While the artistic traditions of the various countries of East, Southeast and South Asia display distinctive aesthetic features, this volume examines the qualities of each area, and seeks commonalities that define the aesthetics of a broader Asian civilisation. Contributors include specialists in philosophy, literature, art history, religion and the comparative study of cultures. Some of them are writing from within their own cultural traditions while others approach their subjects as outside observers.
The book is divided into five sections, dealing with Japanese, Korean, Chinese, Indian and Southeast Asian aesthetics. Individual chapters provide in-depth investigations of specific traditions, embracing both classical as well as modern aesthetic forms. The authors suggest that Japanese culture is characterised by an openness to diverse cultural influences, Korean culture by “peninsularity”, Chinese culture by parallels with the West, Indian culture by “rasa” (a kind of “cosmic” feeling that is distinct from the one who feels), and Southeast Asian culture by dilemmas of modernisation. The volume as a whole integrates these studies, clarifying essential elements of each aesthetic culture and drawing on this material to characterise an Asian civilization that transcends individual countries and cultures.
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For many years Myanmar operated an inward-looking economic system built on import substitution. Ultimately this policy failed, leaving behind inefficient state economic enterprises and widespread poverty. Political unrest in 1988 led a newly installed military government to liberalize the economy, opening it to foreign investment and private participation in trade. This move towards a market economy was in line with world-wide trends, but political instability forced the country to follow a different course from neighbouring countries.
By analyzing economic policies and performance across the economic spectrum, this book presents an overall picture of economic development in Myanmar between 1988 and the early 2000s. The authors synthesize both macro and micro level data to overcome some of the limitations of unreliable national statistics, and show how the government attempted to deal with two key issues it faced. The first was how to reform the inefficient socialistic economic system in conformity with a market economy, and the second was how to develop the agricultural and underdeveloped economy to alleviate mass poverty.
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