"Development is a difficult endeavor in any environment, much more so in places such as Myanmar with its "perfect storm" of extreme poverty, international sanctions, political repression, and human rights violations, with concomitant conflicts within development organizations over norms and policies. This book examines how to effect successful development interventions in Myanmar. The author points out how practitioners have questioned universal economic prescriptions for development in ways that have not questioned the normative foundations behind their work. Ware does not argue for a facile moral relativism; he sees Myanmar as an egregious violator of human rights. He does call for "context sensitivity" to help organizations adapt their values to better meet the needs of client populations. Through fieldwork and an extensive series of interviews, Ware brings into focus key issues of perception and practice that are intrinsic to the development enterprise"--Supplied by publisher.

"Novel Characters offers a fascinating and in-depth history of the novelistic character from the "birth of the novel" in Don Quixote, through the great canonical works of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, to the most influential international novels of the present day. An original study which offers a unique approach to thinking about and discussing characterMakes extensive reference to both traditional and more recent and specialized academic studies of the novel. Provides a critical vocabulary for understanding how the novelistic conception of character has changed over time. Examines a broad range of novels, cultures, and periods. Promotes discussion of how different cultures and times think about human identity, and how the concept of what a character is has changed over time"-- "What makes novelistic characters unique? How do novelistic characters reflect or prefigure different ideas of human possibilities? Why and how has the concept of novelistic character changed over time? These are some the questions addressed in Novel Characters, an ambitious work that aims to reinstate character to its proper and central place in the art of fiction. Novel Characters argues that the novel is the literary form best suited to create characters of real, often troubling distinction, and that indeed it has a generic disposition, amounting to an obligation, to do so. DiBattista proposes a way of understanding what is distinctive about novelistic character as well as offering a discussion of how different cultures and times think about human identity. Novel Characters ranges from the "birth of the novel" in Don Quixote through the works of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and concludes by considering today's most influential international fiction. It simultaneously develops a lexicon of terms to describe the 'development' and trace the moral genealogy of novelistic characters through various literary periods"--

""Are we right," Benjamin M. Friedman asks, "to care so much about economic growth as we clearly do?" To answer, Friedman reaches beyond economics. He examines the political and social histories of the large Western democracies - particularly of the United States since the Civil War - distinguishing times of generally rising living standards from those of pervasive stagnation to illustrate how rising incomes render a society more open and democratic. He shows, too, how our attitudes toward economic growth and its consequences have roots in the thinking of prior centuries, especially the Enlightenment, and also include significant strands of religious influence." "Friedman also delineates the role of economic growth in determining which developing nations extend the broadest freedoms to their citizenry. He makes clear that growth, rather than just the level of living standards, is key to effecting political and social liberalization in the third world. But he also warns that the democratic values of countries even as wealthy as our own are at risk whenever incomes stagnate for extended periods. Merely being rich is no protection against a society's retreat into rigidity and intolerance once enough of its citizens lose the sense that they are getting ahead." "Finally, Friedman shows us why, if America is to strengthen democratic institutions around the world as a bulwark against terrorism and social unrest, we must aggressively pursue growth at home and promote worldwide economic expansion beyond what purely market-driven forces would create. And for the United States, he offers concrete suggestions for policy steps to achieve those objectives."--BOOK JACKET