Books

China’s efforts to stimulate industrial development and economic growth through the allocation of investments are analyzed. Cheng concludes with an overall assessment of the distinctive features of the allocation pattern. Includes 41 statistical tables.

The lectures presented in this volume were given during the summer of 1970 under the sponsorship of the CIC Summer Program on South Asia and the Center for South and Southeast Asian Studies of the University of Michigan. It should be recognized that these essays appear in revised lecture form, and not as fully polished scholarly papers. They carry nevertheless the authority—and no little verve—of experienced scholars concerned with both the traditions and the changes so characteristic of modern India.

Since 2009, the Gabii Project, an international archaeological initiative led by Nicola Terrenato and the University of Michigan, has been investigating the ancient Latin town of Gabii, which was both a neighbor of, and a rival to, Rome in the first millennium BC. The story of Gabii, like that of many ancient cities, is one of growth, transformation, and diminishment. In this volume, editors Laura M. Banducci and Anna Gallone highlight the close but sometimes tense relationship between where people live, work, trade, and bury their dead. We learn that, contrary to what you may have read elsewhere about the Roman world, the distinction between spaces of the living and spaces of the dead was not so clear-cut. Areas considered to be “within the city,” or what “being in the city” implied shifted in the minds of the locals as their priorities and needs changed. ​ Assembled in an innovative digital format, the story of the site is presented three times in a “layered” structure: the first, titled “The Story,” explains the narrative of the excavation area in a simple chronological way. The second layer, “More,” contains the explanation of the phasing and the features of the site and their interpretation. The third layer contains the stratigraphic description and the technical reports on specialist materials. The volume is beautifully illustrated with traditional photographs and drawings, as well as an interactive 3D model based on photogrammetric models produced at the time of excavation. The 3D model is linked throughout the text by individual stratigraphic unit numbers and archaeological features. A series of interactive maps of the site, including GIS line-drawings and orthorectified aerial photographs, provide further spatial details.

Efforts to reform the U.S. campaign finance system typically focus on the corrupting influence of large contributions. Yet, as Raymond J. La Raja and Brian F. Schaffner argue, reforms aimed at cutting the flow of money into politics have unintentionally favored candidates with extreme ideological agendas and, consequently, fostered political polarization.
Drawing on data from 50 states and the U.S. Congress over 20 years, La Raja and Schaffner reveal that current rules allow wealthy ideological groups and donors to dominate the financing of political campaigns. In order to attract funding, candidates take uncompromising positions on key issues and, if elected, take their partisan views into the legislature. As a remedy, the authors propose that additional campaign money be channeled through party organizations—rather than directly to candidates—because these organizations tend to be less ideological than the activists who now provide the lion’s share of money to political candidates. Shifting campaign finance to parties would ease polarization by reducing the influence of “purist” donors with their rigid policy stances.
La Raja and Schaffner conclude the book with policy recommendations for campaign finance in the United States. They are among the few non-libertarians who argue that less regulation, particularly for political parties, may in fact improve the democratic process.

Big Digital Humanities has its origins in a series of seminal articles Patrik Svensson published in the Digital Humanities Quarterly between 2009 and 2012. As these articles were coming out, enthusiasm around Digital Humanities was acquiring a great deal of momentum and significant disagreement about what did or didn’t “count” as Digital Humanities work. Svensson’s articles provided a widely sought after omnibus of Digital Humanities history, practice, and theory. They were informative and knowledgeable and tended to foreground reportage and explanation rather than utopianism or territorial contentiousness. In revising his original work for book publication, Svensson has responded to both subsequent feedback and new developments.

Svensson’s own unique perspective and special stake in the Digital Humanities conversation comes from his role as director of the HUMlab at Umeå University. HUMlab is a unique collaborative space and Digital Humanities center, which officially opened its doors in 2000. According to its own official description, the HUMlab is an open, creative studio environment where “students, researchers, artists, entrepreneurs and international guests come together to engage in dialogue, experiment with technology, take on challenges and move scholarship forward.” It is this last element “moving scholarship forward” that Svensson argues is the real opportunity in what he terms the “big digital humanities,” or digital humanities as practiced in collaborative spaces like the HUMlab, and he is uniquely positioned to take an account of this evolving dimension of Digital Humanities practice.

A research tool for scholars studying modern China, particularly those focusing on the post-1949 communal system and economy. The work includes full bibliographic references to some 2,800 essay, articles, pamphlets, and other materials in Chinese taken from more than 130 publications, primarily from mainland. The entries are arranged are arranged topically with annotations. Includes a geographic index to the communes referred to in the listed items.

At the time of the U.S.-Japan auto conferences in March 1983, the hoped-for economic recovery as manifested in auto sales had revealed itself quite modestly. Three months later, the indicators were more robust and certainly long overdue for those whose livelihood depends on the health of the industry–some of whom are university professors.
With Japanese import restrictions in place until March 1984 and drastically reduced break-even points for domestic manufactures, rising consumer demand holds great promise for the industry. The rapidly rising stock prices of the auto-makers captures well the sense of heightened optimism, as do the various forecasts for improved profits.
While the news is certainly welcome, it nevertheless should be greeted with caution. As Mr. Perkins noted at the conference, “we have a tendency to forget things very quickly. If we have a boom market this year, there is a good chance that a lot of things we learned will be forgotten.”To put the matter differently and more bluntly, with growing prosperity there is the risk that management will fall back into old habits, making impossible the achievement of sustained quality and productivity improvement. Similarly, the commitment to develop cooperative relations with workers and suppliers will weaken. The union will be under membership pressure to retrieve concessions rather than to take the longer-term view. This longer-term view recognizes that “up-front increases” and adherence to existing work rules increasingly come at the sacrifice of future job security. Government policymakers will turn their attention away from the industry. This may not mean a great deal given how weakly focused their attentions has been during the last three years and how mixed and contradictory government auto policies have been for over a decade.

The history and mechanisms of the convergence of ancient Aryan and non-Aryan cultures has been a subject of continuing fascination in many fields of Indology. The contributions to Aryan and Non-Aryan in India are the fruit of a conference on that topic held in December 1976 at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, under the auspices of the Center for South and Southeast Asian Studies. The express object of the conference was to examine the latest findings from a variety of disciplines as they relate to the formation and integration of a unified Indian culture from many disparate cultural and ethnic elements.

We all have an animal story—the pet we loved, the wild animal that captured our childhood imagination, the deer the neighbor hit while driving. While scientific breakthroughs in animal cognition, the effects of global climate change and dwindling animal habitats, and the exploding interdisciplinary field of animal studies have complicated things, such stories remain a part of how we tell the story of being human. Animal Acts collects eleven exciting, provocative, and moving stories by solo performers, accompanied by commentary that places the works in a broader context.Work by leading theater artists Holly Hughes, Rachel Rosenthal, Deke Weaver, Carmelita Tropicana, and others joins commentary by major scholars including Donna Haraway, Jane Desmond, Jill Dolan, and Nigel Rothfels. Una Chaudhuri’s introduction provides a vital foundation for understanding and appreciating the intersection of animal studies and performance. The anthology foregrounds questions of race, gender, sexuality, class, nation, and other issues central to the human project within the discourse of the “post human,” and will appeal to readers interested in solo performance, animal studies, gender studies, performance studies, and environmental studies.

Erhard Weigel (1625-1699) was a German mathematician, astronomer, educator, philosopher, and inventor. He was professor of mathematics at Jena University and is considered a key figure in the development of the mathematical sciences of the 17th Century. In particular, he is known to be the teacher of the young Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646-1716) and other notable students. These proceedings record papers presented at an international colloquium held at the Göttingen State and University Library in collaboration with the Erhard Weigel Society based in Jena on December 5-6, 2014. The colloquium was concerned with Erhard Weigel and some of his many students as well as discussed his contribution to the history of science as an excellent educator. Moreover, the colloquium dealt with the flow of impact of his methods and ideas into the scientific community, whose members played a significant role in the scientific revolution of the 17th Century. Finally, a list of known students who attended Weigel’s lectures is given.

This report was prepared for the Policy Board by the U.S. and Japanese research staffs of the Joint U.S.–Japan Automotive Study under the general direction of Professors Paul W. McCracken and Keichi Oshima, with research operations organized and coordinated by Robert E. Cole on the U.S. side, in close communication with the Taizo Yakushiji on the Japanese side.
In view of the importance of stable, long-term economic relationships between Japan and the United States, automotive issues have to be dealt with in ways consistent with the joint prosperity of both countries. Furthermore, the current economic friction has the potential to adversely affect future political relationships. Indeed, under conditions of economic stagnation, major economic issues inevitably become political issues.With these considerations in mind, the Joint U.S.–Japan Automotive Study project was started in September 1981 to determine the conditions that will allow for the prosperous coexistence of the respective automobile industries. During this two-year study, we have identified four driving forces that will play a major role in determining the future course of the automotive industry of both countries. These are: (1) consumers’ demands and aspirations vis-à-vis automobiles; (2) flexible manufacturing systems (FMS); (3) rapidly evolving technology; and (4) the internationalization of the automotive industry.

In basements, dingy backrooms, warehouses, and other neglected places around the world music is being made that doesn’t fit neatly into popular or classical categories and genres, whose often extreme sounds and tiny concerts hover on the fringes of these commercial and cultural mainstreams.

The term “underground music” as it’s being used here connects various forms of music-making that exist outside or on the fringes of mainstream institutions and culture, such as noise, free improvisation, and extreme metal. This is music that makes little money, that’s noisy and exploratory in sound and that’s largely independent from both the market and from traditional high art institutions. In this book, by outlining the historical background but focusing on the digital age, the underground and its fringes can be seen as based in radical anti-capitalist politics or radical aesthetics while also being tied to the political contexts and structures of late capitalism.

Good Vibrations brings together scholars with a variety of expertise, from music to cultural studies to literature, to assess the full extent of the contributions to popular culture and popular music of one the most successful and influential pop bands of the twentieth century. The book covers the full fifty-year history of the Beach Boys’ music, from essays on some of the group’s best-known music—such as their hit single “Good Vibrations” —to their mythical unfinished masterpiece, Smile. Throughout, the book places special focus on the individual whose creative vision brought the whole enterprise to life, Brian Wilson, advancing our understanding of his gifts as a songwriter, arranger, and producer.

Germany serves as a case study of when and how members of intersectional groups—individuals belonging to two or more disadvantaged social categories—capture the attention of policymakers, and what happens when they do. This edited volume identifies three venues through which intersectional groups are able to form alliances and generate policy discussions regarding their concerns. Original empirical case studies focus on a wide range of timely subjects, including the intersexed, gender and disability rights, lesbian parenting, women working in STEM fields, workers’ rights in feminized sectors, women in combat, and Muslim women and girls.

21 articles give insights into German Studies outside the German-speaking countries. The contributions cover as wide a range as reports country by country, descriptions of individual profiles and local study plans, conceptual cross-country approaches and analyses of specific aspects of general relevance. In all their diversity, the articles demonstrate, besides the basic consensus that German and Germany are to be taught as manifestations of another culture, further similarities: Almost without exception German studies have entered a transitional phase that is not only characterized by curriculum reforms but also by discussions about the identity of German studies themselves. Here, the practical orientation seems to be a central point since, more and more, German Studies are seen as a professional education, too.

Strabon von Amaseia, Zeitgenosse der Kaiser Augustus und Tiberius, sah sich als stoischer Philosoph. Er verfasste eine umfangreiche Geschichtsdarstellung und eine Geographie. Erhalten hat sich lediglich sein geographisches Werk. Es ist umfangreich, inhaltlich komplex und vielfältig. Darin führt Strabon durch die ganze seinerzeit bekannte bewohnte Welt – von der Iberischen Halbinsel im Westen bis nach Indien im Osten, von Britannien im Norden bis nach Aithiopien im Süden. In den Mittelpunkt seiner Geographie stellt Strabon nicht etwa die Beschaffenheit der Erde, sondern den Menschen – es ist eine Kulturgeographie, die er verfasst hat. Dabei verstand er es, seine Darstellung interessant, lebendig und sogar unterhaltsam zu gestalten.