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Drawing on the Academic Literacies perspectives of Lea and Street and key genre theorists, this mixed-methods case study explored multilingual student experiences of academic literacy practices in one postgraduate social-science school in an English-medium university in Kazakhstan. Two questions guided the research: (1) To what extent and in what ways do students develop genre knowledge in their school EMI contexts?; (2) Which pedagogical approaches and strategies do students identify as beneficial in supporting genre knowledge development? The study found students developed genre awareness for research-related literacy practices, involving field-, tenor- and mode-related genre knowledge. The study also found student capacity to apply genre knowledge successfully across a range of text genres. Another finding was that challenge and success in genre knowledge development was a function of the extent of explicit feedback from instructors and peers and explicit assignment expectations. Each of our findings are consistent with the critique and recommendations of Lea and Street (1998; 2006) on the importance of a situated approach to developing student academic literacy practice that accounts for the larger institutional contexts and epistemological traditions in which those practices have meaning. These findings have important value for discussions and debates on student academic literacy learning and practice in higher education in Kazakhstan, across Central Asia and in other countries where policies for internationalization and research universities are rapidly transforming higher education literacy practice in the current era of globalization.

Normal 0 0 1 217 1239 10 2 1521 11.768 0 21 0 0 The divide between the poor and the rich in India is getting wider and deeper day by day in the post globalization and privatization. It also sounds paradoxical to hear that the development whatever is happening in India is preceded by large scale corruption where the politicians and the bureaucrats in tandem and in perfect collusion are siphoning off billions of rupees meant for the rural development. But, none of these projects could escape the brunt of corruption in India. The paper deals with a few such stories of corruption as case studies that came to limelight and are placed in ‘convergent’ media either in the blogs of television channels or print media or on line web-portals such as face-book/twitter or on You Tube. The paper hypothesizes that the current level of exposure of corruption in 24x7 ‘convergent’ media is not adequate and would like to explore the ways and means of utilizing it (convergent media) more ‘socially effectively’ to totally curb/eliminate the corruption from the top to the lower level in the governance in India. This study therefore follows multiple methods of inquiry, besides the case studies, including surfing the existing web-portals/blogs for the mobilized public views on exposure of corruption through the ‘convergent’ media and conducting interviews with the convenience sample of media experts in the field as also analyzing the secondary documents (for case studies). The study is therefore a descriptive and qualitative communication research.

POLITICS, INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS, AND GLOBALIZATION Cherry I Walker. Land-Marked: Land Claims and Land Restitution in South Africa. Johannesburg: Jacana Media; Athens: Ohio University Press, 2008. xii + 292 pp. Abbreviations. Maps. Photographs. Tables. Appendixes. Endnotes. Bibliography. Index. $26.95. Paper. Aninka Claassens and Ben Cousins, eds. Land, Power and Custom: Controversies Generated by South Africa's Communal Land Rights Act. Published for the Legal Resources Centre. Cape Town: UCT Press; Athens: Ohio University Press, 2008. xv + 392 pp. DVD. Maps. Abbreviations, Contributors. Notes. Tables. References. Index. $34.95. Paper. These two books are indispensable additions to the core literature on land reform in South Africa. In their different approaches and structures, they both offer a creative mix of academic insights and the entrenched experience of activists, and of local case studies with a wealth of concrete sociological detail alongside broad discourses on modes of analysis on a national and continental scale. They each concentrate on one element of what Cherryl Walker refers to as "the three-legged cooking pot" of land reform policy initiated in 1994: the Restitution Programme and the attempt to reform land tenure in the former Ban tus tans, respectively. Neither covers the third leg of redistribution (the transfer of former white-owned farmland to black occupants), which is the leg that has received most attention and funding - although some of Cherryl Walker's general evaluations do extend to cover it. Indeed, her somewhat skeptical and cautious overall conclusions about the future of land reform apply to both redistribution and restitution plans. Walker's account of restitution provides a look back to the origins of today's problem in previous decades when the injustices of forced removals occurred. Her study is enriched by personal accounts from this period, when she was a "participant observer" working to resist the removals. She supplies a similar insider's account of the first stage of the restitution program, but this time from a position within the new state as the commissioner for land claims in Kwazulu-Natal. Since moving into academia after 2000, her work has continued to benefit from a third perspective, that of academic researcher. The book thus juxtaposes and interrelates the three elements and perspectives: emotive personal memories and indelible images of dispossession; a planner's account of the mechanisms and frustrations of restitution; and the evaluation of the record. The memories from long ago of a litde girl lost in a removal suggest the ways in which such incidents became the currency of a historical narrative at the heart of the rhetoric of national liberation; at the same time, they provide a measure of success or failure and serve to remind us of the complex reality covered up by the national myth. The approach embodied in this fusion of perspectives serves in turn as an explanation of why the restitution program failed. Over and above the occasional lack of political will, the over-bureaucratization and inefficiency, and the mistaken policy formulations (all of which are acknowledged in the account), Walker sees inherent conflicts in the dual goals of reversing injustice and stimulating rural development oriented toward the poor: limits to what can be achieved and how quickly these goals can be achieved via restitution. …

Over the past several centuries, the West has emerged as a global leader economically, militarily, scientifically and technologically. This article explores why it has been so successful in the past in order to determine where its strengths lie at a time when the West's advantage is melting away. This article will argue that the West was the only civilisation that took advantage of the communications revolution involving cheap paper and the printing press in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and could do so because of its values and ethics. Compared to other parts of the world, the West offered more freedom to its peoples, and its societies were the most vertically mobile. This is an important lesson for today when we are in the midst of the digital and Internet communications revolution and another wave of globalisation, and when the whole world seems to be adopting Western values. It is important not to forget where these values originated.

Southeast Asia is one of the world's fastest-growing regions in terms of population and urban growth. The economic and physical landscapes of its cities continue to change with globalisation and transnationalism, requiring update and development of new urban and spatial practices. The aim of this paper is to reflect and review the state of urban planning and policy in Southeast Asia, focusing in particular on the roots of urban planning from European colonial planning, their inherent ideas and principles. Using the case study of Singapore, the intention is to drill down and examine the products of the first modernity represented by British colonial modernist planning, and discuss how largely Eurocentric planning models have shaped and impacted on the present urban structure and development, and are intersecting with the second wave of modernity brought on by globalisation and the new economic growth of the twenty-first century, especially in terms of addressing urban liveability and sustainability.

Tom Lodge. Politics in South Africa: From Mandela to Mbeki. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2003. vi + 314 pp. Notes. Bibliography. Index. $19.95. Paper. Gillian Hart. Disabling Globalization: Places of Power in Post-Apartheid South Africa. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002. xi + 385 pp. Appendix. Notes. Bibliography. Index. $21.95. Paper. It has now been a decade since South Africa emerged from its authoritarian and apartheid past. Inevitably, political scientists pose certain questions: How has South Africa weathered the transition to democratic and free market reform, and where does the "New South Africa" fit into the larger discourse on globalization and neoliberal capitalism? Gillian Hart and Tom Lodge offer two perspectives on these questions, and suggest that South Africa represents an important model for understanding the challenges that face transitional societies seeking to achieve rapid pursuit of free market democracy. Lodge takes a macro approach to analyzing the South African state, focusing on the political forces affecting the national government's leadership as it reshapes the economic and social framework of the country. Hart utilizes a micro analysis that places two communities within the KwaZulu-Natal province under scrutiny to determine why such geographically similar locales developed such different trajectories in their political and economic development. Both authors devote substantial attention to the Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP) developed in the early 1990s by the leadership of the African National Congress (ANC), South Africa's governing party, and the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU). The RDP proposes that growth can be combined with development by (1) meeting basic needs, (2) upgrading human resources, (3) strengthening the economy, (4) democratizing the state and society, and (5) reorganizing the state and the public sector. Lodge examines how the RDP quickly came to represent different things to different people inside South Africa, but by any measure there is little dispute that substantial progress has been made in South Africa in the areas of housing, clean water, electrification, primary health care, and public works. In 1996 the South African government formally adopted a package of economic policies known as GEAR (Growth, Employment, and Redistribution). While Lodge notes the general success of these policies across South Africa as a whole, Hart shows that these policies affected Ladysmith-Ezakheni and Newcastle-Madadeni in very different and sometimes contradictory ways. Part of the explanation for these differences derives from the personalities resident in these communities. …

Review of: Hoad, N., 2007. 'African intimacies: race, homosexuality, and globalization'. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

POLITICS, INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS, AND GLOBALIZATION Ian Scoones, Nelson M a ron g we, Biasio Mavedzenge, Jacob Mahenehene, Felix Murimbarimba and Crispen Sukume. Zimbabwe's Land Reform: Myths and Realities. Woodbridge, Suffolk: James Currey; Harare: Weaver Press; Auckland Park, South Africa: Jacana Media, 2010. xv + 288 pp. Bibliography. Index, f 16.99, $29.95, R1 75.00. Paper. One of the clear aims of this interesting and controversial book by Scoones et al. is to challenge five somewhat overstated myths that have dominated representations of Zimbabwe's post-2000 land reform. These are (1) that the land reform has been a total failure; (2) that the beneficiaries of this reform have been largely political "cronies" of the former ruling party, Zanu PF; (3) that there has been no investment in the new resetdement areas; (4) that agriculture in general is in complete ruins and has created chronic food insecurity; and (5) that the rural economy has collapsed. Challenges are made on the basis of detailed empirical research conducted over the past decade on "what has happened in the new resettiements" in Zimbabwe since 2000, and specifically in Masvingo Province in the country's dry southeast. The book's overall emphasis is explicidy on the "changing livelihoods of people who gained land" (31) - notably, not on those who didn't - and according to the authors, their data represent the "ground-level, field realities" that most others have failed to examine or acknowledge. These realities (in the Masvingo area, which differs markedly from many other parts of the country) are revealed through a combination of thematic lenses and linked sets of empirically oriented questions addressed in nine of the book's eleven chapters. (The other two are an introductory chapter that discusses debates on land reform and agrarian paths more generally, and a concluding chapter that revisits the five myths and explores "lessons" and policy priorities for supporting developments in the new resetdements.) Among other things, our attention is drawn to the varied origins and motivations of new setders and forms of land occupation across different sites, and the fragmented nature of the newly emerging agrarian structures (chapter 2). We learn of significant differentiation among households, substantial mobility on and off the schemes, including cross-border migration, and multiple livelihood strategies, which together have resulted in both "successes" and "failures" (chapters 3 and 8). Claims are made of unexpected if uneven levels of investment in plots, some production successes, the emergence of various agriculture-related enterprises, and new dynamics of "accumulation from below" (chapters 4, 5, and 10). This is despite a climate of sustained economic crisis and what is referred to as a "vacuum in policy thinking" (235) - here, the authors carefully side-step naming a highly party-politicized if not militarized policy sphere since 2000. In addition, we learn about the "highly complex rural labour market" (139) in the new resetdements (chapter 6), which the authors argue counters an over-emphasis by others on displacement and job losses. We also discover how land reform has altered the way in which "real markets" operate (chapter 7), with new commodity chains "opening opportunities for some and closing options for others" (149). Finally, the research reveals the complex struggles over territory, structure, and authority occurring in the new resetdements, and the surfacing of "hybrid" forms of governance that pose key challenges for state-making as well as for agricultural development (chapter 9). …

RELIGION Peter Paris, ed. Religion and Poverty: Pan-African Perspectives. Durham, N.C: Duke University Press, 2009. xxiv + 360 pp. Notes. Contributors. Index. $89.95. Cloth. $24.95. Paper. According to the foreword by Jacob Olupona, this book represents a culmination of several Ford Foundation-sponsored seminars, lectures, and discussions held over the course of four years in South Africa, Kenya, Ghana, Jamaica, and the United States, where various academics of religion and society interrogated issues related to the causes of poverty and the intersection between poverty and religion among African peoples, with an attendant focus on "poverty alleviation." As suggested, too, in Esther Mombo's chapter, "Religion and Materiality: The Case of Poverty Alleviation," the inference is that "poverty eradication" is viewed as a distant ideal, and that food aid and other philanthropic antihunger organizations are forced to accept poverty alleviation as the only feasible goal, given the widening chasm under globalization and neocolonialism between the haves and have-nots in the world, particularly in Africa and the African diaspora. One does wonder, though, how, if organizations like the World Bank and the IMF advance antipoor policies like Structural Adjustment that in fact exacerbate poverty, the same organizations could be expected to alleviate poverty in "partnership with religious organizations, particularly churches" (xvii). A further question is "Why do religious traditions not demand the outright eradication of poverty as a sine qua non for ethical existence of their various adherents in the world?" Perhaps writers like Kossi Ayedze in the chapter "Poverty among African People and the Ambiguous Role of Christian Thought," who proposes a materially oriented Christian gospel that caters to both souls and bodies (208), make us realize that Christian theologians still struggle with the injunction of Jesus to surrender everything to the poor and live a materially and spiritually selfless life. But the question still remains: Why does poverty exist in the world and Africa in particular, to the point that the modest United Nations Millennium Development Goal of reducing poverty by half by 2015 is now viewed as unrealistic and unattainable? Religion and Poverty is a broad-based text that charts the historical roots of poverty in Africa and the diaspora through genocidal processes like the trade in enslaved Africans from the seventeenth through the nineteenth centuries (see Katie Cannon's chapter, "An Ethical Mapping of the Transatlantic Slave Trade," and Barbara Bailey's instructive discussion of the subjugation particularly of women, "Feminization of Poverty Across Pan African Societies: The Church's Response - Alleviative or Emancipatory?"). The book highlights the challenges of economic globalization, which champions the transnational spread of corporate capitalism at the expense of informal entrepreneurs, especially women, who foster the survival of millions of families, youth, and children in the underdeveloped world (see 'The Informal Economy and the Religion of Global Capital" by the South African theologian Takatso Mofokeng), and it also investigates the contradictions between such imported notions and indigenous African religiocultural understandings - as, for example, in Maasai practice - that decry poverty and require collective access to land that cannot be owned (see Elizabeth Amoah's "African Traditional Religion and the Concept of Poverty"). …

Jennifer Cole and Deborah Durham, eds. Generations and Globalization: Youth, Age, and Family in the New World Economy. Blooming to n: Indiana University Press, 2007. 240 pp. Photographs. Notes. Works Cited. Index. $65,00, Cloth. $24.95. Paper. In their introduction to these case studies of change in generational relations and the new transnational economy, Cole and Durham remind us that World Bank and International Monetary Fund structural adjustment programs (SAPs) contributed to globalization. In Africa and elsewhere, the conditions attached to IMF loans had a deleterious effect on social programs that previously provided incentives and a safety net, particularly for a country's youngest and oldest generations. Likewise, globalization deepened the chasm between beneficiaries of the new market-driven economy and the many who found themselves further marginalized. The outcome was plummeting incomes and increased class divisions with "consumer driven enclaves" of wealthy elites surrounded by others for whom elite lifestyles and Western goods "were mostly out of reach" (4). Two demographic factors intersect with globalization: changing demographic balances from lowered infant mortality rates and extended life expectancy, and increased transnational migration as young people from the global South seek improved economic opportunities or safe havens from war in more affluent regions. Such demographic alterations challenge existing policies, both in Africa and elsewhere. Three of the seven cases in this volume illustrate how the state's role in providing a social safety net is under siege. China confronts lingering vestiges of state socialism as it faces new demands for "quality" (sushi) education from its growing urban, middle-class population (Woronov, ch. 1). Education that privileges individual achievement and prepares youth for roles in the new, highly competitive global economy is the goal of quality education in China. Madagascar struggles to define the gendered role of youth as its government moves from socialism to a liberalized global economy that has spawned new generational and gender relations (Cole, ch. 3). In the North, Western European nations work to shed their welfare state apparatuses in favor of a European Union model that champions individual responsibility, achievement of knowledge, and economic competitiveness, all in a socially integrated global economy that includes youth, middle-age wage earners, "third-age" (55-74 years) physically able workers, and "fourth-age" elders needing care (Greenberg & Muehlebach, ch. 6). Of the contributions, four investigate changing concepts of youth and work. Magazine and Sanchez (ch. 2) focus on transnational migration between Tlalcuapan, Mexico, and California, demonstrating how generational expectations of ayuda (reciprocal family work) have changed over time as global capitalism has opened opportunities for transformation and adaptation between and within generations. The new global market and "fresh contacts" with global players from abroad also affect cycles of intergenerational exchange in Madagascar (Cole, ch. 3), where youth negotiate older networks of patronage and exchange, creating novel opportunities for upward social mobility. …

Network Power: The social dynamics of globalization David Singh Grewal(New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2008), 416 pp.

Fantu Cheru. African Renaissance: Roadmaps to the Challenge of Globalization. London: Zed Books/Cape Town: David Phillip, 2002. Distributed by Palgrave USA. xv + 253 pp. References. Index. $25.00. Paper. In this interesting and easy-to-read book, Fantu Cheru argues that globalization, with its contradictory tendencies, is a complex, irreversible process and that "any vision of an 'African Renaissance' must, at the very least, provide a coherent strategy on how to navigate" it successfully (xiii). Motivated by what he refers to as the negative climate surrounding views on Africa, Cheru decided to provide a response to this pessimism. Ironically, however, some parts of his book unwittingly reinforce the very pessimism he set out to address. From the outset, Cheru argues that there are no simple solutions to Africa's economic problems, and he recommends commonsense approaches. In his view, the lackluster performance of the IMF/World Bank-engineered reforms stems mostly from the fact that neoliberal reform programs lack historical context. Paradoxically, Cheru's own analysis of the sources of Africa's crisis also lacks such a context. He underscores the hurdles that need to be overcome to realize an African renaissance, hurdles whose core elements can be summed up as dirigisme, rationalism, and preemption. His solutions include democracy and good governance, investment in education, poverty reduction, agricultural development, strong regional integration, managed urbanization and strengthening the urban-rural interface, and maintaining peace and preventing conflict. Notably, the list fails to mention macroeconomic management. Correctly, in my view, Cheru prescribes what he calls a "guided embrace of globalization with a commitment through pre-emptive national or regional development strategy and economic policy coordination" (xv). Undeniably, he is right to assert that blind surrender or adherence to globalization by African states will not necessarily advance their interests, especially from an equity point of view. Nevertheless, since Cheru aims to address the causes of Africa's economic and social crisis, he should have begun by identifying what he means by this crisis. Had he done so, he would have been able to make a distinction between symptoms and causes. For example, many of the factors he lists as causes of Africa's economic, social, and political crisis are, in and of themselves, symptoms of the crisis. A case in point is the agricultural decline which, whatever its eventual consequences, resulted from policy failures and environmental adversities; it is not a cause of the crisis. …

British Cultural Studies includes over thirty essays written by expert contributors, covering almost every aspect of culture and identity in Britain today and addressing the current transformations of British culture and identity in the context of globalization. The opening section of the book deals with different conceptions of Britishness and identity, including English, Scottish, Irish, Welsh, Asian and Black British identities. Section Two then analyses the interplay between tradition and heritage in contemporary culture, whilst the final section looks at the world of lifestyle groups, subcultures, and cultural politics and the way in which they have come in many ways to substitute for notions of Britishness.

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) has been an increasingly important issue for private and non-government businesses to consider when investing in countries. The paper specifically addresses transnational corporations and how they can negatively affect the development of countries when socially irresponsible and notes the increasing consumer awareness of corporate irresponsibility. It argues that better relationships between governments and corporations need to be established to reduce low living standards, exploitation, poverty, and unemployment, which would contribute to overall sustainable development. The paper recommends having CSR indicators for measurement, addresses why CSR should matter to business corporations, and gives insight into how the ILO can act and relate to CSR. This paper was written as an insight into the work of the World Commission on the Social Dimension of Globalization 2004 that aims to provide a fairer globalization for all.

Academics and activists who have followed the discussions of globalization in the World Social Forum literature and in progressive publications will readily agree with Soederberg that globalization does not simply signify an “inevitable and unstoppable” (26) process. In focusing on the concept of global governance, she contributes to the critical problematization of an international economic regime which all too frequently is treated as benevolent in its consequences and independent of politics. Soederberg strongly resists mythological descriptions of global (and regional) financial and other economic regimes, by pursuing an historical - materialist analysis of the emergence of the relevant organizations and institutions, always identifying the role of power, political influence and political planning in their construction. She nimbly walks the reader through a plethora of institutions which even the informed lay-person and political activist will not know how to distinguish. She obviously possesses enormous knowledge of their workings and their history. In this sense this is a very useful book to read, particularly for those who are not specialists in the fields of international relations, Third World development or the politics of international financial institutions.

Der Aufstieg des globalen Südens hat Folgen für die bislang eurozentrische Soziologie. Der Aufsatz fasst einige Aspekte des Aufstiegs und der eurozentrischen Soziologie zusammen, um dann einige Folgerungen für die Erneuerung der Soziologie zu ziehen.

Emmanuel Kwaku Akyeampong, ed. Themes in West Africa's History. Athens: Ohio University Press/Oxford: James Currey/Accra: Woeli Publishing Services, 2006. xii + 323 pp. Photographs. Bibliography. Index. $49.95. Cloth. $24.95. Paper. This edited volume is an exciting new West African history textbook that could be used effectively at both undergraduate and graduate levels. As its editor makes clear in the introduction, however, Themes in West Africa's History is not intended to be a substitute for a conventional historical textbook: it does not provide a narrative history of events. Nor is it organized, like Boahen's classic (though now out of date) Topics in West African History (Longman 1986 [1966]), around major episodes in West African history such as the trans-Saharan trade, Islamization, the slave trade, and colonialism. Rather, the chapters in this volume focus on themes-poverty, social inequality, environment and disease, religious transformation-that are particularly relevant to current conditions in the region; indeed, the authors of this volume share an interest in contributing to a "history of development" that speaks to Africa's contemporary problems and challenges. Thus while Themes does not solve the problem of out-of-print or out-of-date textbooks, it does potentially serve as a useful substitute, eliminating the need for a supplementary readings that, given copyright laws, can be costly. The volume comprises an introduction and thirteen essays-including contributions from linguists, political scientists, economists, and anthropologists, as well as historians-organized into three parts. The essays are well-written, reflect up-to-date scholarship, and conclude with useful recommended reading lists. Part 1 provides an excellent introduction to the most significant methodological approaches in the reconstruction of African history. Susan McIntosh summarizes the archaeological and climatological evidence for the prehistory of West Africa from roughly 10,000 BP; underlining the indigenous sources of food production, urbanism, and occupational specialization, she puts to rest earlier theories attributing West African social innovation and complexity to external stimulus. James Webb's chapter on ecology and culture complements Mcintosh's discussion, focusing on human adaptations to the environment through the period of increased external contact brought on by the trans-Saharan and Atlantic trades, colonialism, and postcolonial globalization. M. E. Kropp Dakubu provides a particularly lucid and accessible overview of historical and comparative linguistics, contact studies, and the importance of language studies for historians. And David Conrad suggests how the content and form of Manding oral traditions reveal important cultural values, as well as a sense of history at odds with the European historiographical tradition; his chapter might be productively assigned alongside The Epic of Sunjata, a staple of West African history courses. …

A powerful case for the global market economy The debate on globalization has reached a level of intensity that inhibits comprehension and obscures the issues. In this book a highly distinguished international economist scrupulously explains how globalization works as a concept and how it operates in reality. Martin Wolf confronts the charges against globalization, delivers a devastating critique of each, and offers a realistic scenario for economic internationalism in the future. Wolf begins by outlining the history of the global economy in the twentieth century and explaining the mechanics of world trade. He dissects the agenda of globalization's critics, and rebuts the arguments that it undermines sovereignty, weakens democracy, intensifies inequality, privileges the multinational corporation, and devastates the environment. The author persuasively defends the principles of international economic integration, arguing that the biggest obstacle to global economic progress has been the failure not of the market but of politics and government, in rich countries as well as poor. He examines the threat that terrorism poses and maps the way to a global market economy that can work for everyone.