All is not well with the evaluation of government programs and projects. Resources available to any society are limited. If governments are to increase the well-being of their citizens, they must be able to select and implement the socially most beneficial projects and policies. But many government agencies lack the expertise to carry out a cost-benefit analysis, or even to commission one…
Since the time of decolonisation in Fiji, women’s organisations have navigated a complex political terrain. While they have stayed true to the aim of advancing women’s status, their work has been buffeted by national political upheavals and changing global and regional directions in development policy-making. This book documents how women activists have understood and responded to these cha…
What about Asia? Revisiting Asian Studies brings together scholars from Asia, Europe and America to test the strength of a field of study which, considering the rise of Asia, should be gaining momentum. But is it? This is one of the many questions that the contributors to this volume ask themselves. In the past decade the use and legitimacy of area studies, and in particular Asian studies, have…
The book is a critical examination of affirmative action, a form of preferential development often used to address the situation of disadvantaged groups. It uses a trans-global approach, as opposed to the comparative approach, to examine the relationship between affirmative action, ethnic conflict and the role of the state in Fiji, Malaysia and South Africa. While affirmative action has noble g…
In The Social Significance of the Neighbourhood the negative image of the social quality of poor urban districts is critically examined based on research in two districts of The Hague. This investigation focuses on the extent to which living in a certain quarter could constitute as an obstacle to social mobility and what role social relations play between local residents therein. Based on inter…
The relationship between customary land tenure and ‘modern’ forms of landed property has been a major political issue in the ‘Spearhead’ states of Melanesia since the late colonial period, and is even more pressing today, as the region is subject to its own version of what is described in the international literature as a new ‘land rush’ or ‘land grab’ in developing countries. T…
Securing Village Life: Development in Late Colonial Papua New Guinea examines the significance for post-World War II Australian colonial policy of the modern idea of development. Australian officials emphasised the importance of bringing development for both the colony of Papua and the United Nations Trust Territory of New Guinea. The principal form that development took involved securing small…
This collection of essays arose from a workshop held in Canberra in 2013 under the auspices of the Academy of Social Sciences in Australia to consider the impact of the encroachment of the market on public universities. While the UK tripled fees in 2013 and determined that the teaching of the social sciences and the humanities would no longer be publicly funded, it was feared that Australia wou…
The global economic downturn that followed the collapse of major US financial institutions is no doubt the most significant crisis of our times. Its effects on corporate and governmental balance sheets have been devastating, as have been its impacts on the employment and well being of tens of millions of citizens. It continues to pose major challenges to national policymakers and institutions a…
When lorry drivers in Northampton slapped stickers on their cabs declaring ‘No truck with the Chilean Junta!’ they were doing more than threatening to boycott. They were asserting their own identity as proud unionists and proud internationalists. But what did trade unionists really know of what was happening in Chile? And how could someone else’s oppression become a means to solidify your…