The recent discovery of Chinese medical manuscripts in a tomb dated to the second century BC in Ma-wang-tui, Ch'ang-sha, has revealed extremely interesting new information on the subject of ancient Chinese childbirth practices. The scrolls contain detailed advice concerning a proper and auspicious treatment of the placenta, an astronomical chart for choosing the perfect location for the burial of the placenta, and a description of the custom of exposing the newborn infant on the earth directly after birth. This paper offers a translation of these paragraphs and an interpretation based on a Japanese medical text that reflects Chinese medieval practices, basic knowledge of Chinese cosmology, society and religion and also general cross-cultural patterns for the treatment of the placenta that have been established through an anthropological research into placenta-related practices, beliefs and mythology from many different traditional cultures.

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This dissertation examines South Korea as an emergent middle power in East Asia, and how this is being reflected on its diplomatic behavior in relation to the processes of regionalism. The literature of middle powers suggests that countries such as South Korea can play useful roles to promote cooperation in several specific areas. In East Asia, the need for regional institutionalization became evident since the Asian Financial Crisis (AFC) of 1997-98, yet the attempts of China and Japan for regional leadership are often viewed as problematic. Hence, this research confirmed its main hypothesis which points to South Korea as a capable middle power to lead East Asian regionalism. Thus, in those particular instances where Korea has chosen to display middlepowermanship – as a catalyst, facilitator and/or manager of regionalist projects – the advancement in the processes of regional institutionalization in East Asia was generally observed. In doing so, this research looked into South Korea’s foreign policy behavior towards East Asian regional processes and towards Northeast Asia as a subregion. Regional institution-building attempts, as well as the creation of regional governance were the main aspects observed; hence this research falls within the theoretical boundaries of international political economy and international relations. Neoliberal theories related to neo-functionalism, institutionalism and especially inter-governmentalism were considered to understand regionalism, while preferring a constructivist point of view to explain the relations among states. A qualitative type of methodology was favored, including interviews with policy-makers and experts, as well as archival research of primary and secondary sources. Ultimately, this study has both practical and theoretical contributions, since the literature on middle powers does not often consider applications to regionalism, a process which is usually advanced and led by great powers. Thus, study conclusions suggest several improved practical understandings of East Asian regionalism in general, recommendations for its continuing advancement and possible future strategies for South Korea’s role in it as the regional middle power. / This dissertation examines South Korea as an emergent middle power in East Asia, and how this is being reflected on its diplomatic behavior in relation to the processes of regionalism. The literature of middle powers suggests that countries such as South Korea can play useful roles to promote cooperation in several specific areas. In East Asia, the need for regional institutionalization became evident since the Asian Financial Crisis (AFC) of 1997-98, yet the attempts of China and Japan for regional leadership are often viewed as problematic. Hence, this research confirmed its main hypothesis which points to South Korea as a capable middle power to lead East Asian regionalism. Thus, in those particular instances where Korea has chosen to display middlepowermanship – as a catalyst, facilitator and/or manager of regionalist projects – the advancement in the processes of regional institutionalization in East Asia was generally observed. In doing so, this research looked into South Korea’s foreign policy behavior towards East Asian regional processes and towards Northeast Asia as a subregion. Regional institution-building attempts, as well as the creation of regional governance were the main aspects observed; hence this research falls within the theoretical boundaries of international political economy and international relations. Neoliberal theories related to neo-functionalism, institutionalism and especially inter-governmentalism were considered to understand regionalism, while preferring a constructivist point of view to explain the relations among states. A qualitative type of methodology was favored, including interviews with policy-makers and experts, as well as archival research of primary and secondary sources. Ultimately, this study has both practical and theoretical contributions, since the literature on middle powers does not often consider applications to regionalism, a process which is usually advanced and led by great powers. Thus, study conclusions suggest several improved practical understandings of East Asian regionalism in general, recommendations for its continuing advancement and possible future strategies for South Korea’s role in it as the regional middle power.

This dissertation creates two new theoretical tools to analyze connections between politics and environmental change. The first section develops the concept of Northern ‘shadow ecologies’ to understand the environmental impact of a Northern state on Southern resource management. A Northern shadow ecology is the aggregate environmental impact of government aid and loans; corporate investment and technology transfers; and trade, including purchasing practices, consumption, export and consumer prices, and import tariffs. After outlining Japan’s shadow ecology, the next part constructs an analytical lens to uncover salient Southern political causes of timber mismanagement. This spotlights modern patron-client links between Southern officials and private operators that debilitate state capacity to implement resource policies. Using these analytical tools, and building on extensive primary sources and more than 100 in-depth interviews, the remainder of the thesis examines the two most important factors driving commercial timber mismanagement in Indonesia, Borneo Malaysia, and the Philippines: pervasive patron-client ties between Southeast Asian officials and timber operators; and the residual and immediate environmental impact of Japan. In a continual struggle to retain power in societies with fragmented social control, Southeast Asian state leaders build potent patron-client networks that syphon state funds, distort policies, and undermine supervision of state implementors. In this setting, the state is often unable to enforce timber management rules as implementors -- in exchange for gifts, money, or security -- ignore or assist destructive and illegal loggers, smugglers, and tax evaders. Japan’s shadow ecology has expedited timber mismanagement, and left deep environmental scars that impede current efforts to improve timber management. Post-1990 Japanese government and corporate policy changes to integrate environmental concerns have marginally improved forestry ODA, and contributed to token corporate conservation projects. As well, there is now less Japanese investment, technology, and credit linked to logging. But massive timber purchases from unsustainable sources, wasteful consumption, timber prices that ignore environmental and social costs, import barriers that deplete Southern revenues, and the residual impact of past Japanese practices continue to accelerate destructive logging in Southeast Asia. Sustainable tropical timber management will require fundamental changes to Japan’s shadow ecology. It is also imperative to confront Southern political forces driving deforestation. While reforms will certainly face formidable -- perhaps insurmountable -- political and economic barriers, unless the world community tackles these issues, the remaining primary forests of Southeast Asia will soon perish.

Recent estimates of global maternal mortality indicate that for the first time since the Safe Motherhood Initiative of 1987, deaths due to pregnancy-related causes are on the decline. Defined as the death of a woman while pregnant or within 42 days of termination of pregnancy, maternal mortality is one of the strongest health statistics showing the disparity between poor and rich countries. Although a global decline is documented, challenges to reducing maternal mortality, and meeting Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) for maternal health remain, particularly in many Sub-Saharan African and Southeast Asian countries. This study presents an assessment of Cambodia’s progress towards reaching the Millennium Development Goal of reducing maternal deaths by ¾ by 2015. The report examines issues related to the improvement of maternal health, outlining the magnitude, determinants, and prevention methods of maternal mortality globally and in Cambodia. Cambodia’s health policies and contextual factors impacting the maternal mortality ratio such as dramatic increases of skilled health personnel for delivery, delivery in health facility, and use of antenatal care are identified as key contributors to MMR reduction. Continued progress in reducing maternal mortality in Cambodia requires improvements to midwifery skill, competencies around normal and emergency birthing care, and salaries of midwives as well as an incentive for new graduates to work in the public sector. An increase in the cooperation between government health centers and hospitals are crucial to ensure obstetric referrals, supervision of health center staff, and an improvement in maternal death data collection. Finally a national priority to increase the use of family planning and safe abortion will significantly contribute to the continued reduction of MMR.

During the twentieth century, Soviet Armenian society has been witness to numerous situations in which national identity has become an expression of cultural paradox. From the 1940's to the 1990's, Armenia has been in a transitory state, oscillating between seemingly contradictory categories of East/West, capitalism/communism, traditional/modern, past/present and death/survival. Despite this state of flux, Armenian self-representations insistently point to a collective identity that defines itself as firmly rooted, fixed in space and enduring in understandings. This project explores stories and histories, especially anecdotes collected in the course of fieldwork in Soviet Armenia conducted over two extended periods from 1987 to 1992. What was sought were mechanisms that lend to culture the malleability to bend and twist without radical rupture, allowing culture to reinvent itself endlessly in the face of social pressures and to allow space for new cultural constructions of meaning. I chart the deeply contradictory symbolic structure of Soviet Armenian society as an instrument by which these reworkings are achieved. In so doing, it becomes clear that contradiction does not lead to cultural paralysis. On the contrary, the articulation of contradiction within a narrative mode allows for mediation of difference in a manner that is non-divisive. Further, I trace the modern history of Armenia to reveal the ways in which Armenians manage the affects of Sovietization, of the Diaspora and repatriation, and of Armenian independence and emergence into a new geo-political matrix. Special attention is given to the Soviet Nationality Policy of the 1920's and 1940's and to the disastrous earthquake of 1988, both of which have led to a renewed sense of nationalism and of peoplehood among the Armenians. In tracing symbolic repertoires, I reveal the transitory character of meanings and their implicational associations as culture repositions itself and renegotiates contradictions in new settings.

Land reform is closely related to agricultural development and the whole development process. This thesis examines the impacts of land reform on asset distribution, agricultural productivity, and the process of structural transformation. By investigating land reforms in Japan, Taiwan, and South Korea after World War II, I find that land reform has positive and long-run influences on the structural transformation. Through redistributing farmland from large landholders to small farmers, land reform is viewed as an effective instrument for the achievement of low levels of asset inequality. Land reform also provides small owner-cultivators incentives to work harder and invest more in their own farmlands, leading to an increase in agricultural productivity. The rapid growth in agricultural productivity stimulates the reallocation of labor from agricultural to non-agricultural occupations, which is the key part of structural transformation.

Investigating the concepts of qi and mai and their functions in the oldest extant, recently excavated, second century BCE practice-oriented guides to pulse taking, moxibustion, and needling practices, this thesis aims to show the prominent influence of water imagery and suggests a way to conceptualize its significance. These texts can be seen as transitional in the development of acupuncture, whose later practice would involve use of metal needles and be almost exclusively associated with the cosmological concepts of yin yang and wu xing and circular movements of qi that reached popularity in the Qin and Han dynasties and attested in the oldest and most famous Chinese medical compilation, also of the Han, the Huangdi neijing . In contrast, the paradigm of water, with its unidirectional free flows, is what informs these early medical manuscripts' understanding of qi and mai and their physiological movements.

The focus of this thesis has been on the identification of the primary conditions that attract or deter multilateral interventions into internal conflicts in the Asia Pacific region. This thesis develops a framework which is applied to four cases of internal conflict to see what roles twenty-two structural and perceptual conditions have played in determining why multilateral intervention was initiated in two of the cases, and why multilateral intervention failed to be initiated in the other two cases. The research found that multilateral organizations will accept risks and costs associated with intervention if certain structural and perceptual conditions make intervention an attractive option. These conditions are, a favourable or significant international environment or international event(s), the consent of a sovereign state (even if it is induced), sustained and critical regional and international media coverage, a complete collapse of the state in conflict tainting it with the term 'failed state', a high probability of success, potential economic benefits, a humanitarian crisis (in respect of Unregulated Population Movements and genocide/politicide), the possibility of a clear exit strategy, and a self-interested Member State who can greatly subsidize an intervention. Multilateral non-interventions, on the contrary, are driven by a combination of a lack of sustained and critically analyzed media coverage on conflict issues and consequences, generally positive tactics and strategies adopted by disputants, conflicts of a long duration, the international environment, economic factors unfavourable to intervention, resistance levels to intervention or a failure to call for intervention, lack of any clear exit points, and an escalation phase. The importance of these conditions suggest that multilateral organizations are reluctant to take risks and costs when political will, for the collective and self, are not provoked. Consequently, particular structural and perceptual conditions trigger or influence political will. The analysis of four case studies (East Timor, Solomon Islands, Philippines (Moros), and West Papua) concludes that multilateral interventions will be the exception to the rule in the foreseeable future given the obvious selection bias evident in these policies, and the project questions the ad hoc determinants of current multilateral intervention policies.

The purpose of this study is to investigate online customer-perceived value in relation to the online purchase of tourism products in Taiwan. The concept of value has been discussed in different fields for a long time. This study synthesises findings from these areas in order to identify the key antecedents and consequences which influence customer-perceived value in a B2C e-commerce setting. The customer-perceived value model which is developed broadens the value literature by integrating a range of key variables (i.e. price, quality, sacrifice and satisfaction) into a single theoretical framework. A systematic process of model development is followed to ensure a robust foundation for assembling the measure. A mixed-method research approach has been employed in order to gather in-depth data from a wide area, thereby enhancing the reliability and validity of the analysis. 40 company respondents from 18 companies and 45 consumers were interviewed in the exploratory phase, which enabled the components of the customer-perceived values to be considered. By co-operating with Taiwanese travel agents 914 usable consumer questionnaires were collected in the main survey. The model was tested in a retail setting using a sample of real consumers who were in the process of searching for a tourism product. The findings suggest that Taiwanese consumers, place greater importance on the sacrifice associated with purchasing tourism products than they do on the price, quality and satisfaction elements. The proposed customer-perceived value model explains greater variance in the value construct than other models from the literature, indicating strong analytical support for the framework.