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"North Korea is in the throes of economic and social, if not political, transition. These changes have a pronounced gender dimension: the crisis of the command economy and the gradual emergence of an informal market economy, where, remarkably, the vast majority of North Korea's traders and merchants are women. This book examines the complex relationship between gender roles and economic and social changes in North Korea. The book, based on extensive original research, provides rich details of this development, considers how women's roles in North Korea have developed over time and highlights how women are driving change in other areas of North Korean life too, including family relationships, women's sexuality and reproductive issues and women's cultural identity"--

Why do political elites in authoritarian regimes, even within the same country, engage in different levels of predatory behavior, whereby some foster vibrant capitalism and others suffocate the innovative private sector? This book proposes a theory of localized property-rights protection under authoritarianism. By combining in-depth fieldwork with archival research and quantitative data analysis, Qi Zhang and Mingxing Liu discuss the post-1949 conflicts between dominant and marginalized factions in the Chinese province of Zhejiang. These conflicts resulted in systemic vulnerabilities among the marginalized local cadres, thus motivating them to form alliances with their grassroots constituents. They therefore provided their constituents with quasi-public goods, such as property-rights protection, to increase their odds of political survival. Zhang and Liu argue that this framework can apply both to the Mao era and to the current reform era, and it also can be extended beyond China to a wider context.

Crowdfunding represents a successful grassroots response to the funding gap present in many independent creative projects. While it traditionally operates on the basis of donations and rewards, the Ontario Securities Commission (OSC) has proposed implementing equity crowdfunding, which would permit the online sale of corporate securities to retail investors. This paper posits that equity crowdfunding should be adopted in Ontario. The ensuing growth in capital markets will ultimately benefit the Canadian economy and, in particular, the entertainment sector. The OSC's proposed regulatory framework for a crowdfunding prospectus exemption is a step in the right direction. The streamlined process makes it easier and less expensive for early-stage businesses to raise muchneeded capital. The Internet's global reach serves to match entrepreneurs and prospective investors with unprecedented ease. These reduced barriers create opportunities to kick-start the economy. The anonymity and ubiquity of the Internet make it equally important to provide sufficient investor protection. The OSC's proposal does this in a number of ways: initial and continuous disclosure, modest investment limits, risk acknowledgement, and regulatory oversight. However, the OSC should also consider implementing a statutory action for continuous disclosure misrepresentation. The investment model of crowdfunding preserves the democratic spirit and accessibility that are essential to this funding mechanism. A case study demonstrates how this model may also benefit large capital-intensive projects in the entertainment industry

Over the past decade or so, the concept of capitalism has exploded within the domains of popular culture and mainstream political discourse in the United States, a phenomenon driven forward by the visibility of anticapitalist movements like Occupy Wall Street, the appearance of bestselling books like Thomas Piketty's Capital in the Twenty-First Century and blockbuster movies like The Big Short, and the meteoric rise of nationally prominent democratic socialist politicians like Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Such circumstances spurred the development of what has quickly become one of the most vibrant subfields in the US historical profession—the so-called "new history of capitalism." Following the publication in 2013 of a front-page New York Times article covering this new subfield, historians identifying with the project contributed to a range of field-defining essays and exchanges explaining its origins and inspirations, its innovations, and its importance. The essay to follow introduces the thematic dossier by building upon a number of recent critiques of the conceptual flaws and historical blind spots revealed by the exchanges that have laid down the groundwork of the "new history of capitalism." It argues that this subfield needs to move towards a more meaningful engagement with the social and the cultural, and to incorporate the contributions of recent work on racial capitalism, neoliberalism, the environment, the carceral state, and gender and sexuality in the twentieth-century United States.

North Korean women's fashion has changed in the context of women's relatively recently assumed role as critical actors in North Korea's market-dependent economy. Through examination of changes in women's fashion we learn more about how the way women choose to dress can become an agentic and empowering process. The article argues that the case of North Korean women and their dress practice can inform our understanding of how women, even in the most oppressive of circumstances, develop tactics to manipulate the systems and social order that seek to control them. North Korean women have enacted upon their agency deliberately, getting away with what they can while simultaneously skilfully avoiding the dire consequences of being identified as actors who dare to disrupt the status quo. This type of agency is not always understood or appreciated by Western liberal frames and sensibilities of agency that centralise notions of individualism and freedom. This nuanced appreciation of women's agency has the potential to expand the "rights, choices and autonomy" Western discourse of women's agency in ways that are inclusive of women who live, and sometimes manage to thrive, in the face of extreme oppression. This paper is informed by the authors' field notes from trips to North Korea and by 45 in-depth interviews with North Korean refugees, regular visitors to North Korea and NGO workers.

The author contends that of all the new democratically elected governments in Latin America, Bolivia is the best positioned to become a democratic socialist state. It has the potential elements of a powerful grassroots people's movement; it has the poorest & also the most indigenous population; & it has perhaps the most effective egalitarian organizations in the world. In Dec 2005, the Movimiento al Socialismo ([MAS] Movement toward Socialism) Party elected Bolivia's first indigenous president, Evo Morales, & also took a majority of the seats in the national assembly. The question remains, however, of whether the grassroots movements can remain independent of the government & continue exerting power from the bottom with regard to issues such as the nationalization of natural resources, economic development, land redistribution, & expansion of the public sector. Success will be difficult in light of the pressure on the country from neoliberalism, what the leftists call "savage capitalism." Romer discusses the tactics of neoliberalism & the weaknesses of some of the Bolivian movements. She concludes by emphasizing the need to educate the people as to the real role of the US in building "democracies" around the world & the potential for US government aggression against the new Latin American socialist states, be they democratically elected or not. S. Stanton

Fournier explores the possibility of alternatives to globalization & capitalism. Utopianism is seen as a movement of hope rather than as a blueprint for a perfect society. Fournier reads grassroots movements in terms of utopianism, & it is argued that the small-scale, decentralized, & disjointed nature of grassroots movements offer conditions to cultivate alternatives to market capitalism. It is concluded that grassroots organizations are an emblem of possibility. 91 References. J. Backman