ABSTRACT The rise of Asian states—particularly China and India—and their search for energy, raw m... more ABSTRACT The rise of Asian states—particularly China and India—and their search for energy, raw materials, and markets has spurred talk of a “Global Asia.” Though this has spawned a vast literature, the complexities of language and research environments and the absence of a complex grid of scholarly exchanges—translations, collaborative exchanges, comparative analysis—has meant that these studies have not challenged reigning conceptions of a broad geocultural area and studies of individual states or subregions continue to emphasize their exceptionalism. Though inter-referentiality was projected as a strategy to break out of the “intellectual claustrophobia” of area studies, the continued acceptance of Asia as a cartographic space marginalizes the very global linkages that are salient aspects of the present epoch. Hence area studies scholarship continue largely to obscure the global reach of state and private agencies and of their diasporas as these seek to project elite views and understandings of their states overseas. Rather than taking cartographic units as epistemological fields, we need to chart patterns of human activity to historicize spatial designations.
Ziya Öniş and İsmail Emre Bayram seek to assess whether the rapid rates of growth experienced by ... more Ziya Öniş and İsmail Emre Bayram seek to assess whether the rapid rates of growth experienced by the Turkish economy since it weathered a severe crisis in 2001 as measured by several indices—high levels of investment, especially foreign investment; sustained “export orientation;” increased outlays for education, research and development; sustained economic and political stability, and “favorable regional dynamics” as the European Union (EU) enlargement process—are merely a flash in the pan or sustainable over the long-run. To do this they cast the Turkish trajectory against the “miracle economies” of East Asia, as well as some other middle-and low-income economies in Latin America and elsewhere. Based on this analysis, they conclude that while there are some serious concerns—low domestic savings rate, large deficits in the current account, tapering off the EU accession process, dependence on foreign capital and export markets— long-term sustainable growth can be achieved in Turkey i...
ABSTRACT Despite being called ‘Indian restaurants’, the family-run curry houses that are characte... more ABSTRACT Despite being called ‘Indian restaurants’, the family-run curry houses that are characteristic of high streets in Britain are primarily run by Bangladeshi and Pakistani migrants. This article links the evolution of these restaurants in Britain to colonial history, migration after Independence and contemporary political changes. It analyses the popularity of curry houses alongside the continuing racism meted out to the wait staff and patrons by white Britons in the context of colonial history, migration patterns and the changing industrial fortunes of India and Britain in the post-World War II era. The emergence of wealthy and highly-credentialed Indians and British-born Asians has led to the rise of upmarket eateries and to a sharp bifurcation in diasporic communities.
Ironically, in the very year when the fiftieth anniversary of the Bandung Conference is being com... more Ironically, in the very year when the fiftieth anniversary of the Bandung Conference is being commemorated, the Manmohan Singh government unceremoniously dumped India’s long espousal of independence in international affairs and voted with the United States and the European Union to censure Iran for allegedly violating its obligations under the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) Safeguards Agreement. The vote, at a meeting of the Board of Governors of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) on 22 September 2005, was doubly incongruous as the Indian Ministry of External Affairs’ website clearly recognizes that these allegations were “not justified” and that it would “not be accurate to characterize the current s i tuat ion as a threat to international peace and stabil ity”[1].
The Making of an Indian Ocean World-Economy, 1250–1650, 2015
Thirty years ago, Hayami Akira (1986) characterized a dramatic surge in economic growth—a threefo... more Thirty years ago, Hayami Akira (1986) characterized a dramatic surge in economic growth—a threefold rise in population, a doubling of the arable, and the quadrupling of agricultural output—in Tokugawa Japan as an “industrious revolution.” Unlike the “industrial revolution,” Hayami argued that the rise in per-capita income indicated by a greater increase in agricultural production than in cultivated acreage was due to the implementation of strategies to absorb labor in the form of labor-intensive farming based on wet-rice cultivation. If his formulation was rooted in the peculiarities of Japanese society under Tokugawa rule, Sugihara Kaoru has demonstrated that labor-absorbing strategies were more broadly associated with the spread of rice cultivation in East Asia as in the case of China’s lower Yangzi region in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Both in China and in Eokugawa Japan, farm families additionally began to use family labor to produce nonagricultural goods, to absorb “their own off-peak surplus labour for proto-industrial activities” (Sugihara Kaoru 2003: 87; see also Shiba Yoshinobu 1970).
The struggle by the working class in Poland, of wvhich there have been three earlier manifesta-ti... more The struggle by the working class in Poland, of wvhich there have been three earlier manifesta-tions (1956, 1970-71 and 1976), is located in problems whlich originate in the specific /orm in which pro-duction i., organised. The control exercised by the bureauicracy ov.er ...
The demographic weight and the scale and magnitude of economic growth in China and India-as well ... more The demographic weight and the scale and magnitude of economic growth in China and India-as well as in Brazil and South Africa-marks a seismological transformation in world politics. However, despite their economic clout, the emerging powers of the global South have done little to challenge the Euro-North American domination of the international stage-leaving that task to Bolivia, Venezuela, and Iran. The reluctance of the large states of the global South to challenge the contemporary world order-and the widening income and wealth inequalities within their borderssuggests that they are increasingly complicit in this new world order. However, as growing inequalities unleash greater political instability, it is in the interests of states in the global South to cooperate with each other to change the rules of the game. r
This article argues that proponents of an 'Asian capitalism' were rendered theoretically defensel... more This article argues that proponents of an 'Asian capitalism' were rendered theoretically defenseless by the economic crisis of 1997-98 because the institutionalization of Asian Studies programs over the last 50 years had not generated a genuinely comparative framework. Diversity of research environments and the dominance of the modernization perspective till the 1970s, the first section shows, implied that social change in Asian societies were studied as deformed versions of a normative pattern of social transformation derived from a distorted rendition of English development. Given the continued exoticization of Asian societies, the second section shows, paved the way for culturalist explanations of the spectacular growth of economies along Asia's Pacific Rim in the 1980s and 1990s. The stress of cultural values meant that they were unable to challenge Western analysts when their economies suffered a meltdown. Finally, it is suggested that increasing globalization entails the development of a broader comparative framework and some research strategies are explored.
ABSTRACT The rise of Asian states—particularly China and India—and their search for energy, raw m... more ABSTRACT The rise of Asian states—particularly China and India—and their search for energy, raw materials, and markets has spurred talk of a “Global Asia.” Though this has spawned a vast literature, the complexities of language and research environments and the absence of a complex grid of scholarly exchanges—translations, collaborative exchanges, comparative analysis—has meant that these studies have not challenged reigning conceptions of a broad geocultural area and studies of individual states or subregions continue to emphasize their exceptionalism. Though inter-referentiality was projected as a strategy to break out of the “intellectual claustrophobia” of area studies, the continued acceptance of Asia as a cartographic space marginalizes the very global linkages that are salient aspects of the present epoch. Hence area studies scholarship continue largely to obscure the global reach of state and private agencies and of their diasporas as these seek to project elite views and understandings of their states overseas. Rather than taking cartographic units as epistemological fields, we need to chart patterns of human activity to historicize spatial designations.
Ziya Öniş and İsmail Emre Bayram seek to assess whether the rapid rates of growth experienced by ... more Ziya Öniş and İsmail Emre Bayram seek to assess whether the rapid rates of growth experienced by the Turkish economy since it weathered a severe crisis in 2001 as measured by several indices—high levels of investment, especially foreign investment; sustained “export orientation;” increased outlays for education, research and development; sustained economic and political stability, and “favorable regional dynamics” as the European Union (EU) enlargement process—are merely a flash in the pan or sustainable over the long-run. To do this they cast the Turkish trajectory against the “miracle economies” of East Asia, as well as some other middle-and low-income economies in Latin America and elsewhere. Based on this analysis, they conclude that while there are some serious concerns—low domestic savings rate, large deficits in the current account, tapering off the EU accession process, dependence on foreign capital and export markets— long-term sustainable growth can be achieved in Turkey i...
ABSTRACT Despite being called ‘Indian restaurants’, the family-run curry houses that are characte... more ABSTRACT Despite being called ‘Indian restaurants’, the family-run curry houses that are characteristic of high streets in Britain are primarily run by Bangladeshi and Pakistani migrants. This article links the evolution of these restaurants in Britain to colonial history, migration after Independence and contemporary political changes. It analyses the popularity of curry houses alongside the continuing racism meted out to the wait staff and patrons by white Britons in the context of colonial history, migration patterns and the changing industrial fortunes of India and Britain in the post-World War II era. The emergence of wealthy and highly-credentialed Indians and British-born Asians has led to the rise of upmarket eateries and to a sharp bifurcation in diasporic communities.
Ironically, in the very year when the fiftieth anniversary of the Bandung Conference is being com... more Ironically, in the very year when the fiftieth anniversary of the Bandung Conference is being commemorated, the Manmohan Singh government unceremoniously dumped India’s long espousal of independence in international affairs and voted with the United States and the European Union to censure Iran for allegedly violating its obligations under the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) Safeguards Agreement. The vote, at a meeting of the Board of Governors of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) on 22 September 2005, was doubly incongruous as the Indian Ministry of External Affairs’ website clearly recognizes that these allegations were “not justified” and that it would “not be accurate to characterize the current s i tuat ion as a threat to international peace and stabil ity”[1].
The Making of an Indian Ocean World-Economy, 1250–1650, 2015
Thirty years ago, Hayami Akira (1986) characterized a dramatic surge in economic growth—a threefo... more Thirty years ago, Hayami Akira (1986) characterized a dramatic surge in economic growth—a threefold rise in population, a doubling of the arable, and the quadrupling of agricultural output—in Tokugawa Japan as an “industrious revolution.” Unlike the “industrial revolution,” Hayami argued that the rise in per-capita income indicated by a greater increase in agricultural production than in cultivated acreage was due to the implementation of strategies to absorb labor in the form of labor-intensive farming based on wet-rice cultivation. If his formulation was rooted in the peculiarities of Japanese society under Tokugawa rule, Sugihara Kaoru has demonstrated that labor-absorbing strategies were more broadly associated with the spread of rice cultivation in East Asia as in the case of China’s lower Yangzi region in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Both in China and in Eokugawa Japan, farm families additionally began to use family labor to produce nonagricultural goods, to absorb “their own off-peak surplus labour for proto-industrial activities” (Sugihara Kaoru 2003: 87; see also Shiba Yoshinobu 1970).
The struggle by the working class in Poland, of wvhich there have been three earlier manifesta-ti... more The struggle by the working class in Poland, of wvhich there have been three earlier manifesta-tions (1956, 1970-71 and 1976), is located in problems whlich originate in the specific /orm in which pro-duction i., organised. The control exercised by the bureauicracy ov.er ...
The demographic weight and the scale and magnitude of economic growth in China and India-as well ... more The demographic weight and the scale and magnitude of economic growth in China and India-as well as in Brazil and South Africa-marks a seismological transformation in world politics. However, despite their economic clout, the emerging powers of the global South have done little to challenge the Euro-North American domination of the international stage-leaving that task to Bolivia, Venezuela, and Iran. The reluctance of the large states of the global South to challenge the contemporary world order-and the widening income and wealth inequalities within their borderssuggests that they are increasingly complicit in this new world order. However, as growing inequalities unleash greater political instability, it is in the interests of states in the global South to cooperate with each other to change the rules of the game. r
This article argues that proponents of an 'Asian capitalism' were rendered theoretically defensel... more This article argues that proponents of an 'Asian capitalism' were rendered theoretically defenseless by the economic crisis of 1997-98 because the institutionalization of Asian Studies programs over the last 50 years had not generated a genuinely comparative framework. Diversity of research environments and the dominance of the modernization perspective till the 1970s, the first section shows, implied that social change in Asian societies were studied as deformed versions of a normative pattern of social transformation derived from a distorted rendition of English development. Given the continued exoticization of Asian societies, the second section shows, paved the way for culturalist explanations of the spectacular growth of economies along Asia's Pacific Rim in the 1980s and 1990s. The stress of cultural values meant that they were unable to challenge Western analysts when their economies suffered a meltdown. Finally, it is suggested that increasing globalization entails the development of a broader comparative framework and some research strategies are explored.
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