Networks In East Research Articles

Assessing the impact of regional laboratory networks in East and West Africa on national health security capacities.

National laboratories are a fundamental capacity for public health, contributing to disease surveillance and outbreak response. The establishment of regional laboratory networks has been posited as a means of improving health security across multiple countries. Our study objective was to assess whether membership in regional laboratory networks in Africa has an effect on national health security capacities and outbreak response. We conducted a literature review to select regional laboratory networks in the Eastern and Western African regions. We examined data from the World Health Organization Joint External Evaluation (JEE) mission reports, the 2018 WHO States Parties Annual Report (SPAR), and the 2019 Global Health Security Index (GHS). We compared the average scores of countries that are members of a regional laboratory network to those that are not. We also assessed country-level diagnostic and testing indicators during the COVID-19 pandemic. We found no significant differences in any of the selected health security metrics for member versus non-member countries of the either the East Africa Public Health Laboratory Networking Project (EAPHLNP) in the Eastern Africa region, nor for the West African Network of Clinical Laboratories (RESAOLAB) in the Western Africa region. No statistically significant differences were observed in COVID-19 testing rates in either region. Small sample sizes and the inherent heterogeneities in governance, health, and other factors between countries within and between regions limited all analyses. These results suggest potential benefit in setting baseline capacity for network inclusion and developing regional metrics for measuring network impact, but also beyond national health security capacities, other effects that may be required to justify continued support for regional laboratory networks.

Testing the Effectiveness of Network Governance Mechanisms to Foster Ambidexterity of Agricultural Innovation Networks in East and Central Africa

We tested three innovation network governance mechanisms for exploring and exploiting innovation opportunities. We analysed household-level panel data from agricultural innovation networks in Uganda, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Rwanda. We found that first-order governed networks fostered capabilities for exploitation as well as exploration, while second-order governed networks fostered specialised capabilities for exploitation. Meta-governed innovation networks were most effective in combining multiple capabilities for exploration and exploitation. However, our results indicate that governance alone is not a solution to ambidexterity of innovation networks and we recommend further research on the context as a mediating factor between governance and capabilities.

Shanghai connection: The construction and collapse of the comintern network in east and southeast Asia

(ProQuest: ... denotes non-USASCII text omitted.)Nowadays, especially after the end of the Cold War, communism has lost its appeal as revolutionary thought. Although there are several communist regimes still in existence, nobody except the most committed communists imagines that a communist revolution is possible or historically inevitable. But in the 1920s and 1930s, communism was one of the major political ideologies that inspired revolutionary movements all over the world. The success of the Russian Revolution in 1917 was so impressive that those who were inspired by this first successful communist revolution tried to create their own revolutions in their countries.In East and Southeast Asia, communism was received with enthusiasm by young intellectuals who wanted to liberate their countries from colonial rule or tried to solve social and economical inequalities by way of communist revolutions. They taught communism to laborers and peasants at night schools or by distributing leaflets, and mobilized them to go on strikes and demonstrations. They organized labor unions, peasant associations, and communist institutions. The first communist party in East and Southeast Asia was the Communist Association of the Indies, which was established in the Dutch East Indies in 1920 (and renamed the Communist Party of Indonesia in 1924). The next year the Chinese Communist Party was established, followed in 1922 by the Japanese Communist Party. In 1930, four communist parties were established in Southeast Asia: the Indochinese Communist Party, the Siamese Communist Party, the Malayan Communist Party, and the Philippine Communist Party.Local communist movements in East and Southeast Asia were led by these communist parties, labor unions, and peasant associations, but there was another important dimension to the communist movements in the 1920s and 1930s. The local parties were linked in a network of international and/or regional communist movements under the aegis of the Third International (Comintern). Moreover, local communists frequently sought to promote communism regionally or to help neighboring movements. While there are a number of studies on country-based communist movements, studies of the international or regional communist movement in East and Southeast Asia in the 1920s and 1930s are not as well done, except for several pioneering works on such topics as the regional and international liaisons of the Malayan Communist Party (Cheah 1992; Hara 2009), those of the Indochinese Communist Party (Goscha 1999; Kurihara 2005), and the Comintern's activities in Asia (McKnight 2002). But these works do not reveal clearly how the regional and international liaison networks in East and Southeast Asia were constructed and maintained, and how they collapsed.This paper describes the international and regional communist movement in East and Southeast Asia in the late 1920s and early 1930s, focusing mainly on activities of the regional headquarters of the Comintern in Shanghai. In 1926 the Comintern established the Far Eastern Bureau (FEB) in Shanghai, followed by the Pan-Pacific Trade Union Secretariat (PPTUS) in 1927. These two organizations were in charge of supervising local communist movements in East and Southeast Asia, allocating funds, dispatching couriers and agents, and receiving local communists who tried to go to Moscow. To conduct these works, it was crucial to construct and maintain a liaison network in the region. Construction and maintenance of this liaison network was done by agents and couriers who had contacts both with staff of the regional headquarters in Shanghai and with liaison officers in local communist movements. The network of the international and regional communist movements in East and Southeast Asia in the 1920s and 1930s consisted of links between agents, couriers, the regional headquarters' staff in Shanghai, and local liaison officers acting as nodes. This paper shows how this international and regional network was constructed in the late 1920s, how it was maintained, and finally how it collapsed in 1931. …

Social Networks in East and Southeast Asia II

This second issue continues our study of social networks and social capital in East and Southeast Asia. The articles show both similarities and differences in how each country’s social contexts significantly affect the nature of their social networks. The articles consistently show an Asian version of networked individualism, based on close kinship and friendship, hierarchies, strong work ethics, frequent travel, and digital media. In Thai villages, migrants send remittances to family members back home to honor broader village networks and norms. In China, migrants who come from wealthier village families have larger friendship networks in cities. In Hong Kong, cultural differences such as language limit social interactions between Mainland Chinese and Hong Kong students. In Singapore, population characteristics substantially affect inter-ethnic contact. While social norms circumscribe behavior on Twitter in Japan, Sina Weibo in China is a more chaotic space with much fraudulent practice. In Taiwan, online and offline networks combine to affect participation in voluntary associations. In China and Singapore, authoritative contacts and weak ties increase as well as reduce personal well-being.

Social Networks in East and Southeast Asia I

These articles examine social networks in the context of Asia. Their pages contain numerous examples showcasing the primacy of social context in the patterning, accumulation, role, and value of social networks and social capital. Network characteristics follow from national and institutional characteristics: In China, kinship networks are prominent all throughout the life course. Meanwhile, guanxi continues to be an important factor in the labor market and academic success of Chinese individuals, despite the shift from socialism to capitalism. In Japan, mutual monitoring among kin and coworkers make for a society based on strong ties. In Korea, voluntary associations are important communal spaces for meeting diverse contacts. In China’s neighborhoods, cooperation between neighbors coexists with social control from above to reinforce social hierarchy. The issue ends with a note about the importance of cultivating guanxi in organizations and in everyday life.

The Noulens Affair in East and Southeast Asia

In June 1931, British authorities in Singapore arrested a Comintern operative using the name Joseph Ducroux. An address book found on his person then led the Shanghai Municipal Police to Hilaire Noulens and his wife, both Comintern agents, who were collectively in charge of funneling all monies and communications between the Comintern, the Chinese Communist Party, and Communist organizations throughout East Asia. The arrest of the Noulens, and the material found in their apartments, compromised hundreds of Communists and their international networks in East and Southeast Asia. The case materials themselves, found in British, French, and Dutch archives, expose the ways the Comintern’s Far Eastern Bureau used Soviet capital and an international cast of characters to combat European imperialism in East and Southeast Asia during the interwar period. Although these efforts suffered from serious weaknesses, European colonial administrators nevertheless worried constantly about the specter of an all-powerful Soviet machine bent on world domination. Their response was cross-colonial collaboration to undermine and destroy the Comintern’s activities in the region. This article explores the circumstances surrounding the Noulens Affair, as it came to be known, to argue that the global struggle between communism and anti-communism that marked the years of the Cold War after 1945 cannot be adequately understood without reference to this earlier, interwar period.

Asia's New Mothers: Crafting Gender Roles and Childcare Networks in East and Southeast Asian Societies – Edited by Emiko Ochiai and Barbara Molony

Asia's New Mothers: Crafting Gender Roles and Childcare Networks in East and Southeast Asian Societies – Edited by Emiko Ochiai and Barbara Molony

Emiko Ochiai and Barbara Molony (Eds.) Asia's New Mothers: Crafting Gender Roles and Childcare Networks in East and Southeast Asian Societies

Emiko Ochiai and Barbara Molony (Eds.) Asia's New Mothers: Crafting Gender Roles and Childcare Networks in East and Southeast Asian Societies

Red Power: Liselotte Welskopf-Henrich and Indian Activist Networks in East and West Germany

Acuriousphotograph appeared in 1976 in the East-German newspaperJunge Welt(Fig. 1). Two well-known members of the American Indian Movement (AIM), Dennis Banks and Vernon Bellecourt, were shown together with an elderly German woman, Liselotte Welskopf-Henrich, at her home in East Berlin. This photo, like so many of the photos of Indians in unexpected places, always seems to amuse people, leading them to ask with a snigger why the Indians were there. The Indians' presence in such places, however, is seldom a laughing matter, and in this case, scholars of the post-war era might find the answer to the simple question of the Indians' presence somewhat disconcerting.

Regionale Innovationspotenziale und innovative Netzwerke in Ost- und Südostasien

Regional innovation potential and innovative networks in East and Southeast Asia - theoretical and methodological remarks. In the past three decades the East and Southeast Asian economies have undertaken a historically unique economic catching-up process. Although technological change is considered to be one of the decisive determinants for judging the future economic perspectives, so far no representative empirical surveys are available on the patterns and scales of innovation and co-operation activities at the microlevel in Asia. This paper gives a theoretical and methodological introduction to this volume, presenting representative results from surveys in Singapore, Thailand, Malaysia and China.

What is German History? Reflections on the Role of the Nation in German History and Historiography

At the end of the sixteenth century, when the humanist and geographer Matthias Quad tried to find the boundaries for " Germany," he was forced to conclude that "there is no country in all of Christendom which embraces so many lands under one name." Two hundred years later, Goethe and Schiller wrote their famous epigram: " Germany? But where is it? I don't know how to find such a country." In 1832, Leopold von Ranke remained pessimistic that an answer to this question might easily be found: