Andre Gunder Frank was a path-breaking scholar in several disciplines over an illustrious and contentious 50-year career. First amongst his many important works is the book ReORIENT: Global Economy in the Asian Age, which sought to correct a Euro-centric world view of the development of the global political economy. Frank passed away in April 2005 while working on this new book, a sequel to ReORIENT. In this book Frank shows many of the myths of European industrialisation, hegemony and capitalism which have hidden the fact that Asia remained a serious power not just into the 18th century, as Frank himself argued in 1998, but well into the 19th century as well. When Frank passed away his colleagues rallied to finish this book and it is presented here as his final major statement.

Contributors from a wide spectrum of disciplines, including archaeology, anthropology, geography, ecology, palaeo-science, geology, sociology, and history discuss the complex ways in which human culture, economy, and demographics interact with ecology and climate change.

The Elgar Encyclopedia of Development is a ground-breaking resource that provides a starting point for those wishing to grasp how and why development occurs, while also providing further expansion appropriate for more experienced academics.

Offering an investigation of the ways in which matters of human rights give shape to the European Union's interaction with Asia, this volume argues for the consideration of selected social-constructivist perspectives with regard to the Asia-EU dialogue. It puts into context the function of ideas, identities, values, norms and human rights. Through a number of country-specific and regional case studies, the text examines both the 'enabling' and the 'inhibitory' potential of human rights in the Union's relations with Asian interlocutors. The book proposes a more inclusive, holistic understanding of the significance and potential of the human rights discourse in East-West contacts. It is aimed at a wide readership from the disciplines of politics, international relations, Asian studies, law and human rights.

Language standardization is an ongoing process based on the notions of linguistic correctness and models. This manual contains thirty-six chapters that deal with the theories of linguistic norms and give a comprehensive up-to-date description and analysis of the standardization processes in the Romance languages. The first section presents the essential approaches to the concept of linguistic norm ranging from antiquity to the present, and includes individual chapters on the notion of linguistic norms and correctness in classical grammar and rhetoric, in the Prague School, in the linguistic theory of Eugenio Coseriu, in sociolinguistics as well as in pragmatics, cognitive and discourse linguistics. The second section focuses on the application of these notions with respect to the Romance languages. It examines in detail the normative grammar and the normative dictionary as the reference tools for language codification and modernization of those languages that have a long and well-established written tradition, i.e. Romanian, Italian, French, Catalan, Spanish, and Portuguese. Furthermore, the volume offers a discussion of the key issues regarding the standardization of the ‘minor’ Romance languages as well as Creoles.

Reorienting the East explores the Islamic world as it was encountered, envisioned, and elaborated by Jewish travelers from the Middle Ages to the early modern period. The first comprehensive investigation of Jewish travel writing from this era, this study engages with questions raised by postcolonial studies and contributes to the debate over the nature and history of Orientalism as defined by Edward Said. Examining two dozen Hebrew and Judeo-Arabic travel accounts from the mid-twelfth to the early sixteenth centuries, Martin Jacobs asks whether Jewish travelers shared Western perceptions of the Islamic world with their Christian counterparts. Most Jews who detailed their journeys during this period hailed from Christian lands and many sailed to the Eastern Mediterranean aboard Christian-owned vessels. Yet Jacobs finds that their descriptions of the Near East subvert or reorient a decidedly Christian vision of the region. The accounts from the crusader era, in particular, are often critical of the Christian church and present glowing portraits of Muslim-Jewish relations. By contrast, some of the later travelers discussed in the book express condescending attitudes toward Islam, Muslims, and Near Eastern Jews. Placing shifting perspectives on the Muslim world in their historical, social, and literary contexts, Jacobs interprets these texts as mirrors of changing Jewish self-perceptions. As he argues, the travel accounts echo the various ways in which premodern Jews negotiated their mingled identities, which were neither exclusively Western nor entirely Eastern.

"Frank shows how Marx and Weber got it all wrong. A fundamental rethinking of the rise of the West and the origin of the world-system. Absolutely essential to understanding world history."--Albert Bergesen, University of Arizona "The great virtue of this stimulating book is its relentless push to redefine our framework for thinking about the early modern economy. . . . A benchmark study."--R. Bin Wong, University of California, Irvine

This book brings together historians from the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and Europe to historicize constructions of whiteness as a colonial formation. Confronting the privilege inherent in the invisibility of contemporary whiteness requires that the historical roots of racial power be interrogated, and the history of European colonialism is of much more than passing significance to this task. This collection functions to read the colonial back into whiteness by demonstrating how this racial category traveled around the routes of empire. It shows how a transnational focus can bring historical and spatial specificity to the study of whiteness and thus re-orients the frames of whiteness for American and non-American scholars alike.

This book analyzes the origins and the impacts of China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) on diplomacy, economy (trade, investment, finance), and security among selected host countries and regions in Asia, Africa, and the European Union. By examining the geopolitical economy of BRI activities, it concisely describes the impact of the rise of China and its BRI policy strategy on the reshaping of world order and global governance. This volume explores the BRI by addressing several key questions including: • Why did the Chinese leadership set up the BRI? • What are the activities of BRI projects in the participating countries and related regions? • What are the challenges to the successful implementation of the BRI in the various countries and regions? Moreover, through its analysis of the abovementioned questions, it provides novel contributions to the ongoing scholarly debates between Chinese and non-Chinese scholars – among others, the debate surrounding the “rise of China” and its impact on global governance. Featuring an extensive variety of expert contributors, this study will be an essential reading for students and scholars of International Relations and Global Political Economy as well as Chinese politics and those with an interest in the Belt and Road Initiative more broadly.

The agenda of contemporary western feminism focuses on equal participation in work and education, reproductive rights, and sexual freedom. But what does feminism mean to the women of rural India who work someone else's fields, young Thai girls in the sex industry in Bangkok, or Filipino maids working for wealthy women in Hong Kong? In this 1998 book, Chilla Bulbeck presents a bold challenge to the hegemony of white, western feminism in this incisive and wide-ranging exploration of the lived experiences of 'women of colour'. She examines debates on human rights, family relationships, sexuality, and notions of the individual and community to show how their meanings and significance in different parts of the world contest the issues which preoccupy contemporary Anglophone feminists. She then turns the focus back on Anglo culture to illustrate how the theories and politics of western feminism are viewed by non-western women.