Author: Cristina Vatulescu File Type: pdf Poetics Today 271 (Spring 2006). 2006 by the Porter Institute for Poetics andSemiotics.

Author: Anthony Ware File Type: pdf The plight of Myanmars Rohingya Muslims has made international news in recent years. Reports of genocide, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity are commonplace. The Rohingyas have been denied citizenship and are widely discriminated against. Hundreds of thousands have been internally displaced by violence, or have sought refuge in neighbouring or friendly Muslim countries. This conflict has become a litmus test for change in this country in transition, and current assessments are far from positive. Whitewashing by the military, and a refusal by Aung San Suu Kyis government to even use the name Rohingya, adds to international scepticism. Exploring this long-running tripartite conflict between the Rohingya, Rakhine and Burman ethnic groups, this book offers a new analysis of the complexities of the conflict the fears and motivations driving it and the competition to control historical representations and collective memory. By questioning these competing narratives, offering detailed sociopolitical analysis and examining the international dimensions of the conflict, this book offers new insights into what is preventing a peaceful resolution to this intractable conflict.**ReviewA very compelling rendering of a situation, the complexity of which is greatly underestimated by outside observers of the international community. The strength of the book comes from the effective presentation of different perspectives and the ability to approach arguments from multiple angles.-- Charles Petrie, former UN Assistant Secretary General, and UN ResidentHumanitarian Coordinator for Myanmar Ware and Laoutides provide an important analysis for anyone looking for solutions to the crisis in northern Rakhine State. Well researched and eminently readable, it is to be highly recommended also for its examination of Myanmars governance today. -- Christopher Lamb, President, Australia Myanmar Institute This is an invaluable, must-read inquiry for anyone seeking to wrap their heads around the complexities and divergent perspectives of this seemingly intractable crisis. The authors are equally compelling and constructive in their recommendations, seeking to re-think pathways to constructive dialogue and engagement of all actors. -- Kelland Stevenson, Save the Children Myanmar Country Director, 2011-2016, and Plan International Country Director, 2016 - present Ware and Laoutides effectively weave together theory and empirics to provide a compelling analysis of one of Asias most intractable and troubling conflicts. They conduct a critical yet fair study of the dueling histories put forward by Rohingya and Rakhine advocates and offer useful policy prescriptions. This volume will be controversial, but with a dearth of careful work on the topic, it is very welcome. -- Matthew J. Walton, Aung San Suu Kyi Senior Research Fellow in Modern Burmese Studies, St Antonys College, University of Oxford This book will soon become the requisite source on the violent and vexed dynamics of the Rohingya Muslims and Rakhine State. Presenting a rare calmly balanced, but deeply principled and exhaustively detailed overview of the conflict, its history, Ware and Laoutides have raised important proscriptions for how to crawl out of decades of repression and poverty for all communities in Rakhine. -- David Mathieson, Senior Technical Advisor for the Asia Foundation, former Senior Researcher for Human Rights Watch on Myanmar About the Author Anthony Ware is Senior Lecturer in Development Studies at Deakin University, Melbourne, and Director of the Australia Myanmar Institute. He specialises in international development in conflict situations, and sociopolitical dynamics of community-led development. Costas Laoutides is Senior Lecturer in International Relations at Deakin University, Melbourne. He specialises in separatist conflicts, particularly relationships between negotiated settlements and modes of political accommodation.

Author: Timothy Bewes File Type: pdf Of all the concepts which have emerged to describe the effects of capitalism on the human world, none is more graphic or easily grasped than reificationthe process by which men and women are turned into objects, things. Arising out of Marxs account of commodity fetishism, the concept of reification offers an unrivalled tool with which to explain the real consequences of the power of capital on consciousness itself. Symptoms of reification are proliferating around usfrom the branding of goods and services to racial and sexual stereotypes, all forms of religious faith, the growth of nationalism, and recent concepts like spin and globalization. At such a time, the term ought to enjoy greater critical currency than ever. Recent thinkers, however, have expressed deep reservations about the concept, and the term has become marginalized in the humanities and social societies. Eschewing this trend, Timothy Bewes opens up a new formulation of the concept, claiming that, in the highly reflective age of late capitalism, reification is best understood as a form of social and cultural anxiety further, that such an understanding returns the concept to its origins in the work of Georg Lukacs. Drawing upon writers including Kierkegaard, Herman Melville, Proust and Flannery OConnor, he outlines a theory of reification which promises to unite politics with truth, art with experience, and philosophy with real life.

Author: Charles R. Geisst File Type: pdf Wall Street is the stuff of legend and a source of nightmares, a force so powerful in American society--and, indeed, in world economics and culture--that it has become an almost universal symbol of both the highest aspirations of commercial success and the basest impulses of greed and deception. How did such a small, concentrated pocket of lower Manhattan came to have such enormous influence in national and world affairs. In this wide-ranging volume, economic historian Charles Geisst answers this question as he provides the first history of Wall Street, ranging from the loose association of traders meeting on New York sidewalks and coffee houses in the late 18th century, to the modern billion-dollar computer-driven colossus of today. Here is a fascinating chronicle of Americas securities industry and of its role in our nations economic development. Geissts narrative ranges over two centuries, from just after the Revolutionary War, to the California Gold Rush and the economic boom (for the North) of the Civil War, to the great stock market crash of 1929, right up to the recent junk bond frenzy and the merger mania of the 1980s that culminated in the fall of Drexel Burnham. The book traces many themes--the move of industry and business westward in the early 19th century, the rise of the great Robber Barons, the influence of the securities market on incredible growth of industry, particularly in the innovative financing of the railroads and major steel companies and crucial investments in Bells and Edisons technical innovations. Geisst also looks at the gradual increase in government involvement in Wall Street, revealing how regulation had been minimal at first and many investors had suffered from the abuses of corrupt firms. But with the beginning of the New Deal, the government stepped in to pass a series of laws--centered on the Securities Exchange Commission--that severely restricted the ways that Wall Street firms could operate. Here began a heated debate that still rages today between those who want unfettered license to operate as they please and those who want the government to regulate the market to curb corruption. Of course, The Street has always been a breeding ground for characters with brazen nerve, and no history of the stock market would be complete without a look at the most ruthless wheeler dealers. Geisst for instance details the manipulations by which Jay Gould and associates cornered the gold market, leading to the terrifying market crash on Black Friday in September 1869. Here too are battles of will between powerful personalities and the determined rise to power of such self made men as John Jacob Astor, John D. Rockefeller, and Cornelius Commodore Vanderbilt--as well as the connivings of lesser known deal makers like William Crapo Billy Durant, reputed to have made $50 million in three months shortly before the stock market crash in 1929. Wall Street is at once a chronicle of the street itself, from the days when the wall was merely a defensive barricade built by Peter Stuyvesant, and in a broader sense it is an engaging economic history of the United States, a tale of profits and losses, endlessly enterprising spirits, and the role Wall Street played in helping America become the most powerful economy in the world.