Monthly Archive for August, 2010

Hello America

Published on August 29, 2010 in News and Newsletter. 0 Comments

chinaFrom The Economist

China has become the world’s second biggest economy according to data released on Monday August 16th. Japan’s economy fell behind China’s at market exchange rates in the second quarter (it has been number three in PPP terms for some time). These numbers are not strictly comparable: Japan’s data have been seasonally adjusted while those for China have not. Quibbles aside, Japan will surely be eclipsed soon, if it has not been already. Data compiled by Angus Maddison, an economist who died earlier this year, suggest that China and India were the biggest economies in the world for almost all of the past 2000 years. Why they fell so far behind may be more of a mystery than why they are currently flourishing.

For more…

Red Plenty: Lessons From the Soviet Dream

Published on August 27, 2010 in News. 0 Comments

red-plentyFrom Francis Spufford, in The Guardian

It started with the launch of Sputnik and ended with the Cuban missile crisis, but for a moment – so brief it has almost been forgotten – it looked as if the Russian dream of unrivalled prosperity would be realised. Francis Spufford on the lessons to be learned from the Soviet experiment 1962. At the airport, Harry Palmer – not yet played by Michael Caine, not in fact even named in Len Deighton’s original novel – stocks up on his reading. For the flight he buys the New Statesman and History Today. And then he adds a copy of the Daily Worker. Not just because our Harry (as we might as well call him) is a British spy, keeping up with the communist enemy, but also because Harry, unlike the uppercrust nitwits he works for, is classless and intelligent and up-to-the-minute, and so in a menacing way at this moment in the 20th century does communism seem to be, thanks to the public image of its homeland the USSR.

To read more…

In Defence of Equality

Published on August 25, 2010 in News and Newsletter. 0 Comments

in-defence-of-equalityFrom Richard Wilkinson and Kate Picket, in Prospect

In our book The Spirit Level, Kate Pickett and I demonstrated that, first, many problems which are more prevalent lower down the social ladder are worse in societies with bigger income differences, and second, that almost everyone would benefit from reduced inequality. To some, however, these seem impossible notions. Writing in the August 2010 edition of Prospect, Matthew Sinclair from the Taxpayers Alliance claimed our research was “simply untrue.”

To read more…

Day of the (Brain) Dead

Published on August 24, 2010 in News and Newsletter. 0 Comments

zombie-economicsFrom The Economist

WHEN a book with the title Zombie Economics: How Dead Ideas Still Walk Among Us arrived on my desk, I figured it could go one of two ways. One possibility could be that the zombies were Keynesians, discredited in the 1970s but back in favour today. But the cover illustration of trickle-down economics and efficient financial markets illustrates that the Chicago school is deemed to be the haven of the undead.

It is an entertaining and thought-provoking book by an Australian academic John Quiggin, which also works as a good summary for non-specialists of how the economics debate has developed (NB the book will not be published until October).

To read more…

Global Studies Conference – Share Your Photos

Published on August 12, 2010 in Headline. 0 Comments

flickr-yahoo-logov2To those of you that joined us at the 2010 Global Studies Conference Conference in Hong Kong, or if you’ve participated in a previous conference, please share your photos of the conference with your friends and colleagues that you met while at the conference. Pictures of the conference sessions, dinner, tours and ‘down time’ are all welcome!

Join our Learning Conference Flickr group here, and upload your pictures to easily share. Once you’ve joined, simply click on ‘Add something?’, and upload your photos or videos of the conference.

For information on sharing your photos with Flickr, please read more here.

Latest Papers Published in The Global Studies Journal

Published on August 9, 2010 in Journal and Newsletter. 0 Comments

global_front

The latest issue of The Global Studies Journal includes:

Give the Poor Money

Published on August 8, 2010 in News. 0 Comments

givethepoormoneyFrom The Economist

Celia Orboc, a cake-seller in the Philippines, spent her little stipend on a wooden shack, giving her five children a roof over their heads for the first time. In Kyrgyzstan Sharmant Oktomanova spent hers buying flour to feed six children. In Haiti President René Préval praises a dairy co-operative that gives mothers milk and yogurt when their children go to school.

These are examples of the world’s favourite new anti-poverty device, the conditional cash-transfer programme (CCT) in poor and middle-income countries. These schemes give stipends and food to the poorest if they meet certain conditions, such as that their children attend school, or their babies are vaccinated.

To read more…

Free Money

Published on August 6, 2010 in News. 0 Comments

freemoneyBy Jake Bennett, in The Boston Globe

There are all sorts of things very poor people living in poor countries don’t have. They lack secondary-school educations, usually, and good medical care. They lack steady work and life insurance, bank accounts and competent legal representation, adequate fertilizer for their crops, adequate protein in their diets, reliable electricity, clean water, indoor plumbing, low-interest loans, incubators for their premature babies, vaccinations and good schools for their children.

But the central thing they lack is money. That is what makes them, by definition, poor: International aid organizations define the “very poor” as those who live on less than a dollar a day.

To read more…

Here and There: Six Years in the Middle East

Published on August 4, 2010 in News. 0 Comments

hereandthereBy Keith Gessen and Megan K. Stack, in n + 1

On September 11, 2001 Megan K. Stack, the 25-year-old Houston bureau chief for the Los Angeles Times, was in Paris visiting her sister. After the terrorist attacks on that day, the Times asked if she would be willing to go to Afghanistan. For the next six years, before becoming the paper’s Moscow bureau chief, she reported on Afghanistan, Iraq, Lebanon, Libya, Yemen, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Israel and the West Bank. Her new book, Every Man in this Village is a Liar, describes all these places with a unique comparative perspective and moral engagement. n+1 spoke to her over Skype from Moscow.

To read more…

Global Studies Journal – Become an Associate Editor

Published on August 4, 2010 in Journal and Newsletter. 0 Comments Tags: .

As part of the process of publishing The Global Studies Journal all submissions are sent for peer refereeing, prior to publication. Assessment, comments and guidance by the referees are an essential part of the publication process and invaluable to the authors of the submitted papers.

In recognition of the important role of referees, the international advisory board acknowledges all referees who have refereed papers as an ‘Associate Editor’ in the volume of the journal they have contributed to.

If you would like to referee papers submitted to The Global Studies Journal, please email journals@onglobalisation.com, with your professional details, areas of expertise and contact details. If we feel you are qualified and we require refereeing for papers within your expertise, we will contact you.