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No description available.

Saudi Arabian foreign policy decisions are made by a small group in private and with little public discussion or explanation. Open debates on issues are not encouraged, particularly those that have a direct relation to the nation's security. No concept of public accountability exists. Secrecy is stressed to ensure internal security, as well as stability in the society. However, foreign policy decisions are not made without considerable thought and time spent in discussing the issues with those the leaders of government believe can make a contribution to their understanding of the problems. The decision-making process has the following four characteristics: 1) There is a strong link between domestic and foreign policies because of the historical legacy of the state. For this reason, decision-making includes members of the royal family and religious establishment. 2) Other groups do participate and wield differing degrees of influence depending on the issue area. 3) Much bargaining occurs before an important decision is announced. 4) The process is slow, as the leaders are not prepared to meet crisis situations. For this reason, the leadership usually turns to outside powers to settle the problem. In addition to the delay in making a decision, there is also the failure to follow through. These characteristics are influenced by the increasing complexity of Saudi Arabia's regional and global environment, and by the growing demand on the country to play a larger role in global politics. The methods used by the government result more in a reactive rather than a pro-active policy. The Saudis are more likely to react to events, panic in crises, and delay making decisions at the time the decisions should be made.

All kinds of travellers came to Bali in the 1930s. Many of them produced books and photographs, which later incited more visitors to come and see Bali for themselves. The works of these image-makers who travelled to Bali are the result of actual experience and recounted journeys. Their descriptions of Bali, although based on authentic experience, are also the result of literary and pictorial readings. Their accounts or representations are often enriched with material accumulated from fiction, biblical references, and scientific books, as well as paintings and photographs. These image-makers of Bali did not arrive without mental luggage. Both the textual and visual image-makers constructed images of the paradise according to their own fantasies and personal experience, as did the consumers of those images. The representation of Balinese women was thus heavily influenced by earlier travellers, photographers, and scholars. However, it is difficult to know who imitates whom and whose images can be cited as authentic. The previous readings or visual representations condition expectations in each traveller, so that she or he fashions images inspired by those already in circulation. The themes which recur over and over in photographs confirm existing stereotypical concepts. In other words, these representations influence perceptions of the 'other' that persist to the present day.

'Daughters of the Lesser God: Dalit Women's Education in Postcolonial Pune' examines the nexus between caste, gender and state pedagogical practices in relationship to Dalit (exuntouchable) women ofPune (India). Based on interviews with three generations of Dalit women, it examines the ways in which they have experienced and made use of their formal education in schools and colleges. It traces their lives as they have over the generations migrated from rural areas to the cities, and from city slums to, in some cases, middle-class neighbourhoods. The women belong to two Dalit communities - the Mahars and the Matangs - who are traditionally rivals and competitors. It is argued that the education system discriminates against Dalit women in ways that mirror their socio-economic and religious disabilities. Dalits valourise institutes of formal education for escaping their historical and contemporary degeneration. They look upon education as a primary means of gaining employment, and of advancing economically and socially. Nonetheless, the process of education frequently subjects Dalit girls to humiliating experiences that smothers the hopes of many. These are described and analysed in detail, revealing how the caste system subjects Dalit in general, and Dalit women in particular, to the· 'physical and mental violence' of constant indignities and humiliations. Although the recently burgeoning writing by Dalits has a lot to say on the experience of Dalit men, Dalit women are largely neglected in this literature - something that this thesis seeks to rectify. The thesis also interrogates the ways in which culture is deployed and represented, showing how the process of subjectivation works to produce not merely forms of domination but also complicity and dissent. In recent years, increasing numbers of Dalit women have found ways of resisting the prevalent hegemony, and the research pinpoints the ways in which some have managed to use the education system to their advantage. Wider questions are raised about the ways that the Dalits, and specifically Dalit women, create spaces and sites for their own self-assertion and betterment, and how they engage with modernity in other ways. The dissertation is concerned with contributing to and furthering the dialogue on gendering education and caste. Dalit lives are built on a long history of suffering, anxiety, desire, and struggle, and the creative visions of social justice put forward by Dalits can continue to inspire and shape the consciousness of local and transnational participants in their battles against oppressive and exploitative systems.

Beginning with Edward Said's seminal text, I will question the assumption of Orientalism as a universal and didactic discourse that was conducted exclusively from the West to and for the East. Said's overarching condemnation of Orientalism as an exclusively Western hegemonic structure overlooks the paradigm that Indians were not just collaborative producers of the Orientalist text but selective readers as well. I will argue that the contribution made by the influx of colonised people from the periphery to the colonial centre from the eighteenth century onwards has historically been overlooked. Indian Orientalisms developed along their own particular axes by both utilising and reversing Orientalisms. Through this discursive utilisation, Indians were able to formulate responses to the dominant ideologies of Orientalism and as a consequence created new forms of discourse, both literary and historical. My thesis aims to illustrate that Indians, both in the colony and the metropole, were active and not passive agents in their negotiations of colonial as well as post-colonial space. This legacy needs to be recognised, as it continues to resonate and pose questions in contemporary times where the success of multicultural states in an increasingly globalised world is of paramount importance. Generically, I have adopted non-fiction as the best form in which to convey these hidden histories. Autobiographies, diaries, letters, memoirs and travelogues establish the fluidity and imaginative endeavour that existed between the colony and the metropole. These historical documents illuminate a deeply contested colonial and post-colonial world, where colony became home and home could become the colony. Ultimately, this project aims to identify the Orient within Britain itself and also argue that Indian travellers and settlers have engaged in similar "Orientalising" projects to render Britain intelligible for the Oriental mind, in ways that deconstruct the conventional Orientalist power relations associated with not only the high colonial period but also the pre and post colonial eras.

This thesis examines how ideals of trusteeship influenced British administration of the Palestine mandate. The Covenant of the League of Nations described the mandate system as a 'sacred trust of civilisation'; because of this, the powers who held mandates were obligated to govern the territories they occupied during the First World War with the long-term aim of establishing them as independent members of the international community. British fulfilment of that trust drew on wider influences that had informed its rule elsewhere in the colonial empire; notions of liberalism, utilitarianism, and rationalism, core elements in a British philosophy of colonial rule, profoundly shaped British governance in Palestine. In utilising a model of trusteeship to explore the Palestine mandate, this study also explores how colonial policy-making was shaped by Orientalist representations. Cultural preconceptions enabled the basic premise of trusteeship by providing a binary image of 'backward', inferior subject populations in need of assistance and of progressive, superior Western powers capable of delivering the required 'tutelage'. The influence of trusteeship and Orientalism in Palestine is examined in five key administrative areas: self-government, immigration, land, education, and law and order. Under trusteeship, various forms of local and communal self-government were advanced to provide administrative experience and create a foundation for eventual participation in national self-government; reform ofland tenure and the facilitation of Jewish immigration were intended to promote economic growth and increase prosperity amongst all sections of the population; the government school system was expanded to encourage basic levels of mass literacy and develop vocational knowledge of modern agricultural techniques; and the mandatory administration sought to create local, self-sufficient civilian forces to uphold public security. Such policies allowed British officials to justify their presence in Palestine through discourses of 'progress' and 'improvement', which were required irrespective of any British commitments made to support Zionism.

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This thesis examines the arrangements and relationship amongst the member-States of ASEAN - the Association of South-east Asian Nations (though with less emphasis on Brunei, which only became the sixth and latest member of the Association upon its independence in January 1984) concerning the modern law of the sea issues that can most affect their national interests and the region directly, and which have developed particularly through the Third UN Law of the Sea Conference (UNCLOS III). Such issues are, first, the question of passage through the Straits of Malacca and Singapore, which has borne considerable law of the sea significance even long before the sixteenth century. Hence, such historical background is also explored. Secondly, since the Association consists of the two largest archipelagic States - Indonesia and the Philippines, considerations are given to the emergent archipelagic State concept, as recently developed, which is proved to have profound implications to the ASEAN members. So is the new concept of exclusive economic zone - an extended jurisdictional zone for marine living and non-living resources. The application of both of the latter concepts in the region will consequently render clear beneficiary and disadvantaged States among the members of ASEAN. Search for use of resources in the sea has also led ASEAN States to series of continental shelf boundary delimitation and one joint development arrangement agreements. These are analysed in comparison with a close examination of recent State practice and international adjudication. The thesis aims ultimately to demonstrate what roles the so-called 'ASEAN spirit' have played in influencing the practice of ASEAN States, their conflict management, their co-operation and their general outlook regarding such major law of the sea issues of the region.

La región Asia-Pacífico se ha convertido en uno de los bloques económicos más comercialmente dinámicos. Representa aproximadamente el 44% del comercio mundial y el 55% del PIB mundial. Las 21 economías de APEC están más interesadas en desarrollar relaciones comerciales más profundas con el fin de tener mejores beneficios y avanzar en el cumplimiento de las metas de Bogor. En este escenario, los dos mayores bloques económicos en la historia del mundo se están negociando y se espera que converjan en un futuro cercano, pero ¿es posible?