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Western and Eastern Punjabs are two adjoining regions having similar cultural and historical background and values but separated by international border. Both are heavily dependent upon agriculture sector and are also known as bread baskets. Indian Punjab has a much smaller area but has much higher productivity than Pakistani Punjab. These regions face similar type of agricultural problems related to water, credit, marketing, infrastructure, etc. This article presents a comparative analysis of agricultural situation in both Punjabs and trade relations. The study concludes that both the Punjabs can gain from the cordial relations and cooperation with each other in various fields such as sharing of development experience and developing bilateral agricultural trade.

Recent public commemorations in the US and El Salvador for the 1932 state-sanctioned killing of thousands of indigenous Nahuat in western El Salvador involve Native communities and diasporic Salvadorans who thereby bring attention to the continued marginalization of Native people and cultures. Salvadorans in the US express personal and collective indigeneity while contributing to memory and justice efforts in Izalco, the epicenter of the 1932 violence. Multi-sited ethnography illustrates how Native populations and diasporic others, two publics at the margins of the nation-state, engage popular social memory to acknowledge and commemorate a national tragedy in a process that reconfigures and remakes the meaning of national belonging.

This article intervenes in contemporary debates on the nature of cosmopolitanism and the production of hybrid cultural forms by drawing on first and second hand ethnographic materials on tambor de crioula , an Afro-Brazilian play form. Alternatively emphasizing local, global, and diasporic connections, I chronicle the travels of tambor from peasant villages to a first world metropolis, considering the practice's engagement in ethno-racial struggle, spiritual actualization, improvisational pedagogy, and "exotic" performance as markers of cosmopolitan city life. I argue that while postcolonial desire for Otherness shapes Western consumption of trans-national cultural goods, tambor offers resistant and rearticulatory forms of embodied emplacement and sociability that defy unidirectional interpretations.

Welfare state retrenchment and its corollary, the encouragement of 'active citizenship', are widespread phenomena in Western countries today. While public and academic debates have focused on the practical consequences of changing rules and shrinking entitlements, there has been much less attention on how citizens experience these reforms and their accompanying rhetoric. We know even less about how welfare reform impacts upon people's emotions. Such a focus, however, is important because the reform of the welfare state is about more than changing rights and duties. Reforms tell citizens what they are worth, how they are valued and judged, and how they are supposed tofeelabout the new arrangements.

This article examines Soviet and post-Soviet historiography on the origins of the Great War, paying special attention to the reverberations of western historiographical disputes in the Soviet Union and Russia. The author argues that Fischer's thesis was mostly uncontroversial in Russia. Most Soviet historians were predisposed to view his stress on imperialism (and German imperialism in particular) in a favorable way. Later Russian historians have also mainly agreed with Fischer, though by now the controversy is far enough in the past that few of them refer to him directly in their works. Instead, current Russian historians largely seek to place their works both within the context of the Soviet historiography and with contemporary works in Europe and the United States.

Abstract.Using a composite index of legal provisions for annual and family leave in western Europe, the United States, Canada, Australia, Japan and the Republic of Korea, the authors rank legislative support for this aspect of work–family balance. The United States ranks last: its employers are not required to grant annual leave and employees can take no more than 12 weeks' family leave per year. The United States' comparatively low labour standards, the authors argue, may be due to the dominance of a market‐based conception of employment and the assumption of equal employer–employee bargaining power, neither of which is fully shared by the other industrialized democracies.

AbstractChina's limited transparency concerning its defence spending harms strategic trust, but foreign analysts often lose sight of important realities. Specific details remain unclear, but China's defence spending overall is no mystery – it supports PLA modernization and personnel development as well as its announced objectives of securing China's homeland and asserting control over contested territorial and maritime claims, with a focus on the Near Seas (the Yellow, East, and South China seas). This article offers greater context and perspective for Chinese and Western discussions of China's rise and concomitant military build-up through a nuanced and comprehensive assessment of its defence spending and military transparency.

Since the late Ottoman period, the family has been considered the central element in the modernization process in Turkey. Believing that changes in such institutions as marriage, divorce, and fertility are indices of modern family and modern society, political elites formulated strong aspirations to change Turkish families along Western lines. Turkish families have been characterized by substantial changes in marriage, divorce, and gender roles over the past half-century. Although many explanations have been proposed for these changes, this study offers new explanations based on ideational influences. Our theoretical approach draws on the developmental idealism framework, which throws new light on ideational factors that produce continuity and change in family and demographic behavior.

AbstractThis article uses recent advances in data envelopment analysis, bootstrap data envelopment analysis, to investigate whether technical efficiency in the agricultural sector of 33 African countries improved (catching up) for the period 1966–2001. We also investigate whether there is evidence of efficiency catching‐up within the five regions of Central, Eastern, Western, Northern and Southern Africa. Overall, the results show no evidence for efficiency catching‐up in the entire sample. However, efficiency differed across countries and regions with evidence of catching‐up within the East African countries. Our analyses point to the need for policies that improve technological uptake in African agriculture. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Abstract. The island of Ireland is battered by waves from all sides, most ferociously on the west coast as the first port of call for waves travelling across the Atlantic Ocean. However, when discussing ocean events relevant to the nation of Ireland, one must actually consider its significantly larger designated continental shelf, which is one of the largest seabed territories in Europe. With this expanded definition, it is not surprising that Ireland has been subject to many oceanic events which could be designated as "extreme"; in this paper we present what we believe to be the first catalogue of such events, dating as far back as the turn of the last ice age.

This paper argues that Russian-Western mistrust persists due to historical and cultural developments with roots in the ColdWar. The post-ColdWar imbalance of power served to exacerbate the problem. The United States emerged as the world's superpower acting on perceived fears of Russia, whereas Russia's undermined capabilities dictated a defensive, rather than a hegemonic response. The paper analyzes the decision to expand NATO by excluding Russia from the process. It also asks why the process suddenly stopped in 2008. What changed the West's mind about the expansion was not a revised perception of Russia, but rather concern with its growing power and assertiveness as revealed by the Kremlin's use of force during the Caucasus' war.

Parent involvement in Kenya has mainly been limited to making financial contributions and serving on mandated school-parent bodies. Given the dire need to improve the quality of education, it is important to understand the role of parents in the provision of education. A qualitative research design explored the implementation of this model in primary schools in the Embu West District in Kenya. The findings revealed that limited parent involvement was a result of free primary education (FPE); the lack of a policy on parent involvement; the illiteracy of parents; parents' work commitments; lack of confidence in some parents; time constraints; the gendered nature of parent involvement; and the lack of parenting skills.

SummaryThis paper offers an integrated analysis of the forces shaping the emergence of the African slave trade over the early modern period. We focus our attention on two questions. First, why most of the increase in the demand for slaves during this period came exclusively from western Europeans. Second, and of most relevance for present‐day development outcomes, why was the overwhelming majority of slaves of African origin. Technological differences in manufacturing technology, the specificities of sugar (and other crops') production, and the cultural fragmentation of the African continent all play a role in the analysis. Supporting evidence for each of our claims is provided from a broad corpus of relevant literature.

The site of Bakr Awa is situated in north-eastern Iraq, in the Plain of Shahrizor. Excavations were undertaken in 1960/61by the Iraqi Department of Antiquities and 2010/11 by the University of Heidelberg/Germany. Occupation layers from the beginning of the Early Bronze Age tothe Ottoman period were uncoveredin the lower city and on the citadel. Archaeological evidence from the secondmillennium B.C. shows the most intensive settlement activities and apparent prosperity at Bakr Awa. Several forms of pottery, small finds and architecture reflect dynamic processes of cultural and political transformation at this site located in an area of transition between northern and southern Mesopotamia and western Iran.

The West African Republic of Cape Verde was under socialist governance from the time of independence in 1975 until its first multi-party government initiated privatization in 1991. The study examines, as of the mid-90s, the emergent entrepreneurial lives of a small group of young women, their views about their work, and their rejection of traditional women's roles. This lively group has transformed their public image, used it as an organizing principle for action and modified that of the nation. In their revolt against cultural orthodoxy and assumption of new roles this group's self- and public images have become transformational. What is an image? What does it do? Where lies the truth and power of images?