From school to work : Muslim youths' education and employment strategies in a community in Uttar Pradesh, India

India's Muslim community, which accounts for 14.4 percent of India’s vast population and is thus the largest of all religious minorities, has been the subject of considerable development discourse as Muslims have the lowest level of educational attainment and standard of living among socio-religious groups in the country. This study addresses the meaning of education and career opportunities for Muslim youths in relation to their educational credentials and social position in the hierarchy of Muslim class and caste groups, with particular reference to a community in Uttar Pradesh. The author contends that the career opportunities, possibilities, and strategies of Muslim youths in Indian society depend on multiple factors: social hierarchy, opportunities to utilize economic resources, social networks, cultural capital, and the wider structural disparities within which the Muslims are situated and wherein they question the value of higher education in gaining them admission to socially recognized and established employment sectors.

A Critical Review of Opinion Polls relating to Iranian Voting Intentions: Problems of Research Methodology as applied to Complex Societies

After the 10th Iranian Presidential election on June 12, 2009, several public opinion polls taken in Iran attracted the attention of policy-makers and journalists around the world because of the political crisis that followed. In this paper I first review critically the polls conducted by the WPO (WorldPublicOpinion.org), PIPA (Program on International Policy Attitudes) at the University of Maryland. I also review an essay by Steven Kull, which is based on the aforementioned poll results and which in my opinion leads to false conclusions concerning Iran’s political prospects. I also discuss “An Analysis of Multiple Polls of the Iranian Public,” published by WPO-PIPA on February 3 2010. The present paper arrives at the overall conclusion that it is impossible to obtain an accurate image of political opinions in societies as complicated as that of Iran by concentrating on only one technique of research and analysis, especially when the political and social situation in the society concerned is in a state of constant flux.

インド 現地資料の収集

アジア経済研究所（アジ研）は，開発途上国・地域の政治，経済，社会に関する社会科学分野の基礎的総合的研究を行う研究機関である。研究活動の現地主義に対応し，アジ研図書館でも現地刊行の現地語の資料を重視し，現地に根ざした資料収集を行っている。特に，現地書店との直接取引による購入，現地研究機関や大学，政府機関等との資料交換，直接現地を訪問しての資料収集活動が特徴的である。本稿では，インドの現地資料収集について，アジ研図書館のこの特徴ある資料収集活動を基にご紹介してみたい。また，後半では2007 年にデリーを訪問して資料事情に関する現地調査を行った際の体験についても触れる。

Development and institutionalization of communitarian thought in Thailand

In Thailand, communitarian ideas have been widely accepted and even institutionalized as a principle of national development plans and the Constitution of Thailand. This paper examines how and why the communitarian body of thought, described as "community culture thought," and originally created and shared within a small circle of social activists and academics in the early 1980s, came to be disseminated and authorized in Thai society. Contributors and participants, ways of expression, and avenues for disseminating this paradigm are the main topics in this paper. The paper reveals that these thoughts and concepts have been diversified and used as guiding principles by state elites, anti-state activists, and social reformists since the late 1980s. These people with such different political ideologies were connected through some key individuals. These critical connections networked them onto the same side for promoting communitarian thought in Thailand. When such leading advocates assumed key political positions, it was easy for them to push communitarian ideas into the guidelines and principles of state administration.

The foundation of the Mexican welfare state and social security reform in the 1990s

Before 1982 Mexico's welfare state regime was a limited conservative one that put priority on the social security of organized labor. But following the country's debt crisis in 1982, this regime changed to a hybrid liberal model. The Ernest Zedillo government (1995-2000) in particular pushed ahead with liberal reform of the social security system. This paper examines the characteristics and the policy making of the social security reforms in the 1990s. The results suggest that underlying these reforms was the restructuring of the economy and the need to cope with the cost of this restructuring. The paper also points out that one of the main factors making possible the rapid execution of the reforms were the weakened political clout of the officialist labor unions due to their steady breakdown during the 1990s and the increase in the monopolistic power of the state vis-a-vis the position of labor during the negotiations on social security reforms.

Social cleavages and electoral support in Turkey -- toward convergence?

Studies on Western democracies have shown that deep-seated social cleavages stabilize the electoral behavior and thus reduce electoral volatility. But how do social cleavages affect a party system that is undergoing democratic consolidation, such as in Turkey? In this study, investigations were carried out on long- and short-term relationships between social cleavages (religiosity, ethnicity, and sectarism) and electoral volatility in Turkey during the 1961-2002 period. Cross-sectional multiple regressions were applied to electoral and demographic data at the provincial level. The results showed that in the long-term, social cleavages on the whole have increased volatility rather than reduced it. The cleavage-volatility relationship, however, has changed over time. Repeated elections have mitigated the volatile effect of social cleavages on the voting behavior, as political parties have become more representative of the existent social cleavages.

Industrial Development and the Innovation System of the Ethanol Sector in Brazil

The purpose of this paper is to analyze innovations and the innovation system and its dynamics in the ethanol sector in the State of Sao Paulo. More specifically, this paper focuses on the development process in the sector, the public policies taken to promote the sector, and the organizations and key players involved in these policies and their responses to unforeseeable changes in economic, social and technological environments. To this end, this paper takes an historical perspective and reviews data on the cultivation of sugar cane, the production of ethanol, and on sugar cane yields as indicators of the innovations achieved in the sector. The geographical distribution of these indicators is also examined. Next, several cases in Piracicaba and Campinas in the State of Sao Paulo are presented; these give us a more concrete idea of the processes involved in innovation and technology transfer. Based on these observations, the ethanol cluster and the innovation system of the State of Sao Paulo are discussed from the viewpoint of the flowchart approach to industrial cluster policy.