International and Area Studies Commons^™

Vol. 4, No. 2 Table Of Contents

Zambia Social Science Journal

No abstract provided.

Optimism Versus Pessmism: An Exploratory Analysis Of China In Zambian Media, Bob Wekesa

Zambia Social Science Journal

The huge interest in Zambia-­‐China relations globally, both in academia and popular press, inspires several inquisitions. How have these relations changed and panned out in the present, from a Zambian media perspective? Would a Zambian media approach help provide insights into the ebb and flow of perceptions about China inside Zambia? What can we gather from the Zambian media on the September 2011 regime change in Zambia vis-­‐à-­‐vis China’s engagement? In other words, how did Zambian media craft perceptions on and of China in the era of late president Michael Chilufya Sata’s leadership? To answer these questions, this exploratory study …

Beijing Bicycle: The Cruel Story Of Youth, City, And Modernization In Contemporary China, Patrick O'Conner, Victoria Do, Eric A. Curry

Armstrong Undergraduate Journal of History

About the authors

Patrick is a Savannah native and a history major at Armstrong. He served for ten years in the US Army. He is married with four children and now resides in Metter, Georgia where he enjoys making muscadine wine and hopes to become a history teacher. Eric is from Fort Myers, Florida and currently a history major at Armstrong. He hopes to pursue a career in the Intelligence Community or Office of Foreign Service. After retiring from his government ambitions, he hopes to settle back down in Florida to teach history.

Leaving A Legacy, Walter Lotze

Human Rights & Human Welfare

The ongoing conflict in Somalia, and the complexities that come with finding lasting solutions to a conflict that has raged for decades now, continue to perplex the international community. While a range of previously tried and tested approaches to conflict management are being applied, it is becoming apparent that the international toolkit for responding to conflict situations of such complexity is extremely limited. Indeed, as one international conference after another on Somalia takes place, compacts are signed and funding windows established, old frameworks are abandoned and new ones are forged, and roadmap after roadmap pave the way for further engagement, …

Somali Battlegrounds: On Interest And Accountability, Ines Mzali

Human Rights & Human Welfare

In the wake of the latest and deadliest of Al-Shabab's attacks in Kenya since Kenyan troops entered Somalia in October 2011, Ben Rawlence reiterates the question raised anew by each attack: "What is Kenya doing in Somalia and is it worth the price?" The question leads him to explore the contradiction between the official objectives of the mission and Kenya's particular motivations to launch an offensive of its own. This problematic discrepancy also draws attention to the question of accountability when violations of international humanitarian law have occurred in the context of a military operation by a neighboring country and …

Trends In Poverty Rates Among Latinos In New York City And The United States, 1990 - 2011, Justine Calcagno

Center for Latin American, Caribbean, and Latino Studies

Introduction: This study examines demographic and socioeconomic factors regarding Latinos in New York City and the United States between 1990 and 2011 – particularly poverty rates.

Methods: Data on Latinos and other racial/ethnic groups were obtained from the U.S. Census Bureau American Community Survey, reorganized for public use by the Minnesota Population Center, University of Minnesota, IPUMSusa. Cases in the dataset were weighted and analyzed to produce population estimates.

Results: The analyzed data indicate that the poverty rate among the national population over the last two decades increased. However, there were nuanced and complex trends within both New York City …

The Uneven Representation Of Women In Asian Parliaments: Explaining Variation Across The Region, Devin K. Joshi, Kara Kingma

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Although home to the majority of the world's women, Asia is the continent with the smallest proportion of women in Parliament. Rarely studied from a comparative perspective, this article examines the uneven representation of women in the lower houses of contemporary Asian parliaments. While socio-economic modernization and industrialization are generally expected to increase the proportion of women in positions of political influence, we find that differences in electoral and party systems across Asia play a greater role than levels of female literacy, urbanization, or per capita income. In particular, Asian parliaments with strict quotas and a higher number of (three …

Introduction: Religion And Place: Landscape, Politics, And Piety, Elizabeth Olson, Peter Hopkins, Lily Kong

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

In 2010, a 14-year-old boy was brutally murdered in a suburb outside of Rio de Janeiro when a group of skinheads observed him at a party and suspected that he might be gay (McLoughlin 2011). This scale of horrific homophobia is not uncommon in Brazil, where rates of violence against gays, lesbians, and transgendered people are reported to be amongst the highest in the world. A study conducted with the support of Grupo Gay da Bahia offers the conservative estimate of 260 gays killed in the country in 2010, indicating that rates doubled in only 5 years. The statistic sits …

Fall Roundtable: Africa And Human Rights, Introduction

Human Rights & Human Welfare

An annotation of:

“Kenya’s Somali Contradiction” Ben Rawlence. Project Syndicate. September 30, 2013.

Autochthonous Constitutional Design In Post-Colonial Singapore: Intimations Of Confucianism And The Leviathan In Entrenching Dominant Government, Eugene K. B. Tan

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

Does Singapore's approach to institutional design vis-avis political representation prioritize strong and effective government, or is the goal one that is geared towards a representative government as a means of enhancing political governance? his paper examines the series of amendments to Singapore's Constitution and related legislation, between 1984 and 1990, and in 2010, which relate to political representation in Singapore's electoral system and unicameral legislature. At one level, the changes are part of the endeavor to retain Parliament's standing as the focal point of Singapore's Westminstermodeled system of government. The constitutional changes reflect the political elites' abiding belief that institutional …

Relook Link Between Low Wages And Foreign Workers, Hian Teck Hoon

Research Collection School Of Economics

He felt that the commonplace idea that the huge inflow of foreign workers in the past decade caused a stagnation and even decline in real wage earnings of Singaporean workers in the bottom half of the income distribution was flawed. He argued that real wage earnings of the median worker actually increased when the number of inflows of foreign workers was reaching its peak. Prof Hoon thus felt that Singapore must now find a means to gear its political and economic institutions to continue to embrace economic openness in the next half-century, in order to be able to deliver good …

Singapore's Housing Policies: 1960-2013, Sock Yong Phang, Kyunghwan Kim

Research Collection School Of Economics

The focus of this case study is on the important role of real estate and housing policies in Singapore’s economic development. In the sphere of housing policy, Singapore is known for its high homeownership rates, the very significant role played by the government in housing supply and housing finance, and the wealth that has been created and distributed in the process.

Social Sensing For Urban Crisis Management: The Case Of Singapore Haze, Philips Kokoh Prasetyo, Ming Gao, Ee Peng Lim, Christie N. Scollon

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Sensing social media for trends and events has become possible as increasing number of users rely on social media to share information. In the event of a major disaster or social event, one can therefore study the event quickly by gathering and analyzing social media data. One can also design appropriate responses such as allocating resources to the affected areas, sharing event related information, and managing public anxiety. Past research on social event studies using social media often focused on one type of data analysis (e.g., hashtag clusters, diffusion of events, influential users, etc.) on a single social media data …

K-16 Education Outreach In Asian Studies: Mcc And Asdp, Dona M. Cady

2013 New England Association for Asian Studies Conference

Middlesex Community College is strongly committed to the view that sharing the languages, philosophies, histories, literatures and arts of different peoples is the most profound basis for building bridges and creating respect and civility among cultures.

Our commitment to global education, and specifically our commitment to Asia, has been strengthened by our twenty-three year association with the East-West Center’s Asian Studies Development Program (ASDP). As its first regional center, MCC has collaborated with ASDP on a variety of projects, including multiple Title VI, Fulbright-Hays, NEH Institutes and Bridging Cultures grants, national conferences, and workshops.

Both ASDP and MCC promote a …

The Need For Interdisciplinary Research And Education For Sustainable Human Development To Deal With Global Challenges, Solomon Bililign

International Journal of African Development

Major issues in society - developing alternate sources of energy and a sustainable environment, improving health, and minimizing the effects of climate change require a collective effort by different disciplines working in interdisciplinary groups. Indeed, the boundaries between the different disciplines are becoming increasingly blurred. Society’s responses to major social challenges must be informed by an improved understanding of human perceptions, responses, and of the economic and social impacts of the physical, and biological processes to promote social wellbeing. A comprehensive understanding of the main social challenges requires the collaboration of physical scientists, social scientists, humanities scholars and engineers, and …

Do Foreign Direct Investment And Foreign Aid Promote Good Governance In Africa?, Adugna Lemi, Blen Solomon, Sisay Asefa

International Journal of African Development

The literature on the roles that governance/political and economic stability play to attract capital flows into African economies has been burgeoning. Good governance, liberalization, infrastructure, incentive packages have been regarded as cures to break the deadlock to reverse the economic plight, to attract inflow of capital and, in some cases, to reverse outflows of African economies. The flow of capital, however, has undesirable side effects on host economies’ working conditions, environmental standard, inequality, and culture, among others. These economic and social external or negative spillover effects are due to the phenomenon of “race-to-the-bottom” where companies invest in economies with lax …

Sustainability Of Expansion In An African Airline: A Case Study, Sisay Asefa, Allen Batteau, Lisa Whittaker, Hung-Sying Jing

International Journal of African Development

Ethiopian Air Lines (Ethiopian) has committed to the purchase of 41 new aircraft, nearly doubling their fleet and introducing three new, state-of-the-art types (the A350-900 and the 787-8, and the DA40NG) into a fleet currently consisting of seven models. In a logistically complex industry, this represents a substantial increase in resource commitments and management responsibility in many areas including maintenance, pilot training, facilities, and route planning. The purpose of this paper is to examine this growth strategy, its underlying assumptions, and its sustainability given long-range industry trends in both the developed and the developing world. Using corporate and industry data, …

The Lost Opportunity For Ethiopia: The Failure To Move Toward Democratic Governance, Theodor Vestal

International Journal of African Development

During the critical five year period leading up to the velvet revolution and the overthrow of Haile Selassie’s regime, there were missed opportunities to bring about peaceful change in Ethiopia’s governance. This paper analyzes the events of this period that led to the rise of the Derg and the revolutionary changes that followed and speculates on when strategic steps could have been taken to avoid the catastrophic events that ensued in 1974.

The Political Economy Of Poverty Reduction, Abu Girma Moges

International Journal of African Development

Poverty reduction strategies and policies have gained considerable popularity in recent policy discourse and international economic relations. These policies and strategies are framed in the context of the Millennium Development Goals that set specific quantitative targets to be achieved within a specified time framework. The goals specify the targets and require countries to design national poverty reduction strategies and achieve them with a generous financial assistance from the international community. However, the domestic political economic forces remain to shape the extent and effectiveness of such strategies in addressing and reducing the extent and depth of poverty in the reforming countries. …

Ethiopia’S Dilemma: Missed Chances From The 1960s To The Present, Donald Levine

International Journal of African Development

This was the keynote address at the Fourth International Conference on Ethiopian Development Studies, Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo, MI, August 3, 2007.

The title "An Ethiopian Dilemma" stands to evoke an association to the book by Swedish sociologist Gunnar Myrdal, An American Dilemma, which played a signal role in helping Americans resolve their longstanding conflict of values regarding racial discrimination. The author hopes to suggest ways in which a social scientist might help Ethiopians get a better grip on their country's problems.

Not since the 16th Century has Ethiopia experienced changes so convulsive as in the past fifty years. …