Including contributions from an international team of leading experts, this volume examines state making from a uniquely Asian perspective and reveals some of the misunderstandings that arise when states and state making are judged solely on the basis of Western history. The contributors argue that if we are to understand states in Asia then we must first recognize the particular combination of institution and ideologies embedded in Asian state making and their distinctiveness from the Western experience.

Presenting new empirical and conceptual material based on original...

In this monumental book, sociologist Robert Castel reconstructs the history of what he calls "the social question," or the ways in which both labor and social welfare have been organized from the Middle Ages onward to contemporary industrial society. Throughout, the author identifies two constants bearing directly on the question of who is entitled to relief and who can be excluded: the degree of embeddedness in any given community and the ability to work. Along this dual axis the author locates virtually the entire history of social welfare in early-modern and contemporary...

The Ethics of Competition is a book of Frank H. Knight's writings on a common theme: the problem of social control and its various implications. Knight believed in free economic institutions but was also aware that the competitive economic system could be improved. One of the central figures of neoclassical economics in the twentieth century, Knight pursued a lifelong campaign against irrationalities of nationalism, religious fanaticism, and group conflict, while conceding that these were fundamental orientations of human action that might yet frustrate his own work as an...