アジア・中東・アフリカ・ラテンアメリカ・オセアニア — 全 下位分類

Nigeria has for long been regarded as the poster child for the 'curse' of oil wealth. Due to what is regarded as an African political culture of neopatrimonialism, irreconcilable ethno-religious divisions and predatory subversion of institutions, Nigeria is seen incapable of overcoming the economic deterioration of this 'resource curse'. Yet, Nigeria achieved strong economic growth for over a decade in the twenty first century driven largely by policy reforms in non-oil sectors. The book argues that Nigeria's major development challenge is not an 'oil curse', but one of achieving economic diversification beyond oil, subsistence agriculture, informal activities and across its subnational entities. Through analysis drawing on economic data, policy documents and interviews, the book argues that Nigeria's challenge of economic diversification is situated within a political setting of an unstable distribution of power among individual, group and institutional actors.

Nigeria's ruling elites have lurched from one political crisis to another throughout the country's history and especially in the last two decades of democratic rule. A perpetual state of crisis management orients economic policy to be episodic rather than the systematic and long-term focus necessary to drive the economic transformation Nigeria aspires for. Since the turn of the century, policymaking by successive Nigerian governments despite superficial partisan differences has been oriented towards short-term crisis management of macroeconomic stabilization, restoring growth and selective public sector reforms. To diversify Nigeria's economy, successive governments must reorient towards a consistent focus on: pro-productivity and pro-poor policies, alongside comprehensive civil service and security sector overhaul. These policy priorities, Nigeria's ruling elites are belatedly acknowledging, are crucial to achieving economic transformation. However, this policy shift requires tackling the roots of perpetual political crisis, especially stabilizing the balance of power towards equity and inclusion.

This book is about the "losers" of the Meiji Restoration and the supporters who promoted their legacy. Although the violence of the Meiji Restoration is typically downplayed, the trauma was real, and those who felt marginalized from the mainstream throughout modern Japan looked to these losers as models of action.

Using a wide range of sources, from essays by former Tokugawa supporters like Fukuzawa Yukichi to postwar film and "lost decade" manga, Michael Wert traces the shifting portrayals of Restoration losers. By highlighting the overlooked sites of memory such as legends about buried gold, the awarding of posthumous court rank, or fighting over a disembodied head, Wert illustrates how the process of commemoration and rehabilitation allows individuals a voice in the formation of national history. He argues that the commingling of local memory activists and nationally-known politicians, academics, writers, and treasure hunters formed interconnecting memory landscapes that promoted local figures as potential heroes in modern Japan.

Give and Take offers a new history of government in Tokugawa Japan (1600-1868), one that focuses on ordinary subjects: merchants, artisans, villagers, and people at the margins of society such as outcastes and itinerant entertainers. Most of these individuals are now forgotten and do not feature in general histories except as bystanders, protestors, or subjects of exploitation. Yet despite their subordinate status, they actively participated in the Tokugawa polity because the state was built on the principle of reciprocity between privilege-granting rulers and duty-performing status groups. All subjects were part of these local, self-governing associations whose members shared the same occupation. Tokugawa rulers imposed duties on each group and invested them with privileges, ranging from occupational monopolies and tax exemptions to external status markers. Such reciprocal exchanges created permanent ties between rulers and specific groups of subjects that could serve as conduits for future interactions.

This book is the first to explore how high and low people negotiated and collaborated with each other in the context of these relationships. It takes up the case of one domain-Ono in central Japan-to investigate the interactions between the collective bodies in domain society as they addressed the problem of poverty.