Books on the topic 'Small area market demand'

Structural reforms that increase competition in product markets, or increase flexibility in labour markets, can entail short run output costs unless offset by a demand expansion. When monetary policy is constrained and cannot carry out this short run expansion, there is a potential role for fiscal policy. This chapter quantifies these short run fiscal costs and long run fiscal benefits of reforms, and investigates how the design of reforms can affect this trade-off. In the model, both the costs and benefits of reforms are generally small, although increasingly large reforms entail larger rises in deficit-to-GDP in the short run. Results suggest that reforms in labour markets have little effect on public finances in the long run, but can help to ameliorate the short run costs of product market reforms.

We look into the relationship between business practices and enterprise productivity using panel data with matched employer and employee information from Myanmar. The data show that micro, small, and medium-size enterprises in Myanmar typically do only a few modern business practices. Even so, through estimates of value-added functions and labour demand relations we find a positive and economically important association between business practices and productivity. The results are confirmed when we utilize employer–employee information to estimate Mincer-type wage regressions. In combination, the value-added functions and the Mincer regressions show that at least half of the productivity gain from improved business practices stems from selection effects of employment of more productive workers. This sorting channel is important to keep in mind when supporting enterprises in Myanmar’s manufacturing sector through entrepreneurial training activities. While our results indicate that implementation of more structured business practices could be a key ingredient of a private sector development strategy in Myanmar, the full effect of such a strategy may take time to materialize. Moreover, entrepreneurial training should be accompanied by labour market initiatives aimed at improving productive matches of employers and employees.

Abstract This text aims to provide a simple but effective introduction to general economics for students of agriculture, the rural sector and related topics in universities and colleges. This fifth edition continues the process of adaptation and adjustment to meet changing times, the most significant of which for readers in Europe has been the withdrawal of the UK from the EU which carry implications not only for the chapter on agricultural policy but in many other places in the text. In the process of revision, the opportunity has been taken to make numerous other updates and small improvements. The book has 10 chapters which cover: the essence of economics, consumer behaviour, demand and supply, markets and competition, production economics, factors of production, macroeconomics, international trade, and government policy for agriculture and rural areas.

A key challenge for molecular biology is to use research outcomes to meet the demands of modern society. ‘Molecular forensics’ shows that molecular markers are having a substantial impact; from bench to boardroom or even courtroom. DNA profiling plays a role in helping to solve crimes and miscarriages of justice. Although 99.5 per cent of the human DNA sequence is the same for everyone, there are small regions of variability that are specific to each individual giving each person a unique DNA profile, or fingerprint. DNA profile applications are increasing and are now used to identify food counterfeits and contamination of food; to tackle pandemics and epidemics; and in biosecurity measures.

As cities have gentrified, educated urbanites have come to prize what they regard as "authentic" urban life: aging buildings, art galleries, small boutiques, upscale food markets, neighborhood old-timers, funky ethnic restaurants, and old, family-owned shops. These signify a place's authenticity, in contrast to the bland standardization of the suburbs and exurbs. But as Sharon Zukin shows in Naked City, the rapid and pervasive demand for authenticity--evident in escalating real estate prices, expensive stores, and closely monitored urban streetscapes--has helped drive out the very people who first lent a neighborhood its authentic aura: immigrants, the working class, and artists. Zukin traces this economic and social evolution in six archetypal New York areas--Williamsburg, Harlem, the East Village, Union Square, Red Hook, and the city's community gardens--and travels to both the city's first IKEA store and the World Trade Center site. She shows that for followers of Jane Jacobs, this transformation is a perversion of what was supposed to happen. Indeed, Naked City is a sobering update of Jacobs' legendary 1961 book, The Death and Life of Great American Cities. Like Jacobs, Zukin looks at what gives neighborhoods a sense of place, but argues that over time, the emphasis on neighborhood distinctiveness has become a tool of economic elites to drive up real estate values and effectively force out the neighborhood "characters" that Jacobs so evocatively idealized.

Latin America and the Caribbean, unlike other regions, is still quite young demographically: people over age 60 make up around 11% of the total population. However, the region is expected to experience the fastest rate of population aging in the world over the coming decades. This projected growth of the elderly population raises challenges related to pensions, health, and long-term care. At the same time, it opens up numerous business opportunities in different sectorshousing, tourism, care, and transportation, for examplethat could generate millions of new jobs. These opportunities are termed the “silver economy,” which has the potential to be one of the drivers of post-pandemic economic recovery. Importantly, women play key roles in many areas of this market, as noted in the first report published by the IDB on this subject (Okumura et al., 2020). This report maps the actors whose products or services are intended for older people and examines silver economy trends in the region by sector: health, long-term care, finance, housing, transportation, job market, education, entertainment, and digitization. The mapping identified 245 actors whose products or services are intended for older people, and it yielded three main findings. The first is that the majority of the actors (40%) operate in the health and care sectors. The prevalence of these sectors could be due to the fact that they are made up of many small players, and it could also suggest a still limited role of older people in active consumption, investment, and the job market in the region. The second finding is that 90% of the silver economy actors identified by the study operate exclusively in their countries of origin, and that Mexico has the most actors (47), followed by the Southern Cone countriesBrazil, Chile, and Argentinawhich have the regions highest rates of population aging. The third finding is that private investment dominates the silver economy ecosystem, as nearly 3 out of every 4 actors offering services to the elderly population are for-profit enterprises. The sectors and markets of the silver economy differ in size and degree of maturity. For example, the long-term care sector, which includes residential care settings, is the oldest and has the largest number of actors, while sectors like digital, home automation, and cohousing are still emerging. Across all sectors, however, there are innovative initiatives that hold great potential for growth. This report examines the main development trends of the silver economy in the region and presents examples of initiatives that are already underway. The health sector has a wealth of initiatives designed to make managing chronic diseases easier and to prevent and reduce the impact of functional limitations through practices that encourage active aging. In the area of long term careone of the most powerful drivers of job creationinitiatives to train human resources and offer home care services are flourishing. The financial sector is beginning to meet a wide range of demands from older people by offering unique services such as remittances or property management, in addition to more traditional pensions, savings, and investment services. The housing sector is adapting rapidly to the changes resulting from population aging. This shift can be seen, for example, in developments in the area of cohousing or collaborative housing, and in the rise of smart homes, which are emerging as potential solutions. In the area of transportation, specific solutions are being developed to meet the unique mobility needs of older people, whose economic and social participation is on the rise. The job market offers older people opportunities to continue contributing to society, either by sharing their experience or by earning income. The education sector is developing solutions that promote active aging and the ongoing participation of older people in the regions economic and social life. Entertainment services for older people are expanding, with the emergence of multiple online services. Lastly, digitization is a cross-cutting and fundamental challenge for the silver economy, and various initiatives in the region that directly address this issue were identified. Additionally, in several sectors we identified actors with a clear focus on gender, and these primarily provide support to women. Of a total of 245 actors identified by the mapping exercise, we take a closer look at 11 different stories of the development of the silver economy in the region. The featured organizations are RAFAM Internacional (Argentina), TeleDx (Chile), Bonanza Asistencia (Costa Rica), NudaProp (Uruguay), Contraticos (Costa Rica), Maturi (Brazil), Someone Somewhere (Mexico), CONAPE (Dominican Republic), Fundación Saldarriaga Concha (Colombia), Plan Ibirapitá (Uruguay), and Canitas (Mexico). These organizations were chosen based on criteria such as how innovative their business models are, the current size and growth potential of their initiatives, and their impact on society. This study is a first step towards mapping the silver economy in Latin America and the Caribbean, and the hope is to broaden the scope of this mapping exercise through future research and through the creation of a community of actors to promote the regional integration of initiatives in this field.

Alterations in left ventricular (LV) mass and geometry and LV dysfunction increase in prevalence from stage 2 to stage 5 in CKD. Nuclear magnetic resonance is the most accurate and precise technique for measuring LV mass and function in patients with heart disease. Quantitative echocardiography is still the most frequently used means of evaluating abnormalities in LV mass and function in CKD. Anatomically, myocardial hypertrophy can be classified as concentric or eccentric. In concentric hypertrophy, the muscular component of the LV (LV wall) predominates over the cavity component (LV volume). Due to the higher thickness and myocardial fibrosis in patients with concentric LVH, ventricular compliance is reduced and the end-diastolic volume is small and insufficient to maintain cardiac output under varying physiological demands (diastolic dysfunction). In those with eccentric hypertrophy, tensile stress elongates myocardiocytes and increases LV end-diastolic volume. The LV walls are relatively thinner and with reduced ability to contract (systolic dysfunction). LVH prevalence increases stepwisely as renal function deteriorates and 70–80% of patients with kidney failure present with established LVH which is of the concentric type in the majority. Volume overload and severe anaemia are, on the other hand, the major drivers of eccentric LVH. Even though LVH may regress after renal transplantation, the prevalence of LVH after transplantation remains close to that found in dialysis patients and a functioning renal graft should not be seen as a guarantee of LVH regression. The vast majority of studies on cardiomyopathy in CKD are observational in nature and the number of controlled clinical trials in these patients is very small. Beta-blockers (carvedilol) and angiotensin receptors blockers improve LV performance and reduce mortality in kidney failure patients with LV dysfunction. Although current guidelines recommend implantable cardioverter-defibrillators in patients with ejection fraction less than 30%, mild to moderate symptoms of heart failure, and a life expectancy of more than 1 year, these devices are rarely offered to eligible CKD patients. Conversion to nocturnal dialysis and to frequent dialysis schedules produces a marked improvement in LVH in patients on dialysis. More frequent and/or longer dialysis are recommended in dialysis patients with asymptomatic or symptomatic LV disorders if the organizational and financial resources are available.

This chapter concentrates on the non-imperial demand for stone in the Roman world, to provide some context for understanding the imperially orchestrated stone trade. Two related trends underpin the fashion for stone use: a widespread growth in demand for stone of all types, especially during the first three centuries AD; and targeted and disproportionately high demand for high-quality decorative stones. Imperial building projects played a major role in this process, setting the tone for much non-imperial activity; they have the highest densities of decorative stones and have consequently attracted most scholarly attention. However, in aggregate terms more stone was consumed by the non-imperial market; the bulk of this material moved only short distances to satisfy local demand. The level of demand for high-quality or uniquely patterned stone from imperial building projects, primarily at Rome, distorts the picture of small-scale, localized quarrying and the typically limited pattern of distribution that was the norm.

This chapter considers patterns of skills demand and policy developments in the advanced economies. Determining the actual and anticipated skills demands of employers and individuals are key challenges for policy makers and an area of ongoing interest for academics. This chapter considers academic debates about skills demand, including whether upskilling or deskilling is taking place, as well as the increasing focus on ‘soft’ skills rather than traditional technical skills. This discussion is followed by data on trends and forecasting of skills development. How and where policy and practice positions are formulated are considered for both Coordinated Market Economies (CMEs) and Liberal Market Economies (LMEs), as well as the shifting policy positions and policy interventions. The chapter concludes with a commentary on these debates, trends and interventions.

This chapter examines the impact of legal status on versatility and efficiency in prostitution markets. Focusing on the massage-parlor sector of the prostitution market in the northwest of England, it considers heterogeneity in consumer preferences and whether there exists a perfectly competitive market model with homogeneous sellers. It first provides an overview of the economics of prostitution before discussing the role of variety seeking in the demand for prostitution services. Drawing on consumer-oriented data from massage parlors in the northwest of England, it argues that economies-of-scope conditions have failed to develop to satisfy demand for variety in the area. It also sees the predominant concentration of massage-parlor sex work in England to be of low quality, reflecting a declining influence of the traditional firm-based sex work there.

Under President Lula (2003–2010), Brazil’s foreign aid program expanded significantly into the area of South-South cooperation. This included the “soft power” fields of social protection, food security, agricultural research, and humanitarian assistance, among others, with a particular emphasis on supporting Sub-Saharan Africa, notably but not exclusively Portuguese-speaking countries. Much of this aid was provided with the support of technical assistance from UN agencies such as UNDP and FAO and bilateral aid bodies, via trilateral agreements, under the coordination of Brazil’s International Cooperation Agency (ABC). South-South collaboration is considered to be morally superior to conventional aid arrangements, being supposedly demand-driven and “non-exploitative,” thus empowering recipients in the process. Brazilian policymakers sought to transfer national anti-poverty initiatives to Africa. This was based initially on the Bolsa Família conditional cash transfer (CCT) program, but other nutritional food security initiatives followed, such as boosting small farmer production as well as supporting agribusiness.

The pharmaceutical industry has been heavily criticized for the amount it spends, as well as for the tactics it uses to promote drugs. This chapter begins by providing an overview of pharmaceutical promotion in recent years, and then offers a closer examination of each major promotional channel, including detailing, free samples, journal advertising, sponsorship of medical conferences, direct-to-consumer advertising, and e-promotion. It systematically reviews the contemporary health economics literature on the effect of pharmaceutical promotion on demand, pricing, utilization, and quality of care. The role of the FDA in regulating drug advertising is also examined, including the debate on whether the agency’s responsibility in this area should be expanded or curtailed. The last section of the chapter examines the issues of false or misleading advertising and off-label promotion. The focus in this chapter is on the US drug market.

Institutions and ownership play a central role in the transformation and development of the beer market and the brewing industry. Institutions set the external environment of the brewery through both formal requirements and informal acceptance of these companies’ operations by the public, whereas the owners and their managers adapt to these external challenges but also follow their own agenda in setting up strategies for innovation, marketing, takeovers, etc. The 13 chapters in this book cover changes in a range of institutions, such as excise tax, zoning regulation, trade liberalization, consumers’ habits and tastes for beer and sales regulation of alcohol. The responses from the breweries has included a craft beer revolution with a surge in demand for special flowered hops, a globalization strategy from the macrobreweries, outsourcing by contract brewing and knowledge exchange for small-sized breweries, etc. The book consists of two parts. The first includes chapters primarily focusing on institutions, whereas the chapters in the second part take mainly an ownership perspective. The book’s contribution lies primarily in an analysis of the link between institutions and governance, pointing to how the most successful breweries have adapted to the external changes in institutions in the brewery sector.

Kentucky distillers have produced bourbon and rye whiskeys for more than two centuries. Part I of this book examines the complexities associated with nineteenth-century distilling’s evolution from an artisanal craft practiced by farmers and millers to a large-scale mechanized industry that adopted increasingly refined production techniques. The change from waterpower to steam engines permitted the relocation of distilleries away from traditional sites along creeks or at large springs. Commercial-scale distilling was accompanied by increasing government taxes and oversight controls. Mechanized distilleries readily expanded production and increased their demand for labor, grains, cooperage, copper stills, and other metal fixtures. Improved transportation—turnpikes, steamboats, trains, and dams and locks—allowed distillers to extend their reach for grains and equipment while distributing their product to national and international markets. Industrial production produced large amounts of spent grains, or slop, which had to be disposed of by feeding it to livestock or dumping it in sinkholes and creeks. Industrialization also increased the risk of fire, explosions, personal injury, and livestock diseases. Overproduction during the last third of the nineteenth century, among other problems, forced many distilleries to stop production or close. The temperance movement eventually led to Prohibition, which was in effect nationwide from 1920 to 1933. A small number of distillers survived that period by making medicinal whiskey. Part II consists of two case studies that provide detailed information on the general process of mechanization and industrialization: the Henry McKenna Distillery in Nelson County, and James Stone’s Elkhorn Distillery in Scott County. Part III examines the process of claiming product identity through naming, copyright law, and the acknowledgment that tradition and heritage can be employed by contemporary distillers to market their whiskey. Distillers venerate the “old,” and reconstructing the past as a marketing strategy has demonstrated that the industry’s heritage resides on the landscape—much of it established in the nineteenth century in the form of historic buildings, traditional routes, distillery towns, and other features that can be conserved through historic preservation and utilized by contemporary whiskey makers.

The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) is likely to have profound implications for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) within and beyond the free trade area. The key question will be analysed: what are the challenges and opportunities that the TPP hold for SMEs? It is argued that, first, the key benefits the TPP can be expected to bring for SMEs are enhanced market liberalization and a more predictable regulatory environment. Second, the TPP poses serious challenges for SMEs (eg insufficiency of the opportunities to SMEs, the complexity of rules, difficulties in rule interpretation and implementation, and remaining regulatory differences), but different types of SMEs will face very different problems. Third, the TPP, if properly managed, should bring more opportunities than challenges to SMEs. Finally, opportunities and challenges to SMEs under the TPP may not always be the same as those under bilateral FTAs given the unique nature of this mega FTA.

A Chinese Melting Pot: Original People and Immigrants in Hong Kong’s First ‘New Town’ traces the transformation of Tsuen Wan from a poor and marginal district of agricultural villages, culturally distinctive in that all were Hakka. Like others present in the New Territories in 1898, they enjoyed special privileges under British colonialism as ‘original inhabitants’. This study is focused, in part, on one of their villages: its history, lineages, relationships among and through women, and their songs and laments. In the aftermath of the Japanese occupation and revolution in China, the town, with its daily coastal market, rapidly grew into a major industrial area and assumed an intense, if chaotic, urban form. Its industries attracted enormous numbers of immigrants from China, who created a large variety of voluntary associations to ease their adaptation to the new environment, while the original inhabitants, as property owners, benefited financially from the immigrants’ need for housing, and politically from continuing government support. In the 1980s, changes in economic policies in China led to Tsuen Wan’s present post-industrial form. The original inhabitants remain as a small fragment of the population, their villages intact, although re-sited away from the town centre as part of greatly increased government intervention in creating a planned ‘new town’. Their language and traditions are disappearing as they, like the immigrants, are absorbed into the wider Hong Kong lifestyle.

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.