Local Scholars Research Articles

Understanding CEO Role Perception and Time Usage: Are New Municipal Typologies Useful?

In recent years local government scholars have sought to more explicitly describe the diverse structures that exist within municipalities by developing typologies that extend beyond the traditional mayor-council versus council-manager form definitions. This research explores the value of these new typologies in helping scholars explain differences among chief executive officers (mayors and city managers) in municipalities. Using information obtained from a national random survey of municipalities, this study evaluates two of the most developed new typologies along with the traditional mayor-council versus council-manager classification in terms of how officials allocate their work time and how municipal mayors and city managers perceive both their own and their city councils role in the council/executive relationship. Using the percentage of work time allocated to the “Policy”, “Politics”, and “Management” activities as describe by Ammons and Newell in their 1987 Public Administration Review study (Role Emphases of City Managers and Other Municipal Executives) and the role perceptions of mayors and city managers using the four role dimensions of “Mission”, “Policy”, “Administration”, and “Management” described in the Dichotomy/Duality model developed by James Svara in his 1985 Public Administration Review article “Dichotomy and Duality: Reconceptualizing the Relationship Between Policy and Administration in Council-Manager Cities”, the differences between and among chief executive officers (CEO) are exaimined. We find that differences do exist between mayor and city manager CEOs and that by using new typologies, differences within mayors in mayor-council cities exist but do not exist among city managers in council-manager cities.

Participating in International Academic Publishing: A Taiwan Perspective

There has been growing concern among researchers and scholars about how nonnative‐English‐speaking academics in the expanding circle (Kachru, , p. 520) cope with challenges while publishing in English in international refereed journals in the center. Most found that academics from peripheral countries where English is a foreign language, compared with native‐English‐speaking counterparts in the inner circle, suffer from a dual disadvantage: linguistic unsophistication and intellectual estrangement due to geographic isolation. It is thus imperative to understand how scholars from these countries address these challenges. This commentary focuses on the experiences of a group of applied linguists in Taiwan. It starts with an overview of the recent development of a higher education policy in Taiwan that aims to enhance the quality of local research output and thereby the ranking of local universities among Asian or international top‐tier universities. Then it addresses this policy's impact on local applied linguists' choice of venues for publishing research and the challenges they perceive in the process. It ends with suggestions for governments imposing this pressure on local scholars to revamp their evaluation standards and for mainstream academia and TESOL professionals and their counterparts teaching English as a foreign language to help these scholars share their voices in the center academia.

Le rôle des exploitations minières de la région d’Autun dans la constitution des collections paléontologiques

The birth of the oil shale industry, in the Autun basin (Saône-et-Loire, department in Burgundy), at the beginning of the 1830s, corresponded to a time during which the scientific progress in geology and paleontology was quite fast-paced. The development of the schist industry happened at a time when landmark works were published such as those by Louis Agassiz or Adolphe Brongniart. These scientists relied upon the on-going findings in the Autunois area. An outstanding dynamics was on its way. It brought about the updating of many samples sparking off important paleontological studies. A remarkable coordination set up between the industrial workers of the schist industry, the local scholars on the one hand and the National Museum of Natural History in Paris on the other hand. There resulted from it a frequent if not constant interest in the discovery of the fossils that the layers of schists – exploited with the aim of obtaining oil used as a quaffing product – can contain. This dynamics kept going on till the beginning of the 19th century. It was carried out by outstanding personalities such as Bernard Renault or Auguste Roche who were at the origin of the first collections gathered by the Society of Natural History in Autun, founded in 1886. But then, the findings were made rare. The mechanization of the chopping down and crushing of the schist did not any more offer the suitable conditions to discover new specimens. Anyway, the accumulated collections are already considerable and make of the Autunois one of the major places of great French paleontological progress in the years 1870 and 1880.

Roll With It: Brass Bands in the Streets of New Orleans by Matt Sakakeeny (review)

Reviewed by: Roll With It: Brass Bands in the Streets of New Orleans by Matt Sakakeeny Bruce Boyd Raeburn ROLL WITH IT: Brass Bands in the Streets of New Orleans. By Matt Sakakeeny, with artwork by Willie Birch. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. 2013. The aftermath of the devastation wrought by Hurricane Katrina in 2005 has generated many stories of resilience, hope, and survival pertaining to the experiences of New Orleans musicians, including Jason Berry’s epilogue to the revised edition of Up from the Cradle of Jazz (2009), Keith Spera’s Groove Interrupted (2011), John Swenson’s New Atlantis (2011), and Eric Porter’s and Lewis Watts’s New Orleans Suite (2013)—all valuable studies. Matt Sakakeeny’s Roll with It adds significantly to this narrative trend and provides perhaps the most in-depth and focused account yet. The book presents cogent case studies not only of the vicissitudes confronting members of the brass bands in question (Hot 8, Rebirth, Soul Rebels, etc.), but also of the challenges facing a team of local scholars who combine advocacy for the brass band “second line” tradition with dedication to its documentation, and of the embedded infrastructure problems related to racism, poverty, violence, and invisible service economies deriving from neo-liberal political and economic agendas that affect them all. Sakakeeny’s rendition of the voyage of personal discovery that accompanied his fieldwork is especially noteworthy and engaging, generated partly by the inevitable catharsis that Katrina entailed for anyone who cares about New Orleans, but even more profoundly grounded in the lessons learned from interaction with his informants as they struggled to regain their individual and collective identities through the act of making music. As an ethnomusicologist, Sakakeeny is particularly interested in assessing brass band activity as a multi-faceted form of labor that bridges the gap between service to the indigenous black community and capitulation to the imperatives of cultural tourism and institutionalized festival traditions (such as “Jazz Fest”), but he is careful to let the musicians speak for themselves as they negotiate for power against the various constraints that threaten to overwhelm them. Sakakeeny’s study is replete with insightful analysis of the strategies used by brass band musicians to regulate parades by manipulating tempo, volume, and repertoire to gratify “second liners” and to guide them safely through the streets. There is also a wealth of useful historical information, including new perspectives on the role of brass bands in jazz’s origins, issues related to cultural dynamics and the reconfiguration of tradition with the rise of Harold Dejan’s Olympia Brass Band in the 1960s, the rejuvenation that occurred with Danny Barker’s Fairview Baptist Church Christian Band experiments in the 1970s, and the new wave of experimentation and fusion with modern jazz and popular music styles (such as hip hop) driven by the Dirty Dozen Brass Band and others that has dominated the scene for the past 30 years. Willie Birch’s magnificent artwork and afterward evoke the visual richness and spirituality that enriches “second lines” and provide further enticement for readers to experience for themselves both the solemnity and unbridled joy that animate “second line” parades in New Orleans. [End Page 135] Bruce Boyd Raeburn Tulane University Copyright © 2014 Mid-America American Studies Association

El Estado, los movimientos sociales y el ciudadano de a pie: exploraciones en Bolivia entre 2006 y 2011

El objetivo de este artículo es analizar y contextualizar el aparente deterioro de la relación entre los movimientos sociales y el partido, ahora oficialista, MAS, entre el 2006 y el 2012, en Bolivia. El análisis está basado en una sistemática lectura de periódicos, revistas, artículos científicos y libros sobre la coyuntura política boliviana en este período, así como en una serie de entrevistas callejeras, y en muchas conversaciones con académicos y periodistas bolivianos. Se argumenta que el desarrollo de la relación entre movimientos sociales y su «portador» partidista después de un triunfo electoral depende de varios factores: el pluralismo del partido y su programa, la composición de los movimientos que lo apoyan, el estilo de gobierno, el cambio del papel del partido una vez que asume el poder y el favoritismo que despliega como gobierno. Se concluye que, en el caso del MAS en Bolivia, la combinación de factores más estructurales y factores más coyunturales, como el autoritarismo del MAS, llevaron a la dinámica que hoy en día resulta en una relación compleja y tensa entre el MAS y los movimientos sociales que contribuyeron a su llegada al gobierno.

On the virtuality of translation in Orientalism

The relationship between translation and Orientalism is usually reduced to a binary distinction in which the Orient is either domesticated or foreignized in translation. In fact, translation in the context of Orientalism entails a more complex problem of representation that involves the positioning of agency and the reversal of power between Orientalists and local scholars. In order to offer an explanation of such a relationship, this article borrows from Edward W. Said the notions of the inside/outside paradox and “sufficiency” in Orientalist representation. Accordingly, translation in Orientalism is seen as the process of virtualization – it seeks to produce a version that is endowed with sufficient “virtue” to represent, or even replace, the original. The term “virtual” used in this article combines three senses derived from its etymology – power, virtue and potentiality. These three senses are seen as joining forces at work in the Orientalist translation. Virtuality also accounts for the manipulation that occurs when local scholars “translate back”, by pointing out the paradox they encounter when facing the challenge of representing themselves through translation. The translation of the Sanskrit drama Śakuntalā in nineteenth-century Europe will be discussed as a case of the virtualization process in Orientalist translation.

Can Mentoring Decrease the Brain drain of Academics from Africa?

Abstract In many countries in Africa, there is increasing competition from many sectors for qualified professionals. In universities, where salaries are not competitive, the retention of teaching and research Faculty is a major concern. The emigration of Sub Saharan African academics and professionals has an impact on the number of Faculty with PhDs and the mentoring of early career academics. Well-qualified university faculty often leave for overseas universities where opportunities appear more attractive. Africa cannot afford such a loss of talent and expertise, which is widespread in spite of universities’ attempts to retain local scholars and leaders. So, can mentoring mitigate against the enormous brain drain from Africa? CARTA, a large scale mentoring programme implemented in 2011 for healthcare academics and administrators in African universities, is presented and shows the effects of a comprehensive support and mentoring, particularly in Public Health.

The Current State of Business History in Latin America

Business history in Latin America has seen significant growth in the past 25 years, most notably since the beginning of this century. Although the sub‐discipline benefitted from seminal studies by British and U.S. scholars, most works of note are currently produced by local scholars. Latin American business history holds great comparative potential for business historians in other parts of the world undertaking studies in the areas of emerging economies, business‐state relationships, the role of entrepreneurship, business groups, entrepreneurial families, and foreign investment and imperialism.

Mining for gold: identifying the librarians' toolkit for managing hybrid open access

In 2012, the author and colleagues surveyed eight publishers that had been involved with the Publishing and the Ecology of European Research (PEER) project to learn about the state of hybrid journal publishing. At the same time, one of the key questions asked to a panel of librarians at the International Association of Scientific, Technical & Medical Publishers May 2012 Meeting was what role librarians would play if scholarly publishing shortly went open access (OA) across the board? From the survey of the market, and the rapid OA developments in the UK and EU that include hybrid OA, a picture has begun to emerge of what roles librarians can play with regard to supporting hybrid OA publishing at their institutions. This article focuses on developing new partnerships within a given institution, looks at new budgetary models and the tracking of local scholarship creation. Current pertinent standards are highlighted.

Mind the Gap: Bridging Historiography on Chinese Architecture in the Early Twentieth Century

The concept of architectural history was introduced into China from the turn of the twentieth century through both Japan and the West. In the process, there were differences of approach between local scholars, researchers trained in Japan and the West, and foreign architects and sinologists. This paper will discuss the gaps in perception and understanding of the nature of architectural history and the methodology for its study between these proponents, as well as the various attempts at bridging the gap in the period. It will conclude that the vigorous translation of texts and ideas had not been enough to close the gap.

Politics and Heritage in Egypt: One and a Half Years After the Lotus Revolution

With the break-in in the Egyptian Museum at the height of the ‘Lotus Revolution’ in January 2011 many heritage experts thought they saw their worst dreams come true: another ‘cradle of civilization’ threatened. One and a half years later the ‘½ Revolution’ did not bring the Egyptians the much desired prosperity. In the contrary, much seems to be worse than before January 2011 and unfortunately the heritage sector is no exception. Massive looting arose after the revolution and continues till today. This article tries to answer who these looters are and why the plunder of archaeological sites continues. Yet, many locals defended the sites in their vicinity. How come the local population felt connected to this heritage. For over 10 years they have been forbidden to enter the sites and the authorities even consider them a nuisance who need to be hidden for the massive tourist industry. The post-colonial narrative sheds much light on all these questions. It is noted that there is a huge lack of local involvement in Egyptian heritage as well as an almost absent scientific involvement of local scholars in Egyptology. There are signs that with the new government this will change. Firstly, western Egyptologists seem to realize they need to pay more attention to public/community archaeology and secondly, it is expected that Islamic heritage will be stressed in the coming years perhaps at the cost of Egyptology.

Area of City Impact Agreements

Area of city impact agreements, or growth management tools negotiated between cities and counties, are required by Idaho Code section 67-6526 “to delineate areas of future contiguous growth in order to assure their orderly development and thereby reconcile potentially competing designs for boundary expansion with accepted land use planning principles.” City of Garden City v. City of Boise, 104 Idaho 512, 514 (1983). In Fall, 2012, the University of Idaho College of Law’s Economic Development Clinic worked with a coalition of partners to review existing area of city impact agreements. The Clinic obtained 125 area of city impact agreements, one of the largest collections of local government agreements addressing growth management ever assembled in Idaho, and likely anywhere in the country. Based upon its research, the Clinic drafted this report with detailed guidance for Idaho cities and counties negotiating future area of city impact agreements. Outside of Idaho, this report will be of use to state and local government law and land use law scholars interested in growth management, smart growth, and extra-territorial powers of cities. The Clinic's guidance document and the original agreements are available in this file.

Emerging Issues In Southeast Asian Geography: Local, Non-Local and Collaborative Scholarship

AbstractThis paper reviews several prominent journals to identify key trends and issues in Southeast Asian geography. The review identifies the locus of articles' geographical scholarship, the balance between issue-based versus other types of articles, and the trends in the subject matter of the issue-based publications. The paper considers the meaning of an ‘issue-based’ approach to geography in local and non-local geographical scholarship on and in Southeast Asia. Geography as taught and practiced in Southeast Asia has followed a largely idiographic tradition based on description of landscapes, regions, settlement patterns, and so on. At an applied level, geography in some Southeast Asian countries has tended toward regional planning rather than engaging more centrally with the social sciences. Geography as a critical social science has only a loose purchase in the inherently geographical debates around development, environment, globalisation, and regionalisation in Southeast Asia. On the other hand, geographers from outside the region have engaged in more critical study, and geographical teaching and research on Southeast Asia in Australasia, North America, and Europe tends to take an issue-based approach and to be situated broadly within the realm of ‘development geography’. The paper also concludes with the question of how the discipline can better serve an issue-based agenda without being dominated by western critical social science.

Review: Public Buildings in Early Modern Europe by Konrad Ottenheym, Krista De Jonge, and Monique Chatenet, editors

Konrad Ottenheym, Krista De Jonge, and Monique Chatenet, editors Public Buildings in Early Modern Europe Architectura Moderna 9. Turnhout: Brepols, 2010, xiv + 408 pp., 300 b/w illus. €110 (paper), ISBN 9782503533544 Most buildings in this book will be unfamiliar even to scholars of early modern architecture: these public buildings, such as city halls or market arcades, often count among the happy discoveries of sightseeing in European cities after visiting better-known churches and palaces. A good guidebook might give the names of the architects and dates of the construction campaigns, but if curious to learn more, information about such buildings is often found only in national or regional inventories of historic monuments based on painstaking research by local scholars. Public Buildings in Early Modern Europe furnishes a broad international panorama of such noteworthy early modern urban structures, presenting thirty essays uniting otherwise scattered material on these hard-working building types of late pre-industrial society. The Architectura Moderna series, initiated in 2002, aims to explore architectural exchanges and influences within northern and central Europe during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The essays collected in the series’ ninth volume were originally presented at two related conferences held in Utrecht in 2006 and 2008 under the general title “Public Buildings in Early Modern Europe.”1 Their chronology spans 1400 to 1800, with the major geographical emphasis on the Low Countries, France, and the German lands; Italy, England, Scotland, Denmark, Poland, Dalmatia, Spain, Portugal, and Dutch overseas colonies are also represented. Most articles are in English, but eight are in French, and one each in German and Spanish. The term public buildings is problematic, as book and series coeditor Krista De Jonge admits in her foreword (vii). While many buildings treated here are public in the sense that they were commissioned by and for various civic or governmental bodies, others were commissioned by private or institutional patrons, served a limited group of users, or had restricted access, and thus were arguably “private.” Coeditor Konrad Ottenheym’s introduction opens …

From Lanka Eastwards: The Ramayana in the Literature and Visual Arts of Indonesia (review)

Reviewed by: From Lanka Eastwards: The Ramayana in the Literature and Visual Arts of Indonesia M. Rajantheran From Lanka Eastwards: The Ramayana in the Literature and Visual Arts of Indonesia. By Andrea Acri, Helen Creese and Arlo Griffiths (EDS), Leiden: KITLV Press, 2011 259 pp. ISBN 978-9067-18-384-0 This book consists of a selection of the articles presented at a workshop in 2009. The ten articles are divided into two main categories, Part I (six articles): Old Javanese Kakawin and The Kakawin Ramayana and Part II (four articles): The Ramayana at Candi Prambanan and Candi Panataran. It is evident that the book aims to create an informed historical understanding through a variety of cultural, artistic and religious discourses on contemporary Indonesia. The transculturally intellectual contribution which has shaped the cultural heritage of Indonesia over time is presented in these articles by writers who are knowledgeable in their respective fields of study. Since ancient times almost all cultures in South and Southeast Asia have been influenced by Indian culture, especially by its great literature like the Ramayana, Mahabharatha and Pancatantra. Though the Ramayana and Mahabharata traditions are still celebrated in some parts of this region, they are downplayed in other areas. Nonetheless, in most parts of Indonesia the Ramayana and Mahabharata are seen as a pride of their culture. In Bali these two works are often displayed in the form of stage performances, moral codes, religious practices and even as landmarks. The editors have rightly pointed out the existence of two main approaches—Indianizing and Indonesianizing—in the study of ancient Indonesian culture. No local scholars submitted papers for the workshop; extra efforts should have been made to obtain academic contributions from them as their absence leaves a large academic gap in the effort to present a comprehensive study of Indonesia's culture. Though the articles have been organized objectively, the study would present amore comprehensive account if it included a historical survey of the Old Javanese Kakawin and the Kakawin Ramayana. This is important for readers who are new to this field of study. According to the editors, the first two papers in Part I cover the general perspectives on Kakawin and the Kakawin Ramayana. But in reality those two articles are indeed very specific in their scope: the first article deals with stuti (hymns of praise) in Kakawins and the second deals with kavisamaya-adi from a comparative approach. Stuart Robson, in his article entitled 'Hymns in Kakawins, The Ramayana and Other Examples', shows the importance of stuti in Kakawin Ramayana and other literary examples. He observes that these hymns have been inserted mainly at critical junctures in the plots, which are indeed found in a majority of known Kakawins, including the Kakawin Ramayana. Though this article is presented in a proper academic form, the findings are not new. For example, the writer's conclusion about stuti is not new but common knowledge to Indian Studies scholars. The second article, by Wesley Michel, entitled 'Poetic Conventions as Opposed to Conventional Poetry? A Place for Kavisamaya-adi in Comparative Kavya/Kakawin Studies' is also a content analysis study focusing on epic conventions [End Page 125] (kavisamaya-adi) that is topoi, rather than on formal components such as figure of speech and prosody which have dominated past comparative studies of Kakawin or kavya. This is a specific study of the Kakawin genre from the comparative perspective of Indian kavya literature and poetology ('science of figures') called alamkara-sastra in Sanskrit. This article is well designed, written and contains good findings. Thomas Hunter, in his article entitled 'Figures of Repetition (yamaka) in the Bhattikavya, the Raguvamsa, the Siwagraha Inscriptions and the Kakawin Ramayana', follows the footsteps of C. Hooykaas, who made a similar analysis using the yamaka (figure of speech) found in alamkara-sastra. However, Thomas Hunter has demonstrated that this yamaka predominates in both the Kakawin Ramayana and the Old Javanese Siwagrha inscription of 856 AD. He further provides significant new evidence to support the hypothesis that the Kakawin is contemporary with the inscription, a hypothesis originally developed by Walker Aichele on the basis of a study of their contents. The finding of this article is beneficial to...

Professionalizing Human Resources: A Response to the Increasing Onslaught of Technology

The study was conducted to find out whether or not professionalizing human resources is a vital response to the increasing onslaught of technology. Specifically, this study sought to determine the extent of qualification standards used among the engineer respondents as compared to Civil Service Standards, the management support on the initiation, development, and propagation along Local Scholarship Programs, Computer Training Programs, and Other Measures to beef up the existing capabilities of the respondents, and the frequency of occurrence on the issues they found in the organization. Qualification standards, management support on measures to beef up the existing capabilities of the respondents, and issues have implication to develop human resources. In support to National and Global Competitiveness and Excellence, the human resources are considered as the ultimate wealth of the nation should be given real priority, more opportunities and support on quality education, relevant training and development to sustain engineering competencies and versatility. Building a high quality and excellent human resources will result to building quality infrastructure projects and a progressive world. Indeed, it’s the engineers’ responsibility to provide a society with sustainable development not only on technological but in environment terms as well and the increasingly limited resources. Keywords – Management, human resources, global competitiveness, technology and qualification standards, descriptive, Vigan City, Philippines

Review: The Global 1989

THE GLOBAL 1989 Continuity and Change in World Politics George Lawson, Chris Armbruster, and Michael Cox, eds. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2010. 317PP, US$33.00 paper. ISBN 9780521147910Whether it was the year of miracles or of negotiated transfers of power, 1989 made the idea of the real. Even the broadest world- significant events - the decolonization of Africa, the Vietnam War, the ou crisis of 1973 - developed along two largely separate channels. As if in parallel universes, they had different meanings, different faces on the two sides of the Cold War. Yes, the Soviet Union had oil, but oil's role in command economy was fundamentally different from its place in capitalist economy. Yes, reporters and military attaches from west and east encountered each other in the cafes of Brazzaville, Accra, and Vientiane, but their constraints and their goals, and the ways they thought about the world were fundamentally different. The enterprising transnational historian can trace ghost outlines across the barriers and find comparable effects here and there. Still, as scholars busily work to bridge the Cold War divide, we need to remember that the divide itself is what makes such work interesting.But now we come to 1989, year in which every day's headlines brought surprises from eastern Europe, the Soviet Union, China, South Africa, and Latin America. It is not the broad scattering of contemporaneous events that made the global, but that together they removed or at least weakened that divide, ending the era of parallel universes. In this sense, the world began in 1989, when it seemed as if everyone was experiencing the same reorientation.Of course, there was no everyone and never has been. The end of the Cold War meant one thing in Moscow and another in Paris, Washington, or Cairo. This should hardly surprise us; we are talking about the whole world, after all. The tension between the sense of the and the knowledge of different experiences drives the editors and authors of the articles in this collection. The Global 1989 is the product of one of the many 20thanniversary conferences that collectively blanketed the academic landscape three years ago. Most of those, fortunately, have not resulted in books. It is good thing that this one did. The typical 1989 conference featured couple of reminiscing veterans of the anti-communist struggle, few authors of books about the revolutions who offered potted summaries of ideas already in print, plus some local scholars asked to provide or comparative perspectives. The resultant hodgepodge was pleasant to experience, and there was always at least one new perspective on offer. But commemorative conferences are like wedding videos: if you weren't there, you won't find them particularly interesting.The Global 198g features none of the usual topics. Here global does not mean quick tour around the world, but instead consideration of how problems and processes have or have not been transformed by the end of the Cold War and the fall of European communist regimes. Do we really - as I always ask my students at the outset of courses on 1989 - live not in post-9/11, but post-1989 world? A consensus on this question does not emerge here. Co-editor George Lawson points out in the introductory essay that a fundamental rupture in world order does not appear to have taken place. Rather, much akin to the bionic man, the post-1989 era is quicker, stronger, faster (19) - different, and clearly post, but not utterly transformed. …

Making Kyrgyz spaces: local history as spatial practice in Murghab (Tajikistan)

In the past decade local scholars in Murghab, Tajikistan's easternmost district, have published several books in Kyrgyz on the history and culture of the Eastern Pamirs. In their work, the authors address the region's predominantly Kyrgyz population by emphasizing the ‘kyrgyzness’ of the Eastern Pamirs, which they refer to as Sarykol. The results of these local studies reverberate widely on the ground and have become integrated into everyday interaction. As a consequence, not only the region's history and culture, but also its territory, are perceived through an increasingly ethnicized lens. This paper seeks to explore local history as a way of appropriating space. Following Henri Lefebvre (1974), local history can be defined as an ethno-spatial practice that emphasizes ethnicity. Through an analysis of five works on local history and culture and their embedding in an ethnographic context, this article provides evidence for the significance of local studies in ‘kyrgyzizing’ space. It also demonstrates, moreover, that international non-governmental organizations, through their funding of such research, are entangled with globalized visions of culture, tradition and ethnicity.

Maritime History in Mozambique and East Africa: The Urgent Need for the Proper Study and Preservation of Endangered Underwater Cultural Heritage

The East African coast is a rich domain for underwater cultural heritage, whose archaeological remains are only beginning to reveal the extent of indigenous nautical technology, regional and international social contacts, and far-reaching maritime trade routes sailed for millennia. The diversity of remains found under water range from cultures up and down the East African coastline to further afield: from China, points surrounding the Indian Ocean, to the Persian Gulf, Middle East and Europe. In Mozambique, important steps to investigate and preserve this heritage have been taken over the last 20 years by several groups of local scholars in collaboration with international research institutions. However, this heritage, especially that which lies along the northern Mozambique coast, has also been subjected to extensive and serious disturbance by commercially-oriented salvage programs. These salvage activities have not only had a very negative impact on the state of the cultural resources themselves, but have also prevented the access of legitimate scholars to these resources—particularly grave is the intervention at Mozambique Island, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Among the meritorious efforts to mitigate this situation, in Mozambique and world-wide, the 2001 UNESCO Convention for the Protection of the Underwater Cultural Heritage is an outstanding initiative and needs to be ratified by Mozambique and other East African states.

The institutionalization of Asian American literary studies in Taiwan: a diasporic Sinophone Malaysian perspective

This paper aims to discuss the institutionalization of the studies of Chinese American literature/Asian American literature in Taiwan from the perspective of a Sinophone Malaysian, focusing on the motivation of local scholars to work on Chinese American or Asian American literary works. I argue that claiming that it is the ethnic, cultural and affective affinities that manifests the pertinency of Chinese American or Asian American literature as the object of study might fail to see the cultural heterogeneity and generational difference sitting in the racialized space within such texts. In reading Chinese American or Asian American literature, while a Taiwanese scholar might underline Asian affinities, a diasporic Sinophone Malaysian would stress the textual difference in linguistic medium and multiculturalism within the American context. Furthermore, it is significant to observe comparatively Sinophone literary texts of Chinese American or Asian American produced in Taiwan and Sinophone Malaysian literary works published in Taiwan.