Virtual Library

The article looks at the phenomenon of Kazakhstan’s “wandering capital city” in the twentieth century, when, over the course of less than seventy five years, four different cities had served as the republic’s administrative center. The author suggests that decisions to relocate the capital to a new city before 1991 reflected structural shifts in the political and economic relations between Kazakhstan and the central government. Thus, the succession of relocations can be read as a narrative of the changing colonial condition of Kazakhstan in the twentieth century. This narrative helps us understand how the infrastructural and discursive legacies of imperial policies were inherited and reappropriated by post-Soviet Kazakhstan. From the vantage point of the metropole, the transfer of Kazakhstan’s seat of government from Orenburg to Kzyl-Orda (formerly Perovsk and Ak-Mechet), then to Alma-Ata, and the development of Tselinograd (the future Astana) by the late 1950s were seen as elements of sociopolitical engineering serving economic progress. Each time, the new human and financial resources drawn to a new capital city boosted they city’s development. These structural socioeconomic transformations also had a profound impact on the demographic situation, either marginalizing the Kazakh population or promoting its amalgamation with the newcomers, a process that produced a new local ethnocultural identity.

This article deals with the problems of North Korean defectors currently living in South Korea. In the past, most such defectors came from privileged groups in the North Korean population, and their adjustment to the new environment did not pose a significant problem. However, from the mid-1990s, defectors began to come from the far less privileged groups. They experience serious problems related to jobs, education, crime, and social adjustment. Recent years have seen a dramatic but not always openly stated change in the official South Korean attitude toward defectors: from a policy explicitly aimed at encouraging defection, Seoul has moved to the policy of quietly discouraging it. There are fears that encouraging defection will undermine the policy of peaceful engagement with the North. There is also the perception that refugees are outsiders, not quite adjustable to the conditions of South Korean society and thus a social and budgetary burden.

The story follows the aftermath of a young boy's shocking death during a violent student uprising as told from the perspectives of the event's victims and their loved ones. When a young boy named Dong-ho is shockingly killed in the midst of a violent student uprising in South Korea, the victims and the bereaved encounter suppression, denial, and the echoing agony of the massacre. Through their collective heartbreak and acts of hope unfolds the tale of a brutalized people in search of a voice.

The authors assert that sovereignty can no longer be seen as a protection against interference, but as a charge of responsibility where the state is accountable to both domestic and external constituencies. In internal conflicts in Africa, sovereign states have often failed to take responsibility for their own citizens' welfare and for the humanitarian consequences of conflict, leaving the victims with no assistance. This book shows how that responsibility can be exercised by states over their own population, and by other states in assistance to their fellow sovereigns.

The essays explain the anti-democratic features and limits of Soviet-type totalitarian systems of power. They discuss such concepts as ideology, democracy, civil liberty, law and the state from a perspective which is radically different from that of people living in liberal western democracies. The authors also discuss the prospects for democratic change under totalitarian conditions. Steven Lukes' introduction provides an invaluable political and historical context for these writings. The authors represent a very broad spectrum of democratic opinion, including liberal, conservative and socialist.

How can we make sense of human rights in China's authoritarian Party-State system? Eva Pils offers a nuanced account of this contentious area, examining human rights as a set of social practices. Drawing on a wide range of resources including years of interaction with Chinese human rights defenders, Pils discusses what gives rise to systematic human rights violations, what institutional avenues of protection are available, and how social practices of human rights defence have evolved. 

Three central areas are addressed: liberty and integrity of the person; freedom of thought and expression; and inequality and socio-economic rights. Pils argues that the Party-State system is inherently opposed to human rights principles in all these areas, and that – contributing to a global trend – it is becoming more repressive. Yet, despite authoritarianism's lengthening shadows, China’s human rights movement has so far proved resourceful and resilient. The trajectories discussed here will continue to shape the struggle for human rights in China and beyond its borders.