The main goal of the paper is to present goals and objectives of the American foreign policy towards the Asia -Pacific region (1989 -2009). The period under discussion may be characterized by drastic changes in a global and regional geopolitical environment. In that context it is worth to monitor changes or lack of changes in the U.S. foreign policy towards this more and more important region of the world. The article refers to administrations of three U.S. presidents: George Herbert Bush (1989 -1993), William Jefferson Clinton (1993 -2001) and George Walker Bush (2001 -2009). The analysis takes into account mechanisms of shaping U.S. policy towards Asia -Pacific, a theoretical background of U.S. foreign policy and basic program documents of the U.S. administration. It is worth noticing that in spite of essential changes in world and regional systems, U.S. FP objectives towards the region remained similar, considering current political situation.
The Indonesian nation state was at the beginning an artificial creation but ultimately it appeared to be quite genuine and durable. The main aim of this article is to analyze how was it possible to create and retain an Indonesian national community. There are four main factors which have contributed to the establishment of the Indonesian nation and its national identity and today are still responsible for their maintenance: nationalism and national discourse, the modern nation-state, religion and the performance of nation in everyday practices. An investigation of these factors may shed some light in response to the question about the persistence of the national community in Indonesia.
This paper examines the tests and trials of building a multi-ethnic state in Malaysia. It shows how the state—governed for over half a century by the UMNO and the BN ruling elite—persistently clings on to the notion of Bumiputeraism and aspiration of a Malay Malaysia. This is an anathema to building a multi-ethnic state that celebrates the wealth of diversity in the post-colonial state it was built upon. This paper questions the predominance of the Malays and Islam as the standard norm, which inadvertently affects the way the state treats the minority ethnic groups. The authors argue that elite intransigence among the proponents of Bangsa Melayu could well damage the foundations of the state and change altogether the face of Malaysia forever.
Research in folk conceptions is one of the supporting pillars of psychological approaches to the study of wisdom. We have administered to a religiously diverse sample of Asian university students (n = 646) a questionnaire of our own design focused on deepening our knowledge of the personality context of Eastern wisdom. Results obtained from a factor analysis (partially in agreement with findings of other authors) indicate that in the context of present understanding of the East it is also appropriate to consider wisdom in relation to emotionality, motivation and social skills.
Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) have been constructed as a new site for educational, sociocultural, political, and economic investment. Coupled with such a growing and popular recognition of ECEC as a significant period of children’s learning and development are critical issues concerning accountability, affordability, and accessibility to quality education and care for all. Highlighting the preschool education systems in Taiwan and Hong Kong as two examples from Asia, this paper aims to open up a discursive space for re-conceptualizing the effects of neoliberal discourse and how such a system of reasoning reconstructed notions of inclusion/exclusion to limit the making of quality education and the provision of care for all.
For a long time Westerners were attracted to the Far East by a romantic vision of the Orient. This essay explores how written tourism texts, travel advertisements, and related ephemera, blended fantasy and reality to lure Western visitors to the remote, ‘exotic’ British colony of Hong Kong. Hong Kong was a divided city, with a small British contingent overseeing a large Chinese society. Westerner writers, advertising illustrators, and the tourism industry generally, reflected colonialist perspectives and exploited a largely contrived East-West dichotomy between Hong Kong’s Chinese and British residents, reinforcing an Orientalist view of exoticism and colonial superiority. The essay treats tourism images as cultural relics and social statements, which transmitted disturbing messages about relationships of social power, through a compositional device called visual positional superiority. The essay takes the reader on a hypothetical Grand Tour of colonial Hong Kong, visiting racially segregated Western enclaves, the private world of international hotel “micro-cultures”, and “contact zones”, where people met in “asymmetrical relations of domination and subordination”. The essay concludes with musings on Hong Kong’s recent effort to change its global identity to “Asia’s World City”, after the British transfer of sovereignty to the People’s Republic of China in 1997. Even in the postcolonial era, efforts to encapsulate Hong Kong’s essence rely on troubling symbols carried over from the colonial past.
Indians in Afghanistan and Pakistan, although lucky to live in the neglected neighbourhoods, are victims of the hostile and discriminatory state persecution and local environs. Historically acknowledged as one of the centres of Indian civilization, where Buddha himself had travelled, Afghanistan has substantially differed from India in recent times. People of Indian origin in Afghanistan are now dwindling and diminishing, and their conditions are palpable and precarious. Across the Hindukush, Pakistan, the very heart of India till the mid-20th century, holds the dubious distinction of persuading an intolerant approach towards India since its creation. A professed Islamic state, Pakistan’s prejudice towards minorities, even against some Islamic sects, is reflected even in its constitution. Created after an artificial vivisection, it shed its secular character rather too soon to embrace Islam. Immediately after the vivisection, all non-Islamic living mortals, especially the Hindus and Sikhs, in the country were designated as unwanted. Not so long ago a cherished land of Hinduism and Indian civilization, Afghanistan and Pakistan are now nightmares for persons with Indian roots. The author has analysed three basic issues. Firstly, the paper discusses India’s intimate civilizational contacts with the region and how the course of history has changed over a period of time. Secondly, the paper tried to identify those catalysts, which were responsible for the abrupt and indiscriminate mutation of the hard-core ideologies in Pakistan and Afghanistan that has dislodged India from the two countries. Finally, the paper sheds some limited light on the contemporary time and events which have had a bearing on the changing history of Asia.
This study pays attention to the phenomenon of international migration of the population from Asia and Africa to Europe, or more precisely to the European Union and attempts to point out that this is a category that brings a large number of problems to the political systems of European countries. In the case of population movement we can speak not only about the negatives, as the topic is presented in the current socio-political discourse, but we can also talk about the positives and benefits for receiving and sending countries. Positives and negatives are fundamentally influencing the policy of liberal-democratic nation states and this phenomenon is the cause of radicalisation and diversification of the policy in the European area.
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