Learning by Debating

This essay traces the main lines of debate among economists during the course of China's reform. It first reviews how the market has become legitimated in the country. Then it examines three schools of thought that have emerged from an ongoing debate over the economic role of the state in China's “socialist market economy.” Debates have transformed radically the conceptual frameworks of economists, as well as policymakers, and thereby have exerted enormous influence on the policy process.     

Friendly Relations: Situating Friendships Between Men and Women in the Early American Republic, 1780–1830

Men and women who became friends in the early American republic struggled with societal worries about the purity and chastity of their friendships. More so than other pairs of friends, heterosocial friends had to attend to how their friendships appeared to those around them. One of the most important ways of doing so was positioning a friendship in relation to spouses. In an era when marriage was the central structure for relations between men and women and fears of seduction and ruin were rampant, friends of the opposite sex needed to integrate their friendships within their marriages. This paper examines how men and women did so through the lens of their correspondence. Navigating a society without clear boundaries or rules for conducting a friendship between a man and a woman, individual pairs of friends improvised to create safe friendships in person and in letters. The careful intertwining of marriages and friendships they created demonstrates the way intimate social relationships were embedded in the social fabric of the early American republic.     

Debating Belarus: An Economy in Comparative Perspective

A U.S.-based geographer and Belarusian political scientist assess the current economic crisis in Belarus. Although the country's financial situation is serious in the short term, they argue that analysis of basic social and economic indicators provides some evidence of underlying strength and stability, recently bolstered by a number of trade agreements concluded with Russia in late 2011. The authors argue that the most natural and meaningful basis for ascertaining the health of the country's economy is to compare it with those of its two Slavic neighbors, Russia and Ukraine. That comparison reveals that although Belarus ranks lower on most indices of economic reform, it has outperformed them during the post-Soviet period in several important categories (GDP growth, income equality, agricultural productivity, expenditures on education and health care, life expectancy, and per capita agricultural output) and occupied an intermediate position (below Russia but above Ukraine) in others (e.g., GDP per capita, wages and pensions, and labor productivity). The paper's final section discusses the nature of the relationship between Belarus and Russia (dependence vs. complementarity) and that between the Lukashenka regime and the Belarusian people.     

Debating Belarus: A Framing Comment

A British political scientist and eminent specialist on the politics of the post-Soviet states comments on the divergent perspectives offered in the two preceding papers in the symposium on Belarus in the same issue of Eurasian Geography and Economics. He first briefly reviews the diverse approaches to the study of Belarus evident in the academic literature, and the reasons scholars might be led to the country as a topic of study, especially its suitability as a test bed for several issues of importance in comparative studies (e.g., the nature of presidential power and of political "charisma," of governance without political parties, and an economic model that has appeared until now to have resisted the path of accelerated market reform). Probing more deeply, the author identifies issues of the comparative method of particular relevance to the exchange that warrant further investigation, and goes on to present his own survey data (from early 2011 for Belarus and from 2010 in Ukraine and Russia) in an effort to advance the debate on these issues. In concluding, he suggests a line of further enquiry for understanding better the seeming paradox that is Belarus—the role played by retention of "Soviet" institutions (e.g., trade unions, local councils) that offer a means of communication between ordinary citizens and the authorities.     

Montesquieu's Shadow: Debating reform in the Austrian Netherlands

Arthur Ruppin was the central figure in the Zionist colonization project in Palestine-Land of Israel in the decades preceded the establishment of the state of Israel. Ruppin's immense contribution gave him in Zionist historiography the title of ‘The Father of Jewish settlement in Palestine.’ Nevertheless, in spite of the title ‘Father’, Zionist historiography actually treats him as a ‘Zionist clerk,’ diminishing his role to an apolitical expert on bureaucracy and the economy. Exploring the reasons for his ambiguous position in Zionist historiography and memory, the historical account in the following article reveals how formative were his activities not only in the establishment of the bureaucratic field of the Yishuv (pre-state of Israel), but also in producing and disseminating the modern Hebrew identity models, consequently the article analyzes the relation of these models to the German-social Darwinist perceptions and practices, which shaped Ruppin's cultural identity, weltanschauung and actions.     

Montesquieu's Shadow: Debating reform in the Austrian Netherlands

Under the pressure of governmental reform, beginning in 1740 and intensifying from the 1770s, opponents of reform in the Austrian Netherlands employed arguments derived from The Spirit of the Laws to contest the need for reform. However, reform had also been advocated by local powers using truisms publicised by The Spirit of the Laws, and during the political upheaval of 1789–1790, democrats and traditionalists clashed bitterly over the form of the new Belgian state, both citing Montesquieu to suit their purposes. This article seeks to trace and account for the influence and use of Montesquieu's thought in the Belgian context.     

Talking the talk: Debating debate in northern Afghanistan

The ethnographic focus of this article is on the ways in which Afghan families who lived in northern Pakistan as refugees are currently reflecting upon to their complex experiences of return to their country through a rich and complex culture of debate, as well as the deployment of other verbal and peformative skills, especially imitation. More broadly, it argues that the comparative study of situated practices of debate offers unique insights for the anthropological analysis of Islam, which an expanding body of work on the ways in which piety minded Muslims embody and cultivate ethical and moral values has thus far overlooked.