International and Area Studies Commons^™

The Assassins' Gate By George Packer, John Deniston

Global Tides

A book review of The Assassins' Gate (2005) by George Packer.

An Innocent Murder? The Laws Of International Armed Conflict And The 2006 Tragedy At Qana, Brendan Groves

Global Tides

In the early morning of June 30, 2006, Israeli warplanes struck a civilian apartment complex in Qana, Lebanon, killing some 28 persons, none of whom were thought to have been Hezbollah militants. Footage of the attack was streamed instantly across the world, leading many to decry Israel’s tactics in its conflict against Hezbollah. But did the attack actually violate the Laws of International Armed Conflict? Or, worse, does the attack epitomize the notion of an innocent murder—terrible, perhaps immoral, but lawful? Furthermore, do Hezbollah’s violations of the LOIAC excuse reactionary violations by Israel? This paper offers an analysis of the …

Art And Identity: The Creation Of An ‘Imagined Community’ In India, Maria Kingsley

Global Tides

Colonial powers, indigenous traditions, and internal ethnic and religious rivalries all contribute to Indians’ modern sense of identity. This paper demonstrates how the development of Indian art reflects the contributions of these factors to the creation of an “imagined community” in India. In particular, the artistic discourse in India reflects a larger tension in Indian identity and politics between becoming a part of the modern, global economy and remaining a unique, national, self-defining community.

Influence In An Age Of Terror: A Framework Of Response To Islamist Influence Operations, John Deniston

Global Tides

Adversarial influence operations perpetrated by Islamist terrorist networks confront the most foundational of America’s national defense capabilities: the will of the American people to fight. This assertion is predicated on four key determinations. First, Islamist terrorist networks use influence operations as an integral tool of global jihad. Second, these adversarial influence operations should be perceived as attacks and, subsequently, should demand response. Third, a wide array of US Government tools and institutions currently exists to counter this challenge. Fourth, precision-strike doctrine and cyber-attack response frameworks provide instructional examples of methods to create a coordinated US Government response to such influence …

Theorizing Threat: An Investigation Of Contentious Embodiment, Jennifer Musial, Emily Van Der Meulen

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[First paragraph]

In early summer 2006, we had a phone conversation that generated interest in this topic. Emily was reminiscing about her experiences at the Washington, D.C. March for Women's Lives in April of 2004. The March, a demonstration for reproductive justice, brought out feminists and anti-abortion protestors alike. Emily remembered seeing African-American men holding signs that equated abortion to the airplane attacks in New York City on September 11, 2001. This sparked curiosity: how does abortion become equated with "terrorism"? [1] One answer to this question is that a woman who has an abortion is said to commit "body-terrorism" …

A Geographical Perspective On The Territorial Conflict In The East China Sea: The Implications For International Political Relations Between China And Japan, Joel Stewart

Geography Masters Research Papers

China and Japan are engaged in a territorial dispute in the East China Sea. Sovereignty over a tiny islet, and more importantly, access to substantial hydrocarbon resources are the crux of the dispute. This territorial conflict has broad implications for both China and Japan, and involves a number of complex issues. The objective of this paper is to understand the historical, economic and political factors of this situation, as well as to uncover the elements of the solution, which are contained in the problem. A thorough investigation of the literature on the dispute reveals there is significant potential for the …

This Sporting Life: Sports And Body Culture In Modern Japan, William W. Kelly, Atsuo Sugimoto

CEAS Occasional Publication Series

Yale CEAS Occasional Publication Series - Volume 1

Sports in Japan have long been embedded in community life, the educational system, the mass media, the corporate structures, and the nationalist sentiments of modern Japan. For over a century, they have been a crucial intersection of school pedagogy, corporate aims, media constructions, gender relations, and patriotic feelings. The chapters in this book highlight a wide range of sports, and together, they offer a significant window on to the ways that the sporting life animates the institutions of modern Japan.

Assessing Baxi’S Thesis On The Emergence Of A Trade-Related Market-Friendly Human Rights Paradigm: Recent Evidence From Nigerian Labour-Led Struggles, Obiora Chinedu Okafor

Articles & Book Chapters

The objective of the article is to assess some of the sub-claims that emerge from Baxi’s thesis on an emergent trade-related market-friendly human rights paradigm in the light of the available evidence regarding the intense contestations and confrontations that have occurred between Nigeria’s politically and economically transitional Obasanjo regime and a local labour-led coalition. The piece sets out to ascertain the contextual and localised validity of these ‘Baxian’ sub-claims, within the wider context of the government vs. labour confrontations in Nigeria during the neo-liberal socio-economic reforms undertaken in that country between 1999 and 2005.

[Introduction To] Civil Society In Yemen: The Political Economy Of Activism In Modern Arabia, Sheila Carapico

Bookshelf

Sheila Carapico's book on civic participation in modern Yemen makes a pathbreaking contribution to the study of political culture in Arabia. The author traces the complexities of Yemen's history over the past fifty years, considering its response to the colonial encounter and to years of civil unrest. Challenging the stereotypical view of conservative Arab Muslim society, she demonstrates how the country is actively seeking to develop the political, economic and social structures of the modern democratic state. This is an important book that promises to become the definitive statement on twentieth-century Yemen.

Critical Success Factors For E-Commerce In Thailand: Cultural And Infrastructural Influences, Kittipong Laosethakul, William Boulton

WCBT Faculty Publications

The main purposes of this paper are to identify critical success factors (CSFs) for electronic commerce (e-commerce) in Thailand and explain the major influences behind these factors. Detailed case studies of nine e-commerce companies from different industries in Thailand were conducted. Results showed that social behavior and national culture, more specifically issues pertaining to trust and shopping behavior, were the major influences for the success of e-commerce in Thailand. The phenomenon could be partly explained by Hofstede’s cultural dimensions. Thailand’s infrastructure also played an important role in the success of its e-commerce development. The findings provide a framework to guide …

Representation In Kenya, Its Diaspora, And Academia: Colonial Legacies In Constructions Of Knowledge About Kenya's Coast, Jesse Benjamin

Faculty Articles

This paper explores the construction of knowledge in Kenya in the context and aftermath of colonialism and underdevelopment. Those communities that were politically and economically marginalized in Coast Province over the past century were also displaced in terms of academic opportunities, resulting in fewer social science scholars from Mijikenda and other non-Swahili communities in both Kenyan and diaspora universities. Underdevelopment studies in Africa and Kenya are briefly reviewed, and the colonial history of asymmetric social relations at coastal Kenya is traced. Finally, key debates over identity and history are examined within this context and shown to be exacerbated by diasporic …

Enforcing New Property Rights In Sub-Saharan Africa: The Ugandan Constitution And The 1998 Land Act, Sandra F. Joireman

Political Science Faculty Publications

A convincing case has been made in both academic studies and policy circles for clearly defined private property rights as a means to economic development. Perhaps best characterized by the recent work of Hernando De Soto, well-defined private property rights are thought to be critical not just for economic growth, but also as tool to alleviate poverty. The argument that the poor have capital that need only be put to efficient use through the creation of institutional structures that will allow them to access it is compelling. De Soto's work follows decades of policy advice provided by the international financial …

Homeownership Rates Among New York City’S Racial/Ethnic Groups And Latino Nationalities In 2000, Laura Limonic

Center for Latin American, Caribbean, and Latino Studies

Introduction: This report examines rates of homeownership among ethnic/racial groups in New York City. The data are broken down by four primary ethnic/racial groups: White, African Americans, Asians, and Latinos. Also examined are homeownership rates within the Latino group by nationality for the nine largest populations among the Latino population in New York City. Methods: Data on Latinos and other racial/ethnic groups were obtained from the 2000 Report of the U.S. Census Bureau, Summary File #4 – HCT4. Cases in the dataset were weighted and analyzed to produce population estimates.

Results: In 2000, the average rate of homeownership in New …

An Assessment Of The Challenges To Aid Coordination And Aid Effectiveness In The Reconstruction Of Postconflict Societies: A Case Study Of The Postconflict Reconstruction And Development Of Sierra Leone, Mohamed Ahmed Berray

Archived Theses and Dissertations

No abstract provided.

The Whitening Of Brown Skins And The Darkening Of Whiteness, Elaine Laforteza

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

This paper draws on the interrelation of whiteness and Orientalism to provide a framework for examining the use of skin-bleaching lotions and soaps by some Filipino men and women. Through this focus, I investigate the ways in which skin-bleaching negotiates the "threatening" existence of brown flesh upon the contours of Filipino bodies and within the corpus of western(ised) nations. These threats are negotiated through the skin wherein various chromatic inflections of the flesh become processed as a part of or a threat to normative comfort zones. Skin-colour is thus the site of and for discursive construction and a domain of …

Attacking The Body Politic: The Terroristin In 1970s German Media, Clare Bielby

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

In a 1977 special feature on female terrorism, the German weekly newsmagazine, Der Spiegel, published a photograph of a woman with a bomb strapped to her front, masquerading as a pregnant woman. This image perfectly encapsulates the "paradoxical" quality of the female terrorist, who instead of giving life takes it. Furthermore, if, according to Tamar Mayer, women are represented in national and cultural narratives as "the nation's social and biological womb," the threatening quality of such representations for the body politic of the nation starts to become clear. As Mayer asserts "an attack on these [female] bodies becomes an …

Usaid And Engendering Development In Egypt: With Some Reflection On Political And Economic Aspects Of Usaid, Alaa Ahmed El-Dersh

Archived Theses and Dissertations

[abstract not provided]

To Cite Or Not To Cite? Confronting The Legacy Of (European) Writing On African Music, Kofi Agawu

Publications and Research

English Abstract:

The current citational practice in Western scholarship is ideologically loaded, being far more suited to a written economy than a primarily oral culture in which knowledge is preserved in memory and disseminated through repeated performance. The impact of orality on musical scholarship should be more closely investigated; African scholars have all too often become informants rather than theorists of their own traditions. It is therefore proposed that the routine citation of a body of scholarship developed without Africa's historically-specific intellectual needs and ambitions in mind should in fact be discouraged.

German Abstract:

Die heutige Zitierpraxis der westlichen Wissenschaft …

Grassland Establishment For Wildlife Conservation, D. Todd Jones-Farrand, Loren W. Burger Jr., Douglas H. Johnson, Mark R. Ryan

United States Geological Survey, Northern Prairie Wildlife Research Center: Publications

Establishing grasslands has important implications for wildlife, especially in areas historically rich in grasslands that have since been converted to row crop agriculture. Most grasslands established under farm conservation programs have replaced annual crops with perennial cover that provides year-round resources for wildlife. This change in land use has had a huge influence on grassland bird populations; little is known about its impacts on other terrestrial wildlife species. Wildlife response to grassland establishment is a multi-scale phenomenon dependent upon vegetation structure and composition within the planting, practice-level factors such as size and shape of the field, and its landscape context, …

Review Of Waterfowl Ecology And Management By Guy A. Baldassarre And Eric G. Bolen, Gary Krapu

United States Geological Survey, Northern Prairie Wildlife Research Center: Publications

Waterfowl are among the most studied groups of birds, in part because many species are widely hunted. In recent decades, waterfowl researchers have provided a wealth of new findings related to population ecology and management. Baldassarre and Bolen, recognizing the rapid growth of valuable new information since their book was first published in 1994 and the emergence of numerous new issues confronting waterfowl conservation, have prepared a new edition of their book.
The 2006 edition of Waterfowl Ecology and Management represents a major revision of the authors’ original work. The handsome new front cover contains an inset of a Mallard …

Survey Of Selected Pathogens And Blood Parameters Of Northern Yellowstone Elk: Wolf Sanitation Effect Implications, Shannon M. Barber-Meyer, P. J. White, L. David Mech

United States Geological Survey, Northern Prairie Wildlife Research Center: Publications

The restoration or conservation of predators could reduce seroprevalences of certain diseases in prey if predation selectively removes animals exhibiting clinical signs. We assessed disease seroprevalences and blood parameters of 115 adult female elk (Cervus elaphus) wintering on the northern range of Yellowstone National Park [YNP] during 2000– 2005 and compared them to data collected prior to wolf (Canis lupus) restoration (WR) in 1995 and to two other herds in Montana to assess this prediction. Blood parameters were generally within two standard deviations of the means observed in other Montana herds (Gravelly-Snowcrest [GS] and Garnet Mountain …

Influence Of Wind Generators On Grassland-Breeding Birds, Douglas H. Johnson, Jill A. Shaffer

United States Geological Survey, Northern Prairie Wildlife Research Center: Publications

As the Nation strives for energy independence, interest in renewable energy sources intensifies. Wind energy is one such source, and North Dakota, South Dakota, and Montana are ranked among the top five states for wind potential by the Department of Energy. The Missouri Coteau is especially rich in wind energy potential. With its hilly topography and rocky soils, the Coteau also contains large tracts of unplowed grasslands and undrained wetlands. Accordingly, the Coteau is a prime area for nesting waterfowl and other grassland birds, many of which have suffered marked population declines in recent decades. To help maintain breeding populations …

Testing Global Positioning System Telemetry To Study Wolf Predation On Deer Fawns, Dominic Demma, Shannon Barber-Meyer, L. David Mech

United States Geological Survey, Northern Prairie Wildlife Research Center: Publications

We conducted a pilot study to test the usefulness of Global Positioning System (GPS) collars for investigating wolf (Canis lupus) predation on white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus) fawns. Using GPS collars with short location-attempt intervals on 5 wolves and 5 deer during summers 2002–2004 in northeastern Minnesota, USA, demonstrated how this approach could provide new insights into wolf hunting behavior of fawns. For example, a wolf traveled ≥1.5–3.0 km and spent 20–22 hours in the immediate vicinity of known fawn kill sites and ≥0.7 km and 8.3 hours at scavenging sites. Wolf travel paths indicated that wolves …

Regional Advocacy Networks And The Protocol On The Rights Of Women In Africa, Melinda Adams, Alice J. Kang

Department of Political Science: Faculty Publications

While there has been a significant amount of research on transnational feminist activism at the global level, many feminist transnational advocacy networks are mobilizing within world regions. The lack of attention to the regional level has created a considerable imbalance in research on transnational activism. This article's first objective is to define regional advocacy networks (RANs) as a collection of individuals and organizations from the same world region working together toward a common goal. The article's second objective is to explore the conditions under which RANs are influential. We investigate conditions for RAN success through a case study of an …

Ownership And Wages: Estimating Public-Private And Foreign-Domestic Differentials With Leed From Hungary, 1986-2003, John S. Earle, Álmos Telegdy

Upjohn Institute Working Papers

How do state, domestic, private, and foreign ownership of firms differ in average wages? We address these questions using linked employer-employee panel data containing 1.35mln worker-year observations for 21,238 firms from 1986 to 2003 in Hungary. Our econometric methods exploit the long panel together with the presence of 3,700 switches of ownership type in the postsocialist Hungarian transition to estimate these wage differentials.

Taming The Dragon: China's Experience In The Wto Dispute Settlement System, Henry Gao

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

To many observers, a major challenge raised by China's accession to the WTO is whether the WTO dispute settlement system could cope with China, one of the major traders in the world with an economy that is halfway between a planned economy and a market economy. In this article, the author tries to answer this question by reviewing China's experience in the WTO dispute settlement system. Historically, the senior leadership in China attached disproportionate importance to the WTO dispute settlement system and preferred to avoid using the system. Thus, in the first four cases in which China was sued or …

Geography's Place In Higher Education In Singapore, Lily Kong

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Unlike the other papers in this symposium, which deal with countries where there are large numbers of universities, and comparison can be made over time and across space of geography's place in higher education, this paper focuses on a country that was for a long time described as a 'one-university town': Singapore. What interesting story call there be when geography's presence in higher education is so circumscribed? In this paper, the author illustrates how geography's,fate in higher education in Singapore is closely bound up with developments in other parts of the world, not unlike the way in which the country's …

Phishing With A Poisoned Bait, Warren B. Chik

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

This article discusses the problem of dealing with electronic fraud and identity theft under the current Singapore criminal law.

The Bid Challenge Procedures Under The Wto Government Procurement Agreement: A Critical Study Of The Hong Kong Experience, Henry Gao

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

While there has been an extensive literature on the challenge procedure of the WTO Government Procurement Agreement (GPA) in general, as well as excellent country studies on the operation of the national challenge procedures of several key GPA Members, no such study has been conducted for Hong Kong yet. In the view of the author, even though Hong Kong has a relatively small procurement market, it combines the features of a clean and effective government and a highly internationalised procurement market, and thus makes an interesting subject of study. In this article, the author examines the efforts made by the …

Party Groups And Policy Positions In The European Parliament, Gall Mcelroy, Kenneth Benoit

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

As the legislative body of the European Union (EU), the European Parliament (EP) comprises 732 elected representatives from over 150 national political parties from 25 member states. At the EP level, these members are affiliated with seven major party groups representing distinct policy positions. Here we provide precise estimates of these policy positions based on expert surveys, in addition to characterizing the dimensionality of policy competition in the EP. Our results suggest not only that party groups have identifiable and differentiated positions on multiple issues of policy, but also that these positions group broadly into two orthogonal dimensions: one consisting …