Fighting Climate Change: Agriculture

During the Green Revolution, new strains of rice created at the IRRI in the Philippines multiplied the yields  available from the same amount of inputs and helped end the threat of starvation  to millions (although not everyone, of course, since rice cannot be grown in all  climates and conditions).

Read the full article here.

Review of Dunnett’s Niccolo Rising

In her extraordinary series of Francis Lymond novels, Dorothy Dunnett portrayed a man capable of taking full advantage of the glories of western Europe in one of its most vigorous and self-confident periods. To follow that series, she then began on the House of Niccolo, of which Niccolo Rising is the first, and set it some century prior to the time of Lymond as a means of exploring how that vigorous Europe came about and who were the men (and women) who shaped it.

Read the full review here.

Okhna Mong Port Co. Ltd. in G.D. Sardana and Tojo Thatchenkery, eds., Building Competencies for Sustainability and Organizational Excellence

Announcing: Walsh, John, “Okhna Mong Port Co. Ltd.,” in G.D. Sardana and Tojo Thatchenkery, eds., Building Competencies for Sustainability and Organizational Excellence (Macmillan: New Delhi, 2011), pp.253-61.

It’s the same abstract as the one from a few posts ago but I am going to put in back again:

Okhna Mong Port Co. Ltd. is part of Cambodia’s Mong Reththy Group and was created in 2002 to develop some 64 hectares of land in the southwest of the country as a private sector port, integrated with special economic zone, resort area and other facilities. Cambodia has been moving towards the factory age or the East Asian Economic Model, in which low labour costs provide competitiveness for large-scale manufacturing of mostly low value-added products primarily aimed at exporting. Clearly, an efficient port and attendant infrastructure will be of great assistance in promoting industrialization of the country. Further, infrastructure is an enabling technology that should provide benefits to anyone who wishes to take advantage of it, from individuals right up to the largest corporations. However, there is some concern that making this vital part of the country’ economic development solely part of the private sector is a form of the new enclosure of the commons and that, since it will reduce the role and effectiveness of state agencies within its confines, workers’ rights and protections will be compromised. This case study uses thick description of the Cambodian market, in the context of Mekong Region industrialisation more generally, to analyse the extent to which infrastructure provision is likely to benefit the country as a whole, the equitable distribution of new income opportunities and the social development of the country. Students will be asked to consider whether the existing public-private relationship may be considered to be optimal and what alternatives might be suggested. Additionally, they will be encouraged to debate the various routes to economic development and which of these should be chosen both by Cambodia and by other countries facing the same developmental goals.

Keywords: Cambodia, infrastructure, corruption, economic development, government

Review of Hsiao-Hung Pai’s Chinese Whispers

This extraordinary book details the lives of the many thousands of undocumented Chinese workers in the UK and the misery they almost universally suffer. This is shocking because, with the exception of well-known disasters such as the workers trapped and killed in a refrigerated lorry crossing the Channel and the dozens killed when the tide came in at Morecambe Bay cut off and drowned the cockle-pickers, one likes to think that one’s home country is full of compassionate people or, more importantly, that there are proper systems and regulations in place that can ensure that people are treated decently.

Read the full review here.

What Is Cowboy Capitalism?

‘Cowboy capitalism’ is a term given to the kind of capitalist system that takes place outside the control and supervision of the state. Without such control, there is no enforcement of property rights, no protection for consumers or workers and no need to pay formal taxes or duties.

Read the full article here.

Cranes among Chickens: Chinese Investment in Mainland Southeast Asia

I’m travelling on Thursday to attend a workshop at the Southeast Asian Research Centre of the City University of Hong Kong on “Chinese Investments in Southeast Asia.’ This is the abstract of the paper I will be giving:

Cranes among Chickens: Chinese Investment in Mainland Southeast Asia

Abstract

Resentment is reported to be growing in various parts of mainland Southeast Asia as Chinese capital remakes the business and physical environment. Contract workers involved with building physical infrastructure remain in Laos and Myanmar to establish their own businesses and plans for new and large-scale communities appear to threaten the societal status quo. Large-scale Chinese organizations construct large projects which will direct resources derived from outside the area directly to China, with the intervening territory simply unwanted land to be abridged as quickly as possible. As infrastructure is built, local entrepreneurial businesses are rendered redundant as new opportunities emerge for those merchants who can mobilise economies of scope and scale and who tend to arrive from another place. There are few areas in which local consumers or economic actors can feel a connection with the products of Chinese investment and so no sense of brand or organisational loyalty. Conflict is reported in Vietnam and suppression of news from northern Laos hides other potential flashpoints from view. There is an important role for the Chinese state and the organisations that help enact its policies in mainland Southeast Asia to identify potential sources of conflict and take necessary steps to ensure harmonious relations.

I’m not sure what the publishing set up will be but if anyone desperately wants a copy of the paper as it stands, then please let me know.

 

Business Ethics: Capitalism Captures the Commons

On the one hand it can be seen as businesses finding new products to sell to customers who want to buy them. On the other hand, it can be seen as the attempt by the capitalist system to convert into commercial products those things which used to be free to everyone.

Read the full article here.

What Is Creative Destruction?

The term ‘creative destruction’ was coined by the Austrian economist Joseph Schumpeter in the 1930s to describe the nature of capitalism. The idea is that the action of capitalism can be seen in the endless tearing down of the old and its replacement by the new.

Read the full article here.

Privatization of the Commons

One of the results of the late, advanced form of capitalism at work in the world today has been the attempt of the rich to acquire exclusive rights to those resources which used to be considered as openly available to all people. Those open resources are also called the ‘commons,’ after the common ground in medieval European village systems on which anyone could keep his or her animals.

Read the full article here.

Harvey: The Capitalist City

In his essay on the nature of capitalist urban development,* David Harvey describes some of the many ways in which such developments act to prevent the masses of the people (i.e. the non-elites or non-rich) from accessing the spaces and services of the city.

Read the full article here.