SOAS, University of London (The School of Oriental and African Studies)

Banking Reform in India and China

Banking Reform in India and China seeks to explore the ways in which banking reform is conditioned by a variety of institutional mechanisms. To uncover these dynamics, Saez draws primarily from analytical tools developed in modern game theory and institutional economics. He provides a multidimensional analysis that covers microeconomic, macroeconomic and institutional aspects of these two countries banking systems. It ties together three themes of corporate governance, financial deregulation and central bank independence to banking reform. These unique approaches make this an important contribution to the literature on comparative banking reform in transitional economies.

Introduction
China's Banking Institutional Framework
India's Banking Institutional Framework
The Political Economy of Corporate Governance
Repression and Reform of the Financial System in India and China
Central Bank Independence: A Comparative Perspective
Conclusions

LAWRENCE SAEZ is Visiting Scholar at the Centre for South Asia Studies, University of California, Berkeley. He specializes in economic liberalization and federalism in India. He has published work on various aspects of economic reform in India and China (including foreign investment policy, infrastructure, and privatisation). He is the South Asia editor at Asian Survey.

Bibliography of Hausa Popular Fiction 1987-2002

Bibliography of Hausa Popular Fiction 1987-2002
Prof. Graham Furniss, Languages and Cultures of Africa
In collaboration with M. Buba and W. F. Burgess
Ruediger Koeppe Verlag
2004
ISBN 3896452770

Cambodian Communism and the Vietnamese Model. Volume 1. Imitation and Independence, 1930-1975

Heder, Steve: Cambodia Communism and the Vietnamese Model. Vol. 1: Imitation and Independence, 1930-1975 This work demonstrates that the portrayal of the Khmer Rouge as a movement led by French-educated intellectuals hostile to Vietnamese Communism is fundamentally flawed. Based on Khmer Rouge and Vietnamese Communist documents and interviews, the book shows the two movements were much closer to each other than either of the two ever admitted. The French-educated Khmer Rouge leader, Pol Pot, was deeply influenced by the Vietnamese, whilst the often dominant Vietnamese-trained Brother Number Two, Nuon Chea, made crucial decisions. French degree holders like Khieu Samphan played marginal roles compared to Vietnamese-trained cadres. Vietnamese Communist doctrine is key to understanding the ideology of the Khmer Rouge, who were driven by a desire to imitate but independently outdo Vietnamese successes, to prove Cambodians were better Communists than Vietnamese. This launched the Khmer Rouge on a disastrous trajectory of believing they were the best Communists in the world. With a foreword by David P. Chandler, this book takes the story to 1975. The second volume 'Pol Pot at Bay: The 1991 Paris Agreements and the Return to People's War' will describe how Pol Pot's and Nuon Chea's imitation of Vietnamese doctrine continued into the early 1990s, when they tried to follow a Vietnamese-inspired path, to retake power with the help of the United Nations, but were foiled by a lack of popular support.

Courtly Culture and Political Life in Early Medieval India

This insightful work offers an exciting, new perspective on the culture of classical India, one that is sure to inject fresh vigor into this neglected, and until recently almost moribund, field of study. Ali does what no one has done before ... It is a major contribution to the field and should be read by everyone with a serious interest in India's early culture.' South Asian Studies

Review
'This insightful work offers an exciting, new perspective on the culture of classical India, one that is sure to inject fresh vigor into this neglected, and until recently almost moribund, field of study. Ali does what no one has done before … It is a major contribution to the field and should be read by everyone with a serious interest in India's early culture.' South Asian Studies

Product Description
Scholars have long studied classical Sanskrit culture in almost total isolation from its courtly context. As the first book-length study to focus exclusively on the royal court as a social and cultural institution, this book fills that gap in the literature. Using both literary and inscriptional sources, it begins with the rise and spread of royal households and political hierarchies from the Gupta period (c. 350–750), and traces the emergence of a coherent courtly world view which would remain stable for almost a millennium to 1200. Later chapters examine key features of courtly life which have been all but ignored by the previous literature on ancient Indian society: manners, ethics, concepts of personal beauty, and theories of disposition. The book ends with a sustained examination of the theory and practice of erotic love in the context of the wider social dynamics and anxieties which faced the people of the court.

Book Description
Daud Ali’s book represents the first full-length study of courtly culture in classical India. Trawling literary sources and inscriptions, the book explores the growth of royal households and the crystallization of a courtly world view which would remain stable for almost a millennium.

About the Author
Daud Ali is a Lecturer in the History Department at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London.

Cultivating Development. An Ethnography of Aid Policy and Practice

Amita Baviskar, Visiting Professor, Department of Cultural and Social Anthropology, Stanford University
'This book stands apart as an insider's account that is consistently critical yet steadfast in respecting its subjects. Highly recommended.' --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Scott Guggenheim, Lead Social Scientist, The World Bank
'A superb book, one of those rarities that can change entire ways of thinking. ... A do-not-miss experience.' --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Product Description
Today there is a preoccupation among development agencies and researchers with getting policy right; with exerting influence over policy, linking research to policy and with implementing policy around the world. But what if development practice is not driven by policy at all? Suppose that the things that make for 'good policy' - policy which legitimises and mobilises political support - in reality make it impractical and impossible to implement? By focusing in detail on the activities of a development project in tribal western India over more than ten years as it falls under different policy regimes, this book takes a close look at the relationship between policy and practice in development. David Mosse shows how the actions of development workers are shaped by the exigencies of organisations and the need to maintain relationships rather than by policy. Raising unfamiliar questions, Mosse provides a rare self-critical reflection on practice, while refusing to endorse current post-modern dismissal of development.

From the Publisher
'A superb book, one of those rarities that can change entire ways of thinking. David Mosse is the first social scientist in a generation who can successfuly take cutting-edge insights from academic anthropology and use them to explain practical problems in development. ... For anyone interested in development, Cultivating Development is a do-not-miss experience.' Scott Guggenheim, Lead Social Scientist, The World Bank / '[Mosse's] provocative thesis challenges the received wisdom of that world and compels us to examine afresh the politics and ethics of engaging with development. Amid the profusion of literature in this feild, this book stands apart as an insider's account that is consistently critical yet steadfast in respecting its subjects. Highly recommended.' Amita Baviskar, Visiting Professor, Department of Cultural and Social Anthropology, Stanford University --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Da Madre Courage e i suoi figli a Jiang Qing e i suoi mariti. Percorsi brechtiani in Cina

Titolo: Da Madre Courage e i suoi figli a Jiang Qing e i suoi mariti. Percorsi brechtiani in Cina
Autore: Ferrari Rossella
Editore: Libreria Editrice Cafoscarina
Data di Pubblicazione: 2004
Collana: Cina e altri Orienti. Tascabili
ISBN: 8875430535
ISBN-13: 9788875430535
Pagine: 166

Dhrupad. Tradition and Performance in Indian Music

Dhrupad is believed to be the oldest style of classical vocal music performed today in North India. This detailed study of the genre is built around issues of tradition and performance. There is an overview of the historical development of the dhrupad tradition and performance styles from the 16th century to the 19th, followed by analyses of performance techniques, processes and characteristics. The authors examine the relationship between the structures provided by tradition and their realization by the performer to provide a reconsideration of the nature of "tradition" in dhrupad. The text is augmented with a transcription of a complete dhrupad performance.

Eastern Cauldron. Islam, Afghanistan, Palestine and Iraq in a Marxist Mirror

The route to any coherent understanding of our time runs through the issues addressed in this collection of essays: the political meaning of Islam, the relation of the West to the Islamic world, the new form of imperialism signaled by the Soviet and U.S. occupations of Afghanistan, the intractable conflict over Palestine. In confronting these inescapable issues, global power is being reshaped and the ends for which it will be used are being decided.

This volume brings together Gilbert Achcar's major writings on these issues over the past decades. The essays collected in Eastern Cauldron describe and explain the resurgence of Islamic fundamentalism, the fate of the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan and its aftermath, and above all the Palestinian conflict--in which the regional stakes are so dramatically embodied and contested. Achcar analyzes the social bases, strategies and tactics of PLO, Hezbollah, Israel and the United States from the establishment of the state of Israel to the second Intifada. He pinpoints the contradictions of the Israeli state--seeking at the same time to be Jewish and yet democratic--and the impact of these contradictions on all parties to the conflict.

Eastern Cauldron is primarily aimed at producing a better understanding of the conflicts of the region. Achcar's work is informed by strong moral and political commitments but is never limited to polemic. His work demonstrates the immense capacities of Marxism to illuminate economic, political, and ideological developments without losing sight of their concrete singularity and their complex interconnection. His analyses are supple and inventive, and consistently informed by reflection on rival traditionsof political thought and a deep knowledge of the region.

Ghana's New Christianity. Pentecostalism in a Globalising African Economy

"'...Ghana's New Christianity discusses every major topic that one might reasonably expect to be comprehended under that title -- the politics, the economics, the social issues.... Gifford knows his subject totally, has vast and wide-ranging sympathy for his subjects (though without being uncritical), and explores these themes with admirable intelligence. This book is simply the best thing out there. It should set a standard for future writing in the field. Gifford is such a good scholar: I'm lost in jealousy. I hope this book gets the exposure it so richly deserves. (Philip Jenkins, Pennsylvania State University)"

Product Description
In sub-Saharan Africa over the last two decades there has been an explosion of Christianity. This book sets out to identify its particular character, focusing on a particular place: Greater Accra, the capital of Ghana. Paul Gifford examines a wide range of Accra's new churches, giving priority to mega-churches. Every dimension -- discourse, theological vision, worship, rituals, music, media involvement, use of the Bible, conventions, finances, clientele -- is analysed. Gifford argues that this Christianity is not otherworldly: its emphasis is on success, achievement, wealth here and now. Yet within this general orientation there is diversity. At one end of the spectrum are churches that, building on the traditional religious imagination, see demonic forces everywhere blocking personal success. In the churches the key factor is the special 'man of God' who is understood to have the 'anointing' to conquer these forces, to 'reverse the curse' that is holding the believer back. At the other end is a strain of this new Christianity that discounts spiritual forces and sees victory resulting from the believer's own education and skills, and from transforming culture. The book also joins the debate over the role of this Christianity in modernizing economic and political structures. It sets the scene by describing Ghana's political and economic situation in the decades when these churches were proliferating, and outlines the current debate on the reasons for Africa's economic plight. It is argued that although focusing on success and wealth can provide motivation in circumstances where it is so easy to despair, the pervasive emphasis on miracles militates against any natural fostering of a new work ethic. As for their political role, some churches are easily co-opted; others challenge the government, but for 'spiritual' reasons that provide little incentive to grapple with issues of governance; by contrast, Gifford finds one important church encouraging change of the entire political culture. No other book has set forth the complex nature of Africa's new Christianity with such clarity, or offered such a searching analysis of its power to tackle Africa's predicament.

Identity and Ritual in a Japanese Diving Village. The Making and Becoming of Person and Place

This detailed description of a particular place at a particular moment in time addresses a variety of issues currently at the fore in the anthropology of Japan: the construction of identity, both for a place and its people; the importance of ritual in a country that describes itself as nonreligious; and the relationship between men and women in a society where gender divisions are still very much in place.

Introduction to the Study of the Languages of the Caucasus

Hardcover: 348 pages
Publisher: LINCOM (1999)
ISBN-10: 3895867349
ISBN-13: 978-3895867347

Narcotic Culture. A History of Drugs in China

Narcotic Culture, then, is a ground-breaking, and indeed astonishing, book. It may not represent a final analysis, but there is more than enough within its pages to support the author's belief, expressed elsewhere, that the best way to win the modern A"war on drugsA" may well be to stop fighting it forthwith.'--Taipei Times

Product Description
"China was turned into a nation of opium addicts by the pernicious forces of imperialist trade". This study systematically questions this assertion on the basis of abundant archives from China, Europe and the US, showing that opium had few harmful effects on either health or longevity, that most smokers used it in moderate quantities without any fatal "loss of control", and that the substance was prepared and appreciated in highly complex rituals with in-built constraints on excessive use. In a culture of restraint, opium was an ideal social lubricant helpful in maintaining decorum and composure. It was also a medical panacea before the availability of aspirin and penicillin: it allowed ordinary people to relieve the symptoms of dysentery, cholera, malaria and tuberculosis and to cope with pain, fatigue, hunger and cold. If opium was medicine as much as recreation, the book provides abundant evidence that the transition from a tolerated opium culture to a system of prohibition produced a cure which was far worse than the disease. Heroin and morphine were snorted, smoked, chewed or injected in the wake of the anti-opium movement, often in conditions far more harmful than opium smoking. Although heroin pills were smoked at all social levels in relatively small and innocuous quantities, some hardly containing any alkaloids, the dirty needles shared by the poor caused lethal septicaemia and transmitted a range of contagious diseases. Prohibition spawned social exclusion and human misery, engendering the very problems it was designed to contain.

Orality: the Power of the Spoken Word

What is it about the magic of the moment, being present when the world turned, that is so important an element in individual and social behaviour? The oral communicative moment brings together ways of speaking and pre-existing relations between speaker and audience in such a way that success or failure can seal fates or unpick impending disaster. Graham Furniss examines the nature of such moments, whether memorable public occasions or moments in the daily flow of human interaction, and situates them in the culturally defined expectations that determine what are, and what are not, appropriate genres of speech for particular kinds of event. He argues for examining the characteristics of orality in the context of contemporary social, political and economic processes as people dicuss, decide, change tack, and become aware of the broader consensus beyond their own personal experience.

Plucking the Winds. Lives of Village Musicians in Old and New China

Author: Jones, Stephen, 1953 Sept. 23-
Title: Plucking the winds : lives of village musicians in old and new China / Stephen Jones.
Publisher: Leiden : CHIME Foundation, 2004.
Description: Book
Sound Recording
ix, 426 p. : ill., maps ; 24 cm. + 1 sound disc (digital ; 4 3/4 in.).
LC Subject(s): Folk music --China --Gaoluo --History and criticism.
Ethnomusicology --China --Gaoluo.
Music and society --China --Gaoluo.
Music and state --China --Gaoluo.
Local Subject(s): Ethnic music recordings China Gaoluo.
Notes: One CD of field recordings in pocket.
Includes bibliographical references (p. 399-405) and index.
Local Note(s): Univ. of Pa.: CD with field recordings removed from pocket and stored in Ormandy Center.

Series: CHIME studies in East Asian music ; v. 2
ISBN: 9080361526 (pbk.)

Southeast Asian Warfare 1300-1900

Hardcover: 319 pages
Publisher: Brill (30 Oct 2004)
Language English
ISBN-10: 9004142401
ISBN-13: 978-9004142404
Product Dimensions: 24.1 x 15.5 x 2.8 cm

The Dark Sides or Virtue. Reassessing International Humanitarianism

In this provocative and timely book, David Kennedy explores what can go awry when we put our humanitarian yearnings into action on a global scale--and what we can do in response.

Rooted in Kennedy's own experience in numerous humanitarian efforts, the book examines campaigns for human rights, refugee protection, economic development, and for humanitarian limits to the conduct of war. It takes us from the jails of Uruguay to the corridors of the United Nations, from the founding of a non-governmental organization dedicated to the liberation of East Timor to work aboard an aircraft carrier in the Persian Gulf.

Kennedy shares the satisfactions of international humanitarian engagement--but also the disappointments of a faith betrayed. With humanitarianism's new power comes knowledge that even the most well-intentioned projects can create as many problems as they solve. Kennedy develops a checklist of the unforeseen consequences, blind spots, and biases of humanitarian work--from focusing too much on rules and too little on results to the ambiguities of waging war in the name of human rights. He explores the mix of altruism, self-doubt, self-congratulation, and simple disorientation that accompany efforts to bring humanitarian commitments to foreign settings.

Writing for all those who wish that "globalization" could be more humane, Kennedy urges us to think and work more pragmatically.

A work of unusual verve, honesty, and insight, this insider's account urges us to embrace the freedom and the responsibility that come with a deeper awareness of the dark sides of humanitarian governance.

Reviews:

"David Kennedy's new book reflects on the misunderstandings and mistakes that sometimes lurk amidst the work and results of well-intentioned people who are trying to make the world a better place. . . . This is a disheartening but essential book."--Donald W. Jackson, The Law and Politics Book Review

"Important and timely. . . . The most systematic and attentive treatment of the problems that arise when ideas of humanitarian professionalism contradict the real needs of people in distress."--Eric A. Heinze, Perspectives in Political Science

"This is an interesting and important book. . . . [W]hat Kennedy does do well is to argue that the humanitarian community has by and large failed to confront the reality of bad consequences flowing from good intentions."--Ramesh Thakur, Japanese Journal of Political Science

"David Kennedy . . . has written in this work a provocative analysis of those who would better the lives of individuals through action in international relations. . . . Kennedy is always stimulating and well worth reading."--David P. Forsythe, The American Journal of International Law

"There is a sort of almost spiritually liberating quality in [Kennedy's] relentless self-examination, in his search for a meta-shift of focus for the discipline, in his search for new boundaries to trespass beyond what can be concretely said. . . . Kennedy's call for a pragmatic and responsible humanitarian self-empowerment can appeal to many."--Ignacio de la Rasilla del Moral, European Journal of International Law

Endorsements:

"David Kennedy's challenging and thought provoking arguments should be read, considered, and internalized by all activists and policy makers in international humanitarianism."--Mary Robinson, former U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights and former President of Ireland

The Heritage of Traditional Malay Literature. A Historical Survey of Genres, Writings and Literary Views

Hardcover: 889 pages
Publisher: Kitlv Press (Jul 2005)
Language English
ISBN-10: 9067182141
ISBN-13: 978-9067182140

Prof. Vladimir Braginsky, South East Asia Department

This Place Will Become Home. Refugee Repatriation to Ethiopia

How do communities grapple with the challenges of reconstruction after conflicts? In one of the first in-depth ethnographic accounts of refugee repatriation anywhere in the world, Laura C. Hammond follows the story of Ada Bai, a returnee settlement with a population of some 7,500 people. In the days when refugees first arrived, Ada Bai was an empty field along Ethiopia’s northwest border, but it is now a viable—arguably thriving—community.

For the former refugees who fled from northern Ethiopia to eastern Sudan to escape war and famine in 1984 and returned to their country of birth in 1993, “coming home” really meant creating a new home out of an empty space. Settling in a new area, establishing social and kin ties, and inventing social practices, returnees gradually invested their environment with meaning and began to consider their settlement home. Hammond outlines the roles that gender and generational differences played in this process and how the residents came to define the symbolic and geographical boundaries of Ada Bai.

Drawing on her fieldwork from 1993 to 1995 and regular shorter periods since, Hammond describes the process by which a place is made meaningful through everyday practice and social interaction. This Place Will Become Home provides insight into how people cope with extreme economic hardship, food insecurity, and limited access to international humanitarian or development assistance in their struggle to attain economic self-sufficiency.

Reviews
“Hammond delves into issues of birth and death, family, food, economy, mutual assistance, and network formation. She uses an impressive array of sources that include archival material, personal accounts, interviews, aid reports, and journalists’ accounts. Recommended. All academic levels/libraries.”—Choice 42:10, June 2005
“This Place Will Become Home provides a fascinating insight into the way that refugees reconstruct their lives and their livelihoods once they are able to return to their own country. Based on extensive anthropological fieldwork in the Horn of Africa, Laura C. Hammond’s book skillfully portrays the difficulties and multiple dimensions of the reintegration process. It is essential reading for scholars and humanitarian practitioners alike.”—Jeff Crisp, Director, Policy and Research, Global Commission on International Migration

“Here at last is a study of refugees, return, place, identity, and home that is empirically rich, theoretically engaging, and utterly readable—a treat. Laura C. Hammond illuminates ‘the quality of the relation between person, community, and place’ with consummate insight, sensitivity, and elegance.”—Nicholas Van Hear, Centre on Migration, Policy and Society (Compas), University of Oxford

“As Laura Hammond demonstrates, human reality is much more complex, open to questions, and difficult to penetrate than many believe. In This Place Will Become Home she challenges common assumptions regarding repatriation and presumed homes and homelands. The self-reflective stance with which Hammond engages her experience is communicated to the reader. This approach further deepens the reality and integrity of her work and adds theoretical depth as well.”—Lucia Ann McSpadden, Life and Peace Institute, author of Negotiating Return: Conflict and Control in the Repatriation of Eritrean Refugees

About the Author
Laura C. Hammond is Assistant Professor of International Development and Anthropology at Clark University.

Subject Areas
Anthropology & Ethnography
History / Africa & Middle East

Viele Wege und ein Ziel. Leben und Wirken von Sayyid Abu l-Hasan 'Ali al-Hasani Nadwi (1914-1999)

The book is an intellectual biography of the renowned Indo-Muslim scholar Sayyid Abu l-Hasan ‛Ali Hasani Nadwi (d. 1999). The crucial question to be answered is why he emerged as a transnationally influential personality and remained such beyond his own death. The book works with an innovative analytical framework that combines social network analysis with discourse analysis, using theoretical approaches from Max Weber, Basil Bernstein, Michel Foucault, and Pierre Bourdieu. It sets out with the elaboration of four ideal-typical discourses in which Nadwī was involved: first, on the role and position of ratio in the process of cognition, second, on the role of Sufism, third on religio-political activism, and, finally, on communalism. This first part is followed by an investigation into Nadwī's personal networks, setting out from his family, then his teachers and Sufi shaykhs, shifting to religious and political movements and bodies in India, Egypt, Saudi-Arabia, Morocco, Turkey, and elsewhere. The work demonstrates that, from his first contact with leading members of the South Asian missionary movement Tablīghī Jamā‛at, and by establishing institutionalised relations to one of the intellectual heads of the movement by way of becoming his disciple and, later, his spiritual successor, Nadwī's entire endeavours aimed at spreading the movement worldwide ('One Aim') by using his personal networks within different fields ('Many Ways'). All his various activities, despite their diversity at first glance, can be perceived as aiming at the same goal, but have nevertheless failed for a number of reasons.https://eprints.soas.ac.uk/4098/

We Hold on to the Word of Lizard. A Small Anthology of Zimbabwean Ndebele Writing

We Hold on to the Word of Lizard: A Small Anthology of Zimbabwean Ndebele Writing

Alena Rettova

ISBN 10: 8086057313
ISBN 13: 9788086057316
Publisher: Zdenek Susa
Publication Date: 2004

Writing Home. Representations of the Native Place in Modern Japanese Literature

In a welcome addition to the growing number of theme-based studies of modern Japanese literature, Stephen Dodd takes up the topic of literary representation of the "furusato", what he calls the native place, in fiction published between the mid-Meiji and early Showa period. The theme is a particularly fascinating one since none of the four major authors discussed--Kunikida Doppo, Shimazaki Toson, Sate Haruo, and Shiga Naoya--presents the native place as merely an idyllic site to which the weary urban writer turns for replenishment. Indeed, the beauty of Dodd's study lies in its emphasis on the dynamic relationship that exists between these authors' urban experiences and their creative remembering of the past. In each case, it is the city that mediates, to varying degrees, the authors' representation of home. -- Davinder Bhowmik "Journal of Japanese Studies"