Israeli Exceptionalism | December 2009
Commentary :
“M. Shahid Alam's book is a splendid read--lively, engaging, and thought provoking. It competently penetrates, as will as demystifies, one of the most well packaged ideological myths of our times--Israel as a benevolent, civilized, moral national project and shows clearly its darker side, especially as it pertains to Palestinians who have been the major victims of this myth. Alam offers us a passionate plea for a much needed provincializing of Israeli discourse, one that in the United States monopolizes the public sphere. This book is truly a sobering analysis for all those who believe in this myth.”--Khaldoun Samman, Associate Professor of Sociology and Program Director of the Middle East Studies and Islamic Civilization program at Macalester College and author of Clash of Modernities: The Islamist Challenge and the Making and Unmaking of the "New" Jew, Arab, and Turk
“This book should be read because it describes, with remarkable historical insight, why the current crusade of the West and the Zionists beckons dangers that we all need to understand, urgently.”--John Pilger, Journalist, writer and documentary filmmaker
“M. Shahid Alam is a marvelous writer dealing with some of the most pressing problems facing both the United States and the Moslem world. In this book, exploring the tragedy inherent in the history of Zionism, Alam reveals to us how anti-Semitism and Zionism have evolved into an unholy alliance that now constitutes a major threat to world peace. For those seeking insight into this threat, Alam's book is a ‘must read.’”--Lawrence Davidson, Professor of History, West Chester University
Challenging the New Orientalism | January 2007
Amazon.com editorial summary:
Over the past few decades, a new form of Orientalism has been developing. As exemplified by Elie Kedourie and Bernard Lewis, it points to Islam as the West's archenemy. The rise of political Islam and its opposition to Western domination of the Islamic world are seen as evidence of a deep, abiding hatred of all things Western. Accordingly, the new Orientalists call for thorough reforms, among them regime changes, wars, and the imposition of 'democracy' on Islamic societies. They warn that if the West shrinks from this challenge, the Islamists will surely gain power and destroy the West. The essays in this book 'written after 9-11' dispute the new Orientalist presumption of an unchanging Islam, opposed to "Western" values and incapable of adapting to the modern world. The not-so-hidden objective of the new Orientalism is to promote acceptance of the US and Israel's imperialist push into the Islamic world as both a security imperative and a civilizing mission. Alam argues that the new Orientalist's claim of a categorical split between Islam and the West is based on a biased, inaccurate interpretation of history. While recognizing the political and economic failings of the Islamic world, Alam shows that they are legacies of two centuries of Western imperialism and are shared by all regions at the periphery of the prevailing global capitalism. If the Islamic world lags behind China and India, it is because of two factors that have given a new edge to Western involvement in West Asia and North Africa: oil and Zionism. In Alam's view, Israel is a powerful destabilizing force in the region, whose survival depends upon turning the Western-Islamic conflict into a hot war. Not surprisingly, many of the new Orientalists are strong partisans of Israel.
Poverty from the Wealth of Nations| June 2000
Amazon.com editorial summary:
Shahid Alam presents an analysis of the evolution of global disparities that goes beyond the earlier neo-Marxist critiques of global capitalism. He inserts two additional asymmetries into the global economy--those created by 'unequal races' and unequal states. The author analyzes not only the power of markets, but the powers that shaped these markets. More importantly he demonstrates that loss of sovereignty retarded industrialization, human capital formation and economic growth.
Amazon.com reader reviews:
[5/5 Stars] Reviewer: Will Podmore (see more about me) from London United Kingdom
Alam's brilliant and original book studies the growing polarisation between the economically advanced and lagging countries since 1760. He marshals extensive cross-country evidence and concludes, "The results showed a strong positive correlation between sovereignty and industrialisation."
As he writes, "Sovereignty did matter! Countries which had it would grow faster than countries which did not. The logic of it is simple. Colonization of lagging countries led, via forced integration, to the loss of manufactures, a shrinking comparative advantage in primary production, and the displacement of indigenous capital, skills and enterprises; it also led to monopolization and direct appropriation of their resources. Only sovereign lagging countries - free to structure their integration into the world economy - could avoid or minimize the adverse consequences of integration. Ergo, loss of sovereignty retarded economic growth. ... Countries will structure their international relations to develop manufactures and indigenous capital, enterprises and technological capabilities; they will impose at the outset, or gradually, policies that regulate the entry of imports and foreign capital, labor and enterprises. ... These asymmetries ensure that loss of sovereignty will produce lower levels of industrialisation, lower levels of productivity in the subsistence sector, lower levels of human capital, lower rates of taxation and public expenditure and, finally, lower growth rates of per capita income."
Countries winning their independence after 1945 achieved substantial increases in their manufacturing industry. 1980 saw the imperial counterattack; the international financial institutions, egged on by the key capitalist states, attacked the lagging countries and reimposed dependency. The Soviet Union's demise orphaned the lagging countries; they lost the most powerful counterweight to the USA.
World Bank and IMF policy packages are identical to the EU's demands: end fiscal deficits, privatise industries and services, open government contracts to foreign firms, end state subsidies, remove controls on capital accounts of the balance of payments, end barriers to foreign enterprises' entry.
Without economic sovereignty, all other forms of sovereignty are shadows. The economy is the root of sovereignty: without control over how we work and produce, we are slaves.
Governments and Markets in Economic Development Strategies | June 1989
Amazon.com editorial summary:
"There has been a long-running debate among development economists with regard to the role of governments in the phenomenal economic growth of the East Asian countries. On the one hand, neoclassical economists maintain that their success can be attributed to the laissez-faire approach adopted by the respective governments and the export-oriented policies aimed at achieving more efficient allocation of resources through the harmonization of domestic and world prices. On the other hand, other development specialists challenge this line of argument and counter that these countries have employed active interventionist policies to promote selected export industries by creating dynamic comparative advantage in them. Alam attempts to substantiate the latter thesis with respect to three East Asian countries, namely Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan. This volume consist of five chapters. The first is exclusively concerned with the theoretical discourse between the two schools of thought. The next three chapters relate to the case studies of the three countries. The last chapter tries to answer the question whether the export-oriented strategy, so successful to these countries, can be adopted by other developing countries with an equal chance of success. The book is rather eclectic with no tables or quantification. The writing style is concise and to the point. Appropriate for academic collections."
