International order after the financial crisis

The Great Recession has brought a structural break in international economic and political order. The geography of power is at present being dramatically transformed, notably by the rapid economic rise of China. What makes international order legitimate in a world in which political and economic foundations are rapidly shifting? This article examines analogies and lessons from a previous transition, from a world order centered on Britain, to a US dominated global order. That transition saw two moments of crisis, or turning points, the 1931 financial crisis at the height of the Great Depression, and the diplomatic and military catastrophe of Suez. The article looks at two interpretations of the transition, one by E. H. Carr focusing on the destruction in the Great Depression of a liberal economic and political order and its replacement by a world of brutal Great Power politics; the other by Charles Kindleberger, stressing the need for a benevolent hegemonic power to provide public goods for the world economy and the world political system. China is beginning to behave in the way expected of a Kindleberger hegemon, but also sees the possibilities of asserting power in a world that in the aftermath of 2008 looks much more like the chaotic and crisis‐ridden interwar period as interpreted by E. H. Carr. The challenge for the management of the new international order will lie in the ability of China to embrace the universalistic vision that underpinned previous eras of stability, in the nineteenth century and in the late twentieth century.     

'Casino capitalism' and the financial crisis

I argue that by describing the current financial crisis as the result of 'casino capitalism' commentators are reinforcing familiar and baseless assumptions about exchange and deflecting serious criticism from the true causes of the problem and how we might respond to them. I refer to recent ethnography by anthropologists working in international finance and to three features of casinos: customers, markets and regulation, in order to support the argument that neither individual casinos, nor the industry in general are good exemplars of 'casino capitalism'.     

The Italian welfare state after the financial crisis

The essential characteristics of the Italian welfare state as it developed after the Second World War generated social cleavages and inequities that affected the Italian economy and provided grist for future reforms. At the same time, the welfare state provided political actors with incentives and resources that constrained attempts at reform. With the financial crisis beginning in 2008, serious reform was no longer optional. But austerity politics have generated pressures for changes to the welfare state which are unlikely to moderate most of the underlying inequities generated by the post-war system. Going forward, Italian policymakers must chart a path that is informed by efforts to overcome the pathologies of the past without further undermining the social and economic health of the country.     

Revisiting the South Korean developmental state after the 1997 financial crisis

This study reassesses the conventional wisdom surrounding the developmental state of South Korea (hereafter Korea) since the 1997 Korean financial crisis. The conventional wisdom is that, as a result of the continued structural reforms prompted by the crisis, the Korean developmental state, inherently characterised by active or direct state intervention, strong economic and industrial policies, the chaebol-oriented economic policy, and labour exclusion, has finally begun to dissolve in earnest. In this study, we have considered whether that is really the case and also which theoretical implications can be drawn from this consideration. Analysis of the Korean developmental state following the 1997 crisis has indicated that, quite contrary to conventional wisdom, the developmental state has continued to prevail as a core policy framework of the Korean administrations even after the crisis. There is no doubt that the continued structural and market reform after the crisis certainly undermined the Korean developmental state to a certain degree, but that does not mean the beginning of the end of the Korean developmental state at all. For much evidence strongly indicates that the Korean developmental state still remains intact and strong despite the structural reforms, on account of the successive Korean governments’ assiduous and deliberate efforts to maintain and reinforce it. Even after the crisis, the Kim Dae-Jung and post-Kim regimes have hardly abandoned many of their market interventionist policies. Such market interventionist policies, which were routinely practised under the military regime in the 1960s and 1970s, diametrically contravene the argument that the Korean developmental state has begun to dissolve as a result of structural reform after the 1997 crisis. Contrary to conventional wisdom, the Korean developmental state persists as usual. All this information, then, suggests that path dependence is in action in the case of the Korean developmental state, and this suggests a further hypothesis that the Korean developmental state is very likely to persist in the future as well, despite increasing globalisation pressure, given the strong path dependence.     

The South Korean financial crisis: competing explanations and policy lessons for financial liberalization

There are two types of explanations of the Asian financial crisis: the 'fundamentalist', which focuses on macroeconomic imbalances; and the 'self-fulfilling', which ascribes the crisis to beliefs. This article argues that while both have some merit in explaining the Korean crisis, neither fits the facts very well. The authors put forward a new explanation which emphasizes the role played by financial liberalization and the structural weaknesses in the banking system. They explain that the combination of these factors created conditions that made the Korean banking system vulnerable to the sentiments of foreign investors, simultaneously eroding the ability of the Korean central bank to act effectively as a lender of last resort. The authors examine how various policy mistakes aggravated the crisis and draw some conclusions that may be useful for other emerging market economies.     

Dealing with the banks: populism and the public interest in the global financial crisis

Political protest in Europe and the problematic politics surrounding bank recapitalization in the US have raised growing concerns about the rise of populist politics. Populist politics is problematic in its search for simplistic solutions to complex problems, its disdain for institutions and its political ambiguity. Nonetheless, the rise of populist mobilization also points to genuine concerns about the functioning of democracy. The politics of financial regulation has been dominated by a narrow, utilitarian and technocratic mode of policy-making that has tried to limit public debate, favouring an expert discourse which privileges questions of efficiency over questions of distribution. This article explores the distributional issues at stake in banking recapitalization (particularly questions about the returns governments receive for their investment) and regulation (through an exploration of the financialization literature). It argues that, while populist appeals to 'the people' are too ambiguous to be helpful, given the complexity of the interests at stake in financial regulation, there is a need for a wider and more democratic debate about financial regulation that pays greater attention to distributional issues. Populist mobilization can create pressure for debate, even if it presents few solutions. As a result, we should be wary of moves to shift too much regulation to the international level where populist mobilization is less effective.     

金融危机出境游:越游越省钱

面对国际性的金融危机,人们的日常花销在不断减少。很多国家往往以本国货币贬值来刺激消费。相对而言,外币的购买力比以前增强了,货币贬值国家的商品、劳务、交通、住宿等费用就会便宜很多。这是一个简单的经济常识。而那些喜爱旅游的朋友则会抓住这个机会,去那些曾经昂贵的旅行目的地玩玩看看,冰岛、加拿大、英国、澳大利亚、韩国等国的货币贬值厉害,现在正是"抄底游"的好时机。可以去某一个国家玩,也可以找旅行社来个几国游,汇率变了,怎么玩怎么合算。     

青海应对后金融危机的难点及对策措施

面对国际金融危机带来的严峻挑战,青海省委省政府及时制定实施了一系列应对措施,并取得了积极成效。但是,由于国际经济形势仍不稳定、出口环境仍然偏紧等因素的影响,青海应对后国际金融危机仍然面临着诸多困难。为此,本文结合当前国内外宏观经济环境,从加大正面宣传力度、压缩政府公务支出、转变经济发展方式、加强国内外经济技术合作、强化公共财政职能等方面提出了对策措施。     

论金融危机背景下房地产和谐发展的市场导向和相关条件

由美国金融危机引发的全球金融危机和经济衰退对我国房地产业发展带来了较大的冲击和影响,我国房地产业的政策环境和市场环境由此也发生了相应的变化。根据新形势,我国政府进一步明确了房地产业发展的政策导向,并结合市场的复苏提供了相应的对策措施,通过投资信贷市场和土地增量适时投放,来确保房地产业的“可持续发展”。     

Anthropology in the Anthropocene

In the Anthropocene – an age troubled by global processes of material degradation – anthropology is constrained by its emphasis on local experience. Rather than confine itself, like mainstream economics, to the study of signs and subjectivities, it needs to develop its capacity to deal with the interaction of the symbolic and the material. This should include unravelling how economic ideas and the semiotics of consumption are entwined with the materiality of the biosphere and the physical metabolism of world society.     

Anthropology in the middle east

Canfield, Robert L., ed. Turko‐Persia in Historical Perspective. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991. xiv + 256 pp. including references and index. $54.50 cloth.

Caton, Steven C. "Peaks of Yemen I Summon”: Poetry as Cultural Practice in a North Yemen Tribe. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990. xv + 351 pp. including notes, appendices, bibliography, and index. $34.95.

Khoury, Philip S. and Joseph Kostiner, eds. Tribes and State Formation in the Middle East. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990 xv + 351 pp. including collected references and index. $45.00 cloth, $14.95 paper.     

Anthropology in the arctic and subarctic today

Gösta Berg, ed. Circumpolar Problems: Habitat, Economy and Social Relations in the Arctic. Wenner‐Gren International Symposium Series. Vol. 21. Oxford: Pergamon Press, 1973. vi + 194 pp. Figures, tables, and references. $19.50.     

马林诺夫斯基与现代人类学工作方式

早期的人类学家被称为扶手椅里的人类学家,或者又被称为抽屉里的人类学家。这当然是后学之辈对他们的讽刺。这群人有泰勒、摩尔根、巴斯蒂安、麦克伦南、卢伯克、威斯特马克、马雷特、弗雷泽等人。上述这些理论家基本上遵循了进化论的指导思想,在宗教与婚姻家庭这两方面构筑了不同的进化阶梯路线。     

Arrival: Anthropology in Hollywood

The recent Hollywood science fiction film Arrival features as its main character a linguist who explicitly references the Sapir‐Whorf hypothesis and linguistic relativism. Unusually for a mainstream film, Arrival presents the insights of linguistic anthropology as a key to the human‐alien encounter and combines these concerns with other key anthropological insights, particularly in relation to notions of time and the embodied nature of writing/drawing. In this article, the author argues that the film can be useful in thinking about anthropological debates on ‘strong’ and ‘weak’ versions of Sapir‐Whorf and suggests that a careful parsing of the anthropological concepts drawn on in the film provides food for thought about the possible usefulness of popular fictional concoctions for thinking through contemporary issues in anthropology and conveying them to a wider audience.     

Anthropology and women in development the Leiden experiment

The following publications of the Research Center Women and Development, Institute for Social and Cultural Studies, State University of Leiden, Leiden, the Netherlands, are reviewed:

I De Beij, Ilsa. Van Noot Tot Noodzaak: het belong van karite voor vrouwen in een Gourounsi—dorp in Boven‐Volta. Leiden, 1982, 126 pp., n.p.¹

II Most van Spijk, Marileen van der. Eager to Learn: An Anthropological Study of the Needs of Egyptian Village Women; Report of an Experiment. Cairo‐Leiden, 1982, 84 pp. n.p.

III Most van Spijk, Marileen van der. Who Cares For Her Health? An Anthropological Study of Women's Health Care in a Vilage in Upper Egypt. Cairo‐Leiden, 1982. 99 pp., n.p.

IV Most van Spijk, Marileen van der, Hoda Youssef Fahmy, and Sonja Zimmermann, Remember to be Firm: Life Histories of Three Egyptian Women. Cairo‐Leiden, 1982. 79 pp., n.p.

V Postel, Els and Joke Schrijvers (eds.) A Woman s Mind is Longer than a Kitchen Spoon: Report on Women in Sri Lanka. Colombo‐Leiden, 1980.146 pp. + Appendices, n.p.

VI Risseeuw, Carla. The Wrong End of the Rope: Women Coir Workers in Sri Lanka. Colombo‐Leiden, 1980. 253 pp. + Appendices, n.p.

VII Samarasuriya, Shireen, Who Needs Tourism? Employment for Women in the Holiday‐Industry of Sudugama, Sri Lanka. Colombo‐Leiden, 1982. 85 pp. n.p.     

Anthropology of childhood

Beatrice B. Whiting and John W. M. Whiting. Children of Six Cultures: A Psycho‐Cultural Analysis. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1975. xiv + 237 pp. Figures, tables, illustrations, appendices, bibliography and index. $10.00.