Welcome to Volume 5 Number 1 of the Journal of International and Global Studies. We continue to increase our subscriptions to this free open access online interdisciplinary journal. If you would like to subscribe to the journal, just click on the tab at the top of the page below the journal title. We will be sure to send you the web link to the journal so that you can read and download the essays in accordance with your interests. You will also provide us with a data base so that we can draw on your expertise for peer reviewing essays for the journal.

This Fall 2013 issue features four essays from a variety of different disciplines, two review essays, and 17 book reviews on globalization topics (defined broadly) that is a predominant theme of the journal. The lead essay by Jlateh Vincent Jappah and Danielle Taana Smith examines the consequences of international funding and support criminal tribunals for truth commissions in post-conflict societies as they move towards peace. These authors explore whether post-conflict healing and reconciliation would be more effective by funding truth commissions rather than international criminal tribunals or vice versa. They begin the paper with a conceptualization of what healing and reconciliation is supposed to accomplish. Examining the issues in the case studies of South Africa, Chile, and Rwanda, the authors reveal the complexities and nuances of on-the-ground truth commissions and international tribunals and how they can be fruitful or counterproductive. They conclude that international funding and support for truth commissions or international tribunals must use a victim-centered approach and take into account the unique conditions in post-conflict societies and rely upon reliable and practical strategies to apply in these highly complex historical, political, and cultural situations.

The second essay by independent scholar Vinod Janardhanan is based on a study of the political participation of the Indian diaspora in the U.S. The author surveys the political participation of Indian Americans since the years prior to India’s independence in 1947 and demonstrates how the Indian American organizations have provided fund raising for past elections and created congressional caucuses to enable this relatively small diasporic population to express their views upon the U.S. political stage. The author summarizes the difficulties of the Indian migrants to the U.S. in the late 19th and early 20th century as they were labelled as the “Tide of Turbans,” viewed in racist and Orientalist depictions, and impacted by the exclusionary immigration laws of this period. Even after the 1965 immigration law that dismantled the exclusionary laws directed at Asians, this heterogeneous diasporic community was still frequently targeted by racist attacks, most recently in the aftermath of the 9//11 tragedy. Janardhanan notes how this relatively small diasporic Indian community has mobilized and directed their nationalist and transnationalist aspirations and campaigns to improve their status within the U.S. political arena.

The essay by John Ripton “Developing Paradise: Tourism, the Local Community, and Nature in Las Terrenas, Dominican Republic” focuses on the major development challenges presented by tourism on this Caribbean island. The author describes how the Dominican Republic has concentrated its development efforts on tourism and the consequences for economic development. Undoubtedly, as Ripton notes tourism has greatly benefitted the Dominican Republic as it results in more capital, technology, and other infrastructural developments. Las Terrenas, labelled as the Monte Carlo of the Dominican Republic, is a major site of tourist investment with its setting of beautiful beaches and surrounding mountains, which was incorporated into the global economy. Ripton, drawing on ‘critical development theory,’ and qualitative research methods involving extensive interviewing investigates the consequences of tourism as it influences the region of Las Terrenas. The development of hotels, restaurants, infrastructural developments and a swelling population in Las Terrenas along with increasing corruption and pollution led to considerable negative environmental impacts, more poverty, as well as social and health dysfunctions including tuberculosis and HIV problems with new sex tourism. In addition, interethnic conflict resulting from Haitian migrant workers residing in Las Terrenas rubbing shoulders with the Dominicans erupted. Ripton’s call for listening to indigenous voices and a more sustainable development path ought to be the basis for future trends in Las Terrenas, and elsewhere.

The fourth essay investigates the policies of water control in India from a Foucauldian perspective. Vandana Asthana, associate professor of government at Eastern Washington University, examines how public policies regarding water control in India are shaped by the discourse and political maneuvering of transnational policy networks (TPNs) that are deeply connected with intergovernmental and national elites. The author focuses on the interplay of culture, power, and history and various actors to demonstrate how water governance in India developed in relationship to the neoliberal policies and the logic of privatization beginning in the 1980s with Rajiv Gandhi’s administration. This neoliberal ideology assumed that the public control of water in India led to the waste of resources and thus needed privatization and market mechanisms to become more effective. The neoliberal solutions for water control were framed in the discourse of technicality, which masked the ideology and motives of the elites. Key officials of the World Bank, the IMF, and some influential multinational corporations like Suez, a European company, the UN and interconnected think tanks, as well as NGOs like Water Aid that maintain the same neoliberal ideology of the Bank have dominated water governance policies in India. Other actors include the bilateral agencies like DFID (UK), USAID (USA), BMZ (Germany), and OECF (Japan), ADB, and Public-Private Infrastructure Advisory Facility (PPIAF) began to increase private sector involvement in water control. These international financial agencies through workshops, dialogues, and publications promoted a hegemonic discourse regarding water governance. This legitimized discourse prevented other more democratic processes and policies to emerge based on local voices.

We have one review essay written by Raviprasad Narayanan from the Institute of International Relations at the National Chengchi University in Taipei, Taiwan, on Dafydd Fell’s. book Government and Politics in Taiwan and Jean-Marc F. Blanchard and Dennis V. Hickey’s edited volume New Thinking about the Taiwan Issue – Theoretical insights into its origins, dynamics and prospects both published by Routledge. Another review essay is authored by Karen Teoh, Assistant Professor of History at Stonehill College of Prasenjit Duara’s The Global and Regional in China’s Nation Formation and Bryna Goodman and David S. G. Goodman’s edited volume Twentieth-century Colonialism and China: Localities, the Everyday, and the World two other Routledge publications.

As in the past, we have a number of book reviews for those scholars who have an interest in interdisciplinary research and in globalization and its consequences throughout the world. Again, as we stated in our first issue of the journal, we intend to maintain this standard of generalized interdisciplinary readability for all of our essays and book reviews in future issues of our journal. We hope that you will subscribe to our journal to read future essays, review essays, and book reviews. We also invite you to submit essays, review essays, book reviews, and suggest possible book reviews for the journal.

Sincerely,

Raymond Scupin, Ph.D. Director: Center for International and Global Studies Professor of Anthropology and International Studies Lindenwood University