bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Introduction
Authors: Kuruvilla Sarosh
Published: September 2021

This introductory chapter provides a background of private regulation of labor standards in global supply chains. Over the past three decades, there has been a plethora of private, voluntary regulatory initiatives with regard to social (labor) and environmental issues. This proliferation has come about in part because of pressure from antiglobalizers calling for global governance, and consumer and activist movements calling for global corporations to be more socially and environmentally responsible. There are many different methods of private voluntary regulation for labor standards, but the most common is the private regulation model. It has three elements: setting of standards regarding labor practices in global supply chains through a corporate code of conduct generally based on the conventions of the International Labour Organization; “auditing” or “social auditing” that involves monitoring whether supplier factories comply with the code of conduct; and incentives for suppliers to improve compliance by linking future sourcing decisions to their compliance records (penalizing or dropping noncompliant suppliers and rewarding more compliant ones). The book looks at the current state and future trajectory of this form of private regulation.
Behavioral Invisibility
Authors: Li Ning
Published: September 2021

This chapter focuses on assessing data reliability, using data provided by AUDCO (a large auditing company) from more than forty thousand audits spanning seven-years across twelve countries and thirteen industries. It highlights China, which reports very high levels of unreliable audit information, and examines the role played by a “gray” actor — the audit consulting company (ACC) — in helping suppliers “pass” audits. ACCs provide a variety of services, including falsification of audit records. The chapter then considers how ACCs “advertise” their services and how they work, through a detailed analysis of an audit consultant's work logs, as well as an assessment of why ACCs may be so successful. The analysis suggests that getting a clear picture of what is really happening in a factory requires a nuanced understanding of the nature of the data that auditors examine. It points to the need for auditors to be better trained at spotting falsified data but also to triangulate with other data and information sources (perhaps from workers). Ultimately, the results show that the lack of reliable data provided to auditors is a major reason for the decoupling we see between private regulation practices and sustainable improvements in working conditions in global supply chains across multiple industries and countries.
Are Changes in Corporate Governance an Answer?
Authors: Fischer-Daly Matt
Published: September 2021

This chapter explores the potential for changes in corporate governance to overcome the decoupling problem in private regulation, through a detailed examination of the case of benefit corporations. In the United States, a benefit corporation is a type of for-profit corporate entity that includes among its goals — in addition to profits — a positive impact on society, workers, the community, and the environment. The chapter argues that the B-Corp movement is a false promise because of the legal limitations of actors to seek remedy if a benefit corporation does not meet its “benefit goals” and because of a variety of issues in the certification process for such a corporation. This argument is supported through the analysis of the private regulation program of a leading benefit corporation, which shows that its status has in no way improved coupling between private regulation practices and outcomes. It would seem that the benefit corporation certification is simply another modern ritual of due diligence, although there is a need for additional research on benefit corporations to confirm this conclusion.
Aligning Sourcing and Compliance Inside a Global Corporation
Authors: Kuruvilla Sarosh
Published: September 2021

This chapter focuses on a detailed investigation of a global retailer's attempt to integrate sourcing and compliance as a way to increase the coupling of private regulation and worker outcomes. The case study shows how this global retailer successfully aligned its sourcing and compliance activities and offers lessons for the rest of the industry. First, the case implies that it is highly unlikely large companies' compliance departments can establish the linkage between compliance and sourcing on their own. Second, it is worth noting that the linkage would not have been possible had it not been for a well-developed compliance system already operating for many years with a high profile in the corporate organization. Third, developing a software architecture that included comprehensive supplier scorecards facilitated linking compliance with sourcing. Fourth, the Pangia case highlights the transactional mentality that permeates sourcing operations in the apparel industry. Fifth, the case makes clear that changing the transactional mentality may well require a change of talent. Sixth, benchmarking with firms outside the industry was crucial for learning new lessons. And the final lesson is that vendors will respond to incentives to change their behavior.
Beyond Medicine
Authors: Dutton Paul V.
Published: September 2021

This book provides a penetrating historical analysis of why countless studies show that Americans are far less healthy than their European counterparts. The book argues that Europeans are healthier than Americans because beginning in the late nineteenth century, European nations began construction of health systems that focused not only on medical care but the broad social determinants of health: where and how we live, work, play, and age. European leaders also created social safety nets that became integral to national economic policy. In contrast, US leaders often viewed investments to improve the social determinants of health and safety-net programs as a competing priority to economic growth. This book compares the United States to three European social democracies — France, Germany, and Sweden — in order to explain how, in differing ways, each protects the health of infants and children, working-age adults, and the elderly. Unlike most comparative health system analyses, the book draws on history to find answers to our most nettlesome health policy questions.
After Work in the United States and Sweden
Authors: Dutton Paul V.
Published: September 2021

This chapter investigates the health of the elderly in Sweden and the United States, focusing on populations that are no longer active in the labor force. For most workers in the United States and Europe, the working years are followed by a period of voluntary withdrawal from the labor market. Sweden earned third place on the Global AgeWatch ranking of ninety-six countries. The rating considers health outcomes, income security, financial capability, and an enabling environment in determining the best places to grow old. Meanwhile, the United States ranks ninth. The chapter looks at three social determinants that the World Health Organization has identified as the most important to healthy aging: (1) financial security, including the ability of the elderly to afford appropriate and safe housing, to maintain a nutritious diet, and to benefit from adequate means of transport; (2) social integration, the degree to which elderly people participate in the community, through continued employment, volunteering, or activity in sports, clubs, or other social organizations; and (3) access to preventive and curative health services, including long-term care, and the proximity of these services to the community in which elderly people live.
Prophet
Authors: Lockenour Jay
Published: September 2021

This chapter highlights how Erich Ludendorff turned to works of commentary and prophecy. The failure of the Kapp and Beer Hall putsches and his inability to seize control of the splintering völkisch movement in the mid-1920s began the process of slowly dissolving most of the connections Ludendorff had forged to various political movements. As those bonds dissolved, the chapter unveils a new ideological movement that would attract tens of thousands to Ludendorff’s ideals. This chapter then takes a look at the marriage of Ludendorff and Mathilde von Kemnitz, and focuses on the two projects, the cultivation of Ludendorff’s legend in the Tannenberg League and evangelizing for Mathilde’s neopagan philosophy, “Deutsche Gotterkenntnis” (Germanic understanding of God). Ultimately, it illustrates Ludendorff’s 1922 work Kriegsführung und Politik and discusses his evolution from the “stab in the back” of 1918–19 toward the full-blown belief in the pernicious influence of the “supranational powers” that fills the pages of his works by the late 1920s.
The Struggle for Streeterville
Authors: Kearney Joseph D. , Merrill Thomas W.
Published: September 2021

This chapter assesses the implications of natural accretion, unauthorized landfilling, and a legally sanctioned public works project on the neighborhood known today as Streeterville. It illustrates the three periods following the struggle for control of the land of Streeterville: the first was relatively decorous, consisting largely of litigation over rights to land formed by natural accretion, the second was intense and largely extralegal, and the third period was when the wealthy landowners who claimed the land by riparian rights consolidated their control over the area, abetted by construction undertaken by institutions of impeccable social standing, such as Northwestern University. The chapter investigates why it took so long for the struggle over Streeterville to be resolved, arguing resolution came only when the claimants with the most resources started to build substantial structures on the land. It also examines why the filled land in this area of the lakefront is overwhelmingly held in private hands, whereas the land south of the Chicago River, in what is now Grant Park, is public. Ultimately, the chapter reviews how the public trust doctrine was invoked in challenging the artificial filling of submerged land in Streeterville, and analyzes the Illinois Supreme Court decision following the case.
Introduction
Authors: Taussig Doron
Published: September 2021

This chapter talks about how Americans account for the role of merit in our lives — not the reality of American meritocracy but the perception of it. It explains how we understand the relationship between an individual and his or her circumstances, how we grapple with perceived advantages and disadvantages, then investigates how we square our thoughts on individual lives with our perceptions of the American social system. The chapter also underpins debates about school admissions, hiring practices, and award shows. It emphasizes the important component of forthcoming struggles over health care costs, relief efforts, and economic restructuring. The chapter notes the important implications of our understanding of how life works and what it means to deserve something, arguing that our lukewarm relationship with meritocracy holds some promise. It also discusses the idea of equal opportunity as a prerequisite for a merit-based society, and begins to grapple more with the idea of a functioning system as a prerequisite for meritorious achievement. Ultimately, the chapter offers valuable insights about our colloquial use of the concept of merit in American life and some ideas about a new way to engage with it.
The Power to Divide in Alliance Politics
Authors: Crawford Timothy W.
Published: September 2021

This introductory chapter provides an overview of selective accommodation wedge strategies. Great power competition inevitably entails alliance competitions. Facing the fact or prospect of a hostile alliance, a state has a few basic strategic options. Whether its motive is defensive or offensive, whether it seeks to enhance or deplete balancing power, the menu does not change. If the state is not willing to surrender the primary values or goals the alliance would harm, it must try to reduce the alliance's potential to harm them. One way they can try to weaken the opposing alliance is by dividing it. Selective accommodation extends inducements toward a specific state in the opposition, in order to better isolate, deter, or coerce others. The chapter details that the book seeks to explain how selective accommodation works, when states try it, and what makes them succeed or fail. It examines eight cases of great power diplomacy surrounding the two world wars, in which selective accommodation was tried, sometimes successfully, sometimes not.
Germany Keeps the United States Neutral, 1914–16
Authors: Crawford Timothy W.
Published: September 2021

This chapter examines how Germany's policy of keeping the United States neutral through concessions worked — until its leaders decided to flagrantly violate them. Why did they do that? They came to believe they had a military strategy that could negate the United States' war-tipping strategic weight. Thus, while this case displays the dynamics of successful selective accommodation under highly favorable contingent conditions, it also spotlights the critical role that beliefs about the target's strategic weight play in driving such efforts. As long as they perceived the United States to be a dangerous war-tipper, Germany's leaders maintained the strategy of accommodation and used concessions successfully. Once they were convinced, in January of 1917, that they could nullify U.S. strategic weight through unlimited U-boat warfare, they dropped the policy of concessions and in February launched the U-boat campaign that they knew would sink U.S. ships and make the United States an enemy. The United States entered the war two months later. In short, German leaders made “a cold military calculation that the advantages of destroying all commerce flowing to Great Britain outweighed the disadvantages of a war with the United States.”
Secession and the Sovereignty Game
Authors: Griffiths Ryan D.
Published: September 2021

This book offers a comprehensive strategic theory for how secessionist movements attempt to win independence. Combining original data analysis, fieldwork, interviews with secessionist leaders, and case studies on Catalonia, the Murrawarri Republic, West Papua, Bougainville, New Caledonia, and Northern Cyprus, the book shows how the rules and informal practices of sovereign recognition create a strategic playing field between existing states and aspiring nations that the book terms “the sovereignty game.” To win sovereign statehood, all secessionist movements have to maneuver on the same strategic playing field while varying their tactics according to local conditions. To obtain recognition, secessionist movements use tactics of electoral capture, nonviolent civil resistance, and violence. To persuade the home state and the international community, they appeal to normative arguments regarding earned sovereignty, decolonization, the right to choose, inherent sovereignty, and human rights. The pursuit of independence can be enormously disruptive and is quite often violent. By advancing a theory that explains how sovereign recognition has succeeded in the past and is working in the present, and by anticipating the practices of future secessionist movements, the book also prescribes solutions that could make the sovereignty game less conflictual.
States, Secessionist Movements, and the International Recognition Regime
Authors: Griffiths Ryan D.
Published: September 2021

This chapter maps out the strategic playing field to better understand the sovereignty game. It analyses the process by which an independence movement becomes a sovereign state and the rules that guide the behavior of secessionists. The chapter then defines states and secessionist movements, and outlines their relationship to one another. It examines the international recognition regime by defining it as the evolving body of international legal norms, rules, and principles that determine when an applicant nation has the right to withdraw from an existing state and become a recognized independent sovereign state. The chapter discusses how and why the regime works, how it evolves over time, and highlights the competing normative demands that sit at the heart of the regime. Using the literature on sovereignty and international law, as well as interviews with UN officials, the chapter specifies the admission process for becoming a recognized sovereign state, and the perceived pathways it creates. It further explains two dimensions of statehood that are important for the theoretical framework of the study. One dimension pertains to the inwardly focused function of the state and its ability to provide political order. The other dimension is outwardly focused and calls attention to recognition by other states.
New Caledonia
Authors: Griffiths Ryan D.
Published: September 2021

This chapter focuses on New Caledonia, an example of a decolonial movement. It tracks the development of the movement since the 1960s and follows the different tactics it used at different points in time. The chapter also elaborates the tactics of compellence of New Caledonia, which involved nonviolent civil resistance, the use of violence, and electoral capture. It details how French democracy gradually enfranchised the indigenous group, the Kanaks, and gave them political voice. The chapter presents the independence effort in New Caledonia led by the Kanaks and other ethnic groups including immigrants from France, elements of the white settler community, and Wallisians. It then introduces a new period of cultural movement known as the Kanak Awakening, and its greatest leader, Jean-Marie Tjibaou from the east coast of Grand Terre. Ultimately, the chapter argues that Caledonia differs most from the other movements in this study, for, unlike them, it is classified as a non-self-governing territory and therefore eligible for independence via the path of decolonization.
How Much Does the Compellence Theory Explain?
Authors: Hazelton Jacqueline L.
Published: September 2021

This chapter focuses on the case of Turkey against the Partiya Karkeren Kurdistan (Kurdistan Workers' Party; PKK) in 1984–1999, which involves a democracy conducting a counterinsurgency campaign on its own territory against its own populace. Elite accommodation in Turkey took the form of government support for the great Kurdish landowners of the southeast, providing impunity for illegal smuggling and other accommodations in exchange for the provision of organized violence, controlling civilians to cut the flow of resources to the insurgency. The militia and military campaigns cleared vast areas of the region of their inhabitants. Indeed, the campaign defeated the PKK threat militarily. It captured and imprisoned its leader, Abdullah Ocalan, with U.S. assistance, and the insurgency withered. It was the structural change of the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003 that created the opportunity for remnants of the PKK to regroup and reopen their campaign from northern Iraq, as well as within Turkey. Ultimately, Turkey shows the external validity of the compellence theory because it is considered a particularly brutal campaign and thus should bear little similarity to successful campaigns conducted by democratic great powers and lauded as models if the governance approach explains counterinsurgency success.
Counterinsurgency Success
Authors: Hazelton Jacqueline L.
Published: September 2021

This chapter argues that counterinsurgency success is about power, co-optation, building a coalition, and crushing opposition, not good governance. In the cases examined in the previous chapters, great power backing helped the client government achieve counterinsurgent success, and all six states remain at least nominally partnered with the West on important issues. But all six campaigns also had high human and moral costs. These findings force those who support great-power, liberal military intervention to consider unpalatable choices about national interests. Individually and collectively, these cases provide strong evidence of the explanatory power of the compellence theory, with its emphasis on coalition building among rival elites and a military campaign targeting civilians as well as insurgents. The chapter then looks at the implications of this analysis on peacekeeping and state-building efforts.
Reconfiguring Intergenerational Reciprocity
Authors: Sun Ken Chih-Yan
Published: September 2021

This chapter traces the trajectories through which aging migrant populations navigate temporalities of migration as they reconstruct intergenerational intimacy. It argues that aging immigrants transform cultural ideals of aging and family in response to changes in their social worlds across life stages. It also offers the concept of reconfigured reciprocity to analyze the processes through which aging immigrants fashion cultural logics of intergenerational relations to sustain connections with their children and their children's families. The chapter focuses on older immigrants that embraced ethnic traditions regarding elder care and transformed reciprocal relationships with their immediate kin. It highlights the aging immigrants' assessment of family relations that is undoubtedly biased or selective and their understanding of receiving and transnational contexts that are stereotypical or oversimplified.
Navigating Networks of Support
Authors: Sun Ken Chih-Yan
Published: September 2021

This chapter focuses on the ways temporalities of migration can be observed through the aging immigrants' relations with their communities. It talks about older immigrants who remained in the United States and those who returned to Taiwan and developed strategies to organize their social relationships. It also elaborates how aging immigrants often grappled with belonging in the community when engaged in social networks. The chapter cites two groups of immigrants that adopted different approaches to their cross-border networks, wherein one group knew their place within their social relationships in the United States while returnees in Taiwan tried to reacclimate to communities they had once left. It compares how the processes through which the two groups of immigrants maintained relationships transcended national borders and motivated them to rethink membership in transnational communities.
Better to Die Abroad Than to Live in China
Authors: Henry Eric S.
Published: September 2021

This chapter examines how personal stories of Chinese citizens often narrate self-transformation as both linguistic development and geographical movement from lower-order social spaces to higher-order ones. Taken together, the stories reveal a common plot structure beginning with descriptions of the self in childhood as naïve and lacking in comprehension, followed by a growing awareness, openness, and sense of personal growth and transformation only fully realized when the teller had traveled abroad. This plot structure of English acquisition was framed against the backdrop of Shenyang as a chronotope, the temporally backward and spatially isolated city, which can be transcended through successful language acquisition. Depending on the nature of these autobiographical trajectories, sometimes the narratives culminate in the realization of transnational personae capable of transcending the limitations of the local social context. In others, however, a variety of obstacles such as age, class, gender, or lack of social connections halt narrative self-development in its tracks, leaving only failed potential or the determination to provide a better grounding for one's children to succeed in the same path.
Commodifying Language
Authors: Henry Eric S.
Published: September 2021

This chapter assesses the commerce of foreign languages in contemporary Shenyang. It focuses on the production of language as a commodity, the means by which certain forms of language are imbued with social value through the practices of marketing them to consumers. In the scramble to develop Shenyang's foreign language marketplace, school owners developed innovative strategies to build and maintain their businesses, strategies that themselves were crucial in reconfiguring the nature of language itself from something that is learned to something that is sold. The commodity logic of English extends far beyond their reach through uptake into almost all aspects of foreign language use in China, from public schools to testing to corporate management of linguistic (human) resources. It is no longer a stretch to say that English speakers in China are manufactured in much the same way as the vast number of goods bound from Chinese factories to Western marketplaces.
Introduction
Authors: Freeman Jim
Published: September 2021

This chapter sheds some light on strategic racism and identifies who is doing it, and why. It demonstrates that while the problems Americans face are severe, they are also eminently fixable, particularly if more people remember that the injustice being engineered by the group of billionaires and multimillionaires has not been limited to people of color. The chapter introduces how powerful a tool racial injustice has been for the ultra-wealthy in advancing their economic and political interests. It reveals that while such sordid realities are rarely mentioned in the public discourse, it was nevertheless true that there was a lot of money being made off of this type of large-scale cruelty. Ultimately, the chapter argues that the horrific form of modern-day racism was not adequately captured by the term “systemic racism.” It suggests that persistent racial inequities are merely the accidental byproducts of our economic and political systems. In reality, what the ultra-wealthy have been doing was worse than that, because behind all of the billions of dollars in investments they were making in opposition to communities of color, there was intentionality. There was strategy.
The Racism Profiteers
Authors: Freeman Jim
Published: September 2021

This chapter begins by recounting the experiences of Anna Jones, Carlil Pittman, and Mónica Acosta who endured a persistent emotional and psychological torture that comes from the knowledge that their lives, or the lives of their children, are not valued as much as others. It analyses how the systemic racial injustice affects communities of color across the United States, and persuades more people to listen to what people of color are saying about the challenges they face and how they should be addressed. The chapter also discusses that the residents of the communities of color share a set of common experiences, some of which are similar to the predominantly white communities, and some of which are remarkably different. The chapter then describes how, and why, ultra-wealthy leaders from Corporate America and Wall Street are the driving force behind many of the public policies that uphold systemic racism and cause severe harm to communities of color across the country. It unveils how the nation's mass criminalization and incarceration system can be traced back to the leaders of many of the largest and best-known corporations in the United States, Wall Street banks, private prison companies, and the Kochs' network of ultra-wealthy allies. Ultimately, the chapter explores how many of the same individuals and organizations have played a significant role in the creation of the extreme anti-immigrant policies that have plagued millions of migrants for decades.
Introduction
Authors: Gershun Martha , Lantos John D.
Published: September 2021

This chapter presents two very different perspectives on living organ donation — one very specific and personal and one shaped by a lifetime of professional study and experience. The chapter aims to better understand the evolution and current state of organ transplantation, as well as consideration of practices and policies that could increase the willingness and ability of more people to donate. It tells the story of one kidney transplant from a living donor. The donor was unrelated to the recipient and, when she volunteered to donate, she did not even know the recipient. The chapter examines the importance of the story for two reasons: first, it might inspire some people to follow the donor's path and donate, the second reason is that it might goad transplant programs into rethinking their processes for cultivating, evaluating, and then stewarding organ donors. Ultimately, the chapter discusses why the criteria for who could donate expanded. With each expansion, new ethical questions arose about the motivations of donors, the prerogatives of surgeons, and the acceptable levels of physical and psychological risks for donors.
Why Not Me?
Authors: Gershun Martha , Lantos John D.
Published: September 2021

This chapter discusses a system for screening living donors. The chapter begins with a narrative of the author as she was anxiously waiting to hear whether the Transplant Selection Committee at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, was going to approve her as a kidney donor. It then recounts the author's decision to donate one of her kidneys to a stranger. A few months earlier, she had read an article in the Kansas City Jewish Chronicle about a woman who needed a kidney. The article detailed how Deb Porter Gill had been diagnosed with insulin dependent diabetes and developed unrelated chronic kidney disease. The chapter narrates the reasons why Deb's story tugged at the author. Ultimately, the chapter looks at the importance of the whole series of evaluation and screening in kidney transplantation.
Do I Own My Organs?
Authors: Gershun Martha , Lantos John D.
Published: September 2021

This chapter evaluates the author's narrative after her meeting with Deb Porter Gill. It offers a variety of outcomes if the author had not liked Deb and withdrawn the offer to donate. That could have been for any reason, including political values, lifestyle, religion, or skin color. The chapter argues that living donors are treated by the law and by doctors as the owners of their bodies, and their body parts are considered goods that they can donate or not to whomever they want. The chapter examines the justice-based approach to organ allocation. In contrast with the living donors, cadaveric donors are generally put into national pools and allocated according to nationally agreed-upon criteria. The chapter states that their use is governed not by the autonomy-based preferences of the donor or the donor's family but, instead, by considerations of justice that are built into the administrative rules that dictate how organs should be allocated. Ultimately, the chapter presents the practical reasons for treating cadaveric organs differently than organs from a living donor.
Epilogue
Authors: Gershun Martha , Lantos John D.
Published: September 2021

This chapter looks at Deb Porter Gill's and the author's lives nearly two years since transplant operation. Both women continue to enjoy good health, with no significant complications from the procedure. It describes Deb's vigilant regimen of medications, as her prescriptions put transplant recipients at particular risk for COVID-19. The chapter also highlights Deb's periodic checkups and the author's sixth-month follow-up and last visit to the clinic. One year after the donation surgery, the author's tests showed that she continued to do well with one kidney. Ultimately, the chapter discusses the friendship they created following the surgery, and the author's partnership to write a book.
From Baku to Bandung
Authors: Sidel John T.
Published: September 2021

This chapter looks at how boomtown Baku had emerged as an important hub of modern intellectual activity in the Muslim world by the turn of the twentieth century. It shows how the revolution and its early aftermath in Baku demonstrated the possibilities for both communal and international conflict dividing Muslims and non-Muslims along the fault lines of communism and Islam. The chapter also analyses the connection of Baku of 1920 to the Indonesian Revolution. It provides a coherent narrative account along narrowly nationalist lines, with Communists and Islamists largely disavowed, discredited, and depicted as spoilers and saboteurs. On the one hand, the revolution is said to have been led “from above” by urban — and highly urbane — educated young men familiar from Benedict Anderson's Imagined Communities, a set of Indonesian nationalists who emerged out of Dutch colonial schools in the Netherlands East Indies during the first few decades of the twentieth century. On the other hand, the Indonesian Revolution is also said to have been driven “from below” by a broader pool of the pemuda (youth) representing the broader mass of the Indonesian people, the Rakyat. Ultimately, the chapter details how Baku foretold the possibilities of organized politics and mass mobilization in the Indonesia of the early–mid twentieth century.
From Thanh Niên to the Indochinese Communist Party (ICP) and the Việt Minh
Authors: Sidel John T.
Published: September 2021

This chapter starts with the introduction of Thanh Niên dissolution as a coherent organization, leaving in its wake a welter of new groupings: an Indochinese Communist Party (ICP), a rival Annamese Communist Party in Cochinchina, and the Annam-based Tân Việt (New Việtnam). The chapter demonstrates the onset, unfolding, and ultimate outcomes of the Việtnamese Revolution, which were shaped by World War II, successive seismic shifts in neighboring China, from the overthrow of the Qing and the warlord era to the rise and fall of the KMT (Kuomintang)-CCP (Chinese Communist Party) United Front, the Japanese invasion and occupation, the civil war, and the establishment of the People's Republic of China. The chapter also highlights the establishment of an armed united front effectively under ICP control but aimed to encompass — or overshadow — a broader array of groups active in southern China, the Việt Nam Độc Lập Đồng Minh (Việtnam Independence League, or Việt Minh). Ultimately, the chapter exemplifies the broader importance of China's role in enabling Việtnamese revolutionary mobilization, from the heyday of Phan Bội Châu through Thanh Niên, and the ICP and the Việt Minh.
The Environmental Causes of Violence in the Middle East
Authors: Cohn Samuel
Published: September 2021

This chapter investigates the environmental causes of violence in the Middle East. The Middle East is a desert and the desert is expanding due to the increase in population. This leads to the destruction of the semiarid lands next to the desert. As this happens, local residents are thrown into economic desperation. What do people in the Global South do when they cannot get a job and cannot economically survive? They can turn to crime, work for a local politician or warlord, or go to school. This is the power of the terrorist organizations: they are criminal gangs and warlord organizations and religious education organizations all at once. They cover all of the avenues taken by people who would otherwise be economically marginalized. It is entirely possible that the world will end because of an ecological catastrophe. However, it is also important to think about the effect of ecological loss on people's willingness to work together.
Rethinking Ecological Catastrophe
Authors: Cohn Samuel
Published: September 2021

This chapter assesses ecological catastrophes. It is very easy to link ecological problems such as global warming and population growth to the downfall of societies. There is a substantial historical and archaeological record of civilizations that have collapsed because of ecological problems. However, ecological writers note that not all environmental threats are lethal. They represent a challenge to a society. If the government, the technological system, or the economy of a society remains functional, even dire environmental threats can be addressed. In the environmental literature, the jargonistic term for such adaptation is “ecological modernization.” Ultimately, where the ecological threats are truly dangerous, it is because they undercut the capacity of a society to cooperate and work together.
Progress That Is Real
Authors: Cohn Samuel
Published: September 2021

This chapter reflects on the reduction of violent crime. It looks at historical data on homicides to show how rates of violent crime have dropped dramatically over the course of the last eight hundred years. Why were crime rates so high? Crime rates were high because brigands ruled the road and pirates ruled the sea, and because of violent disputes. What improved? Both the food supply and the economy improved; governments developed courts of law, police forces, prisons, and schools; fertility decreased; and travel increased. Removing poverty removes a lot of the motivation to engage in crime. But it is important to notice the central role of government in producing a lot of the reforms that controlled crime. Ultimately, protecting personal security and controlling crime are fundamental components of social well-being and progress.
What Can Go Wrong When Western Companies Invest in Poor Nations
Authors: Cohn Samuel
Published: September 2021

This chapter examines the case of multinational corporations to demonstrate how the West is still causing economic damage to poor nations. Multinational corporations are companies that are based in one country but have subsidiaries in many other nations of the world. Multinational corporations investing in poor nations is supposed to be good; the multinational corporations offer to bring in capital and technology, which are just what struggling economies need. The problem is capital repatriation, which is when a foreign-owned subsidiary of a multinational corporation transfers its profits out of the local country and into the home country where the multinational's headquarters are located. The chapter then considers a famous study by Barnet and Muller of the Latin American subsidiaries of American manufacturing companies in the 1960s. They found that the American companies actually started very few new manufacturing operations in Latin America. They instead shopped for preexisting successful companies, taking operations that already had a substantial income flow and diverted that flow to the United States. Meanwhile, econometric analyses of both the short-term and the long-term effects of foreign direct investment find that the turnaround point is about five years after the investment. From year zero to year five, foreign direct investment raises rates of economic growth. From year five to year twenty, foreign direct investment lowers rates of economic growth.
Big Government and Prosperity in the United States
Authors: Cohn Samuel
Published: September 2021

This chapter focuses on big government and prosperity in the United States. A lot of Americans are fairly skeptical about the federal government. Some feel the public sector is full of bureaucrats who waste money, interfere with business decisions, and push personal agendas. Others are obsessed with party politics and despise everything from “the other party.” Both groups miss a fundamental point: big government is essential to the survival of a modern capitalist system. The government provides institutional support for the economy that capitalists cannot provide for themselves. Business will not provide defense, education, public health, physical infrastructure, and scientific research because these services are completely unprofitable.
A Guide to Corruption for Naive Idealists
Authors: Cohn Samuel
Published: September 2021

This chapter highlights corruption. Maintaining the integrity of government is integral to societal functioning. But what causes governments to become corrupt? It is not a matter of simple morality; it is not the case that evil people take bribes and good people do not take bribes. Nor is it the case that ethical standards are high in the United States and Europe, and low in the rest of the world. Every country has its own rituals and its own style of handling informal payments. One method is to invoke chivalry and the need for the strong to protect the weak. These exchanges can represent a fundamental alliance and relationship of long-term mutual assistance. Often corruption occurs while maintaining all outward appearances of complete professionalism. The chapter then explains how bribery works, an activity which requires skill and sophistication.
Technical Demoralization
Authors: Cohn Samuel
Published: September 2021

This chapter explains why officials in poor countries are more likely to be corrupt than officials in rich countries. One reason is that even if these officials played things straight, they simply lack the resources to do their jobs. The condition of being unable to do one's job through no fault of one's own can be called technical demoralization. When trying to do one's job is a joke, it no longer really matters whether one follows norms of professionalism or not. The salary of a police officer in Latin America or Afghanistan is generally modest. And one police officer is not going to be able to take out a cartel. So when the drug lord's men come over and offer to help the cop out financially, the officer would be hard-pressed to refuse the offer. The same thing can occur in any branch of government. Public health officials who will never be able to lower the amount of disease in their districts sign off on big, white elephant hospital projects where they can get generous side fees for “consulting.” Engineers who will never be able to build enough roads to accommodate the traffic needs of overpopulated cities throw their projects to shabby, politically connected contractors who stint on materials.
Ethnic Violence
Authors: Cohn Samuel
Published: September 2021

This chapter discusses the economic basis of ethnic hatred and violence. Different nations and different historical periods have different economic issues at stake, and the form of ethnic conflicts is very local specific. Some of the most common forms include hostility to a middle-class minority in a peripheral agrarian nation, which sociologists call a middleman minority; cheap labor minorities in industrial societies, which refers to the African American situation in the present-day United States; and anti-immigration hostilities in industrial societies. Another form is conflict over the control of a corrupt state. Hausa–Yoruba–Ibo conflicts in Nigeria were almost certainly centered on control of the state and control of the petroleum revenues pertaining to the Nigerian state. Finally, there is justification for land seizure. One of the most long-term and enduring conflicts has been between peoples of European extraction and indigenous people in the rest of the world. Nearly all of those conflicts were about land use.
Landlessness and Political Violence
Authors: Cohn Samuel
Published: September 2021

This chapter examines one of the most important economic circumstances causing conflict: landlessness. Technically, small cultivators who own their own land are called peasants, while small cultivators who are landless are known as rural proletariats. If rural proletariats want to farm, they have to work for someone else; a migratory harvest worker is a standard example. Why are peasants more conservative than rural proletariats? Peasants own land and have something to lose, while rural proletariats have nothing so they can take more risks. Moreover, peasants live isolated from and compete with each other, while rural proletariats have close relationships of friendship and solidarity. What does this imply for social conflict? If one peasant were to ask another to join a social movement, that other peasant will be reluctant to help out. Crews of proletarianized workers in contrast are natural combat squads; they are used to standing up for each other. Ultimately, owning land keeps peasants out of violent movements; when they are landless, anything can happen.
The Circle of Societal Death
Authors: Cohn Samuel
Published: September 2021

This chapter illustrates the twelve-step process known as the Circle of Societal Death. Assume some externally caused source of economic decline. This will lower governmental functioning by lowering tax revenues. Low government revenues and performance demoralize government functionaries. When government officials are powerless and irrelevant, there is no reason for them not to become corrupt; corruption in the police and the judiciary leads to crime. Once people become genuinely worried about personal security, networks of social cooperation contract. This means they delegitimize everything outside the group, especially the state, and everything becomes defined in ethnic terms. As both crime and ethnic conflict escalate, young people are drawn into self-defense activity. The movement of youth from investment in the future to coercion in the present mortgages the economic growth of the future. As youth are pulled out of education, society becomes less intellectually capable. Fundamental engineering, business, and technological skills become lost, and projects of large-scale coordination suffer. As projects of large-scale coordination become nonviable, economic growth declines. This circle of death also works in reverse.
Creating a Culture of Caretaking
Authors: Cohn Samuel
Published: September 2021

This chapter discusses the role of women in rebuilding societies in duress and re-creating a culture of caretaking, which was illustrated in the history of early Christianity in the Roman Empire and in a comparison of Uganda's and Afghanistan's capacities to recover from civil war. What happened when these two wars came to an end (or at least a lull in the level of hostilities)? The Northern Ugandan women left the refugee camps and started reconstructing agricultural life in their old villages. Because the women were able to leave the camps and operate on their own, recovery in Uganda was relatively rapid. No such rebound occurred in Afghanistan, because the country is a patriarchal place. Economic activity was restricted to men; men were too involved in politics to do much reconstructive agriculture. Ultimately, women's reconstruction of an economy is also women's reconstruction of a peace economy.
A Wild Idea
Authors: Edmondson Brad
Published: September 2021

This book shares the complete story of the difficult birth of the Adirondack Park Agency (APA). The Adirondack region of New York's rural North Country forms the nation's largest state park, with a territory as large as Vermont. Planning experts view the APA as a triumph of sustainability that balances human activity with the preservation of wild ecosystems. The truth isn't as pretty. The story of the APA, told here for the first time, is a complex, troubled tale of political dueling and communities pushed to the brink of violence. The North Country's environmental movement started among a small group of hunters and hikers, rose on a huge wave of public concern about pollution that crested in the early 1970s, and overcame multiple obstacles to “save” the Adirondacks. The book shows how the movement's leaders persuaded a powerful governor to recruit planners, naturalists, and advisors and assign a task that had never been attempted before. The team and the politicians who supported them worked around the clock to draft two visionary land-use plans and turn them into law. But they also made mistakes, and their strict regulations were met with determined opposition from local landowners who insisted that private property is private. The book is based on in-depth interviews with five dozen insiders who are central to the story. Their observations contain many surprising and shocking revelations. This is a rich narrative about state power and how it was imposed on rural residents. It shows how the Adirondacks were “saved,” and also why that campaign sparked a passionate rebellion.