liberalization models adopted by governments in the region in the wake of the Arab Spring have significant implications for the future direction of party systems and democratic reform.
For decades, political observers and pundits have characterized the Islamic Republic of Iran as an ideologically rigid state on the verge of collapse, exclusively connected to a narrow social base. ...InA Social Revolution, Kevan Harris convincingly demonstrates how they are wrong. Previous studies ignore the forceful consequences of three decades of social change following the 1979 revolution. Today, more people in the country are connected to welfare and social policy institutions than to any other form of state organization. In fact, much of Iran's current political turbulence is the result of the success of these social welfare programs, which have created newly educated and mobilized social classes advocating for change. Based on extensive fieldwork conducted in Iran, Harris shows how the revolutionary regime endured through the expansion of health, education, and aid programs that have both embedded the state in everyday life and empowered its challengers. This focus on the social policies of the Islamic Republic of Iran opens a new line of inquiry into the study of welfare states in countries where they are often overlooked or ignored.
In Central America, dynamic economic actors have inserted themselves into global markets. Elites atop these sectors attempt to advance a state-building project that will allow them to expand their ...activities and access political power, but they differ in their internal cohesion and their dominance with respect to other groups, especially previously constituted elites and popular sectors. Differences in resulting state-building patterns are expressed in the capacity to mobilize revenues from the most dynamic sectors in quantities sufficient to undertake public endeavors and in a relatively universal fashion across sectors. Historical, quantitative and qualitative detail on the five countries of Central America are followed by a focus on El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala. The greatest changes have occurred in El Salvador, and Honduras has made some advances, although they are almost as quickly reversed by incentives, exemptions and special arrangements for particular producers. Guatemala has raised revenues only marginally and failed to address problems of inequity across sectors and between rich and poor.
At the beginning of the twenty-first century countries in the Middle East and North Africa contend with the threats and opportunities of economic globalization, the driving force of change in the ...contemporary world. As the authors confirm in their straightforward and, at times, irreverent analysis of the regions' response to these challenges, it is globalization which is the key to an understanding of economic reform. Through an investigation of the structures of state and civil society, including financial systems, they also demonstrate that there is a direct correlation between economic performance and democratization. In other words, the more liberal the polity, the more effective is its economy in responding to globalization. With its interesting and incisive approach to the politics and economics of the Middle East and North Africa, this will be an essential purchase for students and policy-makers and anyone trying to come to grips with economic globalization generally.
Reclaiming Social Work is a thought-provoking and innovative book which examines how social work′s commitment to social justice has been deepened and enriched by its contact with wider social ...movements. It explores the tensions between social work values and a market-driven agenda, and locates new resources of hope for the social work profession in the developing resistance to managerialism.
