Journal articles on the topic 'Africa, East - Commerce'

The Ottoman-Venetian war for the island of Crete in the middle of the 17th century (1645-1669) was in some ways an anachronistic struggle. The era of imperial struggle in the Mediterranean had come to a close in 1578 when the Portuguese army, assisted by Spain, was defeated at Alcazar in Morocco by the army of the Ottoman protégé, Abd al-Malik. The Ottoman victory was followed by a Spanish-Ottoman truce signed in 1580 which, though it seemed tentative at the time, ushered in a long period of peace in the Mediterranean region. The Spanish acquiesced to Ottoman control of North Africa and turned their attention to their acquisitions in the new world. The Ottomans, for their part, occupied themselves with military conquests in the East and no new campaigns were launched in the Mediterranean.

Abstract Historiography has long recognized the strategic importance of Diu as a commercial hub in the Indian Ocean, despite the decline it experienced in the last quarter of the seventeenth century. A great deal of Diuese commerce, along with the island’s privileged connections with East Africa (especially Mozambique), was sustained by the activity of the Banias—Hindus and Jain—who had long used this small island as a platform for trade. This article analyzes the forms of organization, commercial and financial techniques, and main roles of the Banias of Gujarat, one of the largest and most important urban merchant communities in India and in other Asian and African markets along the Indian Ocean. In the case of Diu, we seek to understand the extent to which the financial capacity and commercial experience of the local Banias allowed them to dominate most commercial activity in Mozambique from the late seventeenth century onwards. We examine the internal structure of the Banias’ merchant communities, the hierarchical dependencies and trade links between the Banias of Diu and of Mozambique, and, lastly, the adaptation of their experience and commercial techniques to the East African coast.

To nineteenth and early twentieth-century scholarship, the early modern expansion of powers like Spain, Portugal, England and Holland, was a necessary preliminary step towards Europe's ultimate domination of the Asian and African continents. Moreover, the relative ease with which colonial powers manhandled regions like North Africa and the Indo-Pak subcontinent suggested that their early modern ‘pioneering’ counterparts must have shared similar experiences. While some historians highlighted superior business concepts (joint-stock companies, profit-sharing) or superior shipbuilding and navigation techniques as the means with which trading powers like the Estado da India and the English East India Company penetrated and overwhelmed Indian Ocean commerce, other scholars boiled it down to the European affinity for using ‘men-of-war, gun, and shot’. The critical underlying assumption of any of these teleological explanations s i that ‘encountered’ cultures were unable to adequately respond to European technology, of course hinting at some deeper and more profound deficiency. Scholarship in recent decades has shorn such confidence and begun to scrutinise this seedling period of interaction between Europe and non-Europe, suggesting that the initial playing ground between ‘encounterer’ and ‘encountered’ was perhaps more level than previously portrayed.

To nineteenth and early twentieth-century scholarship, the early modern expansion of powers like Spain, Portugal, England and Holland, was a necessary preliminary step towards Europe's ultimate domination of the Asian and African continents. Moreover, the relative ease with which colonial powers manhandled regions like North Africa and the Indo-Pak subcontinent suggested that their early modern ‘pioneering’ counterparts must have shared similar experiences. While some historians highlighted superior business concepts (joint-stock companies, profit-sharing) or superior shipbuilding and navigation techniques as the means with which trading powers like the Estado da India and the English East India Company penetrated and overwhelmed Indian Ocean commerce, other scholars boiled it down to the European affinity for using ‘men-of-war, gun, and shot’. The critical underlying assumption of any of these teleological explanations s i that ‘encountered’ cultures were unable to adequately respond to European technology, of course hinting at some deeper and more profound deficiency. Scholarship in recent decades has shorn such confidence and begun to scrutinise this seedling period of interaction between Europe and non-Europe, suggesting that the initial playing ground between ‘encounterer’ and ‘encountered’ was perhaps more level than previously portrayed.

In this beautifully crafted book, Timur Kuran provides a remarkably rich analysis of how Islamic law impeded economic progress in the Middle East and North Africa. Kuran's views are fresh and powerful, and they are subtle. He does not claim that Islamic law was generally bad for economic activity. He does not claim that prohibitions on interest denied credit to merchants or entrepreneurs. Nor does he claim that predation by absolutist states blocked capitalist accumulation or inhibited commerce.

The technology of glassmaking is complex. This complexity has been cited for the exclusion of the development of ancient glass technology from certain regions of the world, especially Africa, South of the Sahara. Thus, much of the existing scholarship on the technology of ancient glass has focused on the Middle East, Mediterranean, and Southeast and South Asia. Although the discourse on indigenous African technology has gained traction in Black studies, the study of ancient glass seems to have been left mainly in the hands of specialists in other disciplines. Drawing from archaeological and historical evidence from Ile-Ife, Southwest Nigeria, in tandem with the result of compositional analysis, this article examines the first recognized indigenous Sub-Saharan African glass technology dated to early second millennium ad or earlier. The development of the local glass recipe and the making of beads not only ushered in a social, religious, and economic transformation in Yorubaland as well as the other West African societies but also redressed the place of Sub-Saharan African in the historiographical map of ancient global technology and commerce.

Rentierism in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region had emanated both from significant external rent and from the statist model of development feeding each other, where legitimacy was secured through rent distribution. The rent-led resource imbalance between the state and the society, as well as intra-societal inequalities in the region, has been less recognized and studied. The flow of external rent in tandem with internal rent-seeking has perpetuated the wealth and power of the political and economic elites and limited economic opportunities of the larger population. The rentierism that bred on vertical controls and network of privileges is set to be disrupted from flows and connectivity generated in the growth of digital commerce in the region.

The Gulf of Guinea, home to numerous ethnic nationalities, stretches from the Republic of Senegal in the west to Nigeria in the east. There have been population movements and socio-economic interactions within and across the coastal belt over the past millennium. In response to their environment, the people have been engaged in fishing, salt-making, commerce and boat making. Fishing, the pivot of their economy, has taken the leading fishing groups – the Fante and Ewe (Keta) of the Republic of Ghana, and the Izon (Ijaw), Itsekiri and Ilaje of Nigeria – all over the entire West African coastline, where they have established many settlements.

Commentary on Alberto Trejos's article "Bilateral and Regional Free Trade Agreements, and their Relationship with the WTO and the Doha Development Agenda." Catherine A. Novelli is a partner in the Washington office of Mayer, Brown, Rowe & Maw LLP. Formerly Assistant U.S. Trade Representative for Europe & the Mediterranean, Novelli coordinated U.S. trade and investment policy for more than 65 countries of Western Europe, Central Europe, Russia, the NIS, the Middle East, and Northern Africa. Previously, Novelli was the Deputy Assistant U.S. Trade Representative for Central and Eastern Europe and Eurasia where she played a key role in the formation of U.S. trade policy for Russia and Central Europe. She joined USTR in 1991 after serving in the Office of General Counsel at the Department of Commerce.

In the 21st century, conflicts in the Middle East can generally be classified into four types, namely: conflicts between outside powers and Middle Eastern countries; between Middle Eastern countries themselves; between different political parties and religious sects within a sovereign country; as well as transnational and cross-border conflicts. The mode of China’s participation in Middle Eastern security governance includes political, security and social conflicts. There are three categories of domestic mechanisms in Chinese practice, specifically: the special envoy mechanism by the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs; the procession and peace-keeping mechanisms by the Chinese Ministry of National Defense; and the foreign aid mechanism by the Chinese Ministry of Commerce. The China–Arab States Cooperation Forum, the Forum on China–Africa Cooperation, the United Nations and other international organizations constitute the major international regimes for China’s security governance. China’s Middle Eastern security governance creates not only ‘public goods’ for the region but also a means for China to build constructive great power relations with the United States, the European Union and Russia, among others. The styles of Chinese and Western security governance in the Middle East vary with the Chinese side placing most emphasis on improving the well-being of Middle Eastern peoples and placing this as the top priority on the agenda, followed by a ‘bottom-up’ roadmap, and the seeking of incremental, consultative, inclusive and selective governance in Middle East conflict resolution.

The case discusses the various factors that bolstered positioning Dubai as the ideal location for a logistics hub, located at the crossroads of international trade and commerce between the Eastern and Western worlds. Dubai is also regarded as the gateway to the world’s most progressive markets which include Greater Africa, the Indian subcontinent, and the East European countries. The case illustrates some of the critical challenges faced by the city in particular and the country as a whole, in the past decade, thereby evaluating the issues and risks that can hinder its strategic logistics developmental roadmap. The case can be taken up for subjects such as logistics and supply chain management, operations management, global logistics systems, warehouse management and strategic management, and to enrich concepts related but not limited to facility location strategy, logistics network expansion strategy, country analysis, distribution hub location strategy, etc.

An extraordinary letter was discovered in a neglected pile of medieval diplomatic correspondence in the Vatican Libraries: a letter from Al-Murtada the Almohad, Muslim Caliph in Marrakech to Pope Innocent IV (1243–1254). The letter, written in finest official calligraphy, proposes an alliance between the Caliph and the Vicar of Christ, the leader of an institution that had called for organized crusades against the Islamic world. While the history of Pope Innocent IV’s contacts with the Muslim rulers of Marrakech remains obscure, the sources indicate that Pope Innocent IV sent envoys south to Marrakech. One of these envoys was Lope d’Ayn. Lope became Bishop of Marrakech, shepherd of a flock of paid Christian mercenaries who were sent to Marrakech by that sometime leader of the reconquista, Ferdinand III of Castile, in a deal he had struck with the Almohads. Although they now had Christians fighting for them and cathedral bells competing with the call to prayer, the Almohads were powerful agitators of jihad against the Christians only decades before. Scholars know only a little about Lope d’Ayn’s story or the historical context of this letter between Caliph Murtada and the Pope. Although very recent research is encouraging, there is a great deal to know about the history of the mercenaries of Marrakech or the interactions between Jews, Muslims and Christians that occurred in early thirteenth century Marrakech. The neglect of Lope d’Ayn and the contacts between the Papacy and the Almohads is only one example of a much wider neglect of North Africa contacts with Europe in the secondary literature in English. While scholarship in English has focused on correspondence, commerce and travel from West to East, between Europe, the Levant and Egypt, there were also important cultural bridges being crossed between North and South, between North Africa and Europe in the Medieval Western Mediterranean.

AbstractForced immigration from the Southwest Indian Ocean marked life at the Cape of Good Hope for over a century. Winds, currents, and shipping linked the two regions, as did a common international currency, and complementary seasons and crops. The Cape's role as a refreshment station for French, Portuguese, American, and Spanish slave ships proved particularly important in the development of a commerce linking East Africa, Madagascar, and the Mascarenes with the Americas. This slave trade resulted in the landing at the Cape of perhaps as many as 40,000 forced immigrants from tropical Africa and Madagascar. Brought to the Cape as slaves, or freed slaves subjected to strict periods of apprenticeship, these individuals were marked by the experience of a brutal transhipment that bears comparison with the trans-Atlantic Middle Passage. The history of the Middle Passage occupies a central place in the study of slavery in the Americas and plays a vital role in the way many people today situate themselves socially and politically. Yet, for various reasons, this emotive subject is absent from historical discussions of life at the Cape. This article brings it into the history of slavery in the region. By focusing on the long history of this forced immigration, the article also serves to underline the importance of the Cape to the political and economic life of the Southwest Indian Ocean.

<p>Il contributo in oggetto si propone di approfondire i rapporti tra le corporazioni e i gruppi industriali italiani da un’ottica particolare, quella dell’associazionismo che si concretizza con l’American Chamber of Commerce in Italy, instituita nel 1915 per agevolare le relazioni commerciali tra Italia e Stati Uniti. La grave crisi economica del 1930 e del 1931 e, poco dopo, le gravissime restrizioni portate agli scambi con l’estero dal programma autarchico del Governo fascista, influirono notevolmente sullo sviluppo della Camera. L’autorità dell’istituzione venne a diminuire, i rapporti con gli Stati Uniti si fecero più rari e il numero dei soci diminuì notevolmente.<strong> </strong>Alle corporazioni furono affidate le autorizzazioni sui nuovi impianti, la costituzione delle compagnie per la valorizzazione dell’Africa orientale italiana, il controllo sulle iniziative economiche nelle colonie, la collaborazione col fisco nella determinazione e nell’applicazione dei tributi ed infine il controllo sul commercio estero e sulle valute. Di conseguenza, la funzione che lo Stato avrebbe dovuto esercitare servendosi delle corporazioni finì col ricadere nelle mani dei grandi industriali, che le dominavano attraverso i loro rappresentanti. Da un lato, quindi, vi erano le corporazioni, che garantivano piena libertà ai gruppi industriali, avallandone le scelte; dall’altro lato, invece, vi erano le autorità governative che riconoscevano i limiti di competenza e d’intervento di quelle istituzioni e la necessità di una migliore definizione degli obiettivi.</p><p>This contribution aims to examine the relationship between corporations and the Italian industrial groups from a particular perspective, which is that of associations through the American Chamber of Commerce in Italy, established in 1915 to facilitate the commercial relations between Italy and the United States. The economic crisis of 1930 and 1931 and, shortly after, the very serious restrictions on foreign trade of the Fascist government program influenced significantly on the Chamber’s development. The authority of the institution was to decline, the relations with the United States became more and more rare and the number of members decreased considerably. Corporations obtained the authorizations on new systems, the establishment of companies for the development of the Italian East Africa, the control on economic initiatives in the colonies, the cooperation with the tax authorities in the determination and application of taxes, and finally control over foreign trade and currencies. So the function that the State should have exercised using the corporations ended up falling into the hands of big businessmen, who ruled through their representatives. Therefore, Corporations guaranteed full freedom to industry groups supporting them, and government authorities recognized the competence and intervention limits of those institutions and the need for a better definition of the objectives.</p>

Purpose – Women’s entrepreneurship is often seen as the solution of both economic growth and gender equality. This is despite academic knowledge of the gendered preconditions for entrepreneurship in many contexts. This paper aims to focus on the gendering of commercial justice, a precondition for entrepreneurship. Informed by gender perspectives on women’s entrepreneurship and previous studies on commercial justice in East Africa, this paper sets out to explore the experiences of urban women entrepreneurs. Design/methodology/approach – The paper is based on an interview study with women entrepreneurs and representatives of support organizations in Dar-es-Salaam, Tanzania. The interviews were conducted in Kiswahili, and access was enabled through dialogues with local partner organizations such as the Tanzanian Chamber of Commerce. Findings – Findings are that with formal legal rights, the informal institutions imply that the marital status of the women, and the attitude of their husbands, is the overarching determinants for the commercial justice perceived as available to them. This has implication for many policy areas, such as entrepreneurship support, women’s empowerment and labour market policy. Theoretically, the findings highlight the importance of studying the informal institutions affecting women’s entrepreneurship around the globe. Concerning commercial justice in particular, three dimensions of gendering are identified. Research limitations/implications – The paper is based on a qualitative interview study. Further studies with varying methods are needed to further explore the gendering of commercial justice in Tanzania, East Africa and beyond. Practical implications – A major practical implication of the study is the insight that business for development, will not automatically lead to business for equality, on a general level. The gender bias is also reproduced in everyday business life, for example, thorough access to commercial justice. Special measures to target the gender equality issue are, therefore, necessary. Another implication of the findings regard the importance of Alternative Dispute Resolution initiatives, affordable to women small and medium enterprise-owners. Originality/value – While other obstacles to women’s entrepreneurship in the developing contexts have been well explored, the gendering of perceived commercial justice has not received sufficient attention in previous studies. Studies applying a gender theoretical perspective on entrepreneurship in the explored context are still needed.

AbstractOne of the challenges of global history is to bridge the particularities of individual lives and trajectories with the macro-historical patterns that develop over space and time. Italian micro-history, particularly popular in the 1980s–1990s, has excavated the lives of small communities or individuals to test the findings of serial history and macro-historical approaches. Micro-history in the Anglophone world has instead focused more on narrative itself, and has shown, with some exceptions, less interest for ampler historiographical conclusions.Sino-Western interactions in the early modern period offer a particularly fruitful field of investigation, ripe for a synthesis of the global and the micro-historical. Cultural, social, and economic phenomena can be traced in economic and statistical series, unpublished correspondence, and other non-institutional sources, in part thanks to the survival of detailed records of the activities of East India companies and missionary agencies in China. Recent scholarship has started to offer new conclusions, based on such Western records and matching records in the Chinese historical archive.In this article, I offer a methodological reflection on ‘global micro-history’, followed by four micro-historical ‘vignettes’ that focus on the economic and socio-religious activities of the Roman Catholic mission in Beijing in the long eighteenth century. These fragments uncover unexplored facets of Chinese life in global contexts from the point of view of European missionaries and Chinese Christians in the Qing capital—‘end users’ of the local and global networks of commerce and religion bridging Europe, Asia, Africa, and South and Central America.

In evolutionary paleontology of terrestrial biotas, the Miocene is the most important age especially for evolution of hominids and mammalian faunas. The modern mammalian fauna appeared from the end of this age in Eurasia. In Sub-Saharan Africa, the assemblage of the late Miocene mammalian faunas was very poor, and these faunas were represented by only few faunas. Therefore, this incompleteness of the late Miocene East African faunas, it is very difficult to analyze faunal turnover of Sub-Saharan mammalian faunas and compare with Eurasian and Sub-Saharan faunas of this age.The paleontological contribution of the Japan and Kenya joint expedition to the Samburu Hills, northern Kenya covered this gap of mammalian evolution in Sub-Saharan Africa.In this work, the Miocene mammalian faunas in Sub-Saharan Africa is examined the half-life (Kurtén 1959, 1972, 1988) of each faunal assemblages (sets).Assemblage of the mammalian faunas from early Miocene was comparatively stable and had long half life in Sub-Saharan Africa on the basis of the results of this work.However, mammalian assemblage changed drastically at the middle Miocene (Astaracian) in Sub-Saharan Africa.A great number of early to middle Miocene mammalian taxa were extinct and the modern mammalian taxa appeared in this period. The half life of middle and late Miocene mammalian faunas is shortened compared with the early Miocene faunas in the East Africa. This geological event of faunal turnover occurred by the immigration and divergence of open land taxa.It is evident that the rise of open land taxa is related to the environmental change for the plateau phonolite and basalt volcanism in the middle Miocene East Africa (Pickford 1981) and the worldwide warm and arid event (savannitisation) of continental temperate zone in the middle to late Miocene (Liu 1988). In the middle Miocene (16 Ma) Pacific region, it has been proposed that the tropical event is recognized from shallow marine faunas of the Southwestern Japan (Tsuchi 1986). African and Eurasian land connection was also established before the middle Miocene (16 Ma±) (Bernor et al. 1987).The Astaracian faunal turnover in Sub-Saharan Africa is considered to be caused by immigration and diversity of open country mammalian taxa and that was related to the worldwide middle Miocene warm event and the plateau volcanism in middle Miocene East Africa. Furthermore, the Pleistocene and modern taxa and their direct ancestors of Sub-Saharan Africa appeared from the late Miocene faunas of East Africa. It has been made clear that the Namurungule Fauna is the forerunner of the modern Sub-Saharan mammalian fauna of savanna environments.As mentioned before, the Hominid Fossil was found from the Namurungule Formation (late Miocene) of northern Kenya. The savannitisation in the Sub-Saharan Africa began in middle Miocene. The origin of hominid bipedalism seems to be closely related to the environmental change from forest to open land (Foley 1984). Human evolution in East Africa is accelerated by the savannitisation of Sub-Saharan Africa which commenced earlier than that of Eurasia and continued throughout the Neogene.

Marcus Wood; Slavery, Empathy, and Pornography (Lynn M. Festa)Michèle Praeger; The Imaginary Caribbean and Caribbean Imaginary (Celia Britton)Charles V. Carnegie; Postnationalism Prefigured: Caribbean Borderlands (John Collins)Mervyn C. Alleyne; The Construction and Representation of Race and Ethnicity in the Caribbean and the World (Charles V. Carnegy)Jerry Gershenhorn; Melville J. Herskovits and the Racial Politics of Knowledge (Richard Price)Sally Cooper Coole; Ruth Landes: A Life in Anthropology (Olivia Maria Gomes Da Cunha)Maureen Warner Lewis; Central Africa in the Caribbean: Transcending Time, Transforming Cultures (Robert W. Slenes)Gert Oostindie (ed.); Facing up to the Past: Perspectives on the Commemoration of Slavery from Africa, the Americas and Europe (Gad Heuman)Gert Oostindie, Inge Klinkers; Decolonising the Caribbean: Dutch Policies in a Comparative Perspective (Paul Sutton)Kirk Peter Meigho; Politics in a ‘Half-Made Society’: Trinidad and Tobago, 1925-2001 (Douglas Midgett)Linden Lewis (ed.); The Culture of Gender and Sexuality in the Caribbean (David A.B. Murray)Gertrude Aub-Buscher, Beverly Ormerod Noakes (eds.); The Francophone Caribbean Today: Literature, Language, Culture (Elizabeth Walcott-Hackshaw)Sally Lloyd-Evans, Robert B. Potter; Gender, Ethnicity and the Iinformal Sector in Trinidad (Katherine E. Browne)STeve Striffler, Mark Moberg (eds.); Banana Wars: Power, Production and History in the Americas (Peter Clegg)Johannes Postma, Victor Enthoven (eds.); Riches from Atlantic Commerce: Dutch Transatlantic Trade and Shipping, 1585-1817 (Gert J. Oostindie)Phil Davison; Volcano in Paradise: Death and Survival on the Caribbean Island of Montserrat (Bonham C. Richardson)Ernest Zebrowski jr; The Last Days of St. Pierre: The Volcanic Disaster that Claimed Thirty Thousand Lives (Bernard Moitt)Beverley A. Steele; Grenada: A History of Its People (Jay R. Mandle)Walter C. Soderlund (ed.); Mass Media and Foreign Policy: Post-Cold War Crises in the Caribbean (Jason Parker)Charlie Whitham; Bitter Rehearsal: British and American Planning for a Post-War West Indies (Jason Parker)Douglas V. Amstrong; Creole Transformation from Slavery to Freedom: Historical Archaeology of the East End Community, St. John, Virgin Islands (Karin Fog Olwig)H.U.E. Thoden van Velzen; Een koloniaal drama: De grote staking van de Marron vrachtvaarders, 1921 (Chris de Beet)Joseph F. Callo; Nelson in the Caribbean: The Hero Emerges, 1784-1787 (Carl E. Swanson)Jorge Duany; The Puerto Rican Nation on the Move: Identities on the Island and in the United States (Juan Flores)Raquel Z. Rivera; New York Ricans from the Hip Hop Zone (Halbert Barton)Alfonso J. García Osuna; The Cuban Filmography, 1897 through 2001 (Ann Marie Stock)Michael Aceto, Jeffrey P. Williams (eds.); Contact Englishes of the Eastern Caribbean (Geneviève Escure)In: New West Indian Guide / Nieuwe West-Indische Gids (NWIG) 79 (2005), no. 1 & 2

Marcus Wood; Slavery, Empathy, and Pornography (Lynn M. Festa)Michèle Praeger; The Imaginary Caribbean and Caribbean Imaginary (Celia Britton)Charles V. Carnegie; Postnationalism Prefigured: Caribbean Borderlands (John Collins)Mervyn C. Alleyne; The Construction and Representation of Race and Ethnicity in the Caribbean and the World (Charles V. Carnegy)Jerry Gershenhorn; Melville J. Herskovits and the Racial Politics of Knowledge (Richard Price)Sally Cooper Coole; Ruth Landes: A Life in Anthropology (Olivia Maria Gomes Da Cunha)Maureen Warner Lewis; Central Africa in the Caribbean: Transcending Time, Transforming Cultures (Robert W. Slenes)Gert Oostindie (ed.); Facing up to the Past: Perspectives on the Commemoration of Slavery from Africa, the Americas and Europe (Gad Heuman)Gert Oostindie, Inge Klinkers; Decolonising the Caribbean: Dutch Policies in a Comparative Perspective (Paul Sutton)Kirk Peter Meigho; Politics in a ‘Half-Made Society’: Trinidad and Tobago, 1925-2001 (Douglas Midgett)Linden Lewis (ed.); The Culture of Gender and Sexuality in the Caribbean (David A.B. Murray)Gertrude Aub-Buscher, Beverly Ormerod Noakes (eds.); The Francophone Caribbean Today: Literature, Language, Culture (Elizabeth Walcott-Hackshaw)Sally Lloyd-Evans, Robert B. Potter; Gender, Ethnicity and the Iinformal Sector in Trinidad (Katherine E. Browne)STeve Striffler, Mark Moberg (eds.); Banana Wars: Power, Production and History in the Americas (Peter Clegg)Johannes Postma, Victor Enthoven (eds.); Riches from Atlantic Commerce: Dutch Transatlantic Trade and Shipping, 1585-1817 (Gert J. Oostindie)Phil Davison; Volcano in Paradise: Death and Survival on the Caribbean Island of Montserrat (Bonham C. Richardson)Ernest Zebrowski jr; The Last Days of St. Pierre: The Volcanic Disaster that Claimed Thirty Thousand Lives (Bernard Moitt)Beverley A. Steele; Grenada: A History of Its People (Jay R. Mandle)Walter C. Soderlund (ed.); Mass Media and Foreign Policy: Post-Cold War Crises in the Caribbean (Jason Parker)Charlie Whitham; Bitter Rehearsal: British and American Planning for a Post-War West Indies (Jason Parker)Douglas V. Amstrong; Creole Transformation from Slavery to Freedom: Historical Archaeology of the East End Community, St. John, Virgin Islands (Karin Fog Olwig)H.U.E. Thoden van Velzen; Een koloniaal drama: De grote staking van de Marron vrachtvaarders, 1921 (Chris de Beet)Joseph F. Callo; Nelson in the Caribbean: The Hero Emerges, 1784-1787 (Carl E. Swanson)Jorge Duany; The Puerto Rican Nation on the Move: Identities on the Island and in the United States (Juan Flores)Raquel Z. Rivera; New York Ricans from the Hip Hop Zone (Halbert Barton)Alfonso J. García Osuna; The Cuban Filmography, 1897 through 2001 (Ann Marie Stock)Michael Aceto, Jeffrey P. Williams (eds.); Contact Englishes of the Eastern Caribbean (Geneviève Escure)In: New West Indian Guide / Nieuwe West-Indische Gids (NWIG) 79 (2005), no. 1 & 2

In this study had been investigated regional cooperation Middle East countries. This study includes, literature revive, historical background, comparison research and submitted to simple model. In this model dependent variables is economic and social development, independent variables are, population, education, culture, fiscal capital etc. Regional cooperation, which are includes social, economic and cultural are based for development. Middle East countries should be revised some economic and social cooperation in the world. These matters are important for countries. In responses to global competition their market (EU, Asia, China, North Africa) have started diversifying into new markets and production. Contrary to other economic cooperation MENA countries are differ from social and economic condition. My hypothesis is important this matter.For example, from port of Liverpool to port of Lagos distance between is 4576 mile. Time is 19.1 days. Nigeria gained independent from UK 1960, after that coined south and north. From port of Le Havre to port of Continuo distance between is 4290 mile .Time is 17.9 days. Benin gained independent from France at 1960.Many years had been some difficulties for trade two countries. Therefore regional cooperation is important .In fact, two countries Commerce City distance between is 85 mile.In this work a theoretical study and a model proposal are prepared about the information of an economic – social and political cooperation among 14 Middle- East countries and about the birth of the idea of a new cooperation (unity) while entering 21’st. century.The cooperation like EU, AET and NAFTA, BR?C-S, LAFTA, NAFTA, EEC, MERCESUR, SHANGAY-5, has brought some facilities to the economic life. It is impossible for a country today to live survive a closed economy to other countries in our globalize world.We would argue that the defining issue of economic geography is the need to explain concentrations of population and of economic activity: the distinction between manufacturing belt and farm belt, the existence of cities, the role of industry clusters. (Fujita, 1999, p. 4)Generally we talk about measuring development, in order to decision for future. So we can choose a series of indicators in different social fields, mainly economics, to describe how a particular society has progressed over the time. There are other phrases that have become important in the public debate trying to explain what development really means to a society. Among these we have: Well-being, Welfare state, Developed countries, Reducing poverty, Solution unemployment, Quality of Life, Human development, Social development etc. Classical sectors are chanced today. Today society called “Knowledge society”. Productive for work needs to quality education. Shortly, innovation policies criteria, globalization, WtrO rules, Wipo rule, Pisa scores requires new studies this field. Basically social and economic development has been result. I will explain reason and cause effect those reasons.Job creation is the first priorities in the MENA region. This model will be contributed to solution of unemployment. A free trade agreement (FTA) is a preferential arrangement among countries in which tariff rates among them are reduced to zero. However, different members of the arrangement may set external tariff for non- members at different rates (Krueger, 1997, p. 7) There are kind of agreement for example. Bilateral investment agreement, free trade agreement, regional investment agreement. I will try to my models similar to European Union.In sum up, according to Bell “Society can be viewed as three separate parts that, when integrated, create a harmonious relationship within society. The three parts: polity, market economy (techno-economic), and culture (human tradition) (Bell, 1976, p. 14) in addition to regional trade has impact of multiple effect some fields.

In this study had been investigated regional cooperation Middle East countries. This study includes, literature revive, historical background, comparison research and submitted to simple model. In this model dependent variables is economic and social development, independent variables are, population, education, culture, fiscal capital etc. Regional cooperation, which are includes social, economic and cultural are based for development. Middle East countries should be revised some economic and social cooperation in the world. These matters are important for countries. In responses to global competition their market (EU, Asia, China, North Africa) have started diversifying into new markets and production. Contrary to other economic cooperation MENA countries are differ from social and economic condition. My hypothesis is important this matter.For example, from port of Liverpool to port of Lagos distance between is 4576 mile. Time is 19.1 days. Nigeria gained independent from UK 1960, after that coined south and north. From port of Le Havre to port of Continuo distance between is 4290 mile .Time is 17.9 days. Benin gained independent from France at 1960.Many years had been some difficulties for trade two countries. Therefore regional cooperation is important .In fact, two countries Commerce City distance between is 85 mile.In this work a theoretical study and a model proposal are prepared about the information of an economic – social and political cooperation among 14 Middle- East countries and about the birth of the idea of a new cooperation (unity) while entering 21’st. century.The cooperation like EU, AET and NAFTA, BR?C-S, LAFTA, NAFTA, EEC, MERCESUR, SHANGAY-5, has brought some facilities to the economic life. It is impossible for a country today to live survive a closed economy to other countries in our globalize world.We would argue that the defining issue of economic geography is the need to explain concentrations of population and of economic activity: the distinction between manufacturing belt and farm belt, the existence of cities, the role of industry clusters. (Fujita, 1999, p. 4)Generally we talk about measuring development, in order to decision for future. So we can choose a series of indicators in different social fields, mainly economics, to describe how a particular society has progressed over the time. There are other phrases that have become important in the public debate trying to explain what development really means to a society. Among these we have: Well-being, Welfare state, Developed countries, Reducing poverty, Solution unemployment, Quality of Life, Human development, Social development etc. Classical sectors are chanced today. Today society called “Knowledge society”. Productive for work needs to quality education. Shortly, innovation policies criteria, globalization, WtrO rules, Wipo rule, Pisa scores requires new studies this field. Basically social and economic development has been result. I will explain reason and cause effect those reasons.Job creation is the first priorities in the MENA region. This model will be contributed to solution of unemployment. A free trade agreement (FTA) is a preferential arrangement among countries in which tariff rates among them are reduced to zero. However, different members of the arrangement may set external tariff for non- members at different rates (Krueger, 1997, p. 7) There are kind of agreement for example. Bilateral investment agreement, free trade agreement, regional investment agreement. I will try to my models similar to European Union.In sum up, according to Bell “Society can be viewed as three separate parts that, when integrated, create a harmonious relationship within society. The three parts: polity, market economy (techno-economic), and culture (human tradition) (Bell, 1976, p. 14) in addition to regional trade has impact of multiple effect some fields.

The continued growth for both smartphone usage and mobile applications (apps) innovations has resulted in businesses realizing the potential of this growth in usage. Hence, the study investigates the antecedents of customer satisfaction due the usage of mobile commerce (m-commerce) applications (MCA) by Millennial consumers in South Africa. The conceptual model antecedents were derived from the extended Technology Acceptance Model (TAM). The research made use of self-administered questionnaires to take a cross section of Millennial MCA users in South Africa. The sample comprised of nearly 5500 respondents and the data was analyzed via structural equation and generalized linear modeling. The results revealed that trust, social influence, and innovativeness positively influenced perceived usefulness; perceived enjoyment, mobility, and involvement positively influenced perceived ease of use; and perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use were positive antecedents of customer satisfaction. Several usage and demographic characteristics were also found to have a positive effect on customer satisfaction. It is important for businesses to improve customer experience and satisfaction via MCA to facilitate a positive satisfaction and social influence among young technologically savvy consumers.

Transactions carried out in the uncertain and impersonal conditions of the Internet require substantial levels of trust. Obtaining customers’ trust is therefore imperative to cultivating and nurturing long-lasting and profitable customer-firm relationships in online environments. Surprisingly however, there is currently a dearth of research on the effects of trust on customers’ acceptance of e-commerce in Africa. This paper investigates the effects of the components of institutional trust on perceptions of ease of use and usefulness, as well as attitudes towards use on customers’ intentions to use Internet banking services. An integrated research model based on the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) was built and empirically tested using data obtained from 390 retail banking customers in South Africa. The results show that the proposed model possesses high explanatory capabilities as it could explain 61 per cent of the variance in Internet banking use intentions. The study results further show that situational normality is neither a salient determinant of customers’ attitudes towards use of internet banking nor their use intention, whereas structural assurance is. By examining the effects of institutional trust on the TAM’s variables, especially in a developing African country, this study does not only provide insights for managers in their efforts to achieve rapid adoption of Internet banking, but also contributes to the literature on the topic.

AbstractThis article outlines the history of the commerce in medicinal plants and plant-based remedies from the Spanish American territories in the eighteenth century. It maps the routes used to transport the plants from Spanish America to Europe and, along the arteries of European commerce, colonialism and proselytism, into societies across the Americas, Asia and Africa. Inquiring into the causes of the global ‘spread’ of American remedies, it argues that medicinal plants like ipecacuanha, guaiacum, sarsaparilla, jalap root and cinchona moved with relative ease into Parisian medicine chests, Moroccan court pharmacies and Manila dispensaries alike, because of their ‘exotic’ charisma, the force of centuries-old medical habits, and the increasingly measurable effectiveness of many of these plants by the late eighteenth century. Ultimately and primarily, however, it was because the disease environments of these widely separated places, their medical systems and materia medica had long become entangled by the eighteenth century.

It is estimated that by 2030 the global shortage of nurses and midwives will be 7.6 million, with African countries among the most adversely affected. Within this context, it is important to understand the specific organizational factors that contribute to registered nurses (RNs)’ decisions to remain or leave their workplaces in East Africa. The aim of this study was to commence exploration of these factors by exploring nurses’ perceptions of organizational culture of selected private hospitals in Kenya. A small-scale exploratory qualitative approach was employed, with eight nurses undertaking semi-structured interviews. There were five female and three male nurses. All participants were RNs; two held a bachelor’s degree in nursing and the rest held diplomas in nursing. The thematic analysis revealed four major themes and nine sub-themes. The major themes included: restrictive work environment, top-down leadership, normalizing the abnormal in team dynamics and professionalism, and ethical concerns. These findings suggest an urgent need for Kenyan private hospital administrators to create a hospital work environment that provides more autonomy for nurses. There is a need for inclusive leadership styles that target hospital organizational structures and processes in order to address nursing workforce team dynamics. A merit-based salary and progressive reward systems are recommended to empower nurses to remain in the workforce.

The examination of the growth of canoe transport in Buganda in the nineteenth century is an aspect of the kingdom's history that has received little serious consideration to date. This paper focuses on the ways in which the canoe fleet, especially from the 1840s, was systematically developed and utilized in the extension of Ganda power and influence in the Lake Victoria region. The need to protect and promote commerce was one of the driving forces behind Buganda's diplomatic, military and technological policies in the second half of the nineteenth century. This was consistent with objectives of the kingdom that had endured since around the middle of the sixteenth century, although the scale of these objectives had expanded along with the kingdom's horizons. Yet recognition of this basic continuity should not detract from our appreciation of the degree to which the Ganda innovated to meet the challenges of long-distance trade, as well as the challenges to their control of the external environment. The presence of Ganda at Tabora, on the southern shore of Lake Victoria, and even at Zanzibar itself is indicative of the alacrity with which Kabaka Suna (c. 1830–56) and Kabaka Mutesa (1856–84) seized their opportunities and attempted to secure conditions perceived to be favourable to the ‘national interest’ far beyond territorial borders. Yet Ganda also failed to realize the full military potential of their canoes. Despite their considerable efforts, the success of the naval endeavour was never without qualifications, and it is one of the primary aims of this paper to analyze these deficiencies.

The World Health Organization (WHO) since June 1998 has advocated for the use of artemisinin-based combination therapies (ACTs) in countries where Plasmodium falciparum malaria is resistant to traditional antimalarial therapies such as chloroquine, sulfadoxine-pyrimethamine, and amodiaquine (19;22). In 2006, WHO released evidence-based guidelines for the treatment of malaria backed by findings from various scientific studies (21). During the period between 2002 and 2006, all the five East African states Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, and Burundi changed their national antimalarial treatment policies to use ACTs as first-line treatments for uncomplicated falciparum malaria and commenced with deployment of the drugs in the state-managed health facilities (12–15). To scale up the use of ACTs in the East African region to combat malaria and speed up progress toward the sixth Millennium Development Goal, a combination of delivery, financial, and governance arrangements tailored to national or subnational contexts needs to be considered.

The Nabwal Hills, northeast of Lake Turkana, contain a record of magmatism associated with the initiation and early development of the East African Rift System in northernmost Kenya. The predominantly volcanic Asille Group, 1400 m thick, directly overlies metamorphic basement and comprises a sequence of basaltic lava flows with significant intervals of rhyolitic pyroclastic units, and minor intercalations of fluviatile sediments. The basement gneisses yield K–Ar cooling ages on biotite of 510 and 522 Ma, typically Pan-African. The 40Ar–39Ar ages on alkali feldspar crystals from the rhyolitic units are concordant and show that the Asille Group spans an interval from at least 34.3 to 15.8 Ma, continuing to at least as young as 13 Ma based on previous measurements. Vertebrate fossil sites, containing primate remains, at Irile and Nabwal are shown to be 17 ± 2 Ma old, Early Miocene, based upon K–Ar age measurements on immediately overlying basalts. Variably reliable whole rock K–Ar ages, determined on basalt samples from low in the sequence, indicate that volcanism commenced as early as 34.8 Ma ago. The overall geochronological results show that magmatism in the Nabwal Hills began about 35 Ma ago in Late Eocene times, interpreted as the time of initiation of crustal extension that led to the development of this segment of the East African Rift System. The Asille Group is tilted about 6° to the SSW. This tilting occurred later than 13 Ma ago, and prior to the eruption of the flat-lying Gombe Group basalts. These basalts may have begun erupting about 6 Ma ago in Late Miocene times, although much of this volcanism occurred between about 3.9 and 4.2 Ma ago in Pliocene times. It is suggested that the main rifting, which continues today, commenced in Late Miocene times, less than 13 Ma ago, and is partly reflected in the tilting of the Asille Group.

A 34-year-old female soldier presented with fever and behavioural changes while deployed in Kenya and was diagnosed with encephalitis. The patient underwent urgent aeromedical evacuation to the Queen Elizabeth Hospital, Birmingham for further management. Microbiology tests excluded common infectious causes that are endemic in the East Africa region. However, an autoantibody screen was positive for antibodies against the N-methyl-D-aspartate receptor (NMDAR). Full body imaging confirmed the presence of limbic encephalitis and an ovarian mass suggestive of a teratoma. The patient was diagnosed with ovarian teratoma-associated anti-NMDAR encephalitis, a potentially fatal disease. The patient underwent surgery to remove the teratoma and commenced immunotherapy with steroids, plasma exchange and rituximab. This case highlights the diagnostic challenges of fever with behavioural changes in military personnel deployed in a tropical environment.

A 65-year-old male patient presented with fever, fast atrial fibrillation and frank haematuria on return to Ireland from travel in East Africa. He had a systolic murmur leading to a clinical suspicion of endocarditis. He had no specific clinical features of diphtheria. Blood cultures were taken and empiric therapy commenced with benzylpenicillin, vancomycin and gentamicin. Corynebacterium diphtheriae was detected on blood culture. The isolate was submitted to a reference laboratory for evaluation of toxigenicity. While initially there was concern regarding the possibility of myocarditis, a clinical decision was made not to administer diphtheria antitoxin in the absence of clinical features of respiratory diphtheria, in the presence of invasive infection and with presumptive previous immunisation. There is no specific guidance on the role of antitoxin in this setting. The issue is not generally addressed in previous reports of C. diphtheriae blood stream infection.

A 46-year-old woman presented in severe abdominal pain on a background of 3 months of weight loss and intermittent vomiting. She had visited East Africa 6 months prior but reported no unwell contacts. On examination, she had generalised abdominal tenderness, distension and a painful paraumbilical swelling. CT scanning confirmed small bowel obstruction and revealed widespread peritoneal nodules, lymphadenopathy, ascites and a soft tissue paraumbilical mass. CA-125 tumour marker was elevated. However, transvaginal ultrasound scanning showed normal-appearing ovaries. She underwent a diagnostic laparoscopy for ascitic fluid analysis and biopsy of omental and peritoneal nodules, which revealed a lymphocytic exudate and caseating granulomas, respectively. Interferon-γ release assay and repeated stains for acid-fast bacilli were negative. She was commenced on antituberculous chemotherapy for a presumed diagnosis of abdominal tuberculosis. Positive culture results 2 weeks later confirmed Mycobacterium tuberculosis infection. The patient experienced a complete resolution of symptoms within 6 weeks of treatment.

The last twenty years have seen a series of studies dealing, at least in part, with the nineteenth-century history of slavery at the East African coast. Each has, in its own way, focused on transformations associated with changing patterns of accumulation in the nineteenth century. If there has been a general theme it is of the increasing constraints placed upon slaves and the increasing demands made on them, as owners sought to reorganize labour time and processes to take advantage of the new opportunities offered by the rapid expansion of commerce from the 1830s. While Morton has attacked Cooper's ‘hegemonic’ perspective and accused him of presenting slavery as benign and static, both are agreed on a basic trend: the increasingly commercial orientation of slave-based agriculture considerably diminished slave autonomy between 1820 and 1890. Recently, Glassman has offered a study which is decidedly non-hegemonic in perspective, and has revealed the ways in which marginal members of society appropriated and sought to reinterpret the ideology through which they were subordinated. Yet he too describes the increasing circumscription of slave autonomy in response to the demands of new kinds of production – in his case, the sugar plantations of the Pangani valley.

This article aims at describing the social life of the American people in several places that made the adventures of John Steinbeck as the author of the novel Travels with Charley in Search of America around the 1960s. American people’s lives are a part of world civilizations that literary readers need to know. This adventure was preceded by an author’s trip in New York City, then to California, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Maine, New Jersey, Saint Lawrence, Quebec, Niagara Falls, Ohio, Chicago, Illinois, Michigan, North Dakota, the Rocky Mountains, Washington, the West Coast, Oregon, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, New Orleans, Salinas, and again ended in New York. In processing research data, the writer uses one of the methods of literary research, namely the Dynamic Structural Approach which emphasizes the study of the intrinsic elements of literary work and the involvement of the author in his work. The intrinsic elements emphasized in this study are the physical and social settings. The research data were obtained from the results of a literature study which were then explained descriptively. The writer found a number of descriptions of the social life of the American people in the 1960s, namely the life of the city, the situation of the inland people, and ethnic discrimination. The people of the city are busy taking care of their profession and competing for careers, inland people living naturally without competing ambitions, and black African Americans have not enjoyed the progress achieved by the Americans. The description of American society related to the fictional story is divided by region, namely east, north, middle, west, and south. The social condition in the eastern region is dominated by beaches and mountains, and is engaged in business, commerce, industry, and agriculture. The comfortable landscape in the northern region spends the people time as breeders and farmers. The natural condition in the middle region of American is very suitable for agriculture, plantations, and animal husbandry. Many people in the western American region facing the Pacific Ocean become fishermen. The natural conditions from the plains and valleys to the hills make the southern region suitable for plantation land.

-Edward L. Cox, Judith A. Carney, Black rice: The African origin of rice cultivation in the Americas. Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 2001. xiv + 240 pp.-David Barry Gaspar, Brian Dyde, A history of Antigua: The unsuspected Isle. Oxford: Macmillan Education, 2000. xi + 320 pp.-Carolyn E. Fick, Stewart R. King, Blue coat or powdered wig: Free people of color in pre-revolutionary Saint Domingue. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2001. xxvi + 328 pp.-César J. Ayala, Birgit Sonesson, Puerto Rico's commerce, 1765-1865: From regional to worldwide market relations. Los Angeles: UCLA Latin American Center Publications, 200. xiii + 338 pp.-Nadine Lefaucheur, Bernard Moitt, Women and slavery in the French Antilles, 1635-1848. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2001. xviii + 217 pp.-Edward L. Cox, Roderick A. McDonald, Between slavery and freedom: Special magistrate John Anderson's journal of St. Vincent during the apprenticeship. Jamaica: University of the West Indies Press, 2001. xviii + 309 pp.-Jaap Jacobs, Benjamin Schmidt, Innocence abroad: The Dutch imagination and the new world, 1570-1670. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001. xxviii + 450 pp.-Wim Klooster, Johanna C. Prins ,The Low countries and the New World(s): Travel, Discovery, Early Relations. Lanham NY: University Press of America, 2000. 226 pp., Bettina Brandt, Timothy Stevens (eds)-Wouter Gortzak, Gert Oostindie ,Knellende koninkrijksbanden: Het Nederlandse dekolonisatiebeleid in de Caraïben, 1940-2000. Volume 1, 1940-1954; Volume 2, 1954-1975; Volume 3, 1975-2000. 668 pp. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2001., Inge Klinkers (eds)-Richard Price, Ellen-Rose Kambel, Resource conflicts, gender and indigenous rights in Suriname: Local, national and global perspectives. Leiden, The Netherlands: self-published, 2002, iii + 266.-Peter Redfield, Richard Price ,Les Marrons. Châteauneuf-le-Rouge: Vents d'ailleurs, 2003. 127 pp., Sally Price (eds)-Mary Chamberlain, Glenford D. Howe ,The empowering impulse: The nationalist tradition of Barbados. Kingston: Canoe Press, 2001. xiii + 354 pp., Don D. Marshall (eds)-Jean Stubbs, Alejandro de la Fuente, A Nation for All: Race, Inequality, and Politics in Twentieth-Century Cuba. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001. xiv + 449 pp.-Sheryl L. Lutjens, Susan Kaufman Purcell ,Cuba: The contours of Change. Boulder CO: Lynne Rienner, 2000. ix + 155 pp., David J. Rothkopf (eds)-Jean-Germain Gros, Robert Fatton Jr., Haiti's predatory republic: The unending transition to democracy. Boulder CO: Lynn Rienner, 2002. xvi + 237 pp.-Elizabeth McAlister, Beverly Bell, Walking on fire: Haitian Women's Stories of Survival and Resistance. Ithaca NY: Cornell University Press, 2001. xx + 253 pp.-Gérard Collomb, Peter Hulme, Remnants of conquest: The island Caribs and their visitors, 1877-1998. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000. 371 pp.-Chris Bongie, Jeannie Suk, Postcolonial paradoxes in French Caribbean Writing: Césaire, Glissant, Condé. New York: Oxford University Press, 2001. 216 pp.-Marie-Hélène Laforest, Caroline Rody, The Daughter's return: African-American and Caribbean Women's fictions of history. New York: Oxford University Press, 2001. x + 267 pp.-Marie-Hélène Laforest, Isabel Hoving, In praise of new travelers: Reading Caribbean migrant women's writing. Stanford CA: Stanford University Press, 2001. ix + 374 pp.-Catherine Benoît, Franck Degoul, Le commerce diabolique: Une exploration de l'imaginaire du pacte maléfique en Martinique. Petit-Bourg, Guadeloupe: Ibis Rouge, 2000. 207 pp.-Catherine Benoît, Margarite Fernández Olmos ,Healing cultures: Art and religion as curative practices in the Caribbean and its diaspora. New York: Palgrave, 2001. xxi + 236 pp., Lizabeth Paravisini-Gebert (eds)-Jorge Pérez Rolón, Charley Gerard, Music from Cuba: Mongo Santamaría, Chocolate Armenteros and Cuban musicians in the United States. Westport CT: Praeger, 2001. xi + 155 pp.-Ivelaw L. Griffith, Anthony Payne ,Charting Caribbean Development. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2001. xi + 284 pp., Paul Sutton (eds)-Ransford W. Palmer, Irma T. Alonso, Caribbean economies in the twenty-first century. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2002. 232 pp.-Glenn R. Smucker, Jennie Marcelle Smith, When the hands are many: Community organization and social change in rural Haiti. Ithaca NY: Cornell University Press, 2001. xii + 229 pp.-Kevin Birth, Nancy Foner, Islands in the city: West Indian migration to New York. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001. viii + 304 pp.-Joy Mahabir, Viranjini Munasinghe, Callaloo or tossed salad? East Indians and the cultural politics of identity in Trinidad. Ithaca NY: Cornell University Press, 2001. xv + 315 pp.-Stéphane Goyette, Robert Chaudenson, Creolization of language and culture. Revised in collaboration with Salikoko S. Mufwene. London: Routledge, 2001. xxi + 340 pp.

Abstract Abstract 1524 The websites of the WMDA and BMDW list almost 100 registries providing volunteer unrelated donor (VUD) stem cells to the transplant community. A minority of these registries have completed a formal accreditation process although the majority of donors (>80%) in BMDW are contained within WMDA accredited registries. As a user of these registry services we were interested to assess variations in the efficiency of services in order to optimise our own search process and maximise our ability to transplant patients who might benefit in a timely manner. Within a national health service we are careful to contain costs and are aware that not only does the level of HLA typing of individual donors differ between registries but the costs of, and time to, obtaining confirmatory samples and the costs of eventual stem cell procurement also vary considerably. Since January 2004 we have maintained a comprehensive database to follow the progress of VUD searches in our institution. During this time searches were commenced for 193 patients (139 Caucasian, 15 African-Caribbean, 24 Asian and 15 mixed-race), and donors identified for 149 (77%). After high resolution typing of the potential recipient our initial request goes to our national hub which then provides a list of possible donors worldwide, including known degree of match and registry source. The simple parameter of time to donor identification is heavily influenced by the transplant centre which often categorises recipients in degrees of urgency and was not thought to be a useful measure of efficiency. Instead we looked at the availability of, time to obtain, and value of (as defined by degree of matching), confirmatory tissue typing samples once the request had been initiated, in addition to normal measures of the quality of the received stem cell product. For the 193 patients we requested further samples from 1226 donors with a median number of requests per patient of 7 (range 1–20). We utilised 30 registries (median number of requests per registry (R/R) of 3, range 1–387), although some 50% of the requests went to only 5 registries with a median of 220 R/R, range 43–387. 806 confirmatory samples were received from 1226 requests (66%). Donor availability and the time to sample arrival were compared in the 5 most frequently utilised registries, hereafter known as registries A-E. The percentage of the requests that resulted in samples and the percentages of samples found to be HLA-matched were 76%, 72%, 70%, 67% and 53% and 31%, 41%, 40%, 46% and 28% from registries A,B,C,D and E respectively. The chance of obtaining a suitable HLA-matched donor was highest from registry D at 31% and lowest from registry E at 15%. Failure to supply a confirmatory sample is due to inability to contact the donor, temporary unavailability or donor refusal and was unacceptably high in registry E at 47%. The median times from request to sample arrival ranged from 15–22 days. We confirmed the difficulties in finding donors for non-Caucasian patients with fewer potential donors provided initially by our hub and a reduced chance of finding fully HLA matched donors (defined generously as 8/8 antigens matched). Such donors were found for 62%, 26%, 46% and 40% of Caucasian, African-Caribbean, Asian and mixed-race patients. 61 patients have been transplanted to date. No differences were found between the 5 registries in the hours to infusion, viability at infusion, volume collected, total nucleated cell counts, CD34+cell numbers or time to engraftment. Of the 88 patients for whom donors were found but no transplant has been performed, 72 remain alive on treatment. Many of these have chronic myeloid leukemia (CML) and are responding to second generation tyrosine kinase inhibitors. The costs of obtaining samples varies from approximately $500-2000 per sample resulting in a range of 500 to several thousand dollars per patient. Cost cannot be recouped in our country if the transplant is not performed. As a result of this audit we have refined our search process using the initial search as a surrogate for the ease of finding a donor subsequently, so that full searches are only initiated in patients failing imatinib if they have few donors and/or donors with low resolution typing and focussing on those registries most likely to provide HLA-matched blood samples. Registries also have a responsibility to improve their service and minimise costs by focussing on donor retention and high resolution typing. Disclosures: No relevant conflicts of interest to declare.

KrisEnergy Pumps Cambodia’s First Crude in 17 Years A Cambodian concession has commenced production after years of delays in a venture between Singapore’s KrisEnergy and the government. The crude comes from oil fields in Block A, comprising 3083 km2 of the Khmer basin in the oil-rich Gulf of Thailand, off the southwestern coast of Sihanoukville. The concession will progress in phases once new wells are commissioned and completed. Kelvin Tang, chief executive of KrisEnergy’s Cambodian operations, called the 29 December event “an important strategic milestone” for the company, while Prime Minister Hun Sen hailed the first extraction as “a new achievement for Cambodia’s economy” and “a huge gift for our nation.” Ironbark Australian Exploration Well Declared Dry; Co-Owner Stocks Plummet BP has come up dry at its Ironbark-1 exploration well, the anticipated multi-trillion-scf prospect off the west Australian Pilbara coast. The disappointing prospect was once seen as a potential gas supplier to the emptying North West Shelf (NWS) LNG plant, where BP is a co-owner, within 5 to 10 years. After 2 months of drilling to a total depth of 5618 m, “no significant hydrocarbon shows were encountered in any of the target sands,” according to co-owner New Zealand Oil and Gas (NZOG). Petrorecôncavo Buys Petrobras’ Onshore Bahian Stake for $30 Million Brazilian operator Petrobras on 23 December signed a contract with independent producer Petrorecôncavo to sell its entire stake in 12 onshore E&P fields, the Remanso Cluster, in the state of Bahia. The sale value for the fields was $30 million; $4 million was paid on signing, $21 million at the closing of the transaction, and $5 million will be paid 1 year after that. The Remanso Cluster comprises the onshore fields of Brejinho, Canabrava, Cassarongongo, Fazenda Belém, Gomo, Mata de São João, Norte Fazenda Caruaçu, Remanso, Rio dos Ovos, Rio Subaúma, São Pedro, and Sesmaria. Zion Spuds the Israeli Megiddo-Jezreel #2 Well On 6 January, Zion Oil and Gas officially spudded the Megiddo­Jezreel #2 on its 99,000­acre Megiddo­Jezreel license area in Israel. “With unique operating conditions in the COVID­19 environment, our crews have performed an amazing task,” Zion CEO Robert Dunn said. “Mobilizing a rig into a new coun­try during a pandemic and rigging up is the most challenging part of the drilling operation,” Zion’s vice president of operations, Monty Kness, added. Exxon Declares a Dud at Second Guyana Well Exxon Mobil said on 15 January that its exploration well in the prolific Stabroek Block off Guyana’s coast did not find oil in its target area. Exxon, which operates the Stabroek Block in a consortium with Hess and China’s CNOOC, has made 18 discoveries in the area in 5 years, totaling more than 8 billion BOE, for a combined potential for producing up to 750,000 B/D of crude. The Hassa­1 exploration well was the giant’s second setback to its drilling campaign in recent months. Heirs Holdings Buys 45% of Shell Nigeria’s OML 17 Field Shell Nigeria announced on 15 January it had completed a $533 million sale of its stakes in an onshore OML 17 oil field in Nigeria to African strategic investor Heirs Holdings, Nigeria’s largest publicly listed conglomerate. The deal is one of the largest oil and gas financings in Africa in more than a decade, with a financing component of $1.1 billion provided by a consortium of global and regional banks and investors. Heirs Holdings, in partnership with Transcorp, one of the largest power producers in Nigeria with 2000 MW of installed capacity, purchased 45% stake in the field. It acquired the stakes of Shell, Total, and Eni to further its expansion into the oil and gas industry. Apex Discovers Oil in Egypt’s Western Desert Privately held independent E&P firm Apex International Energy, backed in part by UK energy investment firm Blue Water Energy, on 18 January announced a discovery in the Southeast Meleiha Concession (SEM) in the western desert of Egypt. The discovery was made at the SEMZ-11X well located 10 km west of Zarif field, the nearest producing field. The well was drilled to a total depth of 5,700 ft and encountered 65 ft of oil pay in the Cretaceous sandstones of the Bahariya and Abu Roash G formations. Testing of the Bahariya resulted in a peak rate of 2,100 B/D with no water. Additional uphole pay exists in the Bahariya and Abu Roash G formations that can be added to the production stream in the future. Kosmos Announces Oil at Winterfell Well Dallas-based E&P independent Kosmos Energy announced on 19 January an oil discovery in deepwater US Gulf of Mexico. The Winterfell discovery well, the product of infrastructure-led exploration (ILX), was drilled to a total depth of approximately 23,000 ft and is located in approximately 5,300 ft of water. This subsalt Upper Miocene prospect in off-shore Louisiana encountered approximately 85 ft of net oil pay in two intervals. ILX exploration, which has featured prominently in upstream operators’ portfolios in recent years of relatively low oil prices, is exploration around producing hubs that can be hooked up to those facilities easily and cheaply. The development sidesteps the need for costly and time-consuming individual hub construction. Equinor Gets Permit To Drill North Sea Wildcat Well The Norwegian Petroleum Directorate has granted Equinor a drilling permit for wildcat well 31/11-1 S in the North Sea offshore Norway, 62 km south of the Troll field. The drilling program is the first exploration well to be drilled in production license 785 S, awarded on 6 February 2015 (APA 2014). Operator Equinor and Total E&P Norge are 50/50 partners in the license, which consists of parts of Blocks 26/2 and 31/11. Petrobras, ExxonMobil Hit Hydrocarbons at Urissanê Well, Offshore Brazil Brazilian state-owned Petrobras announced on 29 January it had discovered hydrocarbons in a well located in the Campos Basin presalt off Brazil’s coast of Campos dos Gotyacaze in the State of Rio de Janeiro. Well 1-BRSA-1377-RJS (informally called Urissanê) is located in Block C-M-411, at a depth of 2950 m approximately 200 km offshore. Petrobras, which operates the block in a 50/50 partnership with Exxon Mobil, said it would analyze the well data to better target exploratory activities and assess the potential of the discovery. BP Offloads 20% Share of Oman’s Block 61 To PTTEP Marking another significant step in its divestment program, BP will sell a 20% participating interest in Oman’s 3950 km2 Block 61 in central Oman to Thailand’s national PTT Exploration and Production (PTTEP) for $2.59 billion. BP will remain operator of the block, holding a 40% interest.‎ The sale comprises $2.45 billion payable on completion and $140 million payable contingent on preagreed conditions.‎ After the sale, BP will hold 40% interest in Block 61, while OQ holds 30%, PTTEP ‎20%, and ‎Petronas 10%.‎ Block 61 contains the largest tight gas development in the Middle East.

First a Man - then a Christian. Grundtvig and Missonary ActivityBy K.E. BuggeThe aim of this paper is to clarify Grundtvig’s ideas on missionary activity in the socalled »heathen parts«. The point of departure is taken in a brief presentation of the poem »Man first - and then a Christian« (1838), an often quoted text, whenever this theme is discussed. The most extensive among earlier studies on the subject is the book published by Georg Thaning: »The Grundtvigian Movement and the Mission among Heathen« (1922). The author provides valuable insights also into Grundtvig’s ideas, but has, of course, not been able to utilize more recent studies.On the background of the revival movement of the late 18th and early 19th century, The Danish Missionary Society was established in 1821. In the Lutheran churches such activity was generally deemed to be unnecessary. According to the Holy Scripture, so it was argued, the heathen already had a »natural« knowledge of God, and the word of God had been preached to the ends of the earth in the times of the Apostles. Nevertheless, it was considered a matter of course that a Christian sovereign had the duty to ensure that non-Christian citizens of his domain were offered the possibility of conversion to the one and true faith. In the double-monarchy Denmark-Norway such non-Christian populations were the Lapplanders of Northern Norway, the Inuits in Greenland, the black slaves in Danish West India and finally the native populations of the Danish colonies in West Africa and East India. Under the influence of Pietism missionary, activity was initiated by the Danish state in South India (1706), Northern Norway (1716), and Greenland (1721).In Grundtvig’s home the general attitude towards missionary work among the heathen seems to have reflected traditional Lutheranism. Nevertheless, one of Grundtvig’s elder brothers, Jacob Grundtvig, volunteered to become a missionary in Greenland.Due to incidental circumstances he was instead sent to the Danish colony in West Africa, where he died after less than one year of service. He was succeeded by his brother Niels Grundtvig, who likewise died within a year. During the period when Jacob Grundtvig prepared himself for the journey to Greenland, we can imagine that his family spent many an hour discussing his future conditions. It is probable that on these occasions his father consulted his copy of the the report on the Greenland mission published by Hans Egede in 1737. It is a fact that Grundtvig imbibed a deep admiration for Hans Egede early in his life. In his extensive poem »Roskilde Rhyme« (1812, published 1814), the theme of which is the history of Christianity in Denmark, Grundtvig inserted more than 70 lines on the Greenland mission. Egede’s achievements are here described in close connection with the missionary work of Bartholomäus Ziegenbalg in Tranquebar, South India, as integral parts of the same journey towards the celestial Jerusalem.In Grundtvig’s famous publication »The Church’s Retort« (1825) he describes the church as an historical fact from the days of the Apostles to our days. This historical church is at the same time a universal entity, carrying the potential of becoming the church of all humanity - if not before, then at the end of the world. A few years later, in a contribution to the periodical .Theological Monthly., he applies this historicaluniversal perspective on missionary acticity in earlier times and in the present. The main features of this stance may be summarized in the following points:1. Grundtvig rejects the Orthodox-Lutheran line of thought and underscores the Biblical view: That before the end of time the Gospel must be preached out into all comers of the world.2. Our Lutheran, Biblically founded faith must not lead to inactivity in this field.3. Correctly understood, missionary activity is a continuance of the acts of the Apostles.4. The Holy Spirit is the intrinsic dynamic power in the extension of the Christian faith.5. The practical procedure in this extension work must never be compulsion or stealth, but the preaching of the word and the free, uninhibited decision of the listeners.We find here a total reversion of the Orthodox-Lutheran way of rejection in principle, but acceptance in practice. Grundtvig accepts the principle: That missionary activity is a legitimate and necessary Christian undertaking. The same activity has, however, both historically and in our days, been marred by unacceptable practices, on which he reacts with forceful rejection. To this position Grundtvig adhered for the rest of his life.Already in 1826, Grundtvig withdrew from the controversy arising from the publication of his .Retort.. The public dispute was, however, continued with great energy by the gifted young academic, Jacob Christian Lindberg. During the 1830s a weekly paper, edited by Lindberg, .Nordisk Kirke-Tidende., i.e. Nordic Church Tidings, became Grundtvig’s main channel of communication with the public. All through the years of its publication (1833-41), this paper, of which Grundtvig was also an avid reader, brought numerous articles and reports on missionary activity. Among the reasons for this editorial practice we find some personal motives. Quite a few of Grundtvig’s and Lindberg’s friends were board members of the Danish Missionary Society. Furthermore, one of Lindberg’s former students, Christen Christensen Østergaard was appointed a missionary in Greenland.In the present paper the articles dealing with missionary activity are extensively reported and quoted as far as the years 1833-38 are concerned, and the effects on Grundtvig of this incessant .bombardment. of information on missionary activity are summarized. Generally speaking, it was gratifying for Grundtvig to witness ho w many of his ideas on missionary activity were reflected in these contributions. Furthermore, Lindberg’s regular reports on the progress of C.C. Østergaard in Greenland has continuously reminded Grundtvig of the admired Hans Egede.Among the immediate effects the genesis of the poem »First the man - then the Christian« must be mentioned. As already observed by Kaj Thaning, Grundtvig has read an article in the issue of Nordic Church Tidings, dated, January 8th, 1838, written by the Orthodox-Lutheran, German theologian Heinrich Møller on the relationship between human nature and true Christianity. Grundtvig has, it seems, written his poem in protest against Møller’s assertion: That true humanness is expressed in acceptance of man’s fundamental sinfulness. Against this negative position Grundtvig holds forth the positive Johannine formulations: To be »of the truth« and to hear the voice of the Good Shepherd. Grundtvig has seen a connection between Møller’s negative view of human nature and a perverted missionary practice. In the third stanza of his poem Grundtvig therefore inserted some critical remarks, clearly inspired by his reading of Nordic Church Tidings.Other immediate effects are seen in the way in which, in his sermons from these years, Grundtvig meticulously elaborates on the Biblical argumentation in favour of missionary activity. In this context he combines passages form the Old and New Testament - often in an ingenious, original manner. Finally must be mentioned the way in which Grundtvig, in his hymn writing from the middle of the 1830s, more often than hitherto recognized, interposes stanzas dealing with the preaching of the Gospel to heathen populations.Turning from general observations and a study of immediate impact, the paper considers the effects, which become apparent in a longer perspective. In this respect Grundtvig’s interpretation of the seven churches mentioned in chapters 2-3 of the Book of Revelation is of crucial importance. According to Grundtvig, they symbolize seven stages in the historical development of Christianity, i.e. the churches of the Hebrews, the Greeks, the Romans, the English, the Germans and the »Nordic« people. The seventh and last church will reveal itself sometime in the future.This vision, which Grundtvig expounds for the first time in 1810, emerges in his writings from time to time all through his life. The most impressive literary monument describing the vision is his great poem, »The Pleiades of Christendom« from 1856-60.In 1845 he becomes convinced that the arrival of the sixth stage is revealed in the breakthrough of a new and vigourous hymn-singing in the church of Vartov. As late as the spring of 1863 Grundtvig voices a contented optimism in a church-historical lecture, where the Danish missions to Greenland and to Tranquebar in South India are characterized as .signs of life and good omens.. Grundtvig here refers back to his above-mentioned »Roskilde Rhyme« (1812, 1814), where he had offered a spiritual interpretation of the names of persons and localities involved in the process. He had then observed that the colony founded in Greenland by Hans Egede was called »Good Hope«, a highly symbolic name. And the church built by the missionaries in Tranquebar was called »Church of the New Jerusalem«, a name explicitly referring to the Book of Revelation, and thus welding together his great vision and his view on missionary activity. After Denmark’s humiliating defeat in the Danish-German war of 1864, the optimism faded away. Grundtvig seems to have concluded that the days of the sixth and .Nordic. church had come to an end, and the era of the seventh church was about to commence. In accordance with his poem on »The Pleiades« etc. he localizes this final church in India.In Grundtvig’s total view missionary activity was the dynamism that bound his vision together into an integrated process. Through the activity of »Denmark’s apostle«, Ansgar, another admired mis-sionary, the universal church had become a locally rooted reality. Through the missions of Hans Egede and Ziegenbalg the Gospel was carried out to the ends of the earth. The local Danish church thus contributed significantly to the proliferation of a universal church. In the development of this view, Grundtvig was inspired as well as provoked by his regular reading of Nordic Church Tidings in the 1830s.

Over the last two decades, Africa has gone through tremendous economic transformation. It was only in 2004 when the Prime Minister for the UK, Tony Blair, described Africa as the “scar on the conscience of the world” when he was establishing the Commission for Africa. A decade later, he described Africa as “the most exciting continent on the planet because of its opportunities.” Within less than twenty years, the continent has become the world’s most rapidly growing economic region. This economic growth has been attributed largely to the active private sector. Kenya, for example, has realized the highest growth rate in the East African region due to its private sector, which makes a major contribution to the country’s GDP. For this growth rate to continue, African countries need to create competitive legal frameworks that continue to attract investors and protect their interests.One of such is the disqualification framework for company directors that seeks to protect the public by placing a prohibition on a miscreant director from being involved, for a specific period, in the management of companies. An efficient disqualification framework also prevents people without the necessary qualifications from managing companies and deters those who might be tempted to engage in fraudulent activities. Without a strict disqualification framework, investors are unlikely to be attracted to a country, as they risk losing their investments when their companies are managed by incompetent, negligent, or fraudulent directors, especially those with a track record of mismanaging other companies. This philosophy was captured clearly by the Kenyan Government when it enacted the Companies Act 2015 and stated that one of its key objectives was to facilitate commerce, industry, and other socio-economic activities. It is against this backdrop that this Article examines whether the disqualification framework under the Companies Act 2015 is adequate to protect the interests of investors. This framework is contrasted with the one that existed under the repealed Companies Act 1962 with a view to assessing whether the reforms are likely to bring about the desired changes.

Tucked into strip malls along Brookhurst Street are the scattered agglomeration of restaurants, markets, bakeries, butcher shops, hookah lounges, educational centers, hair salons, and clothing stores catering to groups who come from the Middle East and North Africa. Proliferating over the last twenty-five years, this Anaheim thoroughfare is colloquially known as Little Arabia. The small strip of commerce is supported by the nation’s largest Arab population residing throughout Southern California. The emergence of Little Arabia is similar to what scholars refer to as “ethnoburbs,” “invisiburbs,” and “design assimilated suburbs.” Little Arabia, however, represents something different: what this paper refers to as an “ethnoanchor.” To illustrate the descriptive utility of the ethnoanchor typology, this paper unpacks the historical, spatial, social, and political dynamics of Little Arabia to illustrate how contemporary migration patterns are influencing suburban regions, collectively illustrating the constitution of a new kind of American dream.

Simon McNorton lives in Beirut, Lebanon, where he works for the UK's Department for International Development (DFID). McNorton heads a team that ensures effective delivery of the UK's £90m bilateral aid package to Lebanon. He has held roles with DFID as a researcher and evaluation adviser based in East Africa and in the UK, following two years as a Senior Research Officer at the UK's Department for Work and Pensions. McNorton graduated from the Trachtenberg School of Public Policy and Public Administration in 2013 with a MasterÕs in Public Policy and a concentration in International Development and Program Evaluation. His capstone team delivered an evaluation framework for Teachers Without Borders global disaster response education. During his graduate study and earlier in his career, McNorton worked for the National Gay and Lesbian Chamber of Commerce in DC as a Senior Policy Fellow, and spent two years in the Public Affairs Team at Stonewall, the UK's leading lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender rights charity. Immediately prior to his graduate study, McNorton spent a year working on social justice programs in Rajasthan, India. He completed his undergraduate study at the University of Salford in Manchester in the UK in 2006. In February 2020, Fania Jean interviewed McNorton for Policy Perspectives.

Purpose: The purpose of this article is to investigate the ways in which states are still significant actors in creating and shaping the nature and characteristics of global labour markets. My argument is demonstrated through an empirical case study of the global labour market for British seafarers. Problem Investigated: The last 30 years has witnessed a decimation of the number of employed British seafarers, particularly at lower rank levels, such as ratings. I contend that despite Britain's long and rich maritime history, the British state has not acted meaningfully to reverse the decline of British seafarers. The lack of meaningful action I contend is an attempt to crew British owned ships with cheaper seafaring labour from Asia, particularly south east Asia. In so doing the British state has contributed to the decline of a once thriving labour market. There has simultaneously been an upsurge in the employment of seafarers of other nationalities, and thus the creation of new labour markets in countries such as the Philippines. This paper is an attempt to understand some of the factors responsible for the decline of the British labour market for seafarers. Methodology and Approach: This paper is the outcome of a larger qualitative study undertaken for my doctoral thesis in industrial sociology which examined the transformation of the global labour market for South African, Filipino and British seafarers. The methodology consists of in depth interviews with maritime officials and trade union leaders. These were conducted in person in London, United Kingdom between 2005 and 2008. These interviews are supported by extensive literature and documentary research, to validate, support and test claims made by my interviewees. Implications and Value of the Research: The theoretical contribution of this paper is to reinsert the state more critically into the literature on labour markets. Empirically, seafaring labour markets are largely ignored by the disciplines of both sociology and commerce. The paper attempts to fill this gap by investigating a much neglected occupational sector. Very little empirical work is being done by South African researchers on global labour markets outside South Africa. This paper is therefore primarily addressed to a South African audience. Conclusion: The paper demonstrates that the state has to be a willing and active partner in ensuring employment security of its worker-citizens in global labour markets. The private sector and organised labour by themselves are unable or unwilling to prevent massive job losses without state intervention. As increasing numbers of workers join global labour markets, states need to become more involved rather than less involved in ensuring the stability of employment for their citizens.

During biblical times in the Near Eastern world, circumcision was a common practice. Reasons for conducting the operation varied. In biblical times, only males were circumcised. This essay attempts to answer the following questions: (1) What was the significance of circumcision in the ancient Near East? (2) Can one say with certainty that circumcision amongst Xhosa communities was influenced by the biblical text? This article commences by examining circumcision in the ancient Near East. The study will then explore the rise of circumcision in ancient Israel when Yahweh commanded Abraham to circumcise all males in his household as a sign of keeping the covenant with Yahweh (cf. Gn 17:9-14). Next, the ideology of excluding women from being circumcised during biblical times is discussed. Thereafter, circumcision conducted in our modern postbiblical world - contemporary perspectives on circumcision, also known as male genital mutilation (hereafter, MGM) - is examined in terms of the following four themes: (1) the role of culture amongst Xhosa communities in motivating MGM, (2) the emergence of female genital mutilation (hereafter, FGM) in Africa, (3) the theory that circumcision reduces transmission of HIV which causes AIDS, and (4) the theory that a circumcised penis enhances orgasm during sex. Next, MGM in South Africa is explained as a violation of human rights. Lastly, this research concludes with possible solutions towards mitigating fatalities of MGM amongst Xhosa communities in South Africa.

Little is known about the global bat souvenir trade despite previous research efforts into bat harvest for bushmeat. We screened eBay listings of bats in Australia, Canada, Italy, Switzerland, United Kingdom and USA to assess the nature and extent of the online offers. A total of 237 listings were retrieved in between the 11th and 25th of May 2020 with a median price per item of US$38.50 (range: US$8.50–2,500.00). Items on offer were mostly taxidermy (61.2%) or skull (21.1%) specimens. Overall, 32 different species of bat were advertised, most of which (n = 28) are listed as “Least Concern” on the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List. One species (Nycteris javanica) is classified as “Vulnerable” and one (Eidolon helvum) as “Near Threatened.” Pteropus spp. specimens were the most expensive specimens on offer and the conservations status of these species may range from “Critically Endangered” to “Data Deficient” by IUCN and the entire genus is listed in the Appendix II by the Convention on the International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES). However, the exact species concerned, and their respective conservation status, could not be confirmed based on the listings' photos. The sourcing of bat was restricted to mostly South-East Asian countries (a third of items sourced from Indonesia) and to two African countries. Our survey revealed that the online offer of bat products is diverse, abundant, and facilitated by worldwide sellers although most offered bats species are from South-East Asia. With a few exceptions, the species on offer were of little present conservation concern, however, many unknowns remain on the potential animal welfare, biosecurity, legal implications, and most importantly public health risks associated with this dark trade.

Iron biofortification of the common bean (Phaseolus vulgaris) commenced in earnest ~18 years ago. Based on knowledge at the time, the biofortification approach for beans was simply to breed for increased Fe concentration based on 3 major assumptions: (1) The average bean Fe concentration is ~50 μg/g; (2) Higher Fe concentration results in more bioavailable Fe delivered for absorption; (3) Breeding for high Fe concentration is a trait that can be achieved through traditional breeding and is sustainable once a high Fe bean sample is released to farmers. Current research indicates that the assumptions of the high Fe breeding approach are not met in countries of East Africa, a major focus area of bean Fe biofortification. Thus, there is a need to redefine bean Fe biofortification. For assumption 1, recent research indicates that the average bean Fe concentration in East Africa is 71 μg/g, thus about 20 μg/g higher than the assumed value. For assumption 2, recent studies demonstrate that for beans higher Fe concentration does not always equate to more Fe absorption. Finally, for assumption 3, studies show a strong environment and genotype by environment effect on Fe concentration, thus making it difficult to develop and sustain high Fe concentrations. This paper provides an examination of the available evidence related to the above assumptions, and offers an alternative approach utilizing tools that focus on Fe bioavailability to redefine Fe biofortification of the common bean.

CCJ.V4 – 2019 Twitter Facebook CCJ.V4.2019 2019 – Vol. 4, No.1 ( Papers 1-3) & No. 2 (Paper 4-6) ISSN 2573-5691 (online) Determinants of Innovations in the Region of MENA by Hau Huang and Massood Samii This paper investigates determinants of innovation in MENA (Middle East and North Africa) countries. This investigation focused on GDP per capita (PPP), higher education enrollment, economy openness, business disclosure and unemployment rates, among other factors. The analysis uses the Global Innovation Index (GII), patent applications and high technology export as dependent variables in separate models. Panel regression is applied in the study. The result indicates that in the MENA region, all the above four factors except unemployment rate are determinants of innovation, and it is also shown that high technology export is the best proxy for innovation among the three dependent variables. This study is organized in the following format: introduction, followed by literature review, then data and methodology, then the results and discussion; finally, the paper closes with its conclusion and potentialities for future research. Intangible Assets and Organizational Performance in Indian Manufacturing Industry by Shafali Bahl Shah and Sangeeta Shah Bharadwaj The importance of intangible assets, such as organizational competencies, experience, and expertise has not been adequately examined. In order to fill that gap, an organizational model was developed based upon research within Indian Manufacturing Industry, so as to determine the key intangible assets of organizational performance and their significance. To an extent that these intangible organizational knowledge as an asset is capable of creating a competitive advantage, the conceptual model contributes to both scholars and practitioners. Hedonic and Utilitariian Motivations: A Study Applied to Wine Consumption by Jose Edson Lara, Ronaldo Lamounier, Wanderleri Ramalho, Thalles Augusto, Eduardo Trindade Wine is part of history, either as a product or as an iconic beverage. It has been the object of studies related to Greek mythology, to the culture of the peoples, to religious values and to contemporary behaviors. It takes a leading role in the history of agriculture, industry, commerce and medicine. It has its trajectory marked by paradoxes, being a product of nature or a product of society, being called the gift of the gods and the work of the devil. Its consumption behavior has stood out in academic and market studies. Considering the evolution and potential of the wine market in Brazil in the last 15 years, the importance of researching on its consumption behavior, specifically on its hedonic and utilitarian motivations, emerges. Therefore, a model was elaborated and tested in order to analyze the characteristics and the relations between these motivations. In this study, a survey was conducted with a sample of 228 wine consumers in Belo Horizonte, Brazil. The objective was to construct and validate an analytical model, in which two constructs were evaluated: the hedonic motivations and the utilitarian motivations of the wine consumption. Implementation of Management Models: A Case Study of Performance of Socioenvironmental Management at Brazillian Public Energy Company by Chrsitiane de Miranda e Silva Correia, Claudia Moreira, and Reynaldo Muniz The organizations seek to improve results and increase the competitiveness with the implementation of management models that support the improvements of the processes and the attendance to the needs of the stakeholders. The objective of this research is to contribute to the practical adoption of a management model in organizations by analyzing the impact of the performance in stakeholders related to social and environmental management. It was used a qualitative research approach that describes, through a case study, intervention and the real-life context of the impact of the implementation of the management model on organizational performance especially in relation to the stakeholder society and community. A questionnaire was sent to strategic collaborators and stakeholders and secondary data were collected. With the analysis of the research data, the conclusion is that the implementation of the management model contributed to the achievement of results and the attendance to the needs of the stakeholders. The implementation of the management model occurred in parallel with other management methodologies that also contributed to the improvement of organizational performance.

Purpose Designated non-financial businesses and professions (DNFBPs) are important actors both in the formal and informal sectors owing to the nature of services they offer. The DNFBPs are key players in financial and economic development and thus are highly vulnerable to money laundering (ML) and terrorist financing (TF) risks. Globally, and indeed, within the West African region, typologies studies have indicated several instances of misuse of DNFBPs for the laundering of proceeds of crime and to a lesser extent, TF. Factors that make DNFBPs vulnerable to ML and TF in the region, include limited understanding of ML/TF risk and anti-money laundering and combating the financing of terrorism (AML/CFT) obligations, and poor implementation of AML/CFT measures by the sector. As reporting institutions, DNFBPs are required to implement appropriate measures to mitigate the ML/TF risk facing them. Mutual evaluation reports (MERs) of countries in the region noted weak implementation of AML/CFT measures by DNFBPs compares to financial institutions. These coupled with the general poor monitoring and supervision of DNFBPs for compliance, make them a weak link in member states’ AML/CFT regime. This study examined how Economic Community of West African States member states can plug the loopholes in the DNFBPs to strengthen their AML/CFT regime and thus improve their performance during mutual evaluation. This study reviewed data from the publications of Inter-Governmental Action Group against Money Laundering in West Africa (GIABA), Financial Action Task Force (FATF) and other credible sources. Design/methodology/approach This study is more of desk-review based on secondary data, including information obtained from GIABA, and FATF publications, and websites as well as information obtained from reliable sources on the internet. The authors reviewed the MERs of GIABA member states that have been assessed under the second round, especially that of Ghana, Senegal, Cape Verde, Mali and Burkina Faso, with particular focus on sections of the reports relating to preventive measures and supervision. In general, this paper adopts a policy approach with a view to explaining the importance and benefits of implementing AML/CFT preventive measures by reporting entities, especially the DNFBPs. Findings This study found that there is a general lack of information on the exact size of DNFBPs across member states, the risk of ML/TF associated with DNFBPs is generally identified as high across member states (albeit at different levels), the extent and level of monitoring/supervision of DNFBPs for AML/CFT compliance trails what is obtainable in financial institutions; the institutional and operational frameworks for regulating, supervising and monitoring DNFBPs are either weak or poorly defined in many member states; and the focus of AML/CFT technical assistance has been more on financial institutions than DNFBPs. Although the number of MERs reviewed for this work may be few, the findings and conclusions in the concluded MERs reflect regional peculiarities, including high informality of the economies, preponderance use of cash in transactions, diversity of DNFBPs and the general weak application of AML/CFT preventive measures by these entities, and the weak AML/CFT supervision or monitoring of DNFBPs which cut across all GIABA member states. Although efforts to address the weaknesses in the DNFBPs, including training and supervision, have commenced, in most member states, these are still at rudimentary levels. Research limitations/implications However, this study is limited by the fact that it was desk-based review without direct inputs of industry players (DNFBPs and their supervisors). Practical implications In general, this paper adopts a policy approach with a view to explaining the importance and benefits of implementing AML/CFT preventive measures by reporting entities, especially the DNFBPs. It aims to bring to the fore the weaknesses of the DNFBPs in the implementation of AML/CFT preventive measures and therefore will be useful to national authorities who are striving toward strengthening their national AML/CT regimes and to DNFBPs who wish to protect the integrity and stability of their system. Originality/value It is imperative to mention that the weak compliance by DNFBPs, and indeed other challenges inhibiting effective implementation of preventive measures, is not peculiar to West Africa. A review of MERs of 17 African countries (eight countries in the Eastern and Southern Africa Anti Money Laundering Group region, five in GIABA region and three in the Middle East and North Africa region assessed under the current round as on October 2020, show a similar pattern of weak ratings under Immediate Outcome 4.

As a specialist in culture and communication studies, teaching in a school of business, I realised that the notion of interdisciplinarity is usually explored in the comfort of one's own discipline. Meanwhile, the practice of interdisciplinarity is something else. The very notion of disciplinarity implies a regime of discursive practices, but in the zone between disciplines, there is often no adequate language. This piece of writing is a brief analysis of an example of the language of business studies when business studies thinks about culture. It looks at how business studies approaches cultural difference in context of intercultural contact. Geert Hofstede's Cultures and Organizations: Software of the Mind (1991) This article is a brief and very selective critique of Geert Hofstede's notion of culture in Cultures and Organizations: Software of the Mind. Hofstede has been publishing his work on cross-cultural management since the 1960s. His work is routinely used in reference to cross/multi/intercultural issues in business studies (a term I use to include commerce, finance, management, and marketing). Before I begin, I must insist that Hofstede's Cultures and Organizations: Software of the Mind is a very useful text for business studies students, as it introduces them to useful concepts in relation to culture, like culture shock, acculturation (not enculturation -- I suppose managers are repatriated before that happens), and training for successful cross-cultural communication. It is worth including here a brief note on the subtitle of Cultures and Organizations: Software of the Mind. This "software of the mind" is clearly analogous to computer programming. However, Hofstede disavows the analogy, which is central to his thesis, saying that people are not programmed the way computers are. So they are, but not really. Hofstede claims that in order to learn something different, one "must unlearn ... (the) ... patterns of thinking, feeling, and potential acting which were learned throughout (one's) lifetime". And it is this thinking/feeling/acting function he calls the "software of the mind" (4). So, is the body the hardware? Thinking and feeling are abstract and could, with a flight of fancy, be seen as "software". However, acting is visible, tangible, and often visceral. I am suggesting that "acting" either represents or is just about all we have as culture. Acting (in the fullest sense, including speech, gesture, manners, textual production, etc.) is not evidence of culture, it is culture. Also, computer technology, like every other technology, is part of culture, as evident in this journal. Culture I share Clifford Geertz's concept of culture as a semiotic one, where interpretation is a search for meaning, and where meaning lies in social relations. Geertz writes that to claim that culture consists in brute patterns of behaviour in some identifiable community is to reduce it (the community and the notion of culture). Human behaviour is symbolic action. Culture is not just patterned conduct, a frame of mind which points to some sort of ontological status. Culture is public, social, relational, and contextual. To quote Geertz: "culture is not a power, something to which social events, behaviours, institutions, or processes can be causally attributed; it is a context" (14). Culture is not an ontological essence or set of behaviours. Culture is made up of webs of relationships. That Hofstede locates culture in the mind is probably the most problematic aspect of his writing. Culture is difficult for any discipline to describe because different disciplines have their own view of social reality. They operate in their own paradigms. Hofstede uses a behaviourist psychological approach to culture, which looks at what he calls national character and typical behaviours. Even though Hofstede is aware of being, as an observer of human behaviour, an integral part of his object of analysis (other cultures), he nevertheless continuously equates the observed behaviour to particular kinds of national thinking and feeling where national is often collapsed into cultural. Hofstede uses an empirical behaviourist paradigm which measures certain behaviours, as if the observer is outside the cultural significance attributed to behaviours, and attributes them to culture. Hofstede's Notion of Culture Hofstede's work is based on quantitative data gathered from questionnaires administered to IBM corporation employees in various countries. He looked at 72 national subsidiaries, 38 occupations, 20 languages, and at two points in time (1968 and 1972), and continued his commentary on that data into the 1990s. He claims that because the entire sample has a common corporate culture, the only thing that can account for systematic and consistent differences between national groups within a homogeneous multinational organisation is nationality itself. It is as if corporate culture is outside, has nothing to do with, national culture (itself a complex and dynamic concept). Hofstede's work does not account for the fact that IBM is an American multinational corporation and, as such, whatever attributes are used to measure cultural difference, those found in American corporate culture will set the benchmark for whatever other cultures are measured. This view is supported in business studies in general where American management practices are seen as universal and normal, even when they are described as 'Western'. The areas Hofstede's IBM survey looked at are: 1. Social inequality, including the relationship with authority (also described as power distance); 2. The relationship between the individual and the group (also described as individualism versus collectivism); 3. Concepts of masculinity and femininity: the social implications of having been born as a boy or a girl (also described as masculinity versus femininity); 4. Ways of dealing with uncertainty, relating to the control of aggression and the expression of emotions (also described as uncertainty avoidance). These concepts are in themselves culturally specific and have become structurally embedded in organisational theory. Hofstede writes that these four dimensions of culture are aspects of culture that can be measured relative to other cultures. What these four dimensions actually do is not to combine to give us a four-dimensional (complex?) appreciation of culture. Rather, they map onto each other and reinforce a politically conservative, Eurocentric view of culture. Hofstede does admit to having had "a 'Western' way of thinking", but he inevitably goes back to "the mind" as a place or goal. He refers to a questionnaire composted by "Eastern', in this case Chinese minds ... [which] ... are programmed according to their own particular cultural framework" (171). So there is this constant reference to culturally programmed minds that determine certain behaviours. In his justification of using typologies to categorise people and their behaviour (minds?) Hofstede also admits that most people / cultures are hybrids. And he admits that rules are made arbitrarily in order to classify people / cultures (minds?). However, he insists that the statistical clusters he ends up with are an empirical typology. Such a reduction of "culture" to this kind of radical realism is absolutely anatomical and enumerative. And, the more Hofstede is quoted as an authority on doing business across cultures, the more truth value his work accrues. The sort of language Hofstede uses to describe culture attributes intrinsic meanings and, as a result, points to difference rather than diversity. Languages of difference are based on binaristic notions of masculine/feminine, East/West, active/passive, collective/individual, and so on. In this opposition of activity and passivity, the East (feminine, collectivist) is the weaker partner of the West (masculine, individualist). There is a nexus of knowledge and power that constructs cultural difference along such binaristic lines. While a language of diversity take multiplicity as a starting point, or the norm, Hofstede's hegemonic and instrumentalist language of difference sees multiplicity as problematic. This problem is flagged at the very start of Cultures and Organizations. 12 Angry Men: Hofstede Interprets Culture and Ignores Gender In the opening page of Cultures and Organizations there is a brief passage from Reginald Rose's play 12 Angry Men (1955). (For a good review of the film see http://www.film.u- net.com/Movies/Reviews/Twelve_Angry.html. The film was recently remade.) Hofstede uses it as an example of how twelve different people with different cultural backgrounds "think, feel and act differently". The passage describes a confrontation between what Hofstede refers as "a garage owner" and "a European-born, probably Austrian, watchmaker". Such a comparison flags, right from the start, a particular way of categorising and distinguishing between two people, in terms of visible and audible signs and symbols. Both parties are described in terms of their occupation. But then the added qualification of one of the parties as being "European-born, probably Austrian" clearly indicates that the unqualified party places him in the broad category "American". In other words, the garage owner's apparently neutral ethnicity implies a normative "American", against which all markers of cultural difference are measured. Hofstede is aware of this problem. He writes that "cultural relativism does not imply normlessness for oneself, nor for one's society" (7). However, he still uses the syntax of binaristic classification which repeats and perpetuates the very problems he is apparently addressing. One of the main factors that makes 12 Angry Men such a powerful drama is that each man carries / inscribes different aspects of American culture. And American culture is idealised in the justice system, where rationality and consensus overcomes prejudice and social pressure. Each man has a unique make-up, which includes class, occupation, ethnicity, personality, intelligence, style and experience. But 12 Angry Men is also an interesting exploration of masculinity. Because Hofstede has included a category of "masculine/feminine" in his study of national culture, it is an interesting oversight that he does not comment on this powerful element of the drama. People identify along various lines, in terms of ethnicities, languages, histories, sexuality, politics and nationalism. Most people do have multiple and varied aspects to their identity. However, Hofstede sees multiple lines of identification as causing "conflicting mental programs". Hofstede claims that identification on the gender level of his hierarchy is determined "according to whether a person was born as a girl or as a boy" (10). Hofstede misses the crucial point that whilst whether one is born female or male determines one's sex, whether one is enculturated as and identifies as feminine or masculine indicates one's gender. Sex and gender are not the same thing. Sex is biological (natural) and gender is ideological (socially constructed and naturalised). This sort of blindness to the ideological component of identity is a fundamental flaw in Hofstede's thesis. Hofstede takes ideological constructions as given, as natural. For example, in endnote 1 of Chapter 4, "He, she, and (s)he", he writes "My choice of the terms (soft feminine and hard masculine) is based on what is in virtually all societies, not on what anybody thinks should be (107, his italics). He reinforces the notion of gendered essences, or essences which constitute national identity. Indeed, the world is not made up of entities or essences that are masculine or feminine, Western or Eastern, active or passive. And the question is not so much about empirical accuracy along such lines, but rather what are the effects of always reinscribing cultures as Western or Eastern, masculine or feminine, collectivist or individualist. In an era of globalism and mass, interconnected communication, identities are multiple, and terms like East and West, masculine and feminine, active and passive, should be used as undecidable codes that, at the most, flag fragments of histories and ideologies. Identity East and West are concepts that did not come out of a political or cultural vacuum. They are categories, or concepts, that originated and flourished with European expansionism from the 17th century. They underwrote imperialism and colonisation. They are not inert labels that merely point to something "out there". East and West, like masculine and feminine or any other binary pair, indicate an imaginary relationship that prioritises one of the pair over the other. People and cultures cannot be separated into static Western and Eastern essences. Culture itself is always diverse and dynamic. It is marked by migration, diaspora, and exile, not to mention historical change. There are no "original" cultures. The sort of discourse Hofstede uses to describe cultures is based on an ontological and epistemological distinction made between East and West. Culture is not something invisible or intangible. Culture is not something obscure that is in the mind (whatever or wherever that is) which manifests itself in peculiar behaviours. Culture is what and how we communicate, whether that takes the form of speech, gestures, novels, plays, architecture, style, or art. And, as such, communication includes the objects we produce and exchange and the symbols to which we give meaning. So, when Hofstede writes that the Austrian watchmaker acts the way he does because he cannot behave otherwise. After many years in his new home country, he still behaves the way he was raised. He carries within himself an indelible pattern of behaviour he is attributing a whole range of qualities which are frequently given by dominant cultures to their cultural "others" (1). Hofstede attributes politeness, tradition, and, above all, stasis, to the European-Austrian watchmaker. The phrase "after many years in his new home country" is contradictory. If so many years have passed, why is "home" still "new"? And, indeed, the watchmaker might still behave the way he was raised, but it would be safe to assume that the garage owner also behaves the way he was raised. One of the main points made in 12 Angry Men is that twelve American men are all very different to each other in terms of values and behaviour. All this is represented in the dialogue and behaviour of twelve men in a closed room. If we are concerned with different kinds of social behaviour, and we are not concerned with pathological behaviour, then how can we know what anyone carries within themselves? Why do we want to know what anyone carries within themselves? From a cultural studies perspective, the last question is political. However, from a business studies perspective, that question is naïve. The radical economic rationalist would want to know as much as possible about cultural differences so that we can better target consumer groups and be more successful in cross-cultural negotiations. In colonial days, foreigners often wielded absolute power in other societies and they could impose their rules on it [sic]. In these postcolonial days, foreigners who want to change something in another society will have to negotiate their interventions. (7) Those who wielded absolute power in the colonies were the non-indigenous colonisers. It was precisely the self-legitimating step of making a place a colony that ensured an ongoing presence of the colonising power. The impetus behind learning about the Other in the colonial times was a combination of spiritual salvation (as in the "mission civilisatrice") and economic exploitation (colonies were seen as resources for the benefit of the European and later American centres). And now, the impetus behind learning about cultural difference is that "negotiation is more likely to succeed when the parties concerned understand the reasons for the differences in viewpoints" (7). Culture as Commerce What, in fact, happens, is that business studies simultaneously wants to "do" components of cross-cultural studies, as it is clearly profitable, while shunning the theoretical discipline of cultural studies. A fundamental flaw in a business studies perspective, which is based on Hofstede's work, is a blindness to the ideological and historical component of identity. Business studies has picked up just enough orientalism, feminism, marxism, deconstruction and postcolonialism to thinly disavow any complicity with dominant (and dominating) discourses, while getting on with business-as-usual. Multiculturalism and gender are seen as modern categories to which one must pay lip service, only to be able to get on with business-as-usual. Negotiation, compromise and consensus are desired not for the sake of success in civil processes, but for the material value of global market presence, acceptance and share. However, civil process and commercial interests are not easily separable. To refer to a cultural economy is not just to use a metaphor. The materiality of business, in the various forms of commercial transactions, is itself part of one's culture. That is, culture is the production, consumption and circulation of objects (including less easily definable objects, like performance, language, style and manners). Also, culture is produced and consumed socially (in the realm of the civil) and circulates through official and unofficial social and commercial mechanisms. Culture is a material and social phenomenon. It's not something hidden from view that only reveals itself in behaviours. Hofstede rightly asserts that culture is learned and not inherited. Human nature is inherited. However, it is very difficult to determine exactly what human nature is. Most of what we consider to be human nature turns out to be, upon close inspection, ideological, naturalised. Hofstede writes that what one does with one's human nature is "modified by culture" (5). I would argue that whatever one does is cultural. And this includes taking part in commercial transactions. Even though commercial transactions (including the buying and selling of services) are material, they are also highly ritualistic and highly symbolic, involving complex forms of communication (verbal and nonverbal language). Culture as Mental Programming Hofstede's insistent ontological reference to 'the sources of one's mental programs' is problematic for many reasons. There is the constant ontological as well as epistemological distinction being made between cultures, as if there is a static core to each culture and that we can identify it, know what it is, and deal with it. It is as if culture itself is a knowable essence. Even though Hofstede pays lip service to culture as a social phenomenon, saying that "the sources of one's mental programs lie within the social environments in which one grew up and collected one's life experiences" (4), and that past theories of race have been largely responsible for massive genocides, he nevertheless implies a kind of biologism simply by turning the mind (a radical abstraction) into something as crude as computer software, where data can be stored, erased or reconfigured. In explaining how culture is socially constructed and not biologically determined, Hofstede says that one's mental programming starts with the family and goes on through the neighbourhood, school, social groups, the work place, and the community. He says that "mental programs vary as much as the social environments in which they were acquired", which is nothing whatsoever like computer software (4-5). But he carries on to claim that "a customary term for such mental software is culture" (4, my italics). Before the large-scale changes which took place in the second half of the twentieth century in disciplines like anthropology, history, linguistics, and psychology, culture was seen to be a recognisable, determined, contained, consistent way of living which had deep psychic roots. Today, any link between mental processes and culture (formerly referred to as "race") cannot be sustained. We must be cautious against presuming to understand the relationship between mental process and social life and also against concluding that the content of the mind in each racial (or, if you like, ethnic or cultural) group is of a peculiar kind, because it is this kind of reductionism that feeds stereotypes. And it is the accumulation of knowledge about cultural types that implies power over the very types that are thus created. Conclusion A genuinely interdisciplinary approach to communication, commerce and culture would make business studies more theoretical and more challenging. And it would make cultural studies take commerce more seriously, beyond a mere celebration of shopping. This article has attempted to reveal some of the cracks in how business studies accounts for cultural diversity in an age of global commercial ambitions. It has also looked at how Hofstede's writings, as exemplary of the business studies perspective, papers over those cracks with a very thin layer of pluralist cultural relativism. This article is an invitation to open up a critical dialogue which dares to go beyond disciplinary traditionalisms in order to examine how meaning, communication, culture, language and commerce are embedded in each other. References Carothers, J.C. Mind of Man in Africa. London: Tom Stacey, 1972. Degabriele, Maria. Postorientalism: Orientalism since "Orientalism". Ph.D. Thesis. Perth: Murdoch University, 1997. Geertz, Clifford. The Interpretation of Cultures: Selected Essays. New York: Basic Books, 1973. Hofstede, Geert. Cultures and Organisations: Software of the Mind. Sydney: McGraw-Hill, 1991. Moore, Charles A., ed. The Japanese Mind: Essentials of Japanese Philosophy and Culture. Honolulu: East-West Centre, U of Hawaii, 1967. Patai, Raphael. The Arab Mind. New York: Scribner, 1983. Toffler, Alvin. Future Shock: A Study of Mass Bewildernment in the Face of Accelerating Change. Sydney: Bodley Head, 1970. 12 Angry Men. Dir. Sidney Lumet. Orion-Nova, USA. 1957. Citation reference for this article MLA style: Maria Degabriele. "Business as Usual: How Business Studies Thinks Culture." M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 3.2 (2000). [your date of access] Chicago style: Maria Degabriele, "Business as Usual: How Business Studies Thinks Culture," M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 3, no. 2 (2000), ([your date of access]). APA style: Maria Degabriele. (2000) Business as usual: how business studies thinks culture. M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 3(2). ([your date of access]).

Background: The economic deregulation of the airline industry in South Africa in 1991 was a landmark event and brought about various changes in the air transport market, both locally and internationally. One important after-effect of deregulation was the entry of low-cost carriers (LCCs) in 2001, which increased competition in the market and offered passengers the freedom to choose between full-cost carriers and LCCs. It is generally accepted that LCCs have been very successful across the globe, and the main reason for this lies in their simplified lower cost business models. One way of achieving lower costs is for LCCs to operate from secondary or alternative airports. This trend is observed in most regions of the world. In South Africa, and more specifically the Gauteng province, Lanseria International Airport is considered as an alternative airport to OR Tambo International Airport (the main international airport of South Africa and located about 30 km east of the Johannesburg Central Business District [CBD]). Currently, two LCCs operate from this airport with a third LCC airline indicating that it will shortly begin operations from this airport.Objectives: The research presented here reflects on the aspects passengers consider when selecting a secondary airport for their travel needs. It also compares the research findings of passenger attributes when choosing Lanseria Airport as a secondary airport in 2010 to a similar study in 2013 after another LCC commenced operations from the airport.Method: In this exploratory research a face-to-face survey was used as the quantitative data collection method in order to identify the factors that influenced passengers’ airport choice decisions at Lanseria International Airport.Results: From this research it emerged that when airports in a metropolitan area are close to one another, one of the main considerations for passengers is access time when selecting an airport. Even after a second LCC started operating from Lanseria International Airport, the attributes passengers regard as important in their decision to fly from the airport remained unchanged.Conclusion: The aim of the research is to gain a deeper understanding of the factors involved in secondary airport selection and, building on this knowledge, to assist airport owners and managers in positioning their airports in a multi-airport competitive environment. Similarly, the findings of the research could assist airlines in their decision-making process to operate from secondary airports