Promotions - Choice's Outstanding Academic Titles 2020 -

While India's economic growth in recent decades has been remarkable, there is a growing concern that the benefits have not been equitably shared. Poverty remains high and inequality is increasing, but identifying the negative social, economic, and political consequences of these trends can help India, and other developing countries, develop inclusive, growth-focused development policy. To that end, editors De (North-Eastern Hill Univ., India) and Pal (Indian Statistical Institute) explain several important issues, such as poverty, inequality, and financial inclusiveness in India, focusing especially on northeast India. The book presents selected studies on inclusive economic growth, looking at recent trends of income and non-income inequality and poverty in the region. Contributing authors discuss the forces underlying these trends, while examining the concept of inclusive growth and providing in-depth analyses of key policy pillars to support an inclusive growth strategy, including employment, access to public services, and social protections. This book is a thoughtful, scholarly consideration of how to make economic growth work for the benefit of a large populace. It offers important insights into how these challenges can be met, making this a valuable guide for researchers and practitioners alike.Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty; professionals.

Global Borderlands has the makings of a scholarly classic, using methodologies from history, sociology, and anthropology to intervene in a broad range of fields, most notably borderland studies. Reyes (Univ. of California, Riverside) proposes the concept "global borderland" as places that are legally plural, where foreign and local interact, characterized by wealth inequality but not confined by simple oppression of local people by rich foreigners. She privileges neither group and avoids reductive assumptions about race and gender. She traces the interaction between foreigners, not just Americans but also, interestingly, Koreans and Filipinos as they interact in a variety of ways, many exploitative, some cooperative. The types and spaces of those interactions are creatively broad, including violence, employment, tax and businesses law, romance, sex work, and diplomacy, to name a few. Interwoven through each chapter is an engagingly descriptive ethnography with theoretical insights, which will appeal to scholars and students alike. Although the Subic Bay Freeport Zone in the Philippines, once a US naval base, is her case study, the book can be read productively by anyone working within borderland studies.Summing Up: Essential. General readers through faculty; professionals.

In contemporary Japan, a small but steady stream of urbanites moving to rural areas for personal and professional reasons is changing the meaning of rural. Klien (Hokkaido Univ., Japan) taps into this emerging migration pattern through interviews in and observations of different parts of the country. Her analysis is densest for rural areas most affected by the 2011 "Great East Japan Earthquake," which shattered lives but also catalyzed an influx of energetic urban volunteers, many of whom stayed in the countryside, serving as a crucial resource for other new migrants. Klien's descriptions are invaluable for understanding the tensions informing these migrants' lives: they are liberated yet constrained, faced with new opportunities yet blocked in ambition, seemingly new migrants who have moved multiple times. Klien carefully anchors her discussion in the literature on migration (especially lifestyle migration), resulting in a book that is both empirically and conceptually valuable. She is to be especially commended for neither simplifying the range of migrant experiences nor attempting to resolve the contradictions in their individual lives. Excellent as an update on Japanese society, but also as a useful reflection on the complexity and unpredictability of contemporary migration overall.Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty.