Thanks to its active role in national politics, the market economy, and popular culture, the Thai crown remains both the country's dominant institution and one of the world's wealthiest monarchies. Puangchon Unchanam examines the reign of Thailand's King Bhumibol Adulyadej or Rama IX (1946-2016) and how the crown thrived by transforming itself ......
Englishwoman Mary McAuley first arrived in Leningrad in the early 1960s, eager to study labor relations for her thesis. Staying at a hostel, she met a number of Soviet students, many born under the rule of Joseph Stalin. Over the half-century that followed, McAuley traced their varying paths and the changing face of the former imperial capital. ......
Gendered Network Memory in the Mara Region, Tanzania
Among communities in the Mara region of Tanzania, it is considered men's responsibility to maintain "history." But when Jan Bender Shetler's questions turned to specific familial connections within the village, she discovered her male informants had to occasionally leave the room-to ask their wives for clarification. The result is an original and ......
The Politics and Practice of Kenya's HIV-Prevention NGOs
Nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) are ubiquitous in the Global South. Often international in origin, many attempt to assist local efforts to improve the lives of people often living in or near poverty. Yet their external origins often cloud their ability to impact health or quality of life, regardless of whether volunteers are local or foreign. ......
Reforms in Myanmar (formerly Burma) have eased restrictions on citizens' political activities. Yet for most Burmese, Ardeth Maung Thawnghmung shows, eking out a living from day to day leaves little time for civic engagement. Citizens have coped with extreme hardship through great resourcefulness. But by making bad situations more tolerable in the ......
Murder, Antisemitism, and Democratic Politics in Interwar Poland
In 1922, voters in the newly created Republic of Poland democratically elected their first president, Gabriel Narutowicz. Because his supporters included a Jewish political party, an opposing faction of antisemites demanded his resignation. Within hours, bloody riots erupted in Warsaw, and within a week the president was assassinated. In the wake ......
Since the overthrow of absolute monarchy in 1932, Thailand's political history has conventionally been interpreted as a long series of popular struggles for representative democracy and against authoritarian military rule. Yoshinori Nishizaki proposes that this history be understood as a continual struggle by elite political families for and ......
Hermann Budzislawski and the Making of Twentieth-Century Socialism
In Writing Against Hitler, Daniel Siemens reconstructs the history of the struggles of socialist intellectuals in Germany from the 1920s through the post-World War II era by focusing on the life of one influential member of that group, Hermann Budzislawski (1901-78). In the 1930s, Budzislawski served as the editor in chief of the prominent ......
The political history of Thailand since the overthrow of absolute monarchy in 1932 has conventionally been interpreted as a long series of popular struggles for representative democracy and against military authoritarian rule. Yoshinori Nishizaki argues that this history can be better understood as one of struggles by elite political families for ......
