Academic literature on the topic 'Child care – Government policy – West, Germany'

What explains the surprising growth of work-family policies in several West European countries? Much research on the welfare state emphasizes its institutional stickiness and immunity to major change. Yet, over the past two decades, governments in Germany, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom have introduced important reforms to their welfare regimes, enacting paid leave schemes, expanded rights to part-time work, and greater investments in child care. A comparison of these countries reveals a similar sequence of political and policy change. Faced with growing electoral instability and the decline of core constituencies, party leaders sought to attract dealigning voter groups, such as women. This led them to introduce feminizing reforms of their party structures and adopt policies to support mothers' employment. In all three cases, women working within the parties played an important role in hatching or lobbying for these reforms. After comparing three countries that moved in a path-shifting direction, this article engages in a brief traveling exercise, examining whether a similar set of dynamics are lacking in two countries—Austria and Italy—that have moved more slowly in reforming these policies. Against the prevailing scholarly literature that emphasizes path dependence and slow-moving change, this article reveals the continued power of electoral politics in shaping redistributive policies.

Abstract The present paper develops an overlapping generations general equilibrium model for Germany in order to study the impact of public policy on household labor supply and fertility decisions. Starting from a benchmark equilibrium which reflects the current German family policy regime we introduce various reforms of the tax and child benefit system and quantify the consequences for birth rates and female labor supply. Our simulations indicate three central results: First, higher transfers to families (either direct, in-kind or via family splitting) may increase birth rates significantly, but they may come at the cost of lower female employment. Second, the introduction of individual taxation (instead of joint taxation of couples) would increase female employment but might further reduce current birth rates in Germany. Third, it is possible to increase birth rates and female employment rates simultaneously if the government invests in child care facilities for children of all ages.

AbstractFollowing two parental leave reforms in West Germany, this research explores how child care and housework time changed among couples who have just had a child. The reform in 1992 extended the low paid or unpaid parental leave period, whereas the 2007 reform introduced income-dependent compensation and two ‘daddy months’. This study contributes to the literature by examining different mechanisms on how these reforms were associated with domestic work time in couples. Based on data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (1990–2010), the analysis applies ordinary least square (OLS) regressions and difference-in-difference estimations. The findings point to a significant reduction in paternal child care time eighteen to thirty months after childbirth among couples with children born after the 1992 reform. The 2007 reform was associated with increased child care time of fathers in the first year and eighteen to thirty months after the birth. Changes in maternal child care and both partners’ housework were not statistically significant. Alterations in maternal and paternal labour market participation, wages and leave taking accounted for most of the observed variations in paternal child care except for eighteen to thirteen months after the 2007 reform. This unexplained variance may point to a normative policy effect.

Abstract Population aging in wealthy western nations has raised concerns about who will provide care to older adults. At the same time, the rise of single parenthood and dual-career families has heightened the need for childcare. As governments and families face challenges in meeting these dual needs, this study compares responses to the question of “who should primarily provide” eldercare and childcare across three countries: the US, Germany and Israel. Analysis of 2012 International Social Survey Programme data reveals that while persons in the US endorse family as care providers to both older adults and children, Israelis endorse government as eldercare providers yet family as the source of childcare provision. German respondents prefer both government and family as childcare providers, yet believe the government should provide eldercare. The paper discusses how cross-national differences in attitudes toward care are associated with cultural and socio-economic characteristics, and highlights implications for policy and practice.

AbstractThis article explores neo-conservative ideology in the industrialized West through a comparative analysis of the arguments advanced against a strong role for the federal government in regulating child care services in the United States and Canada. Existing analyses of neo-conservatism suggest that it is composed of many different elements which may lead to contradictory policy prescriptions; this literature also downplays the presence of a “pro-family” component in the Canadian context. The article illustrates the presence of an “anti-statist,” a “pro-market” and a “pro-family” strand of neo-conservatism in each country, and shows that they converge in opposing federal regulation of child care services. It also suggests that, while there appears to be a shared neo-conservative vision of the appropriate relationship between families and the state across national contexts, discussions of the state and its relationship to the market take on a distinctive tone in each country.

The Prevention-of-Mother-To-Child Transmission (PMTCT) program was introduced to prevent vertical transmission of HIV from a mother to her infant through pregnancy, labor, and breastfeeding. Therefore, it is critical for the program to be accessible in primary health care facilities across the globe to increase treatment uptake and to eliminate child and maternal mortality rates caused by HIV infections. However, barriers are still being experienced by some nurses while implementing PMTCT around Moretele sub-district in the North West Province (NWP). Hence, this qualitative study explored and described the factors influencing the implementation of PMTCT. A qualitative, exploratory-descriptive design was followed. Ten participants were selected purposively, and each participant was interviewed individually using WhatsApp video calling. All participants were made aware of their voices being recorded; data saturation was reached on the eighth participant as no new information evolved. Data were analyzed using Tesch’s method of qualitative data analysis. The findings revealed that factors that influenced PMTCT implementation were due to patient, management, and staff-related factors. Moreover, these factors impacted the provision of effective patient care. The findings of this study show that much still needs to be done to achieve and sustain the PMTCT implementation goal. Therefore, the training of nurses should be of paramount importance. They should be provided and equipped with the necessary resources, support, and encouragement to offer and ensure quality health care. Furthermore, the government should ensure that policies and guidelines are regularly monitored and evaluated.

AbstractObjectiveTo determine the extent to which national and local UK guidelines for the early years sector address key recommendations for encouraging healthy eating based on best available evidence.DesignPhase 1 comprised a literature review to identify new evidence to assess current relevance of the Caroline Walker Trust (CWT) ‘Eating well for under-5 s in child care’ guidelines. Phase 2 assessed the completeness of seven local to national-level government guidelines by comparison with the ‘gold standard’ CWT guidelines.SettingDesk-based review using secondary data.SubjectsResearch literature and statutory guidelines on healthy eating in early years settings.ResultsPhase 1 retrieved seventy-five papers, of which sixty were excluded as they addressed compliance with nutritional and food-based standards only. One report examined a social marketing tool and was deemed too narrow. The remaining fourteen documents assessed interventions to encourage healthy eating in early years settings. Following quality assessment, seven documents were included. Nine key recommendations were identified: (i) role of government; (ii) early years setting policy/guidelines; (iii) training; (iv) menu planning; (v) parents; (vi) atmosphere and encouragement; (vii) learning through food; (viii) sustainability; and (ix) equal opportunities. Phase 2 identified that all seven guidelines included the nine key recommendations but sporadic cover of sub-key recommendations.ConclusionsMore detail is needed on how early years settings can encourage children to eat healthily. Research is required to develop second-layer guidance for interactive materials. Clear processes of communication and support for parents are required. Ways food relates to children's wider learning and social development need further thought, requiring collaboration between the Department of Health and the Department for Education.

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to study the gender specific private returns on education (RE) in Europe in a comparative perspective. The authors extend the model of de la Fuente (2003) by estimating the parameters by gender and introducing maternity leaves and benefits. The paper analyses the impact of the public policy variables evaluating the elasticities with respect to unemployment benefits, marginal and average tax rates, maternity leave and childcare benefits. Design/methodology/approach – The authors estimate the Mincerian coefficients, with the Heckman’ selection model, for 12 West European countries using the EU-SILC data. The authors then use them as input to calibrate the decision model. Findings – The RE of females tend to be higher than those of males in all the Europeans countries but Germany, the Netherlands and Sweden. The gender gap can be explained mainly by the wage premia and labour income taxes which more than compensate the negative effects on females’ returns triggered by higher unemployment rates and maternity-related benefits. Practical implications – The tax system has the most pronounced effect on RE. An increase in the marginal tax rates has a negative impact. An increase in the average tax rates can have a negative or positive impact, depending on the progressivity of the tax system. An increase in unemployment benefits and maternity or child-care benefits has a negative but fairly small impact. Social implications – The analysis considers just one dimension of maternity related policies: the effect on RE and differences across gender. These policies may have aims which are beyond the scope of this paper, for instance to increase fertility. From this viewpoint, the small values of the elasticities presented are reassuring in that they suggest that they can be implemented at a fairly small cost in terms of investment in human capital. Originality/value – The authors compute the RE using a model which allows us to take into account and assess the significance of relevant variables: wage premium, income tax, some public transfers and benefits, costs of the investments. Moreover, the authors estimate the wage premia using relatively recent EU-SILC data. Finally, the paper compares 12 EU countries spanning quite different labour market conditions and institutions.

ObjectiveTo investigate student, parent/carer and secondary school staff attitudes towards school COVID-19 mitigation measures.MethodsRecruitment used school communication, community organisations and snowball sampling in South West England. Audio recorded online or phone individual/group semi-structured interviews were conducted in July–Septtember 2020 and lasted 30–60 min. Interviews focused on views towards social distancing, hand hygiene and testing. Framework analysis was performed on interview notes/transcripts.ResultsParticipants were 15 staff, 20 parents and 17 students (11–16 years) from 14 diverse schools. Concerns about COVID-19 risk at school, especially to vulnerable individuals, were outweighed by perceived risks of missed learning. Some staff felt guilt around being a potential ‘spreader’ by teaching multiple classes. Findings highlighted a wide variety of school COVID-19 mitigation measures being deployed due to ambiguous government guidance. Participants generally saw mitigation measures as an acceptable and pragmatic solution to the perceived impossibility of social distancing in crowded schools, although anticipated challenges changing habitual behaviour. Participants supported school COVID-19 testing but identified the need to consider data security and stigma around COVID-19 diagnosis. Staff were concerned about unintended consequences of risk-reduction strategies on student behaviour, learning and pastoral care, particularly for those with Special Educational Needs or mental health issues who may find the measures especially challenging, and resultant widening inequalities.ConclusionFamilies and staff supported COVID-19 mitigation measures in schools and would welcome the roll out school COVID-19 testing. Clear messaging and engendering collective responsibility are important for compliance and success of COVID-19 mitigation measures. However, schools and policy-makers should consider unintended consequences of measures, providing extra support for vulnerable students and those with additional needs, and consider ways to avoid widening educational and health inequalities. Findings demonstrate the acceptability of school COVID-19 infection control measures is likely to be influenced by the balance of risks and benefits to students.

Defence date: 2 October 2006
Examining board: Prof. Klaus Eder (Humboldt-University, Berlin) ; Prof. Birgit Pfau-Effinger (University Hamburg) ; Prof. Bo Stråth (European University Institute) ; Prof. Colin Crouch (The University of Warwick)
PDF of thesis uploaded from the Library digitised archive of EUI PhD theses completed between 2013 and 2017

Nationalism: Past as Prologue began as a single volume being compiled by Ad Akande, a scholar from South Africa, who proposed it to me as co-author about two years ago. The original idea was to examine how the damaging roots of nationalism have been corroding political systems around the world, and creating dangerous obstacles for necessary international cooperation. Since I (Bruce E. Johansen) has written profusely about climate change (global warming, a.k.a. infrared forcing), I suggested a concerted effort in that direction. This is a worldwide existential threat that affects every living thing on Earth. It often compounds upon itself, so delays in reducing emissions of fossil fuels are shortening the amount of time remaining to eliminate the use of fossil fuels to preserve a livable planet. Nationalism often impedes solutions to this problem (among many others), as nations place their singular needs above the common good. Our initial proposal got around, and abstracts on many subjects arrived. Within a few weeks, we had enough good material for a 100,000-word book. The book then fattened to two moderate volumes and then to four two very hefty tomes. We tried several different titles as good submissions swelled. We also discovered that our best contributors were experts in their fields, which ranged the world. We settled on three stand-alone books:” 1/ nationalism and racial justice. Our first volume grew as the growth of Black Lives Matter following the brutal killing of George Floyd ignited protests over police brutality and other issues during 2020, following the police assassination of Floyd in Minneapolis. It is estimated that more people took part in protests of police brutality during the summer of 2020 than any other series of marches in United States history. This includes upheavals during the 1960s over racial issues and against the war in Southeast Asia (notably Vietnam). We choose a volume on racism because it is one of nationalism’s main motive forces. This volume provides a worldwide array of work on nationalism’s growth in various countries, usually by authors residing in them, or in the United States with ethnic ties to the nation being examined, often recent immigrants to the United States from them. Our roster of contributors comprises a small United Nations of insightful, well-written research and commentary from Indonesia, New Zealand, Australia, China, India, South Africa, France, Portugal, Estonia, Hungary, Russia, Poland, Kazakhstan, Georgia, and the United States. Volume 2 (this one) describes and analyzes nationalism, by country, around the world, except for the United States; and 3/material directly related to President Donald Trump, and the United States. The first volume is under consideration at the Texas A & M University Press. The other two are under contract to Nova Science Publishers (which includes social sciences). These three volumes may be used individually or as a set. Environmental material is taken up in appropriate places in each of the three books. * * * * * What became the United States of America has been strongly nationalist since the English of present-day Massachusetts and Jamestown first hit North America’s eastern shores. The country propelled itself across North America with the self-serving ideology of “manifest destiny” for four centuries before Donald Trump came along. Anyone who believes that a Trumpian affection for deportation of “illegals” is a new thing ought to take a look at immigration and deportation statistics in Adam Goodman’s The Deportation Machine: America’s Long History of Deporting Immigrants (Princeton University Press, 2020). Between 1920 and 2018, the United States deported 56.3 million people, compared with 51.7 million who were granted legal immigration status during the same dates. Nearly nine of ten deportees were Mexican (Nolan, 2020, 83). This kind of nationalism, has become an assassin of democracy as well as an impediment to solving global problems. Paul Krugman wrote in the New York Times (2019:A-25): that “In their 2018 book, How Democracies Die, the political scientists Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt documented how this process has played out in many countries, from Vladimir Putin’s Russia, to Recep Erdogan’s Turkey, to Viktor Orban’s Hungary. Add to these India’s Narendra Modi, China’s Xi Jinping, and the United States’ Donald Trump, among others. Bit by bit, the guardrails of democracy have been torn down, as institutions meant to serve the public became tools of ruling parties and self-serving ideologies, weaponized to punish and intimidate opposition parties’ opponents. On paper, these countries are still democracies; in practice, they have become one-party regimes….And it’s happening here [the United States] as we speak. If you are not worried about the future of American democracy, you aren’t paying attention” (Krugmam, 2019, A-25). We are reminded continuously that the late Carl Sagan, one of our most insightful scientific public intellectuals, had an interesting theory about highly developed civilizations. Given the number of stars and planets that must exist in the vast reaches of the universe, he said, there must be other highly developed and organized forms of life. Distance may keep us from making physical contact, but Sagan said that another reason we may never be on speaking terms with another intelligent race is (judging from our own example) could be their penchant for destroying themselves in relatively short order after reaching technological complexity. This book’s chapters, introduction, and conclusion examine the worldwide rise of partisan nationalism and the damage it has wrought on the worldwide pursuit of solutions for issues requiring worldwide scope, such scientific co-operation public health and others, mixing analysis of both. We use both historical description and analysis. This analysis concludes with a description of why we must avoid the isolating nature of nationalism that isolates people and encourages separation if we are to deal with issues of world-wide concern, and to maintain a sustainable, survivable Earth, placing the dominant political movement of our time against the Earth’s existential crises. Our contributors, all experts in their fields, each have assumed responsibility for a country, or two if they are related. This work entwines themes of worldwide concern with the political growth of nationalism because leaders with such a worldview are disinclined to co-operate internationally at a time when nations must find ways to solve common problems, such as the climate crisis. Inability to cooperate at this stage may doom everyone, eventually, to an overheated, stormy future plagued by droughts and deluges portending shortages of food and other essential commodities, meanwhile destroying large coastal urban areas because of rising sea levels. Future historians may look back at our time and wonder why as well as how our world succumbed to isolating nationalism at a time when time was so short for cooperative intervention which is crucial for survival of a sustainable earth. Pride in language and culture is salubrious to individuals’ sense of history and identity. Excess nationalism that prevents international co-operation on harmful worldwide maladies is quite another. As Pope Francis has pointed out: For all of our connectivity due to expansion of social media, ability to communicate can breed contempt as well as mutual trust. “For all our hyper-connectivity,” said Francis, “We witnessed a fragmentation that made it more difficult to resolve problems that affect us all” (Horowitz, 2020, A-12). The pope’s encyclical, titled “Brothers All,” also said: “The forces of myopic, extremist, resentful, and aggressive nationalism are on the rise.” The pope’s document also advocates support for migrants, as well as resistance to nationalist and tribal populism. Francis broadened his critique to the role of market capitalism, as well as nationalism has failed the peoples of the world when they need co-operation and solidarity in the face of the world-wide corona virus pandemic. Humankind needs to unite into “a new sense of the human family [Fratelli Tutti, “Brothers All”], that rejects war at all costs” (Pope, 2020, 6-A). Our journey takes us first to Russia, with the able eye and honed expertise of Richard D. Anderson, Jr. who teaches as UCLA and publishes on the subject of his chapter: “Putin, Russian identity, and Russia’s conduct at home and abroad.” Readers should find Dr. Anderson’s analysis fascinating because Vladimir Putin, the singular leader of Russian foreign and domestic policy these days (and perhaps for the rest of his life, given how malleable Russia’s Constitution has become) may be a short man physically, but has high ambitions. One of these involves restoring the old Russian (and Soviet) empire, which would involve re-subjugating a number of nations that broke off as the old order dissolved about 30 years ago. President (shall we say czar?) Putin also has international ambitions, notably by destabilizing the United States, where election meddling has become a specialty. The sight of Putin and U.S. president Donald Trump, two very rich men (Putin $70-$200 billion; Trump $2.5 billion), nuzzling in friendship would probably set Thomas Jefferson and Vladimir Lenin spinning in their graves. The road of history can take some unanticipated twists and turns. Consider Poland, from which we have an expert native analysis in chapter 2, Bartosz Hlebowicz, who is a Polish anthropologist and journalist. His piece is titled “Lawless and Unjust: How to Quickly Make Your Own Country a Puppet State Run by a Group of Hoodlums – the Hopeless Case of Poland (2015–2020).” When I visited Poland to teach and lecture twice between 2006 and 2008, most people seemed to be walking on air induced by freedom to conduct their own affairs to an unusual degree for a state usually squeezed between nationalists in Germany and Russia. What did the Poles then do in a couple of decades? Read Hlebowicz’ chapter and decide. It certainly isn’t soft-bellied liberalism. In Chapter 3, with Bruce E. Johansen, we visit China’s western provinces, the lands of Tibet as well as the Uighurs and other Muslims in the Xinjiang region, who would most assuredly resent being characterized as being possessed by the Chinese of the Han to the east. As a student of Native American history, I had never before thought of the Tibetans and Uighurs as Native peoples struggling against the Independence-minded peoples of a land that is called an adjunct of China on most of our maps. The random act of sitting next to a young woman on an Air India flight out of Hyderabad, bound for New Delhi taught me that the Tibetans had something to share with the Lakota, the Iroquois, and hundreds of other Native American states and nations in North America. Active resistance to Chinese rule lasted into the mid-nineteenth century, and continues today in a subversive manner, even in song, as I learned in 2018 when I acted as a foreign adjudicator on a Ph.D. dissertation by a Tibetan student at the University of Madras (in what is now in a city called Chennai), in southwestern India on resistance in song during Tibet’s recent history. Tibet is one of very few places on Earth where a young dissident can get shot to death for singing a song that troubles China’s Quest for Lebensraum. The situation in Xinjiang region, where close to a million Muslims have been interned in “reeducation” camps surrounded with brick walls and barbed wire. They sing, too. Come with us and hear the music. Back to Europe now, in Chapter 4, to Portugal and Spain, we find a break in the general pattern of nationalism. Portugal has been more progressive governmentally than most. Spain varies from a liberal majority to military coups, a pattern which has been exported to Latin America. A situation such as this can make use of the term “populism” problematic, because general usage in our time usually ties the word into a right-wing connotative straightjacket. “Populism” can be used to describe progressive (left-wing) insurgencies as well. José Pinto, who is native to Portugal and also researches and writes in Spanish as well as English, in “Populism in Portugal and Spain: a Real Neighbourhood?” provides insight into these historical paradoxes. Hungary shares some historical inclinations with Poland (above). Both emerged from Soviet dominance in an air of developing freedom and multicultural diversity after the Berlin Wall fell and the Soviet Union collapsed. Then, gradually at first, right wing-forces began to tighten up, stripping structures supporting popular freedom, from the courts, mass media, and other institutions. In Chapter 5, Bernard Tamas, in “From Youth Movement to Right-Liberal Wing Authoritarianism: The Rise of Fidesz and the Decline of Hungarian Democracy” puts the renewed growth of political and social repression into a context of worldwide nationalism. Tamas, an associate professor of political science at Valdosta State University, has been a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University and a Fulbright scholar at the Central European University in Budapest, Hungary. His books include From Dissident to Party Politics: The Struggle for Democracy in Post-Communist Hungary (2007). Bear in mind that not everyone shares Orbán’s vision of what will make this nation great, again. On graffiti-covered walls in Budapest, Runes (traditional Hungarian script) has been found that read “Orbán is a motherfucker” (Mikanowski, 2019, 58). Also in Europe, in Chapter 6, Professor Ronan Le Coadic, of the University of Rennes, Rennes, France, in “Is There a Revival of French Nationalism?” Stating this title in the form of a question is quite appropriate because France’s nationalistic shift has built and ebbed several times during the last few decades. For a time after 2000, it came close to assuming the role of a substantial minority, only to ebb after that. In 2017, the candidate of the National Front reached the second round of the French presidential election. This was the second time this nationalist party reached the second round of the presidential election in the history of the Fifth Republic. In 2002, however, Jean-Marie Le Pen had only obtained 17.79% of the votes, while fifteen years later his daughter, Marine Le Pen, almost doubled her father's record, reaching 33.90% of the votes cast. Moreover, in the 2019 European elections, re-named Rassemblement National obtained the largest number of votes of all French political formations and can therefore boast of being "the leading party in France.” The brutality of oppressive nationalism may be expressed in personal relationships, such as child abuse. While Indonesia and Aotearoa [the Maoris’ name for New Zealand] hold very different ranks in the United Nations Human Development Programme assessments, where Indonesia is classified as a medium development country and Aotearoa New Zealand as a very high development country. In Chapter 7, “Domestic Violence Against Women in Indonesia and Aotearoa New Zealand: Making Sense of Differences and Similarities” co-authors, in Chapter 8, Mandy Morgan and Dr. Elli N. Hayati, from New Zealand and Indonesia respectively, found that despite their socio-economic differences, one in three women in each country experience physical or sexual intimate partner violence over their lifetime. In this chapter ther authors aim to deepen understandings of domestic violence through discussion of the socio-economic and demographic characteristics of theit countries to address domestic violence alongside studies of women’s attitudes to gender norms and experiences of intimate partner violence. One of the most surprising and upsetting scholarly journeys that a North American student may take involves Adolf Hitler’s comments on oppression of American Indians and Blacks as he imagined the construction of the Nazi state, a genesis of nationalism that is all but unknown in the United States of America, traced in this volume (Chapter 8) by co-editor Johansen. Beginning in Mein Kampf, during the 1920s, Hitler explicitly used the westward expansion of the United States across North America as a model and justification for Nazi conquest and anticipated colonization by Germans of what the Nazis called the “wild East” – the Slavic nations of Poland, the Baltic states, Ukraine, and Russia, most of which were under control of the Soviet Union. The Volga River (in Russia) was styled by Hitler as the Germans’ Mississippi, and covered wagons were readied for the German “manifest destiny” of imprisoning, eradicating, and replacing peoples the Nazis deemed inferior, all with direct references to events in North America during the previous century. At the same time, with no sense of contradiction, the Nazis partook of a long-standing German romanticism of Native Americans. One of Goebbels’ less propitious schemes was to confer honorary Aryan status on Native American tribes, in the hope that they would rise up against their oppressors. U.S. racial attitudes were “evidence [to the Nazis] that America was evolving in the right direction, despite its specious rhetoric about equality.” Ming Xie, originally from Beijing, in the People’s Republic of China, in Chapter 9, “News Coverage and Public Perceptions of the Social Credit System in China,” writes that The State Council of China in 2014 announced “that a nationwide social credit system would be established” in China. “Under this system, individuals, private companies, social organizations, and governmental agencies are assigned a score which will be calculated based on their trustworthiness and daily actions such as transaction history, professional conduct, obedience to law, corruption, tax evasion, and academic plagiarism.” The “nationalism” in this case is that of the state over the individual. China has 1.4 billion people; this system takes their measure for the purpose of state control. Once fully operational, control will be more subtle. People who are subject to it, through modern technology (most often smart phones) will prompt many people to self-censor. Orwell, modernized, might write: “Your smart phone is watching you.” Ming Xie holds two Ph.Ds, one in Public Administration from University of Nebraska at Omaha and another in Cultural Anthropology from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Beijing, where she also worked for more than 10 years at a national think tank in the same institution. While there she summarized news from non-Chinese sources for senior members of the Chinese Communist Party. Ming is presently an assistant professor at the Department of Political Science and Criminal Justice, West Texas A&M University. In Chapter 10, analyzing native peoples and nationhood, Barbara Alice Mann, Professor of Honours at the University of Toledo, in “Divide, et Impera: The Self-Genocide Game” details ways in which European-American invaders deprive the conquered of their sense of nationhood as part of a subjugation system that amounts to genocide, rubbing out their languages and cultures -- and ultimately forcing the native peoples to assimilate on their own, for survival in a culture that is foreign to them. Mann is one of Native American Studies’ most acute critics of conquests’ contradictions, and an author who retrieves Native history with a powerful sense of voice and purpose, having authored roughly a dozen books and numerous book chapters, among many other works, who has traveled around the world lecturing and publishing on many subjects. Nalanda Roy and S. Mae Pedron in Chapter 11, “Understanding the Face of Humanity: The Rohingya Genocide.” describe one of the largest forced migrations in the history of the human race, the removal of 700,000 to 800,000 Muslims from Buddhist Myanmar to Bangladesh, which itself is already one of the most crowded and impoverished nations on Earth. With about 150 million people packed into an area the size of Nebraska and Iowa (population less than a tenth that of Bangladesh, a country that is losing land steadily to rising sea levels and erosion of the Ganges river delta. The Rohingyas’ refugee camp has been squeezed onto a gigantic, eroding, muddy slope that contains nearly no vegetation. However, Bangladesh is majority Muslim, so while the Rohingya may starve, they won’t be shot to death by marauding armies. Both authors of this exquisite (and excruciating) account teach at Georgia Southern University in Savannah, Georgia, Roy as an associate professor of International Studies and Asian politics, and Pedron as a graduate student; Roy originally hails from very eastern India, close to both Myanmar and Bangladesh, so he has special insight into the context of one of the most brutal genocides of our time, or any other. This is our case describing the problems that nationalism has and will pose for the sustainability of the Earth as our little blue-and-green orb becomes more crowded over time. The old ways, in which national arguments often end in devastating wars, are obsolete, given that the Earth and all the people, plants, and other animals that it sustains are faced with the existential threat of a climate crisis that within two centuries, more or less, will flood large parts of coastal cities, and endanger many species of plants and animals. To survive, we must listen to the Earth, and observe her travails, because they are increasingly our own.