Herb Thompson

Ignorance and Ideological Hegemony: A Critique of Neoclassical Economics

Neoclassical economists increasingly devise compelling, mathematically elegant hypotheses with dubious, to say the least, policy relevance. They are also most reluctant to engage in conversation with alternative paradigmatic schools (eg., feminists, Marxists, Institutionalists or Post-Keynesians). In doing so they have become intellectually incestuous, and unconcerned about being unaware of what they don’t know (defined as ignorance-squared). Ignorance-squared does not merely imply a lack of knowledge, but also the possibility that it is being produced. It is argued that neoclassical economists, as traditional intellectuals, cultivate the social production of ignorance, and propagate it to their students, in the struggle for ideas. This is done through narrow pedagogy, delineation of research parameters, and by constraining the production and presentation of non-neoclassical knowledge. While a number of reasons exist for the intellectual narrowing of the discipline, one fundamental answer to the query “why is this the case?” may be found in the notion of ideological hegemony.

The economic causes and consequences of the Bougainville crisis

Papua New Guinea has, until most recently, shown all the signs of a newly independent developing economy on the move. However, since November 1988 the nation has been overshadowed by the most serious national crisis since independence in 1975. The crisis has come in the form of a rebellion in the North Solomons Province, one of the wealthiest provinces in the nation and home of one of the largest copper mines in the world. The copper mine has closed; the island is under the control of the Bougainville Revolutionary Army; the national government has lost royalties from a mine which has provided 44% of its exports and 16% of its gross domestic product since 1972; and over a hundred Papua New Guineans have lost their lives in battle. This paper attempts to provide an insight into the causes and consequences of a rebellion which, if not successfully resolved, could set back the development potential of this small resource rich nation by a generation.

Social forestry: An analysis of Indonesian forestry policy

The old native man is showing the white fellow, who looks to be a sallow and paunchy anthropologist, how to light a fire. They are squatting on the ground, around a pile of kindling, and the old mans ten-year-old grandson is squatting too, watching every move. The old man strikes the flint again and again but cannot get the shavings going. Finally, the white man grunts, as if enough film has been wasted, rummages in his pocket, pulls out a cigarette lighter and reaches over without a word. Flick, the flame shoots out, the shavings are lit. The boy looks up at the white man, then at his grandfather, then, eyes narrowed, back to the white man. Freeze. An entirely new, undreamed of, and dominant power has entered his life. And it comes from someone elses father or grandfather, not from his own Bevis 1995, p. 58

Indonesia's wood resource: Trends and policies

Abstract Until the 1960s, the rainforests of Indonesia remained principally un-exploited, but from 1965 onwards the use of Indonesias forests for economic benefit began with the start of extensive logging. To assist the process, the government of President Soeharto sought a massive infusion of foreign investment to fund this economic transformation, taken over by Indonesian entrepreneurs in the 1980s. The primary market was the Japanese. This demand has been the key factor for the subsequent export boom. Tropical deforestation continues apace to the detriment of future generations. “Sustainability”, with reference to tropical rainforests, is non-existent by any definition. Government policies continue to undervalue the tropical rainforest economically and ecologically.

The Building and Construction Industry: Retaliation or Reform?

Abstract This article examines the Australian building and construction industry within the context of economic downturn and recession. Due to the poor reputation of the industry, increasingly accepted by the public at large, two processes have been put in place. One is a Royal Commission into Productivity in the Building Industry of New South Wales which has recommended a variety of punitive measures to bring the industry under control The other is a programme set up within a corporatist framework, described as the Construction Industry Development Strategy. The Strategy is designed to reform the industry through channels of consultation and cooperation at all levels. It has argued that the remedies of the Royal Commission are anachronistic in light of the changes which have been taking place within the industry throughout the 1980s and up to the present. At the same time the process of reform is seen as mis-specified and manipulative in its attempt to bring economic stability and security to one of the...

The Migration of Indian Human Capital: The Ebb and Flow of Indian Professionals in Southeast Asia

been a more consistently robust attention to socio-cultural frameworks. And even though non-western scholarship is being showcased here, the scarcity of citations to relevant publications from the West is frustrating in some chapters. Regarding presentation, more careful editing would have avoided small errors in bibliographies and elsewhere; and the provision of separate filmographies would have been helpful. For a price of £85.00, the reader might reasonably expect more than four images (three of which are from one film). As a comparison, Karen Strassler’s recent book on photography in Java, Refracted Visions (Durham: Duke University Press, 2010), contains 127 photographs, mostly in colour, in a paperback costing only £16.99. The world of publishing moves in mysterious ways. If printed images are too expensive, Routledge might consider hosting a website with relevant visuals, as other publishers have done. Despite these grumbles, this is a very useful contribution to the field. As the editors state, no book on the region has been published since David Hanan’s edited book, Film from Southeast Asia (Hanoi: SEAPAVAA, 2001), and this book does something to fill that gap, although as Lim mentions, Ingawanij and McKay’s Glimpses of Freedom: Independent Cinema in Southeast Asia, then forthcoming, is now available (Ithaca: Cornell Southeast Asia Program, 2012); readers may also be interested in Ian Smith’s edited book,The Cinema of China and South East Asia (NewYork:Wallflower Press, 2012). However, Lim’s claim that there has not been much published in English on film in Southeast Asia needs qualification. Those seeking more in-depth and theoretically situated analyses of cultural interpretation and political intervention will find many journal articles and books about film in most of the countries covered here. It is surprising how many have not been cited in this volume; for example, Yvonne Michalik and Laura Coppens’ collection on Indonesian cinema, Asian Hot Shots (Marburg: Schüren, 2009). Overall, although this volume is not definitive, it has something for everyone with an interest in Southeast Asia, particularly in relation to strategies by documentary filmmakers who do not conform to official policies, and also provides a helpful general orientation to film in the region.

The Economy of China

benign influence in Timor-Leste, even though as colonial masters they were inefficient, imparted little of substance and were occasionally quite violent and cruel. The suppression of the 1959 rebellion in Viequeque, for instance, left hundreds brutally murdered and a history of ethnic animosity that lasts until this day. Only occasionally does Gunn’s contextualising slip into editorialising; for example where he equates a lack of an environmental impact study concerning the purchase of heavy oil generators with corruption (p. 66). There is no doubt this particular issue was controversial, for environmental but more so for economic reasons. There is also no doubt there was considerable concern about corruption in Timor-Leste, which Gunn notes elsewhere. But to equate the particular issue of a lack of an environmental impact study with corruption is, in this reader’s view, a misunderstanding. Perhaps this issue might have been better focused if it had referred to the questionable nature of the ‘‘limited tendering’’ process that characterised much of the government’s large-scale purchases, including the tendering for aspects of the electrification of Timor-Leste of which the generators were a part. In most cases, however, the elaborations in this book are supportable, factual and helpful. The brief biographical notes on a series of political actors are accurate and concise and the more interpretative accounts of historical events hit the mark with very considerable accuracy. Though researchers will come across all of the names here in other contexts, it is useful to have them presented here in chronological order. What are often passing references to names, places and events are allowed more detail here than might otherwise be provided. TheHistorical Dictionary of East Timor is marked by its comprehensiveness, a fact illustrated by its bibliography having its own introduction, which is probably necessary given its depth and reach. It may be that there is a more comprehensive bibliography on Timor-Leste somewhere but, if there is, it is well hidden. The bibliography alone is a comprehensive resource for researchers. For most, this work should rightfully be the standard reference point for matters Timor-Leste. For more sanguine readers, it remains a very enjoyable reacquaintance and should occasionally constitute lively points of discussion for those interested in matters East Timorese.

Rural Transformations and Development – China in Context: The Everyday Lives of Policies and People

Russian economy into a chaotic, inequitable and impoverished mess and the failure of the Asian miracle caused a crisis in neo-liberal development ideas at the World Bank. Second, this loss of legitimacy led to a new market-based framework which placed political participation, partnership and citizenship rather than structural change at the centre of aid projects and financial investments. Third, there were new ways of interweaving neo-liberal ideology in the discourse of good and efficient governance, which, for example, highlighted public-private partnerships and community projects. Various institutional arrangements, such as consultative processes, expert monitoring of performance and written agreements with community leaders, mediated relations between sectional interests and markets. These approaches involved the co-option of groups and movements which were sources of opposition. Further, health and education expenditures were redefined as human capital. Fourth, the Bank accepted, both theoretically and ideologically, that it was engaged in a political process. This involved direct and indirect pressures and trade-offs between labour unions, non-governmental organisations, transnational investors and the Bank itself. Local states had their own political calculations, priorities and agendas which required compromises between them and the Bank. According to Carroll, these domestic forces limited the ability of the Bank to implement its new mixture of political reform and market extension. The social biases of the new paradigm were revealed to the extent that labour unions and other organisations, which represented the poor and the marginalised, were reluctant to participate in consultative processes. The gloomy conclusion is that the new strategies of the World Bank will not of themselves reduce poverty. What they will do is dilute political contestation over the values and assumptions of neo-liberalism. In the end, Carroll has concluded that two fundamental problems with the Bank’s approach have been its inability to address the reality of class power and its false belief that individuals behave like rational calculators within competitive markets.

Book reviews including 'Development and security in Southeast Asia, vol. 3: globalization', edited by David B. Dewitt and Carolina G. Hernandez

Population and Ethnic Demography in Vietnam, a revised translation of a text originally published by the Hanoi Social Sciences Publishing House in 1995 authored by the director of the Institute of Ethnology, offers itself as the first book in English on this broad subject. Seeking to advance the study of ethnic groups in Vietnam, Khong Dien defines a new research terrain in the field of ethno-geography and ethno-demography with a special concern for such indicators as birth, mortality, marriage structure, and migration, albeit, as acknowledged, a line of enquiry he traces back to Marx. As acknowledged, ethno-demography requires precise statistics. The book divides into four chapters: ethnic composition; the distribution of population and ethnic groups; the process of migration and population redistribution; and population structure and population growth. Under ethnic composition, definitions and classification principles are placed under the spotlight offering some history of socialist research on this problem. By the late 1950s, 64 ethnic groups had been scientifically identified in Vietnam falling into three linguistic families. In preparation for the general census of 1979, a revised list of 54 ethnic groups was determined. But where the merging of groups was a scientific convenience, so new ethnic identities have appeared challenging these earlier determinations. As for population distribution it is notable that, of the 54 identified groups, only Kinh, Hoa, Khmer and Chain live predominately in the plains, the rest in the mountainous regions. The most notable feature of ethnic groups in the north is that they are widely distributed across communes and districts. Southern ethnic groups tend to be more concentrated, but the impact of war, migration and other factors has also imposed change. But across three census periods; 1960, 1979, and 1989, the demographic expansion of Kinh in the northern mountains is pronounced. Today there are only eight provinces in which Kinh are less than 50% of the population. We wish to know more about the impact of Kinh migration upon the highlanders along with associated forestry activities. Under migration, we learn that the role of the state in guiding migration has deep

From Information to Knowledge: Teaching and Learning Online

There are a number of forces driving the transformation towards a knowledge-based global economy. The growing role of information and communications technologies, a continuing shift towards services, and the globalization of markets and social formations are just some of the key ones (Pilat, p. 5). Within this environment an increasing number of firms now see themselves, in the first instance, as creators, organizers and developers of knowledge (Drake, p. 24). This is combined with devolution of managerial responsibilities, more flexibility and outsourcing, and a renewed emphasis on networking within the firm to enhance the efficiency of information flow (Vickery & Wurzburg).