Showing papers on "Prosperity published in 1993"

Occupational Choice and the Process of Development

Abstract: This paper models economic development as a process of institutional transformation by focusing on the interplay between agents' occupational decisions and the distribution of wealth. Because of capital market imperfections, poor agents choose working for a wage over self-employment, and wealthy agents become entrepreneurs who monitor workers. Only with sufficient inequality, however, will there be employment contracts; otherwise, there is either subsistence or self-employment. Thus, in static equilibrium, the occupational structure depends on distribution. Since the latter is itself endogenous, we demonstrate the robustness of this result by extending the model dynamically and studying examples in which initial wealth distributions have long-run effects. In one case the economy develops either widespread cottage industry (self-employment) or factory production (employment contracts), depending on the initial distribution; in the other example, it develops into prosperity or stagnation.

Moral Vision in International Politics: The Foreign Aid Regime, 1949-1989

Abstract: Can moral vision influence the dynamics of the world system? This inquiry into the evolving foreign aid policies of eighteen developed democracies challenges conventional international relations theory and offers a broad framework of testable hypotheses about the ways ethical commitments can help structure global politics. For forty years development assistance has been the largest and steadiest net financial flow to the Third World, far ex- ceeding investment by multinational corporations. Yet fifty years ago aid was unheard of. Investigating this sudden and widespread innovation in the postwar political economy, David Lumsdaine marshals a wealth of historical and statistical evidence to show that aid was based less on donor economic and political interests than on humanitarian convictions and the belief that peace and prosperity could be sustained only within a just international order.Lumsdaine finds the developed countries adhered to rules that, increasingly, favored the neediest aid recipients and reduced their own leverage. Furthermore, the donors most concerned about domestic poverty also gave more foreign aid: the U.S. aid effort was weaker than that of other donors. Many lines of evidence--how aid changed over time, which donors contributed heavily, where the money was spent, who supported aid efforts--converge to show how humanitarian concerns shaped aid. Seeking to bridge the gap between normative theory and empirical analysis, Lumsdaine's broad comparative study suggests that renewed moral vision is a prerequisite to devising workable institutions for a post- cold war world.

Princes and Merchants: European City Growth before the Industrial Revolution

Abstract: As measured by the pace of city growth in western Europe from 1000 to 1800, absolutist monarchs stunted the growth of commerce and industry. A region ruled by an absolutist prince saw its total urban population shrink by one hundred thousand people per century relative to a region without absolutist government. This might be explained by higher rates of taxation under revenue-maximizing absolutist governments than under nonabsolutist governments, which care more about general economic prosperity and less about State revenue.

The idea of demographic transition and the study of fertility change: a critical intellectual history.

Abstract: The position is argued that progress in the further study of fertility change rests on a reappraisal of the recent intellectual history of demography. Principally recognition needs to be given to the policy influences which were apparent even before the 1950s. The notion of demographic transition as merely a descriptive term is unproductive and impedes a wider range of approaches to the field. The discussion was an examination of the methodological constraints and the reasons for the continuing reliance on descriptive notions of demographic transition. The theory of demographic transition in 1944-45 and the contrasts between Thompsons 1929 notions and the 1945 notions in the United States were discussed as influenced by the changing institutional context important new intellectual developments and the impact of political events. Notesteins ideas were a primary reference point for discussion as reflecting the distinct change in thinking between 1947 and 1949. Democratic stability and long-term prosperity were hinged on the whole process of modernization and widespread economic development; fertility non-regulation was related to lack of motivation. Notestein and Kingsley Davis were thus at the helm of advocating government sponsored policies on family planning for pretransitional countries. "Peasants were not stupid" they were economically rational and the notion of awkward nonrational institutions and social mores was ignored. The impact of the fall of China and Chiang Kai-sheks nationalist regime and the change in foreign affairs on the Princeton Office and demographic intellectual life was discussed in some detail. The ideological competition of the 1960s and 1970s thwarted self reflection on the inadequacies and flaws in the supply centered activism of the international family planning industry and the "overly dogmatic commitment and rigidity to demographic transition." The historical model (Talcott Parsons variations in classifications) was too fluid and general as a causal explanation for change but it became an irrefutable theory. Modernization became the dominant theory in the 1950s and 1970s even though it could not generate unambiguous testable hypotheses about the specific causes of fertility change. Hodgson and Demeny recognized these inadequacies. Demographic transition theory was both a product of a conception in social science and a means for examining predicting and guiding social change. Current schools of thought are the deductivist the contextualist or interpretative and various realist approaches which interact with the aims of control understanding and intervention. There is a need for historical reconstruction in specific contexts of fertility and perceived costs of childrearing.

Desh-Bidesh - Sylheti images of home and away

Abstract: In migrant villages in Sylhet, places, and the images with which they are associated, represent different and at times competing forms of power. While the 'homeland' refers to spirituality and religiosity, 'abroad' is linked to material bounty and economic transformation, and local desire has become centred on travel abroad as the only route to material prosperity. The 'imagined' foreign worlds of those who have never migrated can therefore be viewed as the ideological concomitant of international dependency, and their ambivalent relationship with the homeland, a key element in the cultural contradictions of migration.

The Politics of Africa's Economic Recovery

Abstract: The waning of the Cold War means that major political powers no longer feel compelled to support African authoritarianism. Revised official consensus holds that, in Africa as elsewhere, political reform must accompany economic adjustment. According to this view, African recovery requires a reduction in the size and economic role of monopolistic and inefficient states, and their transformation into accountable liberal democracies. Is this a desirable and practicable political programme? Certainly, all over Africa the number of liberal democracies is growing. But can they survive and are they compatible with renewed economic growth? Richard Sandbrook answers these questions, and assesses the feasibility of the new political programme in reinforcing Africa's economic recovery. He argues that the programme has merit in the short term, but, in the longer term, a more self-reliant, state-directed approach should be adopted to ensure prosperity and durable democracy in the region.

The Economic History of Italy 1860-1990

Abstract: This book gives a full account of the economic and social history of Italy since unification (1860), with an introduction covering the previous period since the Middle Ages. The Economic History of Italy represents a scholarly and authoritative account of Italy's progress from a rural economy to an industrialized nation. The book makes a broad division of the period into three parts: the take-off (1860-1913), the consolidation in the midst of two wars and a world depression (1914-47), and the great expansion (1948-1990). Professor Zamagni traces the growth of industrialization, and argues that despite several advanced areas Italy only became an industrialized nation after the Second World War, and that during the 1980s the South was still clearly behind the rest of the country. Zamagni analyses data both from a macroeconomic position, in looking at the growth of the finance sector, or the role of the State, and from a microeconomic position when she draws conclusions from the changing population structure, or from the actions of individual businesses. Professor Zamagni reveals that even though the population more than doubled during this time the level of national income rose 19-fold, to move Italy from a peripheral status in Europe to a central position as a prosperous country. A central theme of the book is Professor Zamagni's argument that the Italian economy has been successful not by any great individuality of its own but by being flexible enough to incorporate the successes of other countries: Japan's integrated business network, for example, or Germany's financial structure. She places the industrialization of Italy in the international context by comparing Italy's GDP and other measures of prosperity at different times to the USA, Japan, the UK, France, and Germany. The book is based on original field-work by the author, and the many detailed but small-scale studies existing in Italian. Quantitative trends are described in more than 70 tables of data, while the book provides appendices containing chronologies of main events in various sectors and biographies.

Intensive Agriculture, Social Status, and Maya Diet at Pacbitun, Belize

Abstract: The reconstruction of diet using analysis of stable carbon and nitrogen isotopes of human bone collagen from the recently discovered Maya civic-ceremonial site of Pacbitun, Belize, provides some insight into the relationship between the role of intensive agricultural practice and site abandonment. Maize dependency appears to have changed in degree from the Early Classic (Tzul phase A.D. 250-550) to the Terminal Classic (Tzib phase A.D. 700-900) periods. Maize consumption reaches its peak during the period of greatest wealth and prosperity (A.D. 250-700) but falls toward the end of the sequence when agricultural intensification and maximum population size coincide (A.D. 700-900). The Pacbitun data are compared to those from Lamanai and Copan to create a picture of regional diversity and environmental distinction. Intrapopulational analysis also indicates that access to maize varied by age, sex, and social status.

The economics of youth training in Germany

Abstract: The German ideal may be termed the long view which must eventually lead the German nation to and maintain it in a foremost place as an industrial world power. The British method may be regarded as more philanthropic than patriotic; the ideal is admirable, but the bulk of the nation's workers are not catered for by this ideal and on the bulk of the workers much of the material prosperity of a nation must depend.

Princes and Merchants: European City Growth Before the Industrial Revolution

Abstract: As measured by the pace of city growth in western Europe from 1000 to 1800. absolutist monarchs stunted the growth of commerce and industry. A region ruled by an absolutist prince saw its total urban population shrink by one hundred thousand people per century relative to a region without absolutist government. This might be explained by higher rates of taxation under revenue-maximizing absolutist governments than under non-absolutist governments. which care more about general economic prosperity and less about State revenue.

The new protectionism: protecting the future against free trade

Abstract: This monograph questions the benefits of free trade, arguing that, far from promoting prosperity for all those involved, free trade only serves a narrow range of interests, primarily for the large corporations who conduct it. The authors claim that the consequences of present arrangements and those promised under the new GATT agreement will increase the difference between the world's rich and poor and accelerate the destruction of the global environment. The authors suggest instead that trading arrangements should emphasize regional self-sufficiency and the overall amount of trade should be reduced.

Towards a political analysis of markets

Abstract: This article was originally published July 1993, IDSB24.3This Bulletin stems from a dissatisfaction with the way in which the idea of ‘the market’ or ‘the free market’ is currently used in conventional discourse on development issues. One notion is particularly dominant, implicitly or explicitly: ‘the market’ seen as a flexible, atomistic realm of impersonal exchange and dispersed competition, characterized by voluntary transactions on an equal basis between autonomous, usually private, entities with material motivations.This etiolated model of the market derives from the universe of neo-classical economists and, in the world of development policy, serves to provide intellectual support for their prescriptions. This ‘ideal-type’ market has been elevated to the level of an ideological principle and ethical ideal, providing a policy panacea which promises both efficiency, prosperity and freedom. The main theme of this Bulletin reflects my own concern as a political scientist that, by and large, conventional economic theory, in most of its manifold incarnations, has either ignored or downplayed the role of power in economic processes generally and in markets in particular.

Poverty and Prosperity in the USA in the Late Twentieth Century

Abstract: This book provides a comprehensive review ofjudicial, administrative, and arbitral case law affecting employer attempts at regulation of employee off-duty conduct and personal life styles. It is also an excellent "aid in decision making" to employers, employment advocates, and arbitrators in this complex area of employee-employer relations. The authors distinguish four categories of off-duty cases, based on four sets of legal principles: common law principles of termination at will; the "significant limits" placed on managerial discretion since 1964 by federal and state civil rights statutes; public sector employers' constitutional restraints and due process requirements and, to a limited extent, those of private sector employers subject to governmental regulations; and arbitral standards and analysis under collective bargaining agreements. The authors clearly articulate the principles derived from the case law review and illustrate them with significant and interesting case law examples, carefully drawing on only "often cited" or "most quoted" decisions. In addition, they pose certain questions at the beginning of each section-such as, "Suppose management disapproves of the sexual partners/associations or speech of its employees? Can a public employer dismiss or fail to hire such employees?"-to alert the reader to salient issues on that topic. Hill and Wright clearly distinguish "black letter law" from exceptions, and they include extensive citations in the footnotes so that the reader is not distracted from the flow of the text. Another helpful feature is the authors' summaries and guidelines for decision-making at the end of major sections. Where judicial and arbitral approaches differ, the authors suggest what may be the "better rule" to follow in decision-making or, for example, when "to avoid absolutes," what factors to consider, and where employers will have "a difficult time demonstrating a nexus." Hill and Wright specifically point out "numerous traps" employers may face in attempting to discharge employees for "disloyal" off-duty statements or falsification of employment applications, as well as problems they may encounter in trying to discipline or discharge an employee based on his or her arrest, indictment, conviction, or nolo contendere plea. The circumstances in which arbitrators have in effect recognized "constitutional type" rights or followed the constitutional analysis of the courts-for example, cases involving outside statements of employees about the employer-are also well presented. And aside from a few overly lengthy quotations of arbitral decisions, the writing is so well-crafted that the reader may at times forget that the work is an academic treatise and practical guide. Covering such a broad subject as the ability of employers to take action against employees based on off-duty conduct or lifestyle necessarily requires selectivity. Hill and Wright do not discuss emerging issues such as the treatment of employees under potentially conflicting regulatory standards pursuant to legislation such as the FMLA, ADA, and OSHA. But one could not ask for a better overview, in a format that is easily accessible to both the expert and the novice, of the relevant case law and guiding principles to date.

Miami: A New Global City?

Abstract: There is a considerable gap between popular images of Miami and the political and economic realities of a city that is unique on the U.S. landscape. Miami now has the fourth largest concentration of foreign bank offices in the United States, right behind New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago, and ahead of San Francisco, Boston, or Atlanta. Eastman Kodak moved its headquarters for Latin American operations from Rochester in New York to Miami, and Hewlett Packard made a similar move from Mexico City to Miami. Finns and banks from Germany, France, Italy, South Korea, Hong Kong, Japan, to name but a few, have all opened offices and brought in significant numbers of high-level personnel. Alongside these developments there has been sharp growth in financial and specialized services for business. Miami's media image is so strongly associated with immigration and drugs that the possibility we might be seeing the formation of a new international corporate sector has received less attention. The scale of these developments leads us to ask whether Miami may have emerged as a global city, if not necessarily one of the first rank. This raises a number of questions. What is the relationship between immigration and the emergence of global city functions? Is the Cuban enclave, with its many trading operations for the Caribbean and Latin America, the base on which those new global city functions developed? Or is that growth a somewhat autonomous process benefiting from the concentration of trading operations in Miami but responding to a different logic? Is it development that would have taken place in the Southern Atlantic region anyway, though, without the Cuban enclave, perhaps not in Miami? Will the development of global city functions make Miami into a worldwide business center? Or will it continue to be a regional center for Latin America and the Caribbean, only now not simply for Latin American firms but also for new European, Asian, and U.S. firms. If the latter, what precisely has fueled the growth of international operations over the last few years: Are there new processes under way in Latin America, and are they responsible for the new concentration of operations in Miami? Will this new form of internationalization, one that reaches beyond the Cuban enclave, create new work and prosperity for previously excluded and severely disadvantaged sectors of the labor force? Specifically, has it opened up job opportunities for African-American workers, thereby ending their long-term exclusion from the Cuban enclave's prosperity? These are the questions we seek to address very generally in this brief essay using our recent research (Sassen 1993; Portes and Stepick 1993). Some of the hypotheses in the research literature on global cities are of interest here, especially those that examine the spatial and organizational forms of economic globalization today and actual transnational economic operations (Sassen 1993). By asking these questions, we recover the centrality of place and work in economic globalization. A key proposition in this literature is that the basic combination of geographic dispersal of economic activities and system integration has contributed to a strategic role for major cities. Rather than become obsolete owing to the dispersal made possible by information technologies, cities have generated top-level management and coordination functions and the specialized services needed to run spatially dispersed economic operations. This dynamic can operate at several scales, from global to regional, both within and beyond nations. Do we see in Miami the beginning of this kind of change?

A Degree of Waste: the economic benefits of educational expansion

Abstract: This paper considers the view, long fashionable in academic and political circles, which sees the expansion of higher education as benefiting the country, economically. Drawing on international and national data, the article suggests that such a belief is no longer defensible. On the basis of such data, it is argued that higher education has been expanded well beyond that threshold, where further expansion could be reasonably regarded as an investment and precondition for national prosperity. It is argued that the present expansion of higher education is better regarded as a form of consumption.

Imagining Development: Economic Ideas in Peru's "Fictitious Prosperity" of Guano, 1840-1880

Abstract: Retelling the saga of Peru's nineteenth-century age of guano, Paul Gootenberg provides the first book in English to explore the historical genealogy of Latin America's postcolonial economic thought. He scrutinizes the mentalities, ideas, and visions that led the country down an ill-fated path of export liberalism. The surprising diversity, vitality, and subtlety of Peruvian economic thinking challenges images of Latin American liberalism as a borrowed, impoverished, and narrow conception of material progress. By closely weaving together intellectual and social history and a multitude of forgotten texts, as well as trends in elite and popular and European and national cultures, Gootenberg offers a newly integrated approach to the long-neglected field of Latin American economic ideas.

Conservative Protestantism and the World Order: The Faith Movement in the United States and Sweden

Abstract: This article discusses the extent to which globalization theory can be used to interpret the recent revival and expansion of conservative Protestantism in western societies. By focussing on the diffusion of "Faith" ideology (the Prosperity Gospel) from the United States to the "Word of Life" Bible center in Sweden, I show how the Swedish group acts as a kind of transnational cultural broker, managing a flow of meaning between two very different politicoreligious contexts. I argue that Word of Life seeks to articulate its identity in both local and global terms, simultaneously asserting the existence of an organic unity between religious and political authority in its host country and accommodating to a much wider vision of a divinely sanctioned world order. In the process, it produces a conservative Protestant interpretation of the changing place of Sweden in the global order of nation-states.

Prospects for an American-Style Youth Apprenticeship System:

Abstract: Tom Bailey correctly identifies the greatest challenges to successfully transforming the idea of youth apprenticeship into reality. Although his cautions are well founded, they do not justify the turn toward alternative approaches that he recommends, especially not before demonstration projects that are just now being mounted have had time to yield results. Specific components can be built into an American-style youth apprenticeship system so that it avoids the pitfalls Bailey has identified and simultaneously serves the goals of education, equality, and prosperity.

The Case for Optimism: The West Should Believe in Itself

Abstract: is of course always conflict and strife, not all centuries are as bloody as ours has been. The assassination in Sarajevo shat tered an extraordinary period of econom ic, artistic and moral advance. It was a period when serious thinkers could imag ine world economic unity bringing an end to wars. The conventional wisdom, as Keynes would later write, considered peace and prosperity "as normal, certain, and permanent, except in the direction of further improvement, and any deviation from [this course] as aberrant, scan dalous, and avoidable." If with benefit of hindsight this opti mism seems wildly na?ve, what will future generations make of the crabbed pessimism of today s conventional wis dorn? Exhausted and jaded by our labors and trials, we now probe the dawning era for evidence not of relief but of new and

Economic Development Activity among Land-Grant Institutions

Abstract: Introduction The purpose of this study was to gather, interpret, and present empirical data to increase understanding about the nature and level of contemporary economic development activity among American colleges and universities. The secondary purpose was to contribute information to decision makers and researchers concerned with business-university initiatives. As a well-recognized subset of institutions uniquely oriented toward applying knowledge to address directly social and economic problems, land-grant institutions were selected for the study sample. Limited empirical data are available to inform institutions and government policy makers on this topic, yet significant commitments are being made by academic institutions and government at all levels to involve these institutions more directly in economic development |9, 19, 24, 28~. Previous work on business-university initiatives has tended to examine research impacts primarily, argue for increased (or decreased) involvement of such institutions in economic development, or focus on policy. Much of this literature has been conjectural or superficial in its discussion of factors influencing university-industry initiatives. The present study sought, specifically, to (a) describe the many factors influencing institutions' decisions associated with economic development initiatives, (b) assess the degree of their impact on involvement, and (c) determine the degree to which academic personnel policies were affected or related to increased institutional involvement. Related Literature, Context of this Study Land-grant institutions were created through the Morrill Acts of 1862 and 1890 to train students in the agricultural and mechanic arts to meet the needs of industry and agricultural technology during that period |14~. The obligations of their national grants emphasized service: "On the whole, the land-grant institutions were conscious of the great debt they owed to the public largess" |1, p. 33~. Land-grant institutions number 72 today, comprising about half of the 149 members of the National Association of State Universities and Land-Grant Colleges (NASULGC) |24~. The United States Office of Education ceased collecting separate statistics on the land-grant institutions in 1963 |1, p. 1~. The land-grant idea represents a political ideal. The diminishing of their uniqueness is due to the adoption by other institutions of the basic concepts of the land-grant idea: democratization of education; applied or mission-oriented research conducted to the benefit of the people of the states; and service rendered directly to these people |1, pp. 1, 2~. These institutions "have, since their inception, played central roles in state and national economic development" |17, p. 61~. Today American colleges and universities of varied heritage are expected to respond to local, state, and national economic development and industrial competitiveness needs |4, 7, 20, 25, 27, 28, 32~. Industry-academe partnerships are touted in many quarters |16, 22, 25, 29~. Such partnerships are not a new feature in American life but appear to be changing in character, extent of collaboration, and number |3, 26~. Universities are generally not seen as primary sources of new businesses; for example, they hold only about 2 percent of the active patents in the United States |35~. In some cases, such as Silicon Valley, California, and the University City section of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, they may be initial and essential, but not the primary, sources of new business formation |15~. Yet they are regarded as key to the mix |21~ that results in prosperity in an increasingly information-based economy |20, 32~, including manufacturing-oriented subeconomies |23~. Economic development has been understood to be the process by which underdeveloped nations or less advanced regional economies are accelerated toward parity with more advanced, generally more prosperous, societies. …

Rwanda: Which Way Now?

Abstract: The land of a thousand hills - geographical survey the roots of conflict - ethnic groups and colonialism independence and after Rwanda under siege - the struggle for political supremacy exporting people and importing problems - refugees and the regional context can Rwanda feed itself - population and land an economy addicted to economy export or die...or export and die? - trade and structural adjustment alternative paths to development urbanization - the bright lights beckon migration - the never-ending search for land the environment - a country living off its capital hunters and gatherers in a disappearing world population - from 2 to 10 million in 60 years health for some by the year 2000 - health care, malaria and AIDS education - a cash crop to cultivate women's lives - signs of change on the edge of the abyss - prospects for peace and prosperity an Oxfam update - August 1994.

Machine Liberation: Inventing Housewives and Home Appliances in Interwar France

Abstract: French society entered a period of protracted cultural crisis at the close of the First World War. This was caused in part by France's slow economic development and could not be resolved until French society sustained a systematic renovation in politics, social values, economic practices, and popular mentalities. Modernism as we shall use it in this context represents all of the values so explicitly held by a Jacques Delors, Laurent Fabius, or a Giscard d'Estaing: that bigger is better, that technology (divorced from a coherent social context) is the basis of prosperity and prowess, and that there is but one single path to the brave new world of the future, a world managed by engineers and experts.' It is an ideology rooted in the objectivism of the French Enlightenment, the Prometheanism of the Industrial Revolution, and the audacity of the industrial rationalizers in this century. French social discourse had long counterpoised the rational with the sensual, the modern with the traditional, the empirical with the spiritual, the male with the female, and the mechanical with the organic, bifurcating much of the modernization debate around two irreconcilable poles. Interwar supporters of the modernization vision, despite cultural

Eisenhower and the Mass Media: Peace, Prosperity, and Prime-time TV

Abstract: A UNC Press Enduring Edition -- UNC Press Enduring Editions use the latest in digital technology to make available again books from our distinguished backlist that were previously out of print. These editions are published unaltered from the original, and are presented in affordable paperback formats, bringing readers both historical and cultural value.

Religion and Economic Activity in India: An Historical Perspective

Abstract: I Introduction RELIGIOUS THOUGHT and economic activity have been closely linked throughout the history of India. To justify this claim, this paper will examine briefly two periods in Indian history, ancient India as exemplified by the Mauryan empire, and medieval India of the 8th to the 13th centuries, while suggesting in both cases that a strong interrelationship exists between religious thought and economic structure. Extrapolating to the present, it shall be contended that a key to understanding the social environment of contemporary India is some knowledge of the myriad links between, and the historical evolution of, the religious and economic forces at work in India's current environment. The apposition in this way, of Indian religious thought and economic activity requires some clarification, because a common view of Indian thought would number mysticism, and other-worldliness, as its defining characteristics, neither of which are readily linked to economic activity. But, in reality, Indian religious thought does address this-worldly concerns. Philosophically, the Hindu tradition recognizes that ultimate reality (Brahman) is not only transcendent and impersonal, but is, also, immanent (intrinsic) and personal (an Isvara). The aim of life for the Hindu is not just moksa, or spiritual freedom, but equally artha, or material satisfaction. Thus, religion in the Indian tradition has not divorced itself from the secular affairs of society such as economic and political activity. With this perspective, that religious thought embraces thought both social and political, as well as strictly religious matters, we turn to the first historical episode in which this claim shall be evaluated. II The Mauryan Empire (c. 321-c. 185 BC) THE PERIOD OF THE MAURYAN EMPIRE has been called a "golden age" in ancient Indian history.(1) Under the Mauryans, various small kingdoms came together to form the first Indian empire, which stretched from the borders of present-day Iran to Mysore in the south of India. The Mauryan empire, under Chandragupta and later his grandson, the celebrated king Ashoka, was a model of efficient economic management. It has been called "the world's first secular welfare state, rooted in the toleration of all faiths, the sanctity of all life, and the promotion of amity and peace for all humanity" (Mukerjee, 1959, 92). The wealth of the Mauryan empire is attributed to its thriving land and sea trade with China and Sumatra to the east, Ceylon to the south, and Persia and the Mediterranean to the west. The silk routes from Europe to China put India at the center of a vibrant land trade route, but the Mauryans also had a well developed merchant navy. Connecting the many ports of the empire was an excellent system of roads, and along these trade routes were "marts" or towns where "goods were assembled from all parts of the civilized world" (Mukerjee, 1959, 101). Among the goods that were traded were silks, textiles, brocades, rugs, perfumes, precious stones, ivory, and gold. The internal road network was an arterial system through which the entire empire participated in foreign trade and reaped its benefits. Somewhat like the modern Newly Industrialized Countries (NICs), the Mauryan empire enjoyed export-led growth. Evidence of India's booming export trade is to be found in records of the Roman Senate, where Pliny and the Emperor Tiberius both complained of the huge drain of resources to India to pay for Roman imports (Gupta, 1966, ch. 1). As we shall see presently, this period of significant economic prosperity and sociopolitical stability was matched by the self-poised and self-assured character of the Upanisadic religion. The Mauryan empire saw the pinnacle and fruition of Vedanta as envisaged in the Upanisads. The influence of the earlier Vedic religion, as epitomized by the Vedic fire sacrifice, or yajna, had run its course, and in its place the lofty Advaita Vedantic monotheism was the idiom of Hindu thought of that period. …

Den gotiske labyrint: Middelalderen og kirkerne i Danmark

Abstract: The Gothic Maze focuses on the vigorous building activity among the 2,692 parish churches in medieval Denmark in the time up to the Reformation: Was this an expression of economic prosperity, increased piety, or a church in crises? Can the development be described as a transition from Romanesque to Gothic? How did the churches change? What was the economic background? Who were the benefactors? What were their motives? And what can the changes teach us about the Middle Ages as an epoch?The Gothic Maze studies the concepts of church architecture, its explanations, sources, and contexts. The dissertation emphasizes that concepts as "the Middle Ages", "Romanesque", and "Gothic" are nothing but metaphors created in modern times. The traditional explanations, which refer to currents of fashion and changes in the economic cycle, are insufficient for an understanding of the culmination of building activity in the fifteenth and the sixteenth centuries. Church construction and its context are studied in two of the juridical districts known as "harader" (hundres) in Scania. Experience from this area is used to assist in the interpretation of church-building throughout medieval Denmark. In addition, the building activity is examined in relation to economic data and details of the benefactors in selected areas where the sources permit closer study. The intensive period of building shortly before the Reformation is not interpreted as a direct reflection of increased prosperity or piety, but as the use of material symbols in a time of social stress. The church was threatened by a steadily growing opposition between religious ideals and the new economic realities. Gothicization is a sign of crisis. (Less)

The Mughal Polity—A Critique of Revisionist Approaches

Abstract: The nature of the pre-colonial Indian state, especially as one could see it in similarity or opposition to the state in Europe, has exercised a particular fascination since the seventeenth century, when Francois Bernier spelled out his theory about Oriental monarchies, with special reference to the Mughal Empire and Turkey. It may be recalled that he saw eastern states different from the European in two major particulars: (1) The king here was the owner of the soil, in other words, the exactor of rent; and (2) those who actually collected the tax-rent held only temporary tenures, as holders of jagirs or timars , unlike the hereditary European lords. The temporary tenures, which were a necessary reflex of state ownership of land led to over-exploitation of the peasantry, and, therefore, a progressive decline of the economy and polity. This was in contrast to Western Europe, where the limitation of state right of sovereignty and the dominance of private property over the land, under its protection, were the surest means to progress and prosperity. Already in Bernier we have the articulation of the contrast between the Oriental despotic state and the occidental laissez faire state.