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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]

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]