Suchergebnisse

Women were always portrayed as self-sacrificing and demure, prisoner of various orthodox traditions and devoted to their family. 1 Her behaviour should be modelled on various religious texts, and she would be severely punished if any moral code were violated. However, at the socio-economic and political levels, she was rendered invisible. It was during the colonial phase of India's historical trajectory that the gender question attained centre stage and serious efforts were undertaken to alleviate the situation of Indian women. This greater generalization of patriarchal controls and the pativrata ideals (Doniger & Smith, 1991, The laws of Manu, p. 198) throughout the caste hierarchy was a major factor in the increasing number of widows seen in the colonial period, and a gradually declining sex ratio, leaving India as one of the most patriarchal societies in the world when counting the number of 'missing women'—an estimated 35-40 million women would have been alive were it not for the systematic discrimination (Dreze & Sen, 1995, India: Economic development and social opportunity, OUP Delhi). Nonetheless, the various debates on gender reforms either painted women as victims or heroines thereby denying them any agency.

The category of gender has perennially found itself at the margins because of its social location across South Asia. Albeit heterogeneous by nature, women have borne the burden of history, community, tradition and even geography being violently mapped across their bodies. No wonder that the past two centuries has witnessed heated debates on the women's question in the region ranging from the Altekarian paradigm to the valorized mother figure who is ever nurturing and generous. Many social reformers both male and female sought to battle orthodoxy, religious chauvinism and caste-based status-quoism widening the contours of gender justice in the process. The tropes revolved around consent and coercion, public battles over scriptural legitimacy and contentious traditions. The reformers were treading on delicate grounds as the sacred domain of the 'home' had to be kept immune from any polluting winds of 'western' ideology. This article is an attempt to tease out E.V. Ramasamy Naicker's (Periyar) radical understanding of the gender question and his efforts to create an alternate epistemology to question existing socio-cultural realities. It concludes by arguing that this gendered utopia is also a work in progress.

Kevin Rudd, The Avoidable War: The Dangers of a Catastrophic Conflict Between the US and Xi Jinping's China (New York: Public Affairs, 2022), pp. 420, $32.00. ISBN 139781541701298.

AbstractThis article delineates a hitherto eclipsed labor history of the Northwest Borneo oilfields. In 2018, Brunei Shell Petroleum (BSP) in an unprecedented move, released to Brunei's national archive two labor registers of the British Malayan Petroleum Company (BMPC-renamed BSP in 1958), with entries dating between the 1940s and 1950s. These registers provided a rare glimpse of the workers who were recruited to the Brunei oilfields as labor, a category distinct from staff. As BMPC labor they worked to rehabilitate the company town and the oilfields that were destroyed during the Second World War by the Japanese army and allied bombing in the British protectorate of Brunei. Like colonial records that amassed information for the control and rule of colonized subjects, each entry in BMPC's ledger meticulously noted the date of engagement, place of employment, wages, work history, as well as some biographical information about its workers. Inadvertently, these entries also revealed modes of worker resistance and assertions of agency, thus providing a glimpse of the hidden transcripts of a labor history shaped by the policies of BMPC in this colonial outpost. My article draws on these two BMPC labor registers to trace a micro-spatial history of "Dayak" labor in the emergent Borneo oilfields. Often obscured in historical records, the registers made visible the ways in which Indigenous workers negotiated and resisted the company's control of its labor force. I explore Dayak labor recruitment within the context of the 1880s-1941 when state borders irrevocably shifted and regional economies were increasingly drawn into a global market. In doing so, I chart migrant labor routes across varied regional economies in Northwest Borneo, BMPC's management of a multiethnic labor force, and company workers' agency.

This research paper examines the relationship between Microfinance Institutions ("MFIs") and women's empowerment, demonstrating how these companies serve as catalysts for positive change. Beginning with an overview of MFIs, the research paper introduces you to three MFIs analyzed more in-depth: FINCA (Foundation for International Community Assistance), WMI (Women's Microfinance Initiative), and the World Bank Group. Second, this paper describes the process in which MFIs tackle gender diversity through their primary goal of increasing financial inclusivity. Third, the paper also recognizes the resistance to the MFIs, by describing the reasons for opposition and why people might not be as receptive to such a novel program. Following that, the paper will provide more information on the effectiveness of MFIs on gender development on a larger scale, and then focus on individual case studies to give others a feel of the personal impact these corporations attempt to strive for. Finally, the paper introduces an anecdote to provide a more distinctive perspective of the thought process one might have when approached with the idea of MFIs and their use. In summary, this research paper offers an analysis of the use of MFIs in piloting a new generation of women who successfully utilized micro-credit tools.

Do refugees reshape long-term political behavior in receiving areas? I argue that forced migration can foster a strong group identity among refugees, which can mobilize them toward political parties that champion their identity-based grievances. To test this argument, I examine how one of the largest forced migrations in modern history, the expulsion of ethnic Germans from Eastern Europe into Germany after WWII, shaped their electoral behavior over time. Using an original database of district-level data from 32 elections spanning a century, I find that communities which received greater shares of expellees remain more supportive of the expellees' political champions—the radical right—over time. This relationship is particularly manifested when identity-based grievances are unresolved and politically salient. Mechanism evidence, including novel data on expellee monuments and associations, suggests that a durable expellee identity helps account for these results. My analysis reveals an enduring behavioral legacy resulting from forced migration.

Abstract
It seems fair to say that the system of investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) now faces something of a 'legitimacy crisis'. States complain of what they perceive to be an unjustified encroachment into their regulatory space. Investors bemoan the fragmentation of investment law. And the public resents the fact that an anonymous panel of lawyers sitting behind closed doors are making decisions with significant implications for their well-being and livelihoods through a process in which they are neither seen nor heard. These criticisms of ISDS raise serious questions as to the adequacy of the procedural design of the ISDS system and how this might be affecting perceptions of ISDS's legitimacy as a means of dispute resolution. It is suggested that ISDS's legitimacy crisis can be traced, at least in part, to its failure to uphold certain core values and principles of the Rule of Law – in particular, transparency, accountability and consistency – which are of especial importance in the ISDS context. It is argued that the reason why investment arbitration struggles to uphold these values lies in the dissonance between the public face of ISDS – meaning the public nature and significance of investment disputes – and its private face – meaning the private arbitral process by which investment disputes are resolved. Efforts at reform should be directed at resolving that dissonance, and whilst there is much to commend an incremental reform of the system of arbitration, it seems clear that that can only be an interim step on the path to deeper process reform.