Article Alert - November 2011

November 21, 2011

The U.S. Embassy's Information Resource Center is pleased to offer you Article Alert, the monthly current awareness publication of the Information Resource Center, U.S. Embassy Public Affairs, Bangkok, Thailand. It offers abstracts of approximately 26 current articles and policy briefs from leading American journals and think tanks in six thematic areas with an emphasis on East Asian regional affairs. The views expressed in the articles are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect U.S. government policies.

Full Text Availability: Hyperlinks to full texts are provided for U.S. government documents. Full hard copy texts of non-U.S. government documents are available upon request to IRC service subscribers only. To request full texts, please contact us at irc@state.gov, tel: 02-205-4640; or fax: 02-650-8918, citing the article number(s). Current and back issues of Article Alert are also available in our homepage at http://bangkok.usembassy.gov/services/irc/alert/alert.html.  

SPOTLIGHT: GLOBAL ENVIRONMENTAL CHALLENGES

1. “Climate Change and Thailand: Impact and Response”
Danny Marks. Contemporary Southeast Asia, August 2011, 30 pages.
The author, a consultant for the Rockefeller Foundation’s climate change programme in Thailand, discusses the impacts of climate change on Thailand and a number of problems that will likely exacerbate during the next few decades.

2. “The Effectiveness of Negotiations over International River Claims”
Marit Brochmann and Paul R. Hensel. International Studies Quarterly, September 2011, 24 pages.
With the rising demand for water in water-scarce areas and the predictions of looming ‘water wars,’  the author examines river disagreements and the effectiveness of negotiations, focusing on whether factors that promote negotiation onset have different effects on negotiation outcomes.

3. "Oceanic Revolution and Pacific Asia"
John Curtis Perry. The Fletcher Forum of World Affairs, Summer 2011, 9 pages.
The author, director of the maritime studies program at Tufts University’s  Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at, traces 200 years of evolution in the ocean’s role as avenue, arena, and source in an increasingly globalized world.

GLOBAL HEALTH

4. “The End of AIDS”
Jill Neimark. Discover, October 2011, 9 pages.
The author, a contributing editor at Discover, examines potential cures for HIV and AIDS involving gene therapy and latency activators, focusing on the study of elite suppressors, people who are infected with HIV and remain healthy.

5. “Meaty Concerns”
Marc Michael, et al. World Today, August 2011, 3 pages.
The authors discuss the health implications of rising meat consumption and production on global health range from increased rates of obesity and diabetes to outbreaks of food-borne infections.  Policy options to mitigate negative health impacts are offered.

TECHNOLOGY

6. "Saying Good-Bye to Technologies"
Dave Rensberger. Searcher, September 2011, 4 pages.
The author explores solutions to common problems with technological gadgets and personal computers, focusing on proper and safe ways of getting rid of old computers and destroying confidential or personal files inside their storage devices.

LIBRARY TRENDS

7. “From Cloud to Mobile: Drawing Down Big Info into Little Apps”
Nancy K. Herther. Computers in Libraries, September 2011, 6 pages.
The author, a sociology/anthropology librarian at the University of Minnesota Libraries, discusses the growth of mobile applications and how a library can deliver these apps to its users.

8. “Beyond the Bookmobile”
Richard Oppenheim.  Searcher, July/August 2011, 5 pages.
The author, a CPA of Oppenheim Group, discusses mobile technology’s impact on the library and work in general by taking a look at a range of apps, including those that facilitate e-reading, video viewing and recording, content location, digital rights management, and data customization.

EDUCATION

9. “Blogging and Audience Awareness”
Diane Lapp, et al. Journal of Education, 2010/2011, 12 pages.
The authors discuss blogging as a tool for developing students’ writing and the need of audience awareness, focusing on how students can become aware of their audience for their written work.

10. “The Determinants and Distributional Effects of Public Education, Health, and Welfare Spending in Thailand”
Ponlapat Buracom. Asian Affairs: an American Review, Vol. 38, Issue 3, 2011, 30 pages.
The author, a researcher at the Graduate School of Public Administration, National Institute of Development Administration, Thailand, analyzes the factors affecting the growth of public education, health and welfare spending in Thailand from 1982-2007, and explores their distributional effects by using a benefit incidence analysis.

ASIAN ECONOMIC GROWTH

11. “Making the Transition”
Alejandro Foxley and Fernando Sossdorf. The Carnegie Papers, September 2011, 42 pages.
The authors outline four lessons that middle-income countries should learn to increase the probability that they will successfully transition into advanced economies.  They also offer a comparative perspective that focuses on developed countries that had varying levels of success in the transition from middle-income economies to advanced economies in the last twenty years.

12. “Huge in Asia”
Dustin Roasa. Foreign Policy, September/October 2011, 4 pages.
The author, a writer based in Cambodia, explores brands and products from the United States that are popular business enterprises in Asian countries, as well as companies that are losing popularity in the United States but gaining in Asia.

13. “Who Are We? Who Are They? The Real Facts of a Globalized Chimerica”
Peter Nolan. New Perspectives Quarterly, Summer 2011, pages.
The profound change in the nature of the firm in the era of globalization poses a challenge for governments and citizens in both high-income and developing countries. Who are “we” in the high-income countries and who are “they” in the developing countries in the light of these changes? The author, director of the China Big Business Program at Cambridge University, discusses the fundamental questions about the identity of the firm, the nature of national industrial policy, and international relations.

GLOBAL ECONOMY

14. “Stop Blaming Wall Street”
John B. Judis. The New Republic, August 4, 2011, 4 pages.
The author, a senior editor for The New Republic, discusses why the U.S. economy is struggling, arguing that wrongdoing in the securities industry is not to blame.  The impact on the global economy of U.S. fiscal, monetary, and trade policy from the end of World War II to the present day is examined to show how a variety of factors including trade policy have led to the current state of affairs.

SCIENCE AND ENVIRONMENT

15. “The Speedup”
Monika Bauerlein and Clara Jeffery. Mother Jones, July/August 2011, 6 pages.
The authors discuss the concept of speedup, in which an employee's duties and working hours are expanded with an increase in salary.  They also examine how a lack of union contracts and regulations allows U.S. employers to conduct speedup and offloading, in which a job is cut and the duties are divided among remaining employees.

ASIA AND WORLD AFFAIRS

16. “Southeast Asia-US Relations: Hegemony or Hierarchy?”
Charmaine G. Misalucha. Contemporary Southeast Asia, August 2011, 20 pages.
The author, an assistant professor in the International Studies Department of De La Salle University, Manila, the Philippines, examines the relationship of the United States and Southeast Asia after 9/11, focusing on the concepts of hegemony and hierarchy.

17. “Institutions and the Great Power Bargain in East Asia: ASEAN's Limited ‘Brokerage’ Role”
Evelyn Goh. International Relations of the Asia-Pacific, September 2011, 29 pages.
The author, a fellow at Royal Holloway, University of London, analyzes ASEAN’s strategies for institutionalizing the great powers, and offers recommendations for institutional development that would facilitate the negotiation of the regional great power bargain.

18. “Toward a Smarter Power: Moving Beyond the Rhetoric”
Justin Polin. World Affairs, September/October 2011, 6 pages.
The author, a research associate at the Hudson Institute’s Center for National Security Strategies, examines the Obama administration's “smart power” efforts and the increase of the civilian role in foreign policy.

DEMOCRACY AND HUMAN RIGHTS

19. “The Formation of the ASEAN Intergovernmental Commission on Human Rights: A Protracted Journey”
Yung-Ming Yen. Journal of Human Rights, July-September 2011, 21 pages. The author examines the development of regional human rights mechanisms in Asia and its inconsistency with the global trend of human rights protection.  A historical review of various attempts for regional human rights protection in Asia and a different path toward regime formation in Southeast Asia versus other regional counterparts are discussed.

20. “Monitoring Corruption from a Human Rights Perspective”
Gauthier De Beco. The International Journal of Human Rights, October 2011, 18 pages.
The author examines the relationship between human rights and corruption, focusing on the rationale of monitoring both human rights and corruption.  He also provides cases in which corruption is monitored from a human rights perspective.

21. “Do New Democracies Support Democracy?: The Multilateral Dimension”
Ted Piccone. Journal of Democracy. October 2011, 14 pages.
The author, a senior fellow and deputy director of foreign policy at the Brookings Institution, explores democracy and human rights trends in foreign policies of the world’s six most influential rising democracies—Brazil, India, Indonesia, South Africa, South Korea, and Turkey—over the past decade.

U.S. POLITICS

22. “The GOP's 2012 Field”
Jon Decker. Policy Review, August/September 2011, 11 pages.
Sensing a real opportunity to make Barack Obama a one-term president, eight Republicans have already declared their candidacies for the Republican nomination. -- The author, a media fellow at the Hoover Institution, discusses the path to the presidency for the 2012 Republican nominee.

23. "Race against History"
George E. Condon Jr. National Journal, September 10, 2011, 3 pages.
The temptation to make the 2012 election about George W. Bush is a powerful one for Obama advisers, but American political history suggests this is a trap that Democrats should avoid.  The author, a staff writer covering the White House for National Journal, explains why.

JOURNALISM

24. “News for the World”
Lee C. Bollinger. Columbia Journalism Review, July/August 2011, 5 pages.
The author, President of Columbia University, discusses how the U.S. broadcasting industry can meet the demands of an increasingly global marketplace.  The article is adapted from a published article in the "University of Illinois Law Review" by the same author.

25. “John Paton's Big Bet”
Lauren Kirchner. Columbia Journalism Review, July/August 2011, 5 pages.
The author, an assistant editor at Columbia Journalism Review, discusses chief executive officer (CEO) John Patton's innovative business plan to make his media company Journal Register Company (JRC) financially viable by prioritizing digital media over traditional print, and looking to digital advertising for revenue.

U.S. SOCIETY

26. “America the Brutiful”
Michael Idov. Foreign Policy, September/October 2011, 3 pages.
The author, a contributing editor at the New York magazine, discusses the portrayal of Americans in foreign films from the beginning of the war on terror in 2001, focusing on the depictions of the characters, such as soldiers and military doctors, in the films.