Monitoring Elite Capture in Community‐Driven Development

Recently, a lot of attention has been paid to improving ways of assessing the effectiveness of development interventions. This is to be welcomed, especially with regard to community‐based or participatory aid projects, since considerable resources are currently being earmarked for these by almost all types of donor agencies, including large international organizations. Such projects are vulnerable to elite capture at local level, and this problem must be mitigated if most of the aid funds thus disbursed are to reach the intended beneficiaries. This article discusses several methods available to achieve that objective. In particular, it argues that the sequential and conditional release of aid funds may not be sufficient to keep elite capture well under control, making it necessary to resort to co‐ordination mechanisms among aid agencies, such as multilateral reputation mechanisms. Even these are not going to be effective enough, however. In the end, an active role will have to be played by the ultimate purveyors of aid money, whether the taxpayers or the contributors in fund‐raising campaigns.     

The ASEAN‐China Free Trade Area: genesis and implications

The Asia‐Pacific region's vulnerabilities to the consequences of globalisation were vividly revealed by its financial crisis in 1997–98. ASEAN states considered the US and APEC less than helpful during the crisis, and they found the conditionalities imposed by the IMF unpalatable. But ASEAN as a regional organisation has been much weakened, and it has been working hard to revive its influence. The ‘ASEAN plus 3’ approach has been perceived as an important means to strengthen ASEAN's status and relevance. The ASEAN‐China Free Trade Area is undoubtedly an outstanding achievement of this approach; but ASEAN has been trying to keep its options open. On the other hand, China has been concerned with the danger of a deterioration in Sino‐American relations and the increasing distrust between Tokyo and Beijing. Improvement of China‐ASEAN relations therefore assumes increasing significance in China's regional policy; and enhancing mutual interests and interdependence is the best way to erode the ASEAN states' perception of the ‘China threat’. But China must not neglect the interests of Japan and South Korea or underestimate ASEAN's resistance to the exclusion of the US and its desire to maintain a balance of power in the region. The ASEAN‐China Free Trade Area, hopefully, should also facilitate the narrowing of the gap between the more developed and the developing ASEAN members, as well as that between the more prosperous coastal provinces and the poor interior provinces in China. In many ways, the establishment of the ASEAN‐China Free Trade Area represents a challenge to what can be achieved in the mutual engagement process.     

Cycling towards the nation:the use of the bicycle in Germany and the Netherlands, 1880–1940

This article explores the role of commodities in the construction of identities by examining the use of the bicycle in the Netherlands in comparison with and contrast to Germany. It argues that cyclists in Germany and the Netherlands used the bicycle to construct and display a certain identity and to express certain views of themselves as well as of the society in which they lived. The popularity of the bicycle in Dutch society can thus be explained by its particular meaning in that society. The vehicle became an important object in Dutch national identification, whereas in Germany, despite its widespread use especially among the working class, the bicycle was viewed as outdated and inferior technology by the 1920s.     

The Image of Arab and Islam in Introduction to Sociology College Textbooks in the United States

Sociology textbooks play a central role in educational process of teaching Sociology. This is very obvious in an introduction course. Introduction courses tend to be very large. In major universities, sociology courses attract as many as 500 to 1000 students. The enrollees tend to be drawn from various disciplines ranging from hard core sciences to social sciences. Furthermore, many of the instructors who teach introduction to sociology tend be new, of junior ranks, and lack experience. Thus, instructors who teach introduction to sociology tend to rely heavily upon the textbook to organize their lectures and presentations in order to give an organized overview of the subject matter and present a clear picture of the essentials of the field. Diversity¹ and globalization² are two important variables that have gained popularity and importance among sociologists, and many social scientists, in recent years. Sociologists use these tools to present and analyze sociological data and information. Thus, these two variables have significantly changed both the coverage and the presentation of introductory sociology textbooks in the last decade or so. Diversity and globalization have increased the coverage of foreign cultures and societies. The purpose of this paper is to study the coverage of Islam and the Arabs in introductory sociology textbooks. The study will cover 20 textbooks published in the 1995–2000 by major publishing companies in the U.S. which are used at colleges and universities throughout the country. The choice of textbooks at the college level in a given course relies, in most cases, on the instructor who teaches the course. Therefore a given textbook may be used in different parts of the country. Content analysis techniques will be used to analyze and evaluate the coverage of both Islam and the Arabs. The introductory Sociology texts will be evaluated in terms of whether they give a balanced, measured, impartial, and an objective picture of the Arabs and Muslims.     

Battles in Seattle Redux: Transnational Resistance to a Neoliberal Trade Agreement

Abstract: This paper examines the possibilities and complexities of transnationalism through an analysis of political protests organized in Seattle against the Korea–US Free Trade Agreement, arguably the most significant bilateral trade negotiations involving the US state today. By studying the political practices of the Korean farmers' movement through participant research in Seattle from 4 to 9 September 2006, and revisiting the analysis of the 1999 “battles of Seattle” in recent work by Hardt and Negri, we argue that the concept “transnationalism” is potentially applicable to activists and subaltern social groups as much as states and elites, although these groups do not transnationalize through the same practices or in the same spaces. Our analysis of the protests aims to clarify the essentially spatial nature of political articulation (in Laclau's sense) that make the transnationalization of social movements possible.     

Kinship terms in the Nabataean inscriptions

This paper examines one of the most important aspects of Nabataean social structure, namely kinship terminology. It examines the linguistic derivations, meanings and social significance of kinship terms, and compares them with those found in other Semitic languages.