1,720,974 research outputs found
Lao PDR in 2020: pandemic, debt and resource extraction
No full textFour key, interrelated, themes mark Laos in 2020. First is COVID-19 and its socio-economic effects. With just twenty-three reported cases and no reported deaths, Laos has performed exceptionally well in its containment of COVID-19. However, the social and economic effects of policies implemented to respond to the pandemic have been stark. Included among them is Laos’s surging debt, which is not solely a consequence of the pandemic but has been significantly accelerated by the closure of national borders and slowed economic growth. This debt, and particularly its ties to Laos’s infrastructure-led and resource-extractivist development model, is the second key theme discussed in this chapter. In Laos and elsewhere, COVID-19 represents a critical moment for rethinking national development priorities and practices. Third, is China’s continued growing presence within Laos, and the role of Chinese investment and development financing in contributing to Laos’s infrastructure projects, and its debt. While the party-state has a long history of maintaining positive diplomatic relations with a wide diversity of partners, its economic dependency on China is, arguably, pulling it into uncharted territory. Finally, the fourth key theme of 2020 is the party-state’s continued oppression of and violence against those that contest the harmful effects of extractivist development. Particularly important here is continued party-state efforts to prevent online dissent via intimidation and arrest. These are critical challenges for future development
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
More growth, less freedom? charting development pathways in Lao PDR
No full textAccording to macro-scale measures and indicators the principal development narrative for Lao PDR is one of strong economic growth and continued socio-economic progress. However, the true complexity of socio-economic transformations to have occurred in the country are not easily captured by reductive macro-scale indices. In this chapter I problematize development success narratives surrounding Lao PDR by bringing attention to the relationship between persistent socio-economic challenges and the state’s poor track record on human rights and political freedoms. Here, I argue: (1) that privileging economic growth over political freedom is a threat to sustained poverty-alleviation; (2) the common myth that economic liberalization naturally leads to democratic reform is unlikely to materialize in Lao PDR, and; (3) attempts by foreign donors to depoliticize socio-economic inequalities have bolstered a regime that is responsible for intolerable human rights abuses
The ADB and AIIB: cooperation, competition and contestation
No full textThe push for greater infrastructure connectivity within the Asia-Pacific as a mechanism for advancing socio-economic development is supported by all the region's nation-states, multilateral development banks operating in the region, and also regional intergovernmental organisations such as the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation, and the Pacific Islands Forum Secretariat. This chapter explores emergent forms of competition, collaboration, and cooperation between Asia’s two largest multilateral development banks: the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank and the Asian Development Bank. It goes on to analyse the geopolitics that inform the works of these two institutions; how these institutions frame the relationship between infrastructure connectivity and socio-economic progress; and key similarities and differences in their operational structures and funding priorities. Following this geopolitical and operational analysis, the chapter then briefly turns to some of the ways in which Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank and Asian Development Bank development projects and discourse are producing new forms of marginalization, disadvantage, and impoverishment. The benefit and harm of growing regional interconnectivity within the Asia-Pacific is not evenly distributed
Variations on the Author
Full text link“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Full text linkWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
as cognitive empire: Epistemic violence, ethnonationalism and alternative imaginaries in Zomian highlands
Full text linkChina’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) has become the lodestar of Beijing’s efforts to increase its global political and economic influence. This article interrogates BRI discourse, arguing that the normative adoption of BRI narratives as a means for making sense of connectivity’s between China and other places risks producing new forms of epistemic violence against subaltern populations. The empirical focus of this paper is on China-Laos relations, and the epistemic positioning of highland ethnic minority groups in northern Laos.
This context offers a valuable case study for examining BRI discourse due to: the profound effects of Chinese investment in Laos; the geostrategic importance of Laos as a BRI ‘gateway’ between China and Southeast Asia; the deep histories of ethnic minority engagements across China and Laos; and the limited extant research on both China-Laos relations and the more localized effects of Chinese actors within the highland border regions
Cross-border traders in northern Laos: mastering smallness, by Simon Rowedder
No full text[Extract] Simon Rowedder’s Cross-Border Traders in Northern Laos: Mastering Smallness draws on ethnographic research to examine Tai Lue cross-border trade across northern Thailand, northern Laos, and southern Yunnan (108). It sketches ‘small-scale traders’ everyday lived worlds of transnational connectivity in their own right’ (198).
Arguing that ethnicity is only one, strategically deployed aspect of traders’ identities that does not always determine ‘everyday economic practices’ (137), Rowedder develops a central analytical framework around the concept of smallness. He understands this as the ‘main device’ of ‘narrative identity’ that unites an ‘otherwise ethnically and socially highly diverse group’ (173). He also sees it as offering an ‘analytical entry point’ for revealing small-scale traders’ ‘unvoiced, and thus unheard and unread, transnational trading skills and their trajectories’ (192)
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