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Asef Bayat. Revolution without Revolutionaries: Making Sense of the Arab Spring. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2017, 275 pp., paper, (9781503602588). Asef Bayat, famed for his Life as Politics (2010, [...]

The pandemic has wiped out over 4 million human lives and caused huge economic loss. As poverty forecasts famine, the super-rich became richer. The consequence of the pandemic has also shrunk the democratic space. In selected cases, the growing perception of social inequality matched the number of caseloads of infections and deaths. The response to the pandemic varied depending not only on the effectiveness of the responses by the respective governments but also by the presence of scientific thinking in society. The pandemic and the distribution of vaccine highlighted the need for interdependence and cooperation between the nations. It has also created a need for renewing global justice based on humanity and rationality in the post-pandemic world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

By comparing the response to the COVID-19 pandemic in the Tiger economies, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Singapore, this article examines the advantages and limitations of the statist command and control approaches to crisis management. Local, regional, and global politics as well as global political economy impinge and influence the state response. The article argues that a combination of factors – the institutional memory, overall state capacity and efficacy rooted in the preexisting institutional nexus, performance legitimacy, trust, reliance on scientific rationality, and integration with global scientific networks – stood in good stead in dealing with the crisis. Yet, as the crisis rolled on, some of the stellar performers showed considerable gaps in planning and politics trumped sensible policies. Despite the commonality, the article shows that there were important differences in the responses of the three Tiger economies, especially in rolling out the vaccines, which can be explained not only by the state capacity but also the larger global politico-economic contexts. The article argues that the state capacity is affected by the global dynamics, the specificity of geopolitical and historical contexts, which must be factored in in explaining successes and failures of state responses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Political sociology in Southeast Asia has focused on discussions of economic development and democratization, as well as debate over whether Western or indigenous traditions provide the most useful democratic model for the region. Scholars must guard against losing objectivity in discussing the merits of one or the other cultural paradigm. Political sociologists must also be mindful of the limits imposed upon them by most Southeast Asian societies because of their discipline's controversial nature and governmental or cultural ambivalence toward freedom of discourse.

In an attempt to examine Eurasian globalization historically, this paper outlines three phases of globalization starting from 200 BCE to 1492 CE as Phase 1 and 1500 CE to 1999 CE as Phase 2 and from 2000 CE Phase 3. By historicizing the concept and the process of globalization, the paper attempts to provide a more global rather than a Europe-centred history of globalization and modernization. The paper builds on the idea of Eurasia and offers a new perspective of Eurasian globalization by pivoting on China's role in both Phase 1 and Phase 3 of globalization. The paper uses historical literature that has been not only critical of the Eurocentric view of the world but also provides a more connected view of global history. Concurring with Steger and James [2019. Globalization matters. Cambridge University Press] that globalization has not outlived its utility, the paper seeks to historicize and globalize the discussion of globalization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Corruption is examined as a social problem and a phenomenon that illustrates certain problems in agenda-setting in sociology. The corruption is also examined as a social problem and an indicator of the corruption sociology, drawing on the writings of Syed Hussein Alatas, especially his notion of captive mind or the absence of intellectual autonomy on the part of the Third World sociologists.

With India's robust, neo-liberal economic growth and the growing buying power of the Indian consumers, cricket, a popular sport in India, too, has been transformed. Indian Premier League is a short-format, high-value cricket league that features major international cricket stars who come to India to join one of the eight franchised teams that take part in this competitive tournament. Using the sociological framework of glocalization, this article argues that the intersection of the global economic forces and the local culture that celebrates cricket has created a glocal space for its performance, and with the mediation of communication technology, it has widened the viewership globally. Infused with Indian money, motifs, and meanings, a new spectacle of consumption is on offer. The emergent consumer culture has transformed the game itself, adding a showbiz quality to it. Through the analysis of Indian Premier League cricket, this article sheds light on the consequences of cultural globalization, at once homogenizing and heterogenizing, an essential characteristic of glocalization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The main task of this article is to link the issue of the identity of migrants to the human security of migrants with temporary labor status. This article explores not only the politico-economic circumstances of temporary labor migration amid conditions of insecurity, vulnerability, and precarity, and its social and cultural underpinnings, which are mediated by migrants’ class position, but also the consequences on temporary migrants’ identities. The temporary migrant workers from Bangladesh in the Gulf Coordinating Council (GCC) countries including the United Arab Emirates (UAE) belong to multiple spaces yet their families and homes are foremost anchors in their narratives of belonging. The space most temporary migrant workers occupy is glocal with a specific focus on geography as well as the community. The article addresses the class-based identity and human security of the temporary Bangladeshi migrants in the UAE. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper argues that the world is facing a condition of moral recession with profound and debilitating consequences in all spheres of life. Highly specialized social sciences are failing to address the issue of the moral conditions in a systematic manner. Differentiation, a master sociological process, has relativized the world to the extent that issues of morality and ethics are assigned to specialists, i.e., theologians and moral philosophers. It is only the extreme cases of inhumanity and moral depravation that bring the moral issues to public attention. Defining the value of life as a key moral value, and discussing the deaths and human sufferings in the seemingly endless wars, the paper draws attention to the need for shared global moral values to underpin a global society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on a study related to enhancement of lives of women in Bangladesh due to spread of mobile. Topics discussed include restricted presence of women in labour markets of the country before enactment of the Millennium Development Goals, increase in empowerment of women with transformation in traditional gender role and reduction in maternal mortality and improvement in female literacy level.

This paper traces the history of environmental movement and the growing awareness of sustainable living in the past half a century. Taking The Silent Spring of Rachel Spring (published in 1962) as a point of departure, this paper navigates through the interplay of awareness and consciousness raising, knowledge production, institution building, environmental movement and its globalization. The paper examines the lack of development of a holistic understating of environmental challenges of the world in the face of issue-based social movements. The paper presents the transformation of the conceptualization of development from a narrow "economic development" as measured in income growth to a more inclusive sustainable development where the focus is on quality of life, wellbeing and happiness. The paper provides a brief history of the environmental activism prompted by the growing awareness about environmental and ecological sustainability to the globalization of the environmental movement. In this process environmental activism launched by the civil society, the state and inter-state institutions played an important role. Movements for political rights and economic entitlements need to include environmental rights as an integral part of social movements. In many parts of the Global South such an integrated, thus holistic, movement is still wanting or remains at a rudimentary stage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The socio-cultural changes in Southeast Asia, particularly in Malaysia and Singapore, can be beneficially examined in terms of the concepts of globalisation and glocalisation. The two concepts are related and their evolution and transformation highlight the tangled relationship between the discipline of sociology and globalisation. Although the sociological concepts and theories in the Western sociological discourses have a general import, there are problems in the application of these in the local contexts of Malaysia and Singapore. This calls for a critical and creative refinement of the concepts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Presents an introduction to the April 2005 issue of "International Journal of Contemporary Sociology."

The article presents information on the proposition that in the globalized world the conceptual-if not geographical-boundaries between 'national' and 'international' have been blurred. Not only does this blurring illustrate the validity of increasing cross-border activities predicted by globalization theorists, it also points to the salience of 'nation' and 'nation building' even in the midst of globalization. In this article, is explored the implications of international volunteerism for nation-building in Singapore. It is discussed how international volunteerism through the Singapore International Foundation has the effect of promoting citizens participation in Singapore. This is achieved by fostering a sense of inclusion, developing social capital, promoting volunteerism internally and nurturing a sense of national pride and identity, while developing globally-oriented citizens. All of these attainments contribute to the development of a civic society in Singapore. 'Civic' Society is a "non-political variant of the civil society concept which is containable within the dominant "political culture"

Presents a critical analysis of two books on social development. 'Society and State Market,' by John Martinussen; 'The Post-Development Reader,' by M. Rahnema, edited by Victoria Bawtree.

In evaluating the consequences of the Arab Spring 8 years later, this paper not only focuses on the short‐term consequences of the uprisings that swept through a number of countries in the Middle East and North African region but also analyzes the long‐term prospects for democratization and development in the MENA region. The impact of the Arab Spring, despite its promises and the expectations of the rest of the world, has been dismal. While only Tunisia made a successful transition to a democratic polity with a constitution guaranteeing the basic rights of the people, the rest of the Arab Spring countries remain in the grip of the authoritarian rule, and countries such as Syria, Libya, and Yemen have been degenerated into bloody civil wars with dwindling hope of peace and freedom. On economic front, the growth has been tardy, showing little difference with countries that were unaffected by the Arab Spring. Yet, the paper concludes, echoing historian Eric Hobsbawm's view, that revolutionary outcomes need not be judged as failure too quickly as they are likely to be partial success in the long term. The impact may be observed in the area of social opening, newer class alliances, and the emergence of a less rapacious, reformed, hybrid authoritarianism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

At a cursory look, thanks to the ambitious title, the readers might expect that Alamgir, who has hitherto made his mark by proliferating microeconomic studies of Bangla desh, has come up with his magnum opus, nothing less than a macro-level study of the economy of Bangladesh based on his research. In that expectation, the work under review is bound to disappoint. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Argues the presence of a gender gap concerning sustainable interest in science in Singapore. Survey finding on the issue from junior college and polytechnic students in the country; Exploration of the disadvantages set by the classroom background.