Book review : The politics of transition in Central Asia and the caucasus : enduring legacies and emerging challenges

Review of Amanda E. Wooden & Christoph H. Stefes (eds), The Politics of Transition in Central Asia and the Caucasus: Enduring Legacies and Emerging Challenges. Central Asian Studies. London & New York: Routledge, 2009, xviþ268 pp., £80.00 h/b.

From blogging Central Asia to citizen media : a practitioners’ perspective on the evolution of the neweurasia blog project

This essay examines the development of one regional blogosphere, the Central Asian ‘Stanosphere’, through a focus on the neweurasia blog project. The neweurasia project began in 2005 as an Englishlanguage volunteer-run blog project about the former Soviet republics of Central Asia and the Caucasus, rapidly becoming one of the most visited blogs about the region. Following this auspicious start, over the next five years neweurasia developed into a multi-language locally driven project with more than 80,000 unique page views on average per month. Despite its indisputable successes, the project was often a steep learning curve for all involved. In this essay, we examine neweurasia’s evolution from ‘blogging Central Asia’ towards a citizen media project, and reflect on some of the issues and challenges encountered. On the basis of our discussion, we reflect upon how neweurasia, and citizen media in general, can maximise its impact on the nascent Stanosphere, in the process helping to give Central Asia a voice in the global blogosphere.

Introduction : The complex and contested history of democracy

Democracy has never been more popular. It is successfully practiced today in a myriad of different ways by people across virtually every cultural, religious or socio-economic context. The forty-five essays collected in this companion suggest that the global popularity of democracy derives in part from its breadth and depth in the common history of human civilization. The chapters include exceptional accounts of democracy in ancient Greece and Rome, modern Europe and America, among peoples’ movements and national revolutions, and its triumph since the end of the Cold War. However, this book also includes alternative accounts of democracy’s history: its origins in prehistoric societies and early city-states, under-acknowledged contributions from China, Africa and the Islamic world, its familiarity to various Indigenous Australians and Native Americans, the various challenges it faces today in South America, Eastern Europe, the Middle East and Asia, the latest democratic developments in light of globalization and new technologies, and potential future pathways to a more democratic world. Understanding where democracy comes from, where its greatest successes and most dismal failures lie, is central to democracy’s project of inventing ways to address the need of people everywhere to live in peace, freedom and with a say in the decisions that affect their lives.

Experiencing turbulence: Asia in the Australian imaginary

Over the last century and a half the competing merits of withdrawal from and connection to Asia-and the related vocabularies of separation and engagement-have been defining themes in Australian history. Experiencing Turbulence brings together a selection of publications on Australian representation of Asia, published in various journals and books in the last ten years that follow the publication of Anxious Nation: Australia and the Rise of Asia, 1850 to 1939. Collectively they address key themes in the Australian response to Asia: survivalist anxieties, climate and race, population and immigration, empty Australia, gender and bush mythologies, and regional Identities. These essays reveal the central, often constitutive role that Asia has played in the formation of ideas of nation and identity in Australia from the late nineteenth century to the present. The collection underlines the often unpredictable character of engagement and the fluid nature of fear and fascination, proximity and distance in the Australia-Asia relationship. With the recent publication of a government White Paper on Australia in the Asian Century there is a new determination to persuade Australians that "rising Asia," turbulent though it may be, is an opportunity for Australia more than it is a threat.

Spatial and temporal drivers of small mammal distributions in a semi-arid environment : the role of rainfall, vegetation and life-history

A key task in ecology is to understand the drivers of animal distributions. In arid and semi-arid environments, this is challenging because animal populations show considerable spatial and temporal variation. An effective approach in such systems is to examine both broad-scale and long-term data. We used this approach to investigate the distribution of small mammal species in semi-arid ‘mallee’ vegetation in south-eastern Australia. First, we examined broad-scale data collected at 280 sites across the Murray Mallee region. We used generalized additive mixed models (GAMMs) to examine four hypotheses concerning factors that influence the distribution of individual mammal species at this scale: vegetation structure, floristic diversity, topography and recent rainfall. Second, we used long-term data from a single conservation reserve (surveyed from 1997 to 2012) to examine small mammal responses to rainfall over a period spanning a broad range of climatic conditions, including record high rainfall in 2011. Small mammal distributions were strongly associated with vegetation structure and rainfall patterns, but the relative importance of these drivers was species-specific. The distribution of the mallee ningaui Ningaui yvonneae, for example, was largely determined by the cover of hummock grass; whereas the occurrence of the western pygmy possum Cercartetus concinnus was most strongly associated with above-average rainfall. Further, the combination of both broad-scale and long-term data provided valuable insights. Bolam's mouse Pseudomys bolami was uncommon during the broad-scale survey, but long-term surveys showed that it responds positively to above-average rainfall. Conceptual models developed for small mammals in temperate and central arid Australia, respectively, were not, on their own, adequate to account for the distributional patterns of species in this semi-arid ecosystem. Species-specific variation in the relative importance of different drivers was more effectively explained by qualitative differences in life-history attributes among species.

Nationalism in Central Asia: post-Soviet expediency

National identity for the Tajiks, the Uzbeks and the Turkmens is a construct derived from the Soviet period. Over seventy years of Soviet social engineering and efforts at creating a Soviet community have led to the unintended emergence of aspiring "national" elite and intelligentsia groups, trained and educated in their "national" languages and identifying Soviet-defined administrative territories as their "national" motherlands. The Soviet trained elite and intelligentsia groups in Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan were responsible for the smooth transition to the post-Soviet era, and thus performed a major role in ensuring political continuity. These two states seek to legitimise themselves by claiming to defend and represent the interests of their "national" communities. The Soviet initiated process of social engineering is now being modified to serve these states. National intelligentsia groups, through their scientific, historical and creative writings, are pivotal for the dissemination of the national ideal.

The inter-section of political history and health policy in Asia - the historical foundations for health policy analysis

One of the challenges for health reform in Asia is the diverse set of socio-economic and political structures, and the related variability in the direction and pace of health systems and policy reform. This paper aims to make comparative observations and analysis of health policy reform in the context of historical change, and considers the implications of these findings for the practice of health policy analysis. We adopt an ecological model for analysis of policy development, whereby health systems are considered as dynamic social constructs shaped by changing political and social conditions. Utilizing historical, social scientific and health literature, timelines of health and history for five countries (Cambodia, Myanmar, Mongolia, North Korea and Timor Leste) are mapped over a 30-50 year period. The case studies compare and contrast key turning points in political and health policy history, and examines the manner in which these turning points sets the scene for the acting out of longer term health policy formation, particularly with regard to the managerial domains of health policy making. Findings illustrate that the direction of health policy reform is shaped by the character of political reform, with countries in the region being at variable stages of transition from monolithic and centralized administrations, towards more complex management arrangements characterized by a diversity of health providers, constituency interest and financing sources. The pace of reform is driven by a country's institutional capability to withstand and manage transition shocks of post conflict rehabilitation and emergence of liberal economic reforms in an altered governance context. These findings demonstrate that health policy analysis needs to be informed by a deeper understanding and questioning of the historical trajectory and political stance that sets the stage for the acting out of health policy formation, in order that health systems function optimally along their own historical pathways.

The complex and contested history of democracy

Democracy has never been more popular. It is successfully practiced today in a myriad of different ways by people across virtually every cultural, religious or socio-economic context. The forty-five essays collected in this companion suggest that the global popularity of democracy derives in part from its breadth and depth in the common history of human civilization. The chapters include exceptional accounts of democracy in ancient Greece and Rome, modern Europe and America, among peoples’ movements and national revolutions, and its triumph since the end of the Cold War. However, this book also includes alternative accounts of democracy’s history: its origins in prehistoric societies and early city-states, under-acknowledged contributions from China, Africa and the Islamic world, its familiarity to various Indigenous Australians and Native Americans, the various challenges it faces today in South America, Eastern Europe, the Middle East and Asia, the latest democratic developments in light of globalization and new technologies, and potential future pathways to a more democratic world. Understanding where democracy comes from, where its greatest successes and most dismal failures lie, is central to democracy’s project of inventing ways to address the need of people everywhere to live in peace, freedom and with a say in the decisions that affect their lives.

First report of a phytogeographically mixed (transitional) Middle-Late Permian fossil wood assemblage from the Hami area, northwest China, and implications for Permian phytogeographical, paleogeographical and paleoclimatic evolution in central Asia

A diverse and well-preserved fossil wood assemblage is described, for the first time, from the Middle Permian Taerlang Formation and the Upper Permian Quanzijie Formation in the vicinity of the Tianshan Town, Hami City of northwestern China. On the basis of wood microstructure, the fossil woods are classified into three genera and five species, including one new genus: Prototianshanoxylon gen. nov. and two new species: Prototianshanoxylon erdaogouense sp. nov., Prototianshanoxylon hamiense sp. nov. The new genus is characterized by window-like cross-field pitting and mixed tracheid radial wall pitting that suggest a transitional type between araucarioid-type and protopinoid-type pittings.Phytogeographically, the fossil wood assemblage is characterized by an admixture of elements of both temperate Angaran (represented by wood specimens with moderately to well defined growth rings in their secondary xylem) and tropical-subtropical north subregion of the Cathaysian floras (with wood specimens lacking well-defined growth rings). Such a phytogeographically mixed fossil wood assemblage is interpreted to represent a transitional and complex climate condition between a cool temperate and tropical to subtropical zones, showing both seasonal variation and unstable climate conditions. Previously, similarly mixed floras have already been found to exist widely in northern China ranging in age from Early to Late Permian, but the mechanisms thought to be responsible for their formation were varied and remain controversial. In this study, the formation of these mixed Permian floras of North China is linked to the closure of the Tianshan-Hingan seaway coupled with the collision and amalgamation of Siberia with North China and the Tarim block, in a manner much like closing a pair of scissors with the closure of the seaway proceeding gradually and progressively from west to the east.