bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Sultānā the dacoit and Harishchandra: Two Popular Dramas of the Nauṭankī Tradition of North India
Authors: Hansen Kathryn
Published: November 2008

If it is true that under the mantle of respectability accorded to the Indian epics and Purāāas one finds all manner of ribaldry and indecorous behavior, then perhaps when one delves into the ill-famed world of nauṭankī one will find a much more straightlaced and conservative view of reality than one might expect. Nauṭankī is the popular theatre tradition of the Hindi and Urdu speaking regions of North India, and in particular of Uttar Pradesh. For anyone beginning research on nauṭankī, the issue of its reputation is unavoidable. Hiraman, the innocent cartdriver in Phanishwarnath Renu's Hindi short story The Third Vow, knew from hearsay that nauṭankī shows were not a proper pastime, though he didn't quite know why, and the knowledge didn't prevent him from falling in love with a nauṭankī actress. Similarly, the Hindi drama critics, if they mention nauṭankī at all, repeat vague warnings; the form is crude and debased, not much can be expected from it. Rām Nārāyaā Agravāl, author of Sāngīt, the leading Hindi monograph on the subject, describes its current state as one of commercial ruin, artistic bankruptcy, and sexual display. Female Indian friends simply comment, ‘We were never allowed to see those plays,’ or ‘Why don't you study something nice?’
Raja and Rank in North Bihar
Authors: Brown Carolyn Henning
Published: November 2008

The Maithil Brahmans of Bihar and the Bengali Brahmans of Bengal, two of the five great North Indian Brahman castes, had, as of the early nineteenth century, closely similar systems of ranked grades and hypergamously marrying lineages. In addition, fundamental concepts—of purity and pollution, of coded substance, ofsattva, rajas, andtamas(Dumont 1970; Inden 1976; Davis 1983)—form a shared construction of reality for both groups of Hindus. Yet despite a common ideation and similar patterns of organization up to that point, the ‘Kulin system’ of Bengal virtually disappeared in the middle of the last century, while among the Brahmans to the east in Bihar, the system faltered during the same period, then corrected itself, grew more complex with greater refinements of rank than at any time in the past, and has survived into the present.
Passions of Nation and Community in the Bahubali Affair
Authors: Carrithers Michael
Published: November 2008

In early 1983 Digambar and Svetambar Jains forced into public prominence their struggle over the local Jain pilgrimage site of Bahubali hill in Kolhapur District in southern Maharashtra, in India. By the end of that year the majority Maratha community, Harijans, the local and State Congress Party, the police, the district administration, and the State and Union governments were also entangled in the conflict. These Byzantine and sometimes violent events became known as ‘The Bahubali Affair’ (Marathibāhubalīprakaran).
Secular Trends in Burmese Economic History, c. 1350–1830, and their Implications for State Formation
Authors: Lieberman Victor
Published: November 2008

Scholars of Burma cannot, in good conscience, invoke the usual justification — lack of adequate primary materials — for failing to construct an economic history of the precolonial era. By comparison with Siam, Cambodia, the Malay principalities, or indeed any Indianized Southeast Asian society with the possible exception of Java, Burma offers a uniquely continuous and voluminous array of documents bearing on patterns of cultivation, monetization, taxation, and domestic and foreign trade from at least the fourteenth through the nineteenth centuries.
Purse or Principle: Dutch Colonial Policy in the 1860s and the Decline of the Cultivation System
Authors: Fasseur C.
Published: November 2008

In 1976 I published an article in theActa Historiae Neerlandicae(an annual series of publications in English on the history of The Netherlands, alas abruptly discontinued in 1982 for financial reasons) in which I tried to summarize the main causes of the decline of the cultivation system in Java (Fasseur, 1976, 143–62). Being then a young and ambitious historian with little respect for the big names in the field of Indonesian sciences, I stated that the literature on the cultivation system contained many misunderstandings as to the origins of the ‘decay’ of the system. In this connection I mentioned in particular Wertheim's well-known study onIndonesian Society in Transitionand Clifford Geertz's stimulating essay onAgricultural Involution(1963). Although this latter book is certainly not without its shortcomings, it has greatly obliged all historians by reviving the interest in the role played by the cultivation system in the development of Java during the last century and a half. The period of the cultivation system, in the words of Geertz, was ‘the classic stage’ of colonial history, ‘the most decisive of the Dutch era’. Although I did not realize that fully in 1975, it was thus an opportune moment to publish, twelve years after Geertz's provocative study, a doctoral dissertation on the history of the system. The main flaw of Geertz's work was its weak historical component. The only ‘historical’ dataAgricultural Involutionprovided, were borrowed from an agricultural atlas ofJava published in 1926.
The Nineteenth-Century Indo-American Ice Trade: An Hyperborean Epic
Authors: Dickason David G.
Published: November 2008

Thus it appears that the sweltering inhabitants of Charleston and New Orleans, of Madras and Bombay and Calcutta, drink at my well. In the morning I bathe my intellect in the stupendous and cosmogonal philosophy of the Bhagvat Geeta [sic], since whose composition years of the gods have elapsed, and in comparison with which our modern world and its literature seem puny and trivial; and I doubt if that philosophy is not to be referred to a previous state of existence, so remote is its sublimity from our conceptions. I lay down the book and go to my well for water, and lo! there I meet the servant of the Bramin [sic], priest of Brahma and Vishnu, and Indra, who sits in his temple on the Ganges reading the Vedas, or dwells at the root of a tree with his crust and water jug. I meet his servant come to draw water for his master, and our buckets as it were grate together in the same well. The purc Walden water is mingled with the sacred waters of the Ganges. With favouring winds it is wafted past the site of the fabulous islands of Atlantis and the Hesperides, makes the Periplus of Hanno, and floating by Ternate and Tidore and the mouth of the Persian Gulf, melts in the tropic gales of the Indian seas, and is landed in ports of which Alexander only heard the names.
Indigenous Cooperation and the Birth of a Colonial City: Calcutta, c. 1698–1750
Authors: Hasan Farhat
Published: November 2008

It is a truth that from the western extremity of California to the eastern coast of Japan, there is not a spot where judgement, taste, decency and convenience are so grossly insulted in that scattered and confused chaos of houses, huts, sheds, streets, lanes, alleys, windings, gullies, sinks and tanks which jumbled into an undistinguished mass of filth and corruption, equally offensive to human sense and health, compose the Capital of the English Company's Government in India.
‘Providential’ Circumstances: The Thuggee Campaign of the 1830s and Legal Innovation
Authors: Singha Radhika
Published: November 2008

In his historical defence of the record of the East India Company in India Kaye headed his chapter on thuggee with the following summary of contents: ‘Thuggee—Increased knowledge of the Habits of the People—Its Results’. It was with the flourish of mystery unveiled and mastered that a group of officers of the Political Department had lobbied for special operations against this ‘murderous fraternity’ and for special laws to deal with it.
Introduction
Authors: Beasley W. G.
Published: November 2008

The papers in this number of Modern Asian Studies were originally prepared for a symposium that took place in London in December 1981. It was sponsored jointly by the Japan Foundation and the School of Oriental and African Studies in order to provide an opportunity for discussion of the cultural background to an important exhibition of Japanese art mounted by the Royal Academy during the winter of 1981–82.
Rangakuand Westernization
Authors: Jansen Marius B.
Published: November 2008

The continuities between the study of the West through Dutch in Tokugawa Japan and the program of modernization in the Meiji period seem self evident. The influence of Holland through Deshima became the focus of the life work of Itazawa Takeo and others well before the war, and it received detailed discussion from Charles Boxer in 1936. Nevertheless issues of the importance and influence of Tokugawarangakucontinue to be debated, and that debate greatly enriches our feel for Japanese society then and now.
The Edo Experience and Japanese Nationalism
Authors: Beasley W. G.
Published: November 2008

It is generally accepted that nationalism has two frames of reference. One is external: the pursuit of national independence, asserting the nation's freedom from domination by other states or groups. The second is internal: a commitment to national unity, requiring political and social cohesion. Both are associated with awareness of cultural identity, which is the nation's image of itself in terms of those characteristics that are held to be common to its members.
Ogyū Sorai's Place in Edo Intellectual Thought
Authors: Lidin Olof G.
Published: November 2008

Little did it occur to me when I began to translate Ogyū Sorai's Kyōchūkikō (‘Report from Journey to Kai’) some years ago that this endeavour would lead me to the first work that was written by this philosopher. Even after I had shown that the Kyōchūkikō was only a new and shorter edition (1710) of the earlier travelogue Fūryūshishaki (‘Report of the Elegant Emissaries’), written in 1706, it still took time before I realized that this must be the very first work to come from Sorai's brush. The Fūryūshishaki must be his first work and this means that he was 40 before he wrote anything that was literary, and of any length. What we have from before that time are short pieces, letters, poems, and memoranda; also the lexical work Yakubun sentei, which was probably written, at least partially, before 1706.
Textile Decoration in the Edo Period and its Further Implication
Authors: Watson William
Published: November 2008

As compared with earlier times the emergence of period style in any sense of a unified concept during the Edo period is obscured for the historian by unprecedented factors: the new multiplication of figural and narrative subjects in painting, the predominance of new class interests and patronage, the dissemination of printed pattern books, the suddenly expanded commerce and industry of decorative art in its many branches. Viewed from outside ofjapan the scene has not been clarified by the recent Japanese official emphasis on the art of the Momoyama period as the proper historical perspective for restored imperial rule, nor by an obsession in the west with the special qualified and genre interest of the prints and paintings of the Ukiyo-e school. The work of the latter, in a well-established conventional wording, was ‘patronised by comparatively uncultured people, aimed at a simple and unsophisticated expression, mostly beautiful and sometimes even sensuous rather than deeply spiritual and scholarly’. This approach to the so richly varied art of Edo, and to the original dimension within it created by the new relation of decorative to expressive art, reinforced by the fragmentation of schools, has militated against the definition of pervasive structures in composition which endow the whole art of the period with its distinctive character. The present paper looks to textile decoration as epitomizing a universal trend in design and as an index to stylistic change with some claim to general validity.
Japanese Export Art of the Edo Period and its Influence on European Art
Authors: Impey Oliver
Published: November 2008

The opening up of Japan to the west and the consequent influences of the west and of Japan upon each other are remarkable for many reasons, not least of which is the interchange of styles and techniques of the arts and crafts one to the other. The export of Japanese works of art, and the influence upon European artistic production during the Meiji period (though often of works produced during the Edo period) have all but obscured the remarkable effects Japanese export art had upon the west during the period of self-imposed semi-isolation. Of course Japan was also greatly influenced by western art; that is not the subject of this paper, but it is a subject of great interest, worthy of considerable attention.
Indigenous Trade and European Economic Intervention in North-West Borneo c.1860–1930
Authors: Cleary M. C.
Published: November 2008

The soil and productions of this country are of the richest description, and it is not too much to say, that within the same given space, there are not to be found the same mineral and vegetable riches in any land in the world (James Brooke, 1838).
Dancing the Goddess: Possession and Class in Tamil South India
Authors: Kapadia Karin
Published: November 2008

Religion in India has always been profoundly politicized, which is why it has remained of enduring importance, instead of ‘withering away’ as in the West. Though its presence is somewhat hidden in parties that profess a secular view, it is of vital importance, at the local village level, as a focus for the organization of political factions. More precisely, even if local political parties in Tamilnadu do not organizearoundreligion, theyusereligion and ritual events for their political purposes, in their struggles to dominate local politics. The fact that this politicization of religious ritual is implicit, not explicit, only testifies to the fact that power-relationships—and struggles—exist in all aspects of life (as Foucault often noted), including apparently ‘innocent’ rites such as religious possession.
Women as Participants in the Pakistan Movement: Modernization and the Promise of a Moral State
Authors: Willmer David
Published: November 2008

Photographs taken in Lahore in 1946–47 record the mass participation of women in the pro-Muslim League demonstrations against the Khizar Unionist government. This was the first such mass public mobilization of Muslim women anywhere in pre-independent India. The mobilization of women became a vital element in the League's tactics during the dramatic last months leading up to Independence and Partition. A small group of relatively emancipated female Muslim Leaguers from the Punjab who had been at the vanguard of the anti-Khizar demonstrations were also instrumental in mobilizing the unemancipated women of the North-West Frontier Province to protest against the Khan Sahib Congress ministry. This latter mobilization was evidently so successful that the British governor of the province, on seeing the crowds of burqa-clad women, was reported to have declared that ‘Pakistan is made’. It is perhaps no mere coincidence, then, that Jinnah made his statement about ‘awakening the political consciousness’ of Muslim women at the same session of the AIML at which the demand for Pakistan was made official League policy. The political awakening of Muslim women seemed to be inextricably linked to the struggle for a separate Muslim state in India. The question that this paper deals with, however, is whether in fact the Pakistan movement had a surplus of meaning for women over and above the nationalism of the Muslim League and why it was that many Muslim women were, in Begum Jahan Ara's words, ‘more impatient for Pakistan than men.’
Irony and Purity: Mishima
Authors: Abelsen Peter
Published: November 2008

Tokyo: 25 November 1970, midday. The parade ground of the Self Defence Force's Ichigaya garrison was crowded with personnel. All looked up at the balcony of the main hall, knowing that in the adjoining room the commandant had been taken hostage. On the parapet of the balcony stood one captor, dressed in a brown uniform and donning a headband with an ancient samurai motto, shichishōhōkoku (‘serve the nation for seven lives’). He was Mishima Yukio, the famous writer and founder of a militia named Tatenokai (Shield Society). Hardly able to make himself heard through the wail of sirens and the jeers from the crowd, Mishima held a speech in which he called the constitutional curtailment of the military a threat to Japan's culture. Nothing new, as he had been flirting openly with the extreme right for years. His plea to the men below to follow him in a revolt was greeted with howls of derision.
Commemorating War in Eighteenth-Century China
Authors: Waley-Cohen Joanna
Published: November 2008

Reviewing his long reign in 1792, the Qianlong Emperor (r. 1736–1795) hailed his military triumphs as one of its central accomplishments. To underscore the importance he ascribed to these successes, he began to style himself ‘Old Man of the Ten Complete Victories’ (Shi Quan Lao Ren), after an essay in which he boldly declared he had surpassed, in ‘Ten Complete Military Victories’ (Shi Quan Wu Gong), the far-reaching westward expansions of the great Han (206 BCE–220 CE) and Tang (618–907) empires. Such an assertion, together with the program of commemoration discussed below, served to justify the immense expense incurred by frequent long-distance campaigning; to elevate all these wars to an unimpeachable level of splendor even though some were distinctly less glorious than others; and to align the Manchu Qing dynasty (16–191 i) with two of the greatest native dynasties of Chinese history and the Qianlong Emperor personally with some of the great figures of the past.
Testing the Self-Strengthening: The Chinese Army in the Sino-Japanese War of 1894–1895
Authors: Fung Allen
Published: November 2008

On 25th July 1894, the Japanese navy sank the Chinese man-of-war Gaosheng without warning and thus officially started the Sino-Japanese War (1894–1895). The war was a culmination of the rivalries between the two countries for two decades. Japan, strengthened by its Meiji reforms, and still growing in power, wanted to extend its power within the Korean peninsula. China, on the other hand, was desperately clinging to its influence over its largest, oldest and last vassal. The was was watched with great interest by the European powers as a litmus test of the relative success of the modernization programs carried out by the two countries in the years before. Many observers expected a real fight to be at hand. But this was not to be. The Chinese army was thoroughly beaten in one battle after another: in Pingrang (September 1894), Lushun (November 1894), and Weihaiwei (February 1895). Meanwhile, the Chinese Beiyang Fleet was also heavily beaten by the Japanese navy in the Battle of the Yellow Sea (September 1894). By March 1895, Beijing had come under the Japanese threat. In April, the Chinese government was forced to sue for peace under humiliating terms.
The Embourgeoisement of the Kerala Farmer
Authors: Morrison Barrie M.
Published: November 2008

A new class is emerging in rural Kerala. Though it was christened a bourgeoisie by E. M. S. Namboodiripad, the chief minister of Kerala state during the two phases of land reform (1957–59 and 1967–69), it is not an extension of the modern industrial bourgeoisie into a rural society. Rather it is a distinctly new social formation emerging from among the farmers. The opportunities for farmers to adopt bourgeois aspirations have been created by the particular form of Keralaŉs capitalism interacting with recent changes in localized agrarian society.
British Society in India under the East India Company
Authors: Marshall P. J.
Published: November 2008

The British in India have always fascinated their fellow countrymen. From the eighteenth century until the demise of the Raj innumerable publications described the way of life of white people in India for the delectation of a public at home. Post-colonial Britain evidently still retains a voracious appetite for anecdotes of the Raj and accounts of themores of what is often represented as a bizarre Anglo-Indian world. Beneath the welter of apparent triviality, historians are, however, finding issues of real significance.
‘Those Noble Exemplars of the True Military Tradition’; Constructions of the Indian Army in the Mid-Victorian Press
Authors: Peers Douglas M.
Published: November 2008

This paper is directed first at identifying where and by whom military influences or topics manifested themselves in the periodical pressŉs coverage of India in the period up to the Indian Rebellion. How such manifestations changed over time, as well as the convergence of Anglo-Indian and British newspapers and magazines on Indian topics, will form an important component of this study. Stemming from these initial enquiries, I will further suggest that the model often employed to comprehend such representations —namely ‘orientalism’ —is, as it is often configured, too simplistic and reductionist to account for all the forces at work in the production of images of India. Instead, the mid-Victorian image of India was produced by a very fractured discourse. Racial stereotypes and affirmations of British superiority were certainly to the forefront, but these were frequently inflected by quite separate agendaŉs, such as the military's pursuit of political and professional status and influence, publishers’ search for profits, and the quest for suitable middle-class role models. Moreover, it was a discourse constrained by the dominant contemporary literary conventions and tropes, notably the historical romance in fiction and didacticism in history and biography. Yet there is one strand that runs through these various agendas and literary strategies and that is the one provided by the Indian army. India was by the third decade of the nineteenth-century as much a military as it was a commercial site. In 1850, the then reigning governor-general, Lord Dalhousie, was reminded by John Lawrence of this fact when the latter insisted that ‘public opinion is essentially military in India. Military views, feelings and interests are therefore paramount’.
Introduction
Authors: Lieberman Victor
Published: November 2008

The contributions in this collection, with one exception, are revised versions of papers prepared for a workshop on ‘The Eurasian Context of the Early Modern History of Mainland South East Asia, 1400–1800,’ which was held at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) of the University of London, 22–24 June, 1995. This gathering was organized thanks to the imagination and infectious enthusiasm of Dr Ian Brown, then Director of the Centre of South East Asian Studies at SOAS, and was funded with grants from SOAS, Modern Asian Studies and Cambridge University Press, and the British Academy.
The Birth of Europe as a Eurasian Phenomenon
Authors: Moore R. I.
Published: November 2008

Although they still differ considerably in their willingness to acknowledge it, specialists in the history of north-western Europe in the eleventh and twelfth centuries CE are increasingly treating it as that of the emergence of a new civilization in what had previously been a peripheral region of the Mediterranean-based civilization of the classical west, rather than as a continuation or revival of that civilization itself. In this light Europe, or Latin Christendom as it saw itself, offers a number of striking resemblances to the developments which Lieberman discusses. The most dynamic regions of the new Europe—north-western France, Flanders and lowland England, north-eastern Spain, northern Italy, southern Italy and Sicily—were all peripheral, though in various senses, both to the long-defunct classical civilization and its direct successors, the Byzantine and Abbasid Empires, and to the transitional and much more loosely based ninth-and tenth-century empires of the Franks and Saxons (Ottonians). To this one might add that by the end of the twelfth century the remaining rimlands of the Eurasian continent in a purely geographical sense—Scandinavia, including Iceland, and still more the southern coast of the Baltic and the areas dominated by the rivers which drained into it—were developing very rapidly indeed.
Merciful Father, Impersonal State: Russian Autocracy in Comparative Perspective
Authors: Kivelson Valerie
Published: November 2008

Comparative analyses traditionally have done Russian history no favors. Invidious comparisons have situated Russia firmly in a context of backwardness relative to the West. The term ‘medieval’ customarily applies to Russia until the era of Peter the Great, that is, until the early eighteenth century, and even the least condemnatory scholars point out similarities between Muscovite Russia of the fourteenth through seventeenth centuries and early medieval tribal formations of northern Europe. Along with ‘backwardness,’ comparative history has customarily found in Russia an example of extraordinarily oppressive autocratic despotism, while at the same time, and omewhat contradictorily, decrying the incompetence and rampant corruption of the central state apparatus. These and other unflattering comparative generalizations arose in the observations of Western travellers who recorded their impressions of Russia in the early modern period and have continued in the writings of scholars and journalists to this day.
Connected Histories: Notes towards a Reconfiguration of Early Modern Eurasia
Authors: Subrahmanyam Sanjay
Published: November 2008

The majority of Japanese even today believe that the politico-cultural universe of the Edo period was fundamentally determined by the closure of the country. They also think that the opening of Japan can be reduced to the development of exchanges with the West, following the birth of the Meiji regime. It is hard for them to imagine that Japan developed in relation with other Asian countries, since they are hardly used to appreciating Asian cultures.
‘National Essence’ vs ‘Science’: Chinese Native Physicians' Fight for Legitimacy, 1912–37
Authors: Xu Xiaoqun
Published: November 2008

The medical profession in modern China comprised two radically different schools—modern (Western) medicine and native medicine. The difference in philosophy, theory, and technique made a conflict between the two schools almost inevitable, and the conflict was intensified by the modernization process that was quickened during the Republican period. Western-trained or modern doctors advocated national salvation through science and denounced native medicine as superstitious, unscientific, and an impediment to the development of medical science in China. On the other hand, native medical practitioners insisted that what they learned and practiced was part of the national essence (guocui) and should be protected against the cultural invasion of imperialism (diguo zhuyi wenhua qinlue) including Western medicine. To be sure, both sides used such rhetoric to camouflage the business competition between them, but this rivalry and its implications did point to a profound cultural conflict between Chinese tradition and Western influence in China's modernization. It epitomized a burning issue of the day: whether or not China's modernization meant Westernization and whether a respectable position for China in the modern world was to be achieved through Westernization or preservation of what was regarded or claimed as national heritage.
The Urban Poor and Militant Hinduism in Early Twentieth-Century Uttar Pradesh
Authors: Gooptu Nandini
Published: November 2008

The north Indian state of Uttar Pradesh has the dubious distinction of being the heartland of communalism in India. The years between the two world wars, in particular, saw the most widespread and unprecedented outbreak of communal conflict in this state. One of the significant factors underlying this escalation of communal tensions was Hindu religious resurgence and a gradual, but radical, transformation in the nature of Hinduism. Hinduism became increasingly militant and martial in its public expression. Indeed, some of the roots of so-called ‘muscular Hinduism’ that characterizes Hindu nationalism of recent years can be traced back to the 1920s and '30s. The public face of Hinduism, from this period, appeared less and less to be that of devotion and religious worship and more and more that of aggressive chants and armed displays. The dominant image of Hinduism emerged to be one of very large crowds of people, wielding staffs, flags, swords and other arms, marching in processions during religious festivals. These festivals imparted an aura of triumphant and aggressive expansionism to Hinduism, which in turn, elicited counter Muslim reactions, and contributed to the aggravation of communal tension and violence. The spread of communalism in north India in this period was marked by another, equally significant, development. Communal conflicts came to be increasingly concentrated in urban centres and a section of the urban poor came to play a pivotal role in the upsurge of Hindu martial militancy.
Unsettled Settlers: Migrant Workers and Industrial Capitalism in Calcutta
Authors: de Haan Arjan
Published: November 2008

In 1880, the area north of Calcutta was a ‘jungle’, an area with swamps and marshes and a few scattered villages. With the expansion of the jute industry, the area was rapidly transformed. Factories were set up, and large numbers of people came to the area in search of work. Until the late 1920s, the industry prospered and the population of the industrial area increased enormously, but since then employment growth has stagnated and the population has increased only moderately. At present, the industrial area still shows the features described in the reports at the beginning of this century: ‘mill lines’ crowded with migrant labourers, bad housing conditions, particularly in the privatebastis, small houses with little ventilation and light, open drains, public bathing places.
Ten Days of Wandering and Romance with Lord Raṅkanāta;ṉ: The Pa;ṉkuṋi Festival in Śriraṅkam Temple, South India
Authors: Younger Paul
Published: November 2008

In the third century, a poet in the ancient Cōḻ capital of Uṟaiyūr, on the banks of the Kāvērī river opposite the island of Śrīraṅkam, looked into the sad face of his lover and said that her face reminded him of the bank of the Kāavērī strewn with stalks of banana plants after the celebration of the Paṅkuṇi festival on Śrīraṅkam island. Although this early reference to the Paṅkuṇi festival being celebrated on Śrīraṅkam island dates from a period when the great Paṅkuṇi temple must have been at most a minor shrine, it seems likely that the Paṅkuṇi festival of today is a direct descendent of that early celebration. When inscriptions were carved on the temple walls between the tenth and eighteenth centuries they regularly mention the Paṅkuṇi festival as one of the main features of the temple's ritual, and references in the temple chronicle also seem to assume a continuous performance of this festival. As other festivals began to crowd into the temple calendar the Pankuni festival came to be known as the Āti festival or the ‘Original’ Festival in order to distinguish it from all others.
The Victorian Literary Kiss
Authors: Gitter Elisabeth G.
Published: November 2008

This passage fromEpipsychidionis Shelley's legacy to the many Victorian writers who were fascinated by the image of the kiss. In these lines, Shelley both alludes to the conceits traditionally used to describe kissing and raises the darker and more complex issues that Victorian writers went on to explore.
Post-Socialist Transition and Environmental Protection
Authors: Tang WenFang
Published: November 2008

This article examines the institutional characteristics of market and centrally planned economies and their impact on the environment. It argues that while the planned economies are utilising market mechanisms in environmental protection, their market counterparts are facing more and more environmental problems that require governmental intervention. Using the latest statistical information, the records of sulphur dioxide emission under market and planning over the past twenty years are compared. The findings show that while planned economies generated more pollution due to energy inefficiency, they were nevertheless quite effective in reducing pollution under centralised coordination. This is particularly true at the initial stage of pollution control. Although the industrialised market economies were capable of diverting resources into pollution control, they were equally capable of causing environmental disruption, especially at their early stages of industrialisation. Finally, it is argued that environmental protection in post-socialist societies is likely to experience a downturn in the near future. This is due to the decreasing role of government coordination, the lack of a legal system, and the difficulty of developing a well-functioning market.
From National Hierarchies to International Standardization: Modal Changes in the Governance of Telecommunications
Authors: Genschel Philipp , Werle Raymund
Published: November 2008

The emergence of large technical systems like railroads, telecommunication networks or power grids was closely associated with hierarchical governance. Despite the success of hierarchical structures in promoting the development of these systems they have recently come under strain. They are suspected of being too slow, too cumbersome, and too unimaginative to deal with the complexity and turbulence of modern technology. Practical people as well as academics look for functional alternatives. One of the alternatives is the decentralisation of technical control via standards. The paper investigates this alternative by analysing the role that standards have achieved in telecommunications after the hierarchical order was eroded by globalisation and deregulation. It discusses how the demise of hierarchy has boosted the ‘demand’ for standards and how the institutional infrastructure for standardisation was adapted to meet this demand.
Popular Support for the Welfare State: A Comparison Between Institutional Regimes
Authors: Papadakis Elim , Bean Clive
Published: November 2008

Apart from the preoccupation with raising revenue for the welfare state, the question of popular support is central to its future. Arguments about the prospects for the welfare state, about its social and political bases of support and about classifying different types of regime provide the context of our investigation. Our approach is to examine empirical evidence of the connection between support for the welfare state and (a) different types of regime and (b) social and political factors. The analysis of these relationships has important implications for policy-makers who are concerned about consent to their programmes and about the experiences of comparable regimes.
Europe and the Japanese Banking Challenge
Authors: Mason Mark
Published: November 2008

The dramatic overseas expansion of Japanese banks during the 1980s provoked major policy debates within the European Community. Fears that Japanese firms in the banking industry might replicate earlier successes in other industries, together with charges that Japan did not grant reciprocal access to European banks, raised important questions for EC member states committed to the implementation of common banking policies. Adoption of the crucially important Second Banking Coordination Directive and other public measures enabled the Community flexibly to impose strong controls on Japanese banks in the region. The nature of these public measures toward Japanese firms in the Community's banking industry, together with related EC policies toward local Japanese competition in other industries, suggested the emergence of a more general EC policy model for confronting the vaunted ‘Japanese challenge.’
The Governance of the European Union: A New Institutionalist Approach
Authors: Bulmer Simon J.
Published: November 2008

The analysis of European integration has tended to use a toolkit drawn from international relations. But since the revival of integration in the mid-1980s, the governance of the European Community and European Union has increasingly come to resemble that of a multi-tiered state. Accordingly, this article analyzes the governance of the European Union from a comparative public policy perspective. Using new or historical institutionalism, three levels are considered. In the first part, attention is focused on the EU's institutions and the available instruments of governance. The second part examines the analysis of governance at the policy-specific or sub-system level, and puts forward an approach based on governance regimes. The final part considers the institutional roots of the persistent, regulatory character of governance in the European Union.
Co-opting Vigilantism: Government Response to Community Action for Personal Safety
Authors: Yanay Uri
Published: November 2008

Securing the personal safety of citizens has traditionally been a state monopoly. However, increased fear of crime and victimization has produced individual and community actions to secure personal safety. This paper discusses the emergence and development of the community-initiated ‘Civil Guard’ in Israel, a sweeping movement which emerged in 1974 from a growing fear of terrorism. This grass roots initiative has raised government's concern over its ability to monitor, inspect and control the volunteers. The national police has co-opted the entire movement in three phases. In the first, a spontaneous emergence of self-help initiatives covered the country. Next, the movement was transformed into a national body of volunteers with a clear legal status, albeit under the complicated and joint auspices of the national police and local government. Finally the national police force co-opted the ‘Civil Guard’ into auxiliary units. What began as a neighborhood-based, self-help initiative was molded into a quasi-governmental, police-oriented voluntary organization.
Interest Groups and Public Policy: The Insider/Outsider Model Revisited
Authors: Maloney William A. , Jordan Grant , McLaughlin Andrew M.
Published: November 2008

This paper examines the place of groups in the consultative process in British policymaking. It stresses the importance of consultation even under the Thatcher government and distinguishes between consultation, bargaining and negotiation. The paper identifies the important divide between the relatively few groups with privileged status and the greater number of groups who find themselves consigned to less influential positions. The discussion revisits the insider/outsider typology often used to differentiate interest group strategies and status in policy development. It suggests that the insider group term is associated with a particular style of policy making, and offers amendments to the existing use of the terms to avoid the difficulties which occur from the conflation of group strategy and group status.
Iron Triangles, Woolly Corporatism and Elastic Nets: Images of the Policy Process
Authors: Jordan A. Grant
Published: November 2008

This paper examines three distinct images of the policy process. Iron triangles emphasiże stable relations among a limited number of participants in a relatively closed policy area. Issue networks are fragmented, open and extraordinarily complex and are ill-structured for resolving conflicts and reaching authoritative decisions. The neo-corporatist literature posits a mechanistic interpretation of society: hierarchy, discipline, command and stability, though organized through sectors. These three images can be contrasted with an image of cabinet government which stresses the integrative capacities of central government. The United States can be seen to have moved to some degree from a pattern more closely captured by the iron triangle image to a looser, more complex one resembling features of the issue network image. In Britain, it is possible to detect some movement towards the complexity of the issue network approach. Despite some superficial plausibility, the corporatist image does not apply to Britain, which is best described by drawing on elements of the iron triangle and cabinet government images and some of the complexity of the issue network image. Finally, limits to the fragmentation implied by the issue network image are noted.
Theorizing About the Growth of Government: A Research Assessment
Authors: Larkey Patrick D. , Stolp Chandler , Winer Mark
Published: November 2008

This paper surveys literature from several disciplines on how and why governments grow. The empirical question as to whether, or to what degree, government has grown is critically entwined with the nature of the ‘dependent variable’ chosen (federal government expenditures as a proportion of GNP, total real public expenditures, number of government employees as a percentage of the workforce, etc.). Specific approaches to the study of government growth considered include those associated with: Wagner's ‘Law’, the ‘Displacement Effect Hypothesis’, formal models of political and economic behavior, behavioral views of organizational decision making, the ineffectiveness of the public sector in coping with economic decline, and Marxist views.
Technical Information and Policy Choice: The Case of the Resource Recovery Nondecision
Authors: Bozeman Barry , Bozeman J. Lisle
Published: November 2008

Innovation is only one of a range of public policy responses to social and technological novelty and is not necessarily the most appropriate response. While a number of case studies have provided information about determinants of innovation and have traced processes leading to the adoption of innovation, there has been little attention given to the processes that lead to the rejection, deferral or avoidance of available innovations. This paper examines the technical and political controversy surrounding a proposed resource recovery steam plant in metropolitan Syracuse, New York. Although a report on solid waste management had been prepared in 1969 and a dozen consulting studies authorized over the next decade, by 1981 no decision had been reached. In analyzing twelve years of ‘nondecision’, this study seeks to examine some of the difficulties of using technical information in complex policy problems. The case highlights a number of issues pertaining to the use of information in technology policy including: (1) the role of scientific and technical information in policymaking; (2) the interplay between technical information and political values, and (3) the reciprocal effects of information resources and decision processes.
Analysing Public Expenditure: (I) Planning, Control and Price
Authors: Copeman Harold
Published: November 2008

This paper analyses the different cost bases in which public expenditure can be analysed as a policy problem related to the differing requirements of planning, authorising and controlling the various components of public expenditure. The analysis is applied to the United Kingdom, where in 1981 changes were announced in the method of making public expenditure decisions which had evolved over the previous two decades. The various components of public expenditure in the United Kingdom are described, and the decision-making process which led to the March 1981 Public Expenditure White Paper is outlined. The significance of the different price bases used in public expenditure (cash (at current or at expected prices), volume, cost, and constant) is then explored. The advantages and disadvantages for policy-makers of attempting to reduce the number of price bases used are analysed; it is shown that there is no cost-free route to reducing complexity. The significance of government's decision in 1981 to make greater use of the cash basis in decision-making is assessed. The analysis is applied specifically to the United Kingdom, but the issues raised are of policy relevance to the choice of price bases for public expenditure decision-making in any country in a time of inflation.

(A second paper in a future issue of the Journal will examine the political purposes behind gross or net measurement, the earmaking of receipts, and the more precise relationships between figures used in the planning of public expenditure, in macro-economic analysis and forecasting and in Parliamentary and local control.)
The Pressman-Wildavsky Paradox: Four Addenda or Why Models Based on Probability Theory Can Predict Implementation Success and Suggest Useful Tactical Advice for Implementers
Authors: Bowen Elinor R.
Published: November 2008

Pressman and Wildavsky'sImplementationoccupies center stage in the developing literature about policy implementation, in part because of the analogy they drew between implementation processes and the multiplicative model from probability theory. This paper takes the relevance of probability theory further and considers the additive model from probability theory and conditional probabilities as well as the multiplicative model. This expanded coverage of probability theorems (1) leads to markedly increased optimism about the likelihood of successful implementation, (2) encompasses empirically reasonable tactics such as persistence, packaging of clearances, engineering bandwagons and policy reduction, and (3) generates advice to hopeful implementers – some of it non-obvious.
Evaluation and Problem Redefinition
Authors: Dery David
Published: November 2008

Inadequate problem formulation leads to inadequate, alas persistent, solutions (programs). Program evaluation is commonly held as a means to put programs and policies to the test. The best of controlled experimentation, however, cannot serve as the ‘potential falsifier’ of problem formulation, only of the adequacy of means to solve a pre-conceptualized problem. An analysis of disadvantaged youth policy in Israel is provided to illustrate and support these contentions.
Discounting Discounting
Authors: Goodin Robert E.
Published: November 2008

Policy analysts typically presume that future payoffs should be discounted relative to present ones, and that this discounting should proceed at the same rate for all goods and all periods. Closer inspection of four arguments for discounting, however, shows these practices to be problematic. Only two of those arguments provide plausible justifications for time-discounting at all; and neither of those justify a constant rate throughout all periods or for all goods. Indeed, there is an important class of ‘nontradable’ goods which can be discounted only in their own terms. The overall conclusion is that policymakers ought, logically as well as morally, to weight the interests of the future far more heavily than in ordinary discounting procedures.
Tax Subsidy of Home Ownership
Authors: Ittig Peter T.
Published: November 2008

This paper considers the tax treatment of homes as investments and as consumer goods in light of current and conventional arguments that home-ownership is subsidized through the tax structure. Unconventional comparisons of tax effects with particular reference to the USA are presented which call into question the conventional view.
The Costs and Benefits of Foreign Students in United States Higher Education
Authors: Winkler Donald R.
Published: November 2008

This paper makes a two-fold contribution to the practical application of cost-benefit analysis and to our understanding of the costs and benefits to the host country of foreign students in higher education. First, within the technical constraints it develops a model for assessing costs and benefits; this model is potentially applicable to all countries with foreign students. The model includes educational and political as well as economic inputs, and the paper discusses qualitative as well as quantitative costs and benefits. Secondly, the model is applied to the particular case of the United States. The significance of different perspectives for assessing net benefit is recognized, and costs and benefits are assessed from the perspectives of higher education institutions, state residents and all US citizens. The paper finds positive net benefits, subject to a number of assumptions. However, the policies of both state governments and the US government do not appear to be consistent with the goal of maximizing this net benefit.